Connor
The smell hit me first.
Butter. Brown sugar. Cinnamon. The kind of smell that makes your stomach betray you even if you've just eaten.
Gran's kitchen was pure chaos, but it was the good chaos. The Isla chaos.
Bowls on every surface. Flour dusting the counter like snow. The radio playing some old folk tune I couldn't name. And right in the middle of it, Gran, hair tied up in a scarf, sleeves rolled, moving like she was running a five-star restaurant out of her council house.
She was packing.
In Isla fashion. Which meant four Tupperwares for one meat pie, everything labeled in Sharpie, and baking something new for "the journey" even though the journey was five hours on a train.
"Shortbread?" I asked, nodding at the tray in the oven.
"Aye," she said, slapping scone dough onto a tray. "And tablet. And bridies. You'll starve in Cardiff eating that English shite."
I sat at the table with tea that was 70% milk, 30% sugar, 0% actual tea.
