Chapters (39)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Epilogue
- Author’s note
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
Downstairs, the cottage was cold, but there was no wood for the burner (and besides, she hadn’t any matches). Although there was an electric heater under the staircase and another upstairs in the bedroom, Anna wasn’t yet awake enough to work out how to turn them on. She shuffled into the kitchen instead, collecting the bag of groceries she’d dumped there the night before. It was only the basics: bread, tea, milk, butter, jam, cheese, eggs, salt and pepper. Anna stared at the oven with distinct misgiving, wondering how bad it would be inside. When she finally opened the creaking door, though, she was relieved to find it nowhere near as in need of cleaning as she had expected. Anna lit the grill and pushed two slices of bread beneath it. Then she went to make tea and realized she didn’t have a kettle. Or a mug, for that matter. Water would have to do, if she could find something to put it in and the pipe wasn’t coming straight out of the sea. Toast made, Anna sank onto the sofa and ate mechanically, staring at the ceiling, feeling blank and unreal.
Anna realized that the double wooden beams above her head had been turned into storage space. In between each of the struts that held the second floor in place was a uniform five-inch gap, and in one corner there was still a book tucked into the space, lying lengthways on its cover. Anna stood and reached up to pull it out. It was an old notebook, bound in soft brown leather, and Anna opened it to discover page after page of recipes in cramped, neat handwriting. She wondered if it had belonged to the previous owner, Bren, and whether it had been left there deliberately when the MacKenzie man had cleared the place of the old woman’s belongings, or if it had just been missed. After all, her own grandmother’s recipe book was a precious thing, made even more so by the memories Anna had of the times she had spent with her mother as a young child, cooking recipes from its pages. Every time she used it now, Anna felt as if she knew a little more about her grandmother, who had passed before Anna was born. It helped her feel close to her mother, too, though she’d been gone for most of Anna’s life.