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Back The Cottage at Rosella Cove Save as PDF
Chapters (50)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Book
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. Twenty-six
  30. Twenty-seven
  31. Twenty-eight
  32. Twenty-nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-one
  35. Thirty-two
  36. Thirty-three
  37. Thirty-four
  38. Thirty-five
  39. Thirty-six
  40. Thirty-seven
  41. Thirty-eight
  42. Thirty-nine
  43. Acknowledgements
  44. About the Author
  45. Also by Sandie Docker
  46. Book Club Questions
  47. Welcome to the Kookaburra Creek Café
  48. Prologue
  49. One
  50. Sign up to Read More and discover new favourites

Sylvia always provided an answer, of course. Her warm expression and kind eyes looked down on Alice from her framed place on the wall above the oven, her grey hair collected in a white cotton bonnet. At least they were the colours Alice imagined behind the sepia tones of the picture. Sylvia wasn’t her real name, though there was no reason it couldn’t have been. Alice had simply called her that all those years ago when she first stepped into the kitchen and looked up in wide-eyed terror, wondering how on earth she’d ended up in this town.

Sylvia had told her that day, by way of the recipe that fell to the bench when Alice reached up to touch the picture hanging on the wall, to bake chocolate fudge cupcakes. So she had. It was the first cake of any description she’d ever made and the world stilled. It was as if everything around her had quieted. It was the first time in Alice’s life she’d been able to switch off the constant thoughts in her head. The first time she’d been able to forget the scars and bruises collected in her life and enter The Silence. And so it had been that way ever since.

Alice looked into Sylvia’s eyes and waited, asking her silently what to bake today. The answer came at once: strawberry and white chocolate.

Alice lowered her cup, her heart pounding, and stared hard at Sylvia. ‘What?’

Sylvia gazed straight back, her eyes giving nothing away.

With shaking hands Alice pulled out the red and white polka-dotted patty cases from the pantry and lined the cupcake tin. She hesitantly reached for her bowls, beaters and measuring cups. Sylvia had never been wrong before. But strawberry and white chocolate?

Alice closed her eyes and, when she opened them again, the morning chorus of magpies and lyrebird no longer floated through the open window, the constant, gentle buzz of the old fridge could not be heard: The Silence.

Her hands steadied as she hulled the strawberries, chopped them into small pieces and folded them into the batter. She pushed a square of white chocolate into the centre of each waiting cupcake and her breathing quickened. Strawberries and white chocolate was not a combination she’d ever used before. Or ever wanted to use. Strawberries, yes. White chocolate, yes. But never together. Memories of that night so long ago teased the edges of Alice’s mind. How could Sylvia have known?

Alice slid the tray on to the oven shelf and shut the glass door. She cranked up the music on the radio and moved her hips in time with the beat as she cleaned down the bench and started washing up.