“I saw her pack it myself.”
Clio felt goose bumps as he carried on talking. “Honestly, the whole thing was so bizarre. She took off without any warning after our baby was born. The last time she saw him he was five months old, and he’s eighteen months now. Can you believe it? One minute she was saying she wassolooking forward to being a grandmother, the next, she does a disappearing act.”
“Can you describe the embroidery?”
“Not very big, maybe two-thirds the size of an A4 piece of paper, torn across the top. Tatty. Old.”
“Any idea where she got it from?”
“No. There was a horrible accusation from the family who live at the manor house that she stole it from them. I didn’t for an instant believe it, because Mummy never broke the law. It’s unthinkable, and they had a nerve to even suggest it after she cared for one of their relatives.”
Clearly, he still felt very angry about this. Clio asked, “Wheredoyou think she got it from?”
“She’d been collecting scraps of fabric for years, from secondhand shops, jumble sales, and the like, because she did a lot of sewing. She was into all that Women’s Institute sort of stuff. Crafts andthe like. Flower arranging for the church. Her collection’s still here. You’re welcome to look at it if you’d like.”
She followed him through the house to a room at the back, which was small but cheerfully furnished and decorated. A large window overlooked a well-stocked garden that was settling into its autumn droop. A botanical print of a palm frond hung prominently on the wall beside it.
“This is where Mummy spent her time whenever me and Daddy didn’t need her,” Simon said. Clio glanced at him to see if he detected anything wrong with still calling his mother “Mummy” at his age or with the casual sexism he was displaying. Apparently not.
She was drawn to a circular table nestled in the window, piled with books.
“That’s Mummy’s booky-wooky table,” Simon said. “That’s what we called it.”
“Right,” Clio said. What a way to infantilize Eleanor Bruton’s interests.
Simon opened the lid of a wooden chest. “Here’s the box of rags.” Again, a casually derogatory description. Maybe Eleanor Bruton had a better sense of humor about such things than I do, Clio thought. She hoped so.
Fabric swatches were folded neatly inside the chest, silks, linens, and cottons in all colors, some embroidered or trimmed with lace. Clio carefully removed some of them. Simon stood over her for a few moments, then his phone rang. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said, and stepped out to take the call.
Clio rummaged through everything in the chest, but there was nothing of interest. None of the fabric seemed particularly old or special. She examined some of the books on the table. They were highbrow, and niche, histories of bookbinding and embroidery. Again, she felt goose bumps, and she had just started to flick through one of them when Simon’s voice startled her.
“She was always reading,” he said, watching her from thedoorway. “She belonged to a book club. They would meet here sometimes.”
“What kind of book club?”
“Fiction reading. Women’s books.”
Clio held up the book she was holding. “Did she ever talk about these books?”
He shook his head. “I think those are her old university books. She went to Cambridge. That’s where she met Daddy.”
Clio knew he was wrong. The book she was holding had a library sticker and bar code inside the front cover. Eleanor had borrowed it from a library in Salisbury. Presumably, she was supposed to have returned it by now.
Simon’s phone rang again. He glanced at it. “Busy morning,” he said.
She took the hint. “I should leave you in peace,” she said. “Thanks so much for your time.”
Clio sat in her car for a few moments after leaving the Brutons’ house. If Eleanor Bruton had been educating herself about embroidery and bookbinding, then she must have at least suspected that her piece of fabric had something to do with the fragment in the British Museum. It was too much of a coincidence otherwise.
Lillian had believed they were related, too.
Goose bumps. For the third time.
Anya
Sid was sleeping peacefully beside me when I woke up early to the sound of the ocean. I drank my coffee in a cozy spot on the window seat. It was my first day at work, and I was a bag of nervous energy.
I was counting on this place to take the doubts that had plagued me and disperse them over that cold North Sea, leaving them adrift, unable to find their way back to me. I was excited about the manuscripts, about where they might lead me.
