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‘You too, Sam.’ she said, surprised to realise that she meant it. ‘Well, I’ll be off then, I need to sort out somewhere to sleep.’ She turned to Lena. ‘Thank you so much for the tea and company.’
‘You’re welcome, and don’t be a stranger. If you have any questions, you know where I am.’ Lena said.
The old woman still looked a little pensive and her words puzzled Edie – questions about what?
Number 17 felt cold and lonely after the warmth and homeliness of Lena’s house. Despite the fact that it was June, Edie felt inclined to put the fire on in the lounge. There had never been central heating in the house and she remembered it being Baltic in winter with only two gas fires and a scattering of dangerous looking electric heaters to warm the whole house. As she lit the gas she worried about carbon monoxide poisoning and checked the flames for colour; they looked all right, but she was probably no great judge.
She hugged herself and huddled for a moment by the hearth, soaking in some warmth and wondering if the cold might actually be coming from the inside. It would take more than a few half-hearted flames to thaw her ice-defended core.
Ignoring the oppressive clutter of the lounge she made her way upstairs by dint of the feeble landing light, which swung in its shade and cast looming shadows across the stained and aged wallpaper. When she removed her hand from the bannister at the top she noticed that she had gathered a number of long, fine blond hairs on her palm. She shook them off.
Dolly’s bedroom turned out to be a no go zone; not only was it filthy and squalid, but it was full. Every surface was laden with clutter, and clothes had been piled onto the bed. More of the hair littered the room, both in fine filaments and huge hanks. Several disembodied wooden heads had been scattered around the room, each at a varying stages of baldness. It was a macabre sight, especially when lit by a bulb not much brighter than a candle. The fine details of the scene were hidden by inky cloaks of shadow which intensified the grotesquery and heightened Edie’s instinctive reaction, which was to recoil and run. At one time she had been fascinated by her aunt’s occupation and had been mesmerised by the precise creativity that formed the wigs that Dolly made. Now the half-made hair-pieces looked repulsive, like things that had been attacked, savaged and brutalised. The faceless wooden wig blocks made the whole scene even more disturbing, with the shadows painting gruesome features on their flat faces. Edie shut the door and suppressed a shudder. Dolly’s room was best faced in the cold and reasonable light of day.
The spare room, where she and Rose had slept as children, was chock full of junk, Edie was barely able to open the door and step in. The smell of damp and mould assailed her nose and she shut the door on that too.
Dickie’s room had a Mary Celeste feel, as if he had just stepped out for a moment. If the whole room hadn’t been covered in a thick film of dust, Edie might have believed that he had – and was due back at any moment to resume making the half-finished model that sat on his workbench. As a pastime Dickie had made automata, miniature models of fantastic things that sprang to life and moved at the turn of a tiny handle. When Edie had last stayed at the house, he had given her one as a gift – a Pegasus who soared and moved his wings if you wound him up. It had been a simple yet beautiful thing and Edie had treasured it, until Simon had smashed it to bits in a fit of temper. She had kept the parts in a shoe box, intending to ask Dickie to mend it one day, but he had died and so had the marriage, and Pegasus had been lost in the aftermath.
She looked around the room at the shelves, all full of Dickie’s creations – animals, people, birds and beasts, all limited to perfect and precise arcs of movement that could only be brought about by a human hand. They were trapped on their wooden plinths, waiting for freedom and Edie thought she knew something of how it felt. She shut the door softly on Dickie’s domain and left the room in peace.
Her final option upstairs was Beattie’s room, which was as clear and tidy as the others were cluttered. It was the smallest bedroom, a box room really, and was reminiscent of a monk’s cell. Sparse, white and ordered. A plain counterpane lay over the bed, which had been made years before with sheets stretched as tight as the skin of a drum. They were yellow with age and spotted with mould. Edie pressed a hand onto the bed and felt a sensation of damp. She would not be sleeping there.
The last resort was the sofa in the sitting room downstairs. Somehow that felt better and less of an invasion of privacy than using one of the bedrooms. The trick would be finding useable bedding. Everything in the linen cupboard was damp and stank of old dust and decay. Edie had brought her own towels, but hadn’t thought to bring bedding. She thought briefly about shipping out to a hotel, then wondered if Lena might lend her a few sheets and a quilt. If she went to a hotel now, she might never come back and she couldn’t do that. The thought of spending any more time in the house was becoming more and more depressing. Not only was her task daunting but the place seemed to be sighing and breathing around her as if it had a life of its own, one that it had sucked from its previous residents. Grandma Beattie, Dolly and Dickie were gone, but to Edie it felt like they were still there and watching her every move.
For reasons that she couldn’t explain, but that were based on raw instinct, she was uneasy about asking Lena for help. The old lady’s censorious demeanour was liable to hook out more and more of Edie’s guilt regarding the neglect of her extended family. The state of the house alone was accusation enough and evidence that Dolly had lived and died alone and uncared for. Edie resigned herself to sleeping on the sofa in the clothes that she was wearing. An uncomfortable night seemed like small penance to pay for the years that Dolly had cared for her and Rose in the absence of their mother. Years and solicitude that had been met unequally with rejection and indifference.
