From a Distance Read Online Free Page A

that Baked Alaska waits for no one, and Version One was ready. Version Two, when she had finished preparing it, would just need a few minutes with a blow torch.
    She looked at the dog. ‘You’ll have to eat some you know, Grayson.’ He thumped his tail, opening one eye for a moment. ‘It’ll melt and no one else is here.’ The dog sighed, feigning interest briefly, before tucking his nose back into the sleek coil of his body.
    Forgetting the dog for now, and the fact that he was sulking in the hope of reminding her to walk him, Luisa was confidently at the helm with all systems go in the kitchen. She had already created two utterly different Baked Alaska puddings, and conceived a recipe for rosewater and cardamom sorbet that would sit exotically between them. The fact that not a single person was here to eat them was just too bad. Another glance at the New York clock and she was completely in the transatlantic zone. It was still an ungodly hour for most of the world’s population. She loved those golden moments before the day had truly begun, and all that ambrosial pleasure in having achieved so much in the small hours. It was actually almost midday in Norfolk, but who would know or care if they saw her? Ambrosia. How could she translate that into an ice cream? Peaches and marsala? Honeycomb hit with a dash of vin Santo? What was the twenty-first-century version of the Nectar of the Gods? It depended on who you asked. Tom, like any bloke, would say Guinness, or a decent claret, while Mae would probably go for something typically teenage like rum and Coke. Ellie? Difficult to say, chai, probably, or lassi. Ellie hadn’t called for over a week now.
    Luisa had last heard from her through a typed Skype message to Luca, ‘Tell Mum I’m fine, and I’ll be off air for a while.’ True, it probably wasn’t cause for concern, but it was odd to think of her daughter experiencing so much that she, Luisa, could never know. Or do.
    Everyone else in the family was doing their thing. Ellie meditating away in India, or travelling on a bus or a train, or dyeing her hair or whatever a girl let loose on her gap year might be up to. Luca and Mae were busy with exams at school, and so, of course, was Tom, working harder than ever. Leading the history department no less. It was essential, and expected, that she, Luisa, was busy too. She just had to raise her sights, look at the clock and pretend to be in New York, with bustling people, all, according to her sister-in-law Dora, rising at 5 a.m. to go to the gym and maybe therapy before even thinking about breakfast and work. So inspiring. Why be a rural drop out, a Norfolk housewife with an ice-cream-making habit, when, with New York time on the wall, she could be a Manhattan scenester?
    Pulling in her stomach, Luisa corrected her posture, dropping her shoulders, as if she was at Spiritual High, her weekly yoga class. Breathe . . . and breathe . . . It was tricky to keep an eye on the fluffing of the meringue as it rose in the mixer while maintaining her spine in the correct position for Tadasana. Three exhalations felt like a marathon and she gave up. There was a time and a place for yoga, and it wasn’t here or now.
    Luisa removed the block of Amaretto-laced ice cream from the deep freeze. Wrapped in cling film, it resembled a lung, she thought, or a small bagpipe. It wasn’t quite the shape she had hoped, it might have been better to freeze it in a mould, but if she chipped a bit away she could make a rectangle. It was the work of a moment to slice a few slivers off it and encase it in the sponge cake she had already cut to shape. The Baked Alaska was going to resemble a swimming pool. That was the plan. She had found the perfect natural food colour on the Internet and turning the meringue blue had worked a treat – Hockney-esque and beautiful, if a little startling. She’d got carried away with the Amaretto, and the whole thing was rather alcoholic considering it was for a