Chapters (48)
- Cover
- Praise
- About the Author
- Also by Tricia Stringer
- Title Page
- Dedication
- 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
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Author’s Note
- Acknowledgements
- Excerpt
- One
Several pieces of notepaper and magazine clippings poked from the pages. She flicked to the page on family, opened out a piece of notepaper that had been stuck there and smiled. Written in Laura’s primary school hand was the title ‘Giraffe Soup’, then a list of ingredients and the method. As a little girl Laura would never eat pumpkin. It was the only vegetable grown on the property and they had it in abundance. Natalie had cooked up a big pot of it one day and added other vegetables. Laura had been about four and had eyed the bowl of soup, speckled with the green of zucchini and the brighter orange of carrot, with suspicion. Olive had appeared in the kitchen behind her granddaughter and had announced it was giraffe. Laura had eaten the lot and asked for more. Natalie had been grateful for Olive’s intervention and from then on pumpkin and vegetable soup was giraffe soup in the King household.
Natalie could have thrown the recipe out, she knew it by heart, but she’d written Olive’s name in brackets after the title. That was a reminder of how helpful her mother-in-law could be and a counter for the other times when Natalie got so frustrated by Olive’s interference.
And that was one of the reasons why she didn’t simply toss the old book away. Between its moralising pages were the mementos, mostly happy, of a different life to the one the book prescribed. Natalie’s life. Her family’s own real life. If anyone else saw Olive’s name next to the soup title they wouldn’t realise the significance but Natalie did, just like she knew the family photo she’d glued inside the front cover held special memories.
She’d insisted on having the portrait taken before her eldest, Kate, had left home for uni. It was an informal photo. Milt was seated in the middle, Natalie leaning into him, his arm around her waist and their three daughters cuddled in behind and to his other side. The girls had hated the photo when it had arrived from the photographer. Laura had braces back then, Bree had very short hair and said her ears looked too big for her head, and Kate always said she had a silly look on her face. But to Natalie it was a precious moment in time and even though the large framed copy was banished to a hall cupboard, she’d kept this small copy for herself.