‘I’m on my way,’ Georgia said as she waved down a taxi and stamped her feet against the cold as it circled round for her. ‘I’ll be back in the office in twenty minutes. I’ll come straight in to see you, I promise.’ She ended the call, sliding into the taxi the second it pulled up to the kerb and giving the driver the address.
Georgia rested her head back and took a breath then, trying to process what had just happened. Sometimes she felt as if she hadn’t truly rested in years, every minute of every day filled with work and her nights spent answering emails and sitting up in bed until she fell asleep with her laptop, before it started all over again. It was as if she’d been exhausted for as long as she could remember.
She leaned forward and reached into her bag for the little box she’d just been given. Georgia turned it over in her hand, blowing away a little dust that had gathered against the string as she wondered whether she even wanted to know what was inside. She’d spent the past ten years accepting the fact that she didn’t have a family, proving to herself and to the world that she could succeed despite everything she’d been through, that she could move past the grief of her teenage years. And yet the idea of opening the box felt almost as if she’d be unravelling the carefully constructed barriers she’d so painstakingly built around herself.
Just open it. Don’t overthink it, just open it.
It took her a moment to untie it, her nails catching on the string as she tried to pull the knot. Eventually it gave way and she discarded it along with the tag, lost to the depths of her oversized bag, before pulling back the lid and finding an enormous gemstone resting inside. She gasped, not having expected anything quite so extravagant, especially knowing the decades the box had spent hidden beneath floorboards, gathering dust in an old house. She put the box on her lap and took out the stone, turning it over in her fingers, marvelling at the sheer beauty of it and wondering whether it was a rare gem or possibly even a diamond, its pink hues so radiant they were almost purple as it caught the light. The size was almost impossible to comprehend—it was at least twice the diameter of the largest engagement ring she’d ever seen.
Beneath it was a newspaper clipping, and she reluctantly put the stone back inside the box and took the yellowed paper out. It was in a language she didn’t recognise, and so she folded it again, taking out the stone so she could place it all back carefully inside. Her grandmother had been wealthy—that was one of the only things she really knew about her—and she’d held that wealth as tight as could be until her death. But this stone was possibly something her grandmother didn’t even know about; or if she had, was it something she’d been searching for throughout her lifetime? Had her grandmother even known she was adopted?
‘Miss, this is as close as I’ll be able to get you,’ her driver said.
Georgia looked up, having lost all track of time as she inspected the little box, realising they were almost at her office. As her phone began to vibrate again, she quickly secured the box and put it back in her bag, nodding her thanks to the driver as she paid him at the same time as answering the call.
‘Sam, I’m here. I told you?—’
She touched her hand to her bag, her mind still on the stone she’d found as her best friend and business partner positively squealed down the line, her excitement palpable, and told her that they’d been called in for a final meeting within the hour to discuss the proposed buyout of their company. Georgia crossed the road and hurried towards her building, deciding to grab them both very strong coffees at the café downstairs before going up, even though Sam had insisted she come straight to her office. But despite Georgia’s excitement at what they were about to achieve, for once it wasn’t work on her mind as she stood and waited for their espressos. After all these years, all that time yearning to have more reminders of her family, to discover more about the loving parents she’d never stopped mourning, and now she’d finally been given one.
She only wished that the one reminder she’d now been given didn’t belong to the one family member she’d have preferred to forget.
2
EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER
Georgia walked through the auction house, admiring all the jewellery on display. She nudged Sam’s shoulder when they passed a necklace dripping with diamonds so large it was almost impossible to believe they were real. She couldn’t imagine who would buy these things to wear; or perhaps she was wrong, and they simply went into safes throughout London, investments that were never intended to be worn.
‘When you said we needed to treat ourselves, I was thinking of something a little smaller,’ Sam whispered.
They both laughed, heads bent together before moving along to an arrangement of designer handbags. After years of doing not much apart from work, Georgia had decided it was time to indulge in a luxury purchase, and it hadn’t taken much convincing to get Sam to join her.
‘You know, when we started out in my parents’ attic, I never would have thought we’d be here,’ Sam said with a sigh, as she gestured to a bright pink snakeskin Birkin bag. ‘I’m still not ready to part with this much money, but even the fact that we’re here looking, that wecouldbuy something if we wanted to…’
Georgia linked her arm through Sam’s, thinking back to those early years, remembering the fire inside her, that shewouldn’t be held back by the tragedy that had marred her life. The fire in her belly was still there, only now it was more about proving toherselfthat she could achieve everything she set her mind to.
‘I know exactly what you mean. I feel like I’ve been window-shopping for years, and suddenly we can walk into the shop. I actually can’t believe it.’ Just like she couldn’t believe they had no work to do over the weekend, when usually her every waking moment was spent glued to her laptop.
They kept strolling, neither of them stopping for long, until Sam came across a Cartier love bracelet that caught her eye. ‘I think this is what I came here for,’ she announced, waving one of the assistants over. ‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’
Georgia nodded, but it wasn’t the rose gold bracelet inset with diamonds that she was looking at anymore. In a glass box a few paces away, a pair of earrings was on display. They were each made of an enormous pink stone, which hung from a circle of diamonds and smaller, matching pink stones, and Georgia couldn’t take her eyes off them. The pink almost turned purple as the light caught it; a colour she’d only ever seen once before in a stone, and she moved around the box the better to look at them.
‘Georgia?’ Sam called. ‘What do you think?’
Georgia turned her attention back to Sam, walking over to look at the bracelet on her wrist as she held it out to her. ‘It’s gorgeous. I think you should definitely bid on it.’
‘What are you looking at over there?’ Sam asked, nodding to the assistant to take off the bracelet. It needed a little tool to unscrew it, and Georgia imagined how claustrophobic she’d feel if she couldn’t easily slip something off when she wanted to. ‘Just a theory, but I think the items in locked glass boxes with alarms fitted might be out of your budget.’
Georgia laughed, they both did, before the woman helping them cleared her throat.
‘You’re referring to the pink earrings?’ she asked.
Georgia followed the other woman’s gaze back to the display. ‘Yes. They’re absolutely stunning, aren’t they? The colour caught my eye as I walked past, but I can tell they’re most definitely out of my league.’ Even if she had that kind of money, they weren’t her style. Georgia wore a small pair of solitaire diamond earrings in her lobes that had belonged to her mother, and a smartwatch on her wrist—she was more practical than extravagant when it came to style.
‘The stones are pink tourmalines, and they’re unique, given their size,’ the assistant said, securing away the bracelet Sam had been trying on before walking towards the glass case.
Georgia followed, admiring the earrings again. Clearly the woman was going to tell her about them, despite her having made it clear that she wasn’t buying.
‘They belonged to the Italian monarchy, and were held by the royal family since the late 1800s. They were actually worn by the former queen herself shortly before the king’s abdication of the throne. When they went into exile, relocating to London, rumour has it that a few pieces were discreetly sold to the wealthiest of collectors in Switzerland and London, with a strict caveat that they weren’t to be put on display for at least half a century.’
