In April, at the height of the first national lockdown, Louise Troyano recalls being on a daily walk around the neighbourhood with her husband, Luis, and remarking that it was a good job this wasn’t the year he’d been ill.

In 2018, Luis, a finalist in series five of The Great British Bake Off, had been diagnosed with stage three oesophageal cancer and spent months in and out of hospital, having an operation to remove a tumour and going through two rounds of chemotherapy. By the autumn of 2019, he’d been given the all-clear and the couple began to get their lives back.

“He was fishing, he was eating, he was back at work. He was cooking again, making my tea and all that,” says Louise. “It all seemed to be normal again, for a bit.”

In May, shortly after that walk, Luis noticed he couldn’t swallow again – an all-too familiar sign that something was wrong. “He probably didn’t tell me straight away,” says Louise, talking to me over Zoom from their home in Stockport. “He made an appointment again to have swallow tests. They told him at first it was just [after] effects from the surgery, they didn’t think it was cancer.”

But it wasn’t long before Luis’s condition deteriorated. “He was getting worse. I think I took him to A&E about three times,” recalls Louise. It was on one of these trips to hospital that Luis was told the cancer had returned. Because of Covid restrictions, the couple – who got together when they were just 19 – weren’t allowed to be together when he was given the news.

“I just had to drop him off at A&E and come home. And then he was ringing me to tell me: ‘It’s come back.’ We were both upset, and then I had to drive all the way to the hospital again. I don’t know how I did that journey,” says Louise. “Moments like that, you want to be together. I remember I got to A&E again and said: ‘I need to see my husband’, and they were like: ‘We don’t let visitors in’. ‘But I need to see my husband!’”

By July, they had been told the cancer had spread. It was possible chemo might help Luis live a little longer, but he was given a matter of months to live. “I was like, ‘Yes, do chemo, do chemo’, because he couldn’t swallow at this point, he was on a feeding tube again,” says Louise. “He’d not been able to eat for three months, and he likes eating. I wanted him to have the chemo for it to shrink again so he could at least eat. That was obviously a bit optimistic, but I wanted him to be able to enjoy some sort of life. But that never happened.”

It seems especially cruel that a man who so dearly loved food and will be remembered for his wonderful baking should have had this particular joy taken from him in his final months. Luis died in October at a hospice near the couple’s home, at the age of 48. The final episode of this year’s Bake Off, which was broadcast three weeks later, was dedicated to him. Louise watched it at home with a friend.

“I was crying because of all the nice stories from the bakers. Then, at the closing credits, Luis popped up.” Luis once said the show had “totally changed my life”. He ran his own advertising company before going on Bake Off in 2015. “I now also bake for a living, which is simply amazing,” he said. 

His baking took him to food shows around the country; he published a book called Bake It Great, and opened The Hive Bakery in Stockport. “It was brilliant,” says Louise, “but I think in the end he thought it was too much like hard work, so he closed it, but I’m glad he did it.”

Eventually, baking went back to being something Luis did for fun, while work was running the marketing department at Salford City Council. He was also, Louise says, a keen fisherman, flew model airplanes, did beekeeping and played the ukulele. “He always put 100 per cent into everything. I look back and think: ‘Oh my God, you fitted so much in.’ It’s inspirational, really. You think: ‘I’ve not done half of that – I’ve just sat and watched you…’”

Bake Off was just another hobby that grew into something more. “I don’t even know how it started; it was just: ‘Oh, I made this…’ The next minute he’s telling me: ‘I’ve entered the Bake Off’,” recalls Louise.

“I used to think it was mad if we were walking through Manchester and people would say ‘there’s Luis off the Bake Off’, and he’d just wave. People would want selfies and I’d think: ‘It’s Luis, why do you want a selfie?’ It was nice but strange.”

Louise is now raising money in memory of her husband, in aid of  Macmillan Cancer Support, which is a beneficiary of this year’s Telegraph Christmas Charity Appeal, and which supported Luis in his final weeks.

“Luis left me a note that I wasn’t allowed to read until he died. It said he didn’t want flowers at his funeral, he wanted a JustGiving page. I got more donations on the page again straight after Bake Off ended. It’s been amazing to watch and read all the messages from people from all over the world.

“I feel sorry for anyone who’s had someone that’s died and they’re not ‘famous’ and don’t get all these messages. I’m so lucky to have that extra bit of love. It’s really helped,” says Louise.

Macmillan’s highly trained nurses came in when Luis started to deteriorate. “They were like superheroes, but with PPE,” says Louise. “They sort of swept us up and just did stuff when we couldn’t think and we’d got tired of trying to do it. Luis was getting more and more fed up with it all. They took over and knew what to do. They sorted out all his medication when the pain was getting too much.”

It was the Macmillan nurses that first suggested Luis might consider going into a local hospice. “Obviously, that was something we didn’t want to think about. But they just explained it in a way that made sense and it wasn’t as scary. It was hard work with him being here. He couldn’t get up the stairs towards the end. It wasn’t the same as in the hospice, because they looked after him 24/7, and I couldn’t,” says Louise. 

The hospice came with its own challenges, as Louise was limited in how often she was permitted to visit Luis, due to Covid restrictions. “I was allowed an hour every couple of days. It was hard, because obviously other people wanted to see him, and they weren’t allowed. He wanted to be in the hospice towards the end. He didn’t want me to go through what we were going through. He decided he would die in the hospice, I think, just because it was easier for me.”

At Luis’s funeral – a small affair, due to Covid restrictions – Claire Goodwin, one of the bakers from his 2015 cohort, brought cakes from Luis’s cookbook. “We ate them in the cemetery afterwards,” recalls Louise. “We called it a ‘cake wake’ because we weren’t allowed to do anything because of Covid. I know a lot of people will remember him for his baking. We’ve got messages from people from all over saying: ‘I’m making such and such this Christmas in honour of Luis.’ I love that. I’m just really proud of him.”

Louise, meanwhile, will be eating the Christmas cake Luis made for her back in June. “I’ve not looked at it yet,” she says. “It’s going to be tricky to eat. But I’m sure it’ll be lovely.”