With her kitchen wiped clean and all her equipment tidied away, Anna thought she was just a little more in love with the Fishergirl’s Luck than she had been before. She ran her hand up the stone wall as she climbed the stairs, thinking that the place probably deserved a fresh lick of paint.

Seven

When Anna woke the next morning to sun streaming through her new curtain, she was already thinking about food. She must have dreamed of cooking, and was left with a nebulous memory of presiding over the creation of an elaborate feast. Anna lay looking up at the low pitch of her ceiling, watching the luminous patterns cast there by the morning sun and trying to remember the details of what that shadow-self of hers had cooked. She had dreamed of food a lot when she was younger, the thrill of discovering a talent for a profession to which she aspired suffusing every moment of her consciousness. In those early days Anna’s sleeping mind had conjured ideas for whole dishes so often that she had kept a notebook by her bed and developed the habit of scribbling them down before they scattered after waking. As the years had passed, though, this night-time tendency of her subconscious had atrophied, shrunken into non-existence by constant thwarting. Always working in others’ kitchens meant that Anna so rarely got to cook meals of her own design. This persisted even once Geoff had become chef-patron of his own place with enough clout to listen to her ideas, had he felt so inclined. He never did.

Anna got up and went downstairs to fill her new kettle, because tea was always a good place to start. Taking the milk out of the fridge, she was reminded that, really, she’d already cooked enough. Still, she was still eager to follow this renewed seam of creativity.

I haven’t made anything sweet, she thought. I could take some dessert.

As she leaned back against the kitchen counter, contemplating what would be appropriate, her gaze fell on Bren’s recipe book. She picked it up, leafing through the dry pages, wondering if there was anything within that would work. It seemed like a nice idea to take something of Bren’s along to this first meeting with her neighbours.

A recipe for raspberry and hazelnut shortbread caught Anna’s eye, both because it sounded delicious and because there was a lovely little sketch of two wild raspberries still on their canes in the corner. There was a note alongside, in writing so tiny that Anna had to turn the book sideways and squint to make out the words.

Almonds good, too, but DM hates hazelnuts so that’s favourite for domino night or the greedy so-and-so will scoff the lot. Nuts better chopped, not ground – June 1983