As she lay on the lumpy sofa, watching the last of the evening light dwindle through the dirty window, she hoped that the funeral might offer some redemption – that laying Dolly to rest with some dignity and respect might undo the cloying sense of obligation and guilt. She would wear black as a mark of respect and hope that it wouldn’t reflect the flush of hypocrisy that was sure to creep into her skin and show her for the fraud she was.
Rose had arranged for a car, it would arrive at eleven the next day to collect her. Then she would follow the hearse carrying Dolly’s body, encased in its pine-veneered coffin and covered up in flowers. Then it would be over, and she could do what she had to do and put it all behind her – as she had with so many other things
Sleep followed on the wings of this anticipated relief and Edie relaxed into it, her inert form brushed by shadows, cast by the light of passing cars and given form and life by the ghosts of the past that resided amidst the clutter and dirt of Number 17 Coronation Square.
Chapter Two (#ulink_51f23655-4b29-5849-97a3-6bb44c8336f4)
Edie sat in the first pew of the chapel, stiff and uncomfortable in her black suit and aware that she was the centre of attention for the small congregation. Other than Sam and Lena she knew nobody, and whilst they waited for the vicar she battled with the hypocrisy of her thoughts. If all these people had known Dolly well enough to come and pay their respects, why had she died alone in squalor? The vicar arrived, and they all stood while he led the first prayer. They sat for the eulogy, and Edie wondered whom it was that he was talking about when he referred to Dorothy, a pillar of the community and tireless charity supporter who had relentlessly collected for the local charity shops, and who would be much missed by her many friends. For a split second Edie wondered if she’d come to the wrong funeral, for surely the lily clad coffin could not contain Dolly – who had been more a pillar of salt than a pillar of the community. She shook the thought away and stood to sing the hymn that Rose had chosen – Jerusalem. As she mouthed the words, Edie considered the incongruity of the whole thing as applied to Dolly, all she could think about was Rugby and the W.I. Finally, and to her relief, the curtains slid shut and Dolly disappeared. Now all Edie had to face was the lonely walk of shame back down the aisle as she led the mourners from the chapel.
As mourners went, they seemed to be a hungry lot, most of them cheerfully seized upon the opportunity to drink tepid tea and consume limp sandwiches and dry cake in the little hall that lay to the back of the crematorium. Most of the strangers avoided her and chatted amongst themselves, occasionally shooting speculative glances in her direction. She felt both ridiculous and fraudulent in her black suit, and she was tired and achy. The night on the sofa had been dream filled, stiff and uncomfortable, the cushions had felt as if she was lying on a bag of pebbles. Edie was half convinced that Dolly had stuffed the cushions with bricks. She surreptitiously rubbed at the small of her back and returned a weak smile to Sam and Lena who were making their way towards her. They had made a beeline, but had been hampered at every step by elderly women who caught at Lena’s arm and engaged her for what seemed to Edie interminably long moments. To her relief Sam left his mother and strode over. ‘You look like you need rescuing’ he said, offering her a thimble full of weak tea.
‘Thank you, and I do, who are all these people?’ She took the tea and sipped. It was vile, lukewarm and made her wince.
Sam looked around the room. ‘Bingo and jumble sale cronies I think. A good funeral is the highlight of their week.’
‘I didn’t know Dolly was a bingo fan.’ It was true, she didn’t, but then she hadn’t known Dolly well enough to know much about her habits and hobbies.
‘I think Mum used to drag her there from time to time, not sure she was ever a fan, not like Mum, the woman is a bingo fiend.’
Edie wanted to laugh and indulge this charming man who was being so kind, but laughter at a wake seemed incongruous and rude, especially when your every move was being scrutinised. ‘Do you know who that is?’ she said, nodding towards a tall, smartly dressed middle-aged man who stood alone, looking almost as out of place as Edie felt she was. Sam followed her gaze. ‘No idea. Doesn’t look much like a bingo aficionado though.’
It was true, he didn’t. If Edie had been forced to categorise him she would have said that he looked like a policeman, or a soldier. Something about his stance – the impression that he was standing at ease, yet missing nothing – stuck her as representing something official. Her attention was pulled away from him by the arrival of Lena.
‘Bloody ghouls, not as if a one of them cared about Dolly. Makes me sick – they only come for the free food and a cup of tea. Some of ‘em want to get a life!’ Lena said it as if the cheery exchanges she had voluntarily participated in had been some kind of personal affront. It made Edie smile.
‘Well, I’m glad at least a few people came – it would have been a poor show for her if it had just been the three of us. Besides, someone has to eat all these awful sandwiches.’
Lena regarded the limp, curling egg and cress sandwich that sat sad and unappetising on the plate that she held. ‘Sausage rolls weren’t up to much either, I swear the tight buggers here use the leftovers from the last do.’
Edie nodded, ‘You’re probably right.’ She turned to find a spot where she could abandon the rancid tea and winced as the movement jarred her aching back.
‘What’s up, did you hurt yourself?’ Sam asked, a look of concern flickering across his handsome features.
