‘I’m not sure, but I’d say at least seventy years? Maybe older?’
‘Go on. Tell me about the meeting.’
‘There was a woman there—Mia—and she introduced herself as the niece of Hope Berenson. The law firm had represented her Aunt Hope during her lifetime, and she’d operated a place called Hope’s House here in London, for unmarried mothers to give birth and find adoptive parents for their babies.’
Blake took a sip of her wine, before setting her glass down and reaching for the little handwritten name tag, still attached to the string. She ran her fingertips over it as she recalled what Mia had told them that day.
‘This Mia had discovered a collection of boxes, all identical, beneath the floorboards of Hope’s House. Her aunt passed away some time ago, and with the house set to be demolished, she went to check that nothing personal had been left behind,’ Blake said. ‘Each box that she found had a name tag, and this one bore my grandmother’s name. There were seven boxes in total.’
‘So her connection to the house…’ Deb’s question trailed as Blake looked up at her.
‘From what I can understand, it seems that my grandmother was born there, and that her mother, my great-grandmother, left this little box for her after she gave birth. Presumably hoping that her daughter would one day be given it, and maybe discover who she was.’
Blake could see tears shining from Deborah’s eyes as she listened to the story, and she blinked away her own. There was something so emotional about a mother leaving her baby behind, with only a box of trinkets to guide her back. Blake had no way of knowing whether placing her child for adoption was even something her great-grandmother would have wanted todo, or whether it was simply what was done back then. She knew that Deborah had young children of her own, which no doubt made this type of tale even more emotional for her.
‘Did anyone in your family know about the adoption, or was it kept completely secret?’
‘I can’t imagine that anyone knew, but my grandmother passed away years ago, and there’s no one else I can really ask about it,’ Blake said, sitting back as their waiter returned to fill their water glasses. ‘I think it’s fair to say that it came as a surprise to the other women in the room, too, so my guess would be that it was kept a secret from all the families involved. That none of the children who’d been adopted knew that anything had been left behind for them, or that they were even adopted.’
‘How many other women were at the meeting?’ Deborah asked.
‘There were six, including me. We all listened to Hope’s niece, Mia, tell us about her aunt, the lawyer asked us to sign a document and show our identification, and then we were each given our box.’ She paused, taking another sip of wine. ‘There was one box sitting there unclaimed, and when someone asked her about it, she said they hadn’t been able to find any information on who it was left for. But the others were all claimed, and then we left, and?—’
‘And you’ve just sat on this information? All this time has passed, and it’s still a mystery to you? You haven’t tried to solve it?’
Blake swallowed, not wanting to answer the question. The truth was, ever since her grandmother had died, she’d found anything to do with her family or the past hard to confront. A big part of her hadn’t been sure whether she even wanted to discover her grandmother’s secrets now that she was gone, even though she’d passed more than a decade ago.
‘I suppose I just didn’t know where to start,’ Blake eventually said. She gestured towards the clues that Deborah was now inspecting all over again. ‘I’ve taken that sketch out of the box probably a hundred times and stared at it, trying to figure out what it means and how to connect it to my past, but that’s as far as I’ve got. But what I keep coming back to is that for my great-grandmother to have left this behind, it must have been of the utmost significance to her. This was all she left for her daughter, who may one day have come looking for her, so she must have thought that it would be an obvious clue at the time.’I just haven’t been brave enough to do something about it.
‘Which means that, if we presume this was her design with her signature at the bottom, it must have been considered something that others would recognise, at the time? Is that what you’re hinting at?’
‘Or perhaps that shehopedit would be recognisable by the time her daughter found it? Perhaps she gave up her baby to fulfil her dreams.’ Blake had circled the information round and round in her mind so many times, but the only thing she kept coming back to was that her great-grandmother had been well-known in the fashion world at the time. Why else would she have left a clue with what was presumably her signature at the bottom?
Their food arrived then, and Blake thanked their server as Deborah carefully folded the paper and returned it to the box. She took longer with the piece of fabric, turning it over back and forth in her fingers, before sighing and eventually placing it on top of the paper.
‘Is it just me, or does the box smell ever so slightly of roses?’ Deborah asked. ‘Or is that my imagination getting carried away?’
Blake took the box and inhaled. Deborah was right, itdidsmell ever so faintly like roses. She’d thought it smelt familiar, but she hadn’t been able to put her finger on it. Now she knew.
‘You’re not imagining it. I can smell roses, too. It’s almost as if someone dropped perfume into the box, and even after all these years, it’s still lingering.’
‘It’s fascinating, truly it is, and I think our readers would love the story. You’re absolutely right about the mystery of it all, and it being one of those pieces that will have people coming back, wanting to find out more. There’s nowhere else they can find the answer, no other site they can go to, to try to find out how the story ends. They would be on this journey with you.’
Blake picked up her knife and fork. The food smelt amazing. ‘I can hear abutcoming,’ she said, before taking her first mouthful. It was divine, and she promised herself that she’d start treating herself to a nice meal out more often. She’d spent so much of her life worrying about money, and she still saved as if she was the little girl without food in the fridge. It made extravagant lunches such as these all the more special to her.
Deborah sighed. ‘The problem isn’t whether I want to run with it or not, because the answer to that is most definitely yes. The issue is, how are you going to unravel the mystery? If you haven’t known where to start so far, what will change between today and Monday, when I tell you to hit the ground running?’
Blake finished her mouthful at the same time as Deborah began eating. It wasn’t lost on her that she’d been asking herself the very same question.
‘I need you to open some doors for me,’ Blake said, truthfully. ‘I need to know that it’s okay to use your name, to approach some of London’s most influential creative designers and heads of houses, under the banner of the magazine.’
‘Because you think one of them might recognise the signature at the bottom of the design?’
Blake grinned. ‘Precisely.’
‘Well, then, you officially have my permission to use my name in any way you need. I’ll even call ahead if that wouldhelp,’ Deborah said, waving to get their waiter’s attention and ordering more wine. ‘I’ll pitch it to the board to be our anchor piece for the new launch, with my full support, of course, but I think they’ll love it. Now, let’s enjoy lunch, and we’ll tell everyone at the office that this took us hours to discuss. I have no intention of going back and suffering through another meeting today.’
Blake laughed and added some of the sides to her plate. She only wished she’d told Deborah about the little box in her possession earlier.
