She looked around the kitchen. The pots and pans she’d used to absolutely no effect the day before were still sitting in the sink and had been joined by the porridge pot, an ancient brown and orange thing that was only ever used for the morning oats. Flora had the faintest memory of her mother saving up something—was it stamps?—to buy the set of different-size pans. This was the only one left. Its screws were coming loose.
She followed the line of sunlight that danced in and out of the dirty kitchen windows. This place was utterly filthy. It wasn’t the boys’ fault exactly—they worked hard—but it certainly wasn’t going to get any better on its own. And there was something about mess and dirt that made it hard to relax. Flora wasn’t a clean freak, not by any means, but this was so dispiriting and couldn’t be doing any of them any good. And that was before they all caught amoebic dysentery.
No. It wouldn’t do.
She cracked open the ancient dishwasher and emptied its filthy filter. As it ran through a cycle with the dishwasher cleaner that had obviously never been used, she started washing everything by hand, using a vast amount of the cleaning products she’d gathered up along with the pie ingredients in the supermarket, filling and refilling the sink with hot water and making the creaky old boiler start up over and over again. She didn’t just wash the dirty dishes; she washed every single smeared bit of crockery, piling a load up in the corner to be taken to the island’s sole charity shop. When, after all, did they ever have thirty-five people round who all needed a saucer? How many freebie mugs from fertilizer companies could conceivably be useful?
Then she started scrubbing the shelves, thick with dust and sticky rings; she made herself filthy crawling into cupboards, and swilled bowl after bowl of gray water down the drain. She threw away piles of old advertising leaflets and used envelopes, gathered up bills and bank statements and divided them into piles that she could go over with her father—she would have to get him into Internet banking; it would make his life a lot easier. Possibly. Or Innes, at least.
She threw out all the old packets of half-eaten pasta and out-of-date rice—it was amazing they didn’t have mice, truly—and tidied up the contents of the cupboards. She didn’t know what to do with them, but it was nice to know that such peculiar items as corn flour and suet were all in there.
The work was tiring, but it was satisfying to see results as she refilled the mop bucket again and again. Just to be doing something felt like a triumph in itself, lifting her from the slightly panicky morass into which she’d steadily felt herself sinking since she’d known she was coming back. She thought of Jan the night before, out in the hosing rain, putting up tents for poor kids from the inner city. Well, Jan wasn’t the only person who could do good things, she found herself thinking, then realized this was ridiculous.
She’d filled the oven with noxious chemicals—she made a note to dispose of them carefully, in case they got into the duck pond—but it had to be left on for a good couple of hours. She might as well put the kettle on. She was pleased to see it gleaming, having been left to soak in limescale remover. She rinsed it under the tap about a billion times, feeling the satisfaction of watching the little white flakes disappear, then boiled some water. She’d refilled her mother’s little tins with Tea, Coffee, and Sugar written on them, although she had vowed to herself that as soon as there was any money—and she’d have to take a look at that with her father too: was there any money?—the first thing she was going to do was get a proper coffee machine so she didn’t have to drink the powdered stuff she’d weaned herself off long ago.
Then she realized that thinking like that made it seem as though she was going to be staying longer than a week.
Which she wasn’t. Job done. In and out and home again. Back again. Home again. Ugh. The terminology was confusing.
Reaching up to run a finger along the newly polished dresser top, she knocked over the pile of recipe books that stood there. She had bought her mother lots, whatever was fashionable, figuring that if she spent that much time in the kitchen, she might want to try cooking different things. So there was Nigella, Jamie, anything Flora had thought looked interesting but not too technical or weird. Anything with zucchini spaghetti was absolutely out.
She looked at them now as they cascaded onto the floor. Pristine. Utterly untouched, practically the only tidy things in the room. Her mother—who had always thanked her profusely—must have politely put them up on the shelf then never, ever opened them. Not even for a look.
Flora shook her head, half smiling. No wonder her father said he knew where she got her stubborn side.
As she picked the books up, wondering if she could sell them, she came across an old notebook tucked in between them. The kettle boiled on as Flora stared at the note book. It was at the same time both new to her—she couldn’t exactly recall seeing it—and on the other hand as utterly familiar as the back of her hand, like seeing a stranger in a crowd then realizing she’d known them all her life.
She crouched down, and tentatively picked it up.
It had a dark hard cover with red binding, coming slightly loose, and a matching red bookmark string inside it. There were grease spots on the cover. She opened it up, knowing even as she did so exactly what it was. No wonder her mother had never needed to use any of those other books she’d bought for her.
She had her own recipe book.
Chapter Fifteen
How could she have forgotten? But then Flora had never really thought of meals being designed as such; her mum just cooked, that was all, as natural as breathing. Dinner appeared, steady as clockwork, 5 P.M. on the dot, when the boys got in from the fields or from school; great big slices of apple pie to finish, with farm cream, of course, sluiced out of the old cracked white jug with the blue cows round the rim (which had survived the purge). Puddings and jellies, thick hams and delicate potatoes, and always pie. As a small child, Flora would help her, sitting at her elbow and absorbing everything. She was particularly good at licking the spoon but reasonably good at passing the baking powder and kneading and mixing. As she’d grown older and was studying for exams, she still worked to the rhythm of her mother’s wooden spoon and rolling pin. And here it all was.
She suddenly felt a slight hiccup of excitement.