‘Yeah. OK.’
‘Was he with Tamzin?’ Diane washed her hands again after handling the raw chicken and poked around in the bottom of the fridge for onion, feathery-ended celery and a mini tree of broccoli.
‘Yeah.’
Diane put the oil on to heat and turned the cold water on the vegetables, releasing the smells of onion and celery into the room. ‘They seem to have quite a thing,’ she said, cautiously.
‘Yeah.’
The vegetables didn’t take long to soften and the chicken to par-cook. In ten minutes Diane was able to push the curry into the oven and sit down at the table. ‘I have something to show you.’
‘Yeah?’ Bryony looked up.
From the cupboard under the stairs, Diane took out the dusty black leather box that she’d brought back from Freddy’s and, tipping it, let the jumble of gold slide heavily onto the cheap, scarred old table and all over Bryony’s magazine.
Bryony froze. Aghast eyebrows slid slowly into her hair. ‘Oh, my God. What have you done? Oh,Mum.’
‘What on earth do you think I’ve done?’ Gently, Diane wiggled free a thick gold rope threaded through with fine black ribbon and then a large oval Victorian locket. She frowned as she noticed that the clasp was broken on the locket. She’d have to take it to a good jeweller and get it fixed. Probably cost megabucks. That was the trouble with gold.
Bryony still didn’t touch any of the booty. In fact, she pushed herself slightly from the table. ‘You realise you’re putting your fingerprints on it?’
Bubbles of laughter rose up inside Diane. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Bryony! I haven’t stolen it.’
‘Is it yours?’
There was a round gold brooch that Diane could remember being shown as a child, enamelled heavily with turquoise and red. It had been her grandmother’s. Picking with her fingernail she managed the awkward little clasp. Inside was a tiny brown lock of hair. A baby curl of her mother’s. ‘Well, no, it’s not mine.’ Piece by piece she laid the entire collection in rows so that Bryony could see it. Necklaces, bracelets and bangles, brooches, rings and earrings.
She put her hand over her daughter’s, taking the pleasure of the smooth whiteness of Bryony’s skin next to the rough redness of her own. ‘It’s yours.’
Bryony’s wide-eyed gaze flew to hers. ‘All this? How can it be?’
‘Uncle Freddy’s been keeping it for you in his safe and I think that now you’re nearly twenty-one and going to be a mother it’s time it came to you. It’s your inheritance. These things were your great-grandmother’s – my mother’s mother, that is. And these, my mother’s. Some things will need attention before you wear them. The ribbon on this choker is useless, of course, but the cameo is very fine, apparently. My grandfather bought it for my grandmother when he came back from the Great War.’ The ribbon was frayed and faded to a purply grey from the black she remembered curving around her grandmother’s stocky neck.
Cautiously, as if still not quite believing that what they were doing was permissible, Bryony opened another locket. ‘Who’s in here?’
Diane inspected the faded sepia inside. ‘That’s my mother and her two brothers. And these, here, are Granny’s wedding and engagement rings. And these are Great-Granny’s.’
Bryony picked up her great-grandmother’s engagement ring and twirled it in the light from the window. ‘That stone’s like a small egg. What do you think it is?’
‘It’s a diamond.’
Bryony put the ring down as if it was hot. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘Not at all. She always used to say, “It’s too big to be pretty but that’s what your grandfather wanted me to have.” She used to turn it underneath her finger when she wore gloves so that it wouldn’t snag. Granny’s ring is diamond, too.’ She moved it around with her fingertip on the table, remembering how she’d loved to clean it with a little toothbrush when she was a child.
With an expression of awe, Bryony picked up the diamond cluster and slid it onto her finger. ‘This is mega, too. Your father must’ve loved her.’
That was one thing Diane understood about her father. ‘Oh yes. They were a good team – he was the general and she was his lieutenant.’
They continued sorting through the heavy jewellery, Diane telling her the stories attached to the pieces, dull with dusty neglect.
It didn’t take long for Bryony to ask the obvious question. ‘And why didn’t you inherit all this? Why has it hung around in Uncle Freddy’s safe?’
Diane got up and took the curry out to stir it, hiding her face in the cloud of steam. ‘More of the same old boring feuding, darling. Granddad didn’t want me to have it; Uncle Freddy was desperately embarrassed when Granddad tried to give it to him. We each refused it, and came up with the idea of it coming directly to you. I’m rather glad, now.’ She closed the oven door. ‘It’s only just coming home to me that by refusing my share of Mum and Dad’s estate, how much I cheated you. That’s what your dad said at the time but I wouldn’t listen.’ She explained about the £100 of premium bonds, too.
Bryony’s young eyes were shrewd. ‘But if Granddad had wanted me to have it, and your share of his money, he would have left it in a thingy for me. A trust.’
Diane’s head was beginning to ache and she thought how nice it would be to go and lie in a deep bath and shut out the world. And think of James. No! Not think of James. It might make her cry. Cry for the moon.
