The Orange Grove

Even at 14, Holly had known her mother was protesting too much. What was it then about this old recipe?

West Dorset, February 2018 Holly flipped through the crumpled and stained pages of her mother’s old recipe book and there it was, peeking from inside a yellowing envelope. As if somebody (her mother?) had half wanted the recipe to be a secret one, half wanted it to be seen. Carefully, she extracted the fragile sheet of paper from the envelope and smoothed out the folds with her fingertips. The original recipe was written in Spanish; she recognised a few of the words. Under this, the ingredients and instructions had been written much more clearly and in English, all of it in handwriting she did not recognise.

Seville orange and almond cake, she read. For an occasion.

Well, she thought, if this wasn’t an