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Instructions In The Cauldron
Instructions In The Cauldron
SERENA LONGHI GELATI
INSTRUCTIONS IN THE CAULDRON
Publisher: Tektime
Tradotto da Valentina Giglio.
© Serena Longhi Gelati 2019
To someone who isn’t here anymore but is watching from up above…
I. The Holly Bush Cottage
It was Friday and like every Friday Sarah and I would go to our granny’s.
The Holly Bush Cottage, as we called it in our family, was our second home, we had spent there every weekend and the summer holidays since we were babies.
A nice cottage in the English countryside, in Marlow precisely. Our great-grandparents had built it, our grandpa had inherited it later and it was inhabited by our granny Susan.
The house was composed of a living room, a kitchen and a dining room on the ground floor, three large bedrooms with two nice bathrooms on the first floor and a wooden attic with two large skylights opening on the surrounding countryside. I had spent so many evenings watching spellbound the clouds from up there!
Our pride was however the garden, where the big holly giving the name to the building dominated, followed by the oak near the gate and by a hawthorn bush, standing next to the main door. Of course, roses weren’t missing, and lavender bushes, orchids, pot marigold and a small place dedicated to officinal herbs like sage, rosemary and mint.
Our parents ran a cafeteria called Café Room in Newbury, a nice wooden place whose specialities were, besides coffee, apple pies and scones.
Mum and dad didn’t have much time to devote to us at the time. I wondered who would have looked after us if our granny hadn’t been there. In my eight-years-old child mind, however, this problem was solved in a short time: granny was there and she would never go away.
I wished I could spend more time with my parents, the only time to stay with them was a week in Palma de Maiorca in the summer. I hated the cafeteria.
“You shouldn’t talk like this, Anne!” my mother scolded me, “that is our job and it enables us to live a comfortable life”.