There were, of course, several cake recipes at the end of the book. Birthdays and Christmas and many happy things. Thinking of Eilidh’s fairly strict boxes of raisins and dried fruit that she’d provided in the backpack, Flora decided that filling Agot up with sugar might be mildly a payback. But here was something she hadn’t made for a long time. And she already had the ingredients. She smiled to see it. Scones. That was it.
Her mother had circled a note at the top of the page: HOT OVEN COLD BUTTER.
“WHA’S THAT SAY?” said Agot, who had pulled over a chair from the kitchen table, dragging it noisily across the flagstones. Bramble huffed as if aggrieved.
“It says ‘hot oven cold butter,’” said Flora. “Because that is what you need when you’re making scones.”
Agot’s face brightened. “I YIKE SCONES. MAKE SCONES!”
Everything Agot said, Flora noticed, was short, emphatic, and announced at high volume. Flora looked at the little girl’s contented face and wondered why she herself wasn’t clearer like that. Clearer in her job, with her family; with what she wanted.
“Hmm, okay.”
She turned up the oven, cleaned Agot’s sticky hands, then set her to work mixing the flour, milk, and chilly butter.
A thought struck her. She didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her before. She wondered if the boys had gotten to it first.
She went into the larder, the cold storage off the main kitchen. The boys didn’t seem to use it much. There were endless cans of beans and fruit—when her mother was young, it was difficult and expensive to get fresh fruit on the island. Annie had loved canned mandarins and peaches and pears. When fresh fruit finally did turn up on a regular basis, she always professed herself disappointed with it compared to the syrupy contents of the cans she absolutely adored—and here they still were.
And up on the higher shelves—yes! Treasure, glowing in the light coming through the tiny dormer window. Pink, deepest purple, bright red. Damson. Strawberry. Blackberry. Cloudberry. It was like discovering an entire seam of her mother.
Looking at the jars, Flora realized that that was it. The very last of the jam; the very last of her mother in those little misshapen bottles, touched by her hands. Much of it had been given away to friends and neighbors, but some had been kept to get them through the winter. A winter she hadn’t seen.
Flora sat down suddenly and started to weep.
“WHA’S WRONG?” Tiny sticky hands were grabbing at her, concernedly lifting her hair from her face. “YOU CRYING?”
“No,” said Flora.
“ISS,” said Agot, in the manner of one who was very experienced at spotting crying. “YOU CRYING.”
She paused for two seconds.
“BETTER NOW?”
Flora found herself half smiling and rubbed her face fiercely.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am.” She blinked.
“I YIKE JAM,” announced Agot cheerfully. And Flora thought about it, and looked up at the field of wild raspberry, and thought, well, there was no point in leaving it, after all, and removed a jar, wiping the dust off the top lightly with her finger.
The scones in Agot’s paws were rather lumpy. Flora, on the other hand, had forgotten the simple pleasure of shaping things and the feel of the dough in her hands, and she cut them out with the little shaped cutter and lined them up neatly on the buttered tray.
“SCONES!” shouted Agot loudly as Innes came in from the fields for lunch.
“Oh great!” he said instinctively, then recoiled slightly as she insisted that he try one of her slightly charred offerings. Flora’s, in contrast, were absolutely perfect, and she felt ridiculously proud of herself. Innes even looked at her with a bit of respect in his eyes.
“Can I have one of each?” he asked tactfully.
The scones were still warm, and the butter melted on them beautifully, and then came the glistening jam.
It was, Flora knew, just jam. But with its deep sweetness, the slightly tart edge of the raspberries, came memories of her mother, standing right there, stirring frantically, her face pink with the heat, warning them off if they got too close to the boiling sugar. Jam day was always an exciting rush; a prolonged wait for them to be allowed to try the very first batch, spread on freshly baked bread, with melting butter from the dairy. A jeely piece, her father had called it, and Flora had eaten it every day, coming home from school up the dark track, the evenings getting shorter and shorter until it felt like they were living in the night all the time; but always, when she came in, there it was: that fresh bread smell and the sweetly spreading jam.
Without speaking, Flora watched Innes go through exactly the same process. He lifted the scone to his lips, but before he took a bite, he breathed in the scent of it and, briefly, closed his eyes. Flora flicked her gaze away, embarrassed that she’d caught him in a moment so personal, one that he clearly hadn’t expected to be witnessed. There was a pause. Then he bit into the scone.
“Oi, sis,” he said. “I think you could probably sell some of these down at the caff.”
“Shut up,” said Flora, but she was smiling.
Agot, meanwhile, had taken full advantage of their distracted attention to wolf down three of the scones—not, Flora noticed, her own. Then she pulled her father down to her level, with a look of something very important to impart.
“DADDY!” she whispered loudly.
“What is it, small fry?” he said, crouching down on his hefty haunches.
“I YIKE FLORA!”
Flora found herself grinning.
“AND!” she went on, sticky fingers grabbing at her father’s arm. “AND JAM!”
“Well, yes,” said Innes. “So you should. Your grandma made this jam.”
“GRANDJAM!” said Agot, and they both smiled at that.
“Where’s Fintan?” said Flora.
Innes shrugged.
“Dairy, probably. Hides out there all the time these days. Don’t know what he’s doing in there. Nothing good.”
“Do you think I should take him a scone?”
Innes smiled ruefully.
“Peace offering?”
“Is it that obvious?” said Flora. “Why is he so down on me all the time?”
Innes shrugged.
“It’s not just you. He’s down on all of us, haven’t you noticed?”
He looked at the cooling tray of scones.
“Better leave nine for Hamish.”