Beat 6 eggwhites till stiff. Add 6tbsp caster sugar. Beat till creamy. Stir in 1tbsp cornflour and 1tbsp vinegar. Spread mix in a cake shape on a tray covered in baking paper. Bake at 150˚C till crisp on the outside. Cool.

Top with cream beaten with Cointreau or orange zest, then with passionfruit, sliced strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and sliced mango. Make several, and eat large amounts.

GIBBER’S CREEK, DECEMBER 1988

SCARLETT

The bride wore white, because she liked it, not because it was tradition, and because neither Jed nor Nancy had worn Matilda’s wedding dress, over seventy years old, satin embroidered with a hundred tiny roses, and it had looked so sad hanging unworn again in the vast wardrobe at Drinkwater.

Matilda’s rose-covered dress was perfect too, because The Rose of Overflow had just edged onto the bestseller list and Scarlett had helped proofread it and finally made Jed accept that if she used her computer it wouldn’t blow up.

Bees buzzed at the ripening peaches in the orchard. Cicadas screamed a dozen operas out the window, almost drowning out the song of the golden whistler on the sill. Scarlett had always loved golden whistlers. They had been the first bird she had ever noticed, in the years when she could only lie until someone moved her. The bird had sat and sung to her, as if it knew she needed music and a friend.

Scarlett gazed at herself in the mirror, then back at the bird. ‘Why am I terrified?’ she muttered.

The golden whistler gave its call again. Unfortunately, thought Scarlett, she didn’t speak bird, though it sounded reasonably approving.

‘Woof?’ said Barnaby, the three-legged red heeler Felicity had given Jed, though Felicity also knew no one could replace their beloved Maxi, chasing endless rabbits with no recriminations in doggy heaven. One love never replaced another. It just piled on top.

‘I don’t speak dog either,’ Scarlett told him as Barnaby sniffed at the hem of the dress, as if trying to place the scent of the long-gone dogs who must have followed the woman who had worn this fabric so long ago.

But Matilda was there, still, and not just in the dress that Scarlett wore. With Jed’s stories, she’d seen the past live all around them. As of course it always did, thought Scarlett, if only people noticed.

‘What’s wrong, brat?’ Jed strode in wearing a yellow silk caftan embroidered with wattle — worn only once by Matilda and judged a mistake for a woman in her eighties, but perfect for a matron of honour in her mid-thirties, and eight and a half months’ pregnant.

‘I’m scared.’

‘What of? That you’ll trip going down the aisle? The car’ll break down? That I will once again go into labour at the most inconvenient time? I won’t, I promise. This kid is going to stay scheduled.’

‘Am I doing the right thing?’

‘Getting married?’