Edie gave him a wan smile. ‘Oh it’s nothing, I ended up sleeping on the sofa last night. The house is pretty damp and I couldn’t find any clean bedding, I’m just a bit stiff that’s all.’ Lena had turned away, distracted by yet another mourner who ignored Edie but expressed their sorrow to the woman who had known Dolly best… yet hadn’t known when her friend lay dying, hadn’t checked on her, hadn’t spoken to her in months. It was natural that people would gravitate towards the more familiar face, Edie supposed. It was probably justified – she’d have been hard pressed to know how to react if anyone had approached her and expressed sorrow for her loss. It had been uncomfortable enough when the vicar had shaken her hand and expressed his sympathy. She cast about the room, looking for the tall stranger, but he’d gone. ‘I might ask your mum if I can borrow some bedding for tonight.’ she said absently to Sam. ‘Not sure I can face another night on that sofa, I’ll be fit for nothing.’
Sam smiled. ‘I’m sure she’ll be glad to help, and you look pretty fit to me Edie Byrne.’
Blushing at a funeral felt as awkward and insensitive as laughing, but there were some things Edie couldn’t control. She could feel the flush creep up her neck and flood her face in a total betrayal of the cool and collected demeanour she had been trying to cultivate. In any other circumstances she would have made a self-deprecating quip in order to level the field again, but Sam had turned away from her and was whispering to his mother. To her further chagrin an elderly man had braved the great divide and was heading for Edie with condolences tripping off his tongue. As he approached she couldn’t help but notice the scowl of disapproval that flickered across Lena’s face. It seemed the man had seen it too because he inserted himself between Edie and Lena and promptly turned his back on the old lady and her son.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss my dear, such a tragic end, so sad.’
Edie didn’t know what to say, so she gave him a weak smile and thanked him.
‘I tried to call on poor Dolly a number of times, but she’d turned her back on us all at the end.’ he said.
So Edie had gathered. ‘Yes, it seems she shut everyone out. I wonder why?’
The old man shrugged his shoulders and spread his arms, he held a silver topped cane in one hand, and with his neat cravat and perfectly pressed black suit, looked to Edie as if he might be about to perform a magic trick. ‘Who knows what was going through her mind? She was never quite the same after Dickie, I always suspected that in losing him she lost her purpose. Fell out with almost everyone so I believe, became very suspicious of us all. It’s a terrible thing when people push their friends away.’
Edie nodded, only half listening to him. Everything people said to her with regard to Dolly felt like an indictment. He placed a cool, thin hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze – she was surprised at the strength of it, he looked so frail. ‘Still, life must go on mustn’t it? And I must say, you really are the image of your father.’
The mention of Frank, any mention of Frank, stunned Edie. No one ever spoke of him, if it wasn’t for the fact that she knew someone had to have sired her Edie might have thought that her father was a figment of everyone’s imagination. Frank Morris, eldest and most un-prodigal of Beattie’s sons, had been a taboo subject for so long that this sudden mention had jarred her completely. Before she could muster a response the man had turned on his heel and walked away.
Lena nudged her with an elbow much sharper than the woman’s fleshy figure belied. ‘What did he want?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know, who is he?’ Edie said, still reeling from the overt mention of her father.
‘You don’t want to know. He’s a vicious old gossip with a chip on his shoulder, best to ignore him, everyone else does.’
Edie was good at doing what she was told and damped down her curiosity as instructed. People were beginning to leave, much to her relief, and the hollow thanks and farewells that she was forced to deliver whilst flanked by the indomitable Lena were distraction enough from the strange encounter.
***
Lena had gone further than just loaning some bedding and had offered Edie a bed for the night, which she had accepted gratefully and had appreciated fully when the bathroom had also offered a shower. The squalor and oppression of Number 17 had been washed away in an instant under the pelting hot water, and a night between clean white sheets that oozed the aroma of fresh air and sunshine (even if it had come from a packet of soap powder) had eased any reservations that remained. With the help of Lena’s kindness Edie had the best night’s sleep she had experienced in an age.
She descended the stairs refreshed and reinvigorated, to be met by the smell of bacon, a fresh cup of tea and Sam, sitting at the table and smirking at her over his breakfast. ‘You moving in then?’
‘Not quite, just taking advantage of your mother’s hospitality and cadging a bed for the night. I’ll buy some bedding today and make do next door.’
‘You will not.’ Lena said as she placed a huge plateful of fried food in front of her. ‘You can stay here as long as you like, it’s the least I can do. Ignore him, he’s always been a sarky bugger. I would have offered you a room straight off, but I didn’t know quite how bad it was next door.’
‘I do really appreciate it Lena, it’s pretty depressing in there. I honestly don’t know where to start. I made a dent in the kitchen the day I arrived, but it’s hard to believe how much stuff they hoarded.’ Edie said, eyeing the breakfast and surprised to find that she actually had an appetite for it. She hadn’t bothered with breakfast for years.
‘I’ll give you a hand if you like, I’ve got nothing on today.’ Sam said.
‘Would you? It’s pretty bad mind, you might want to bring some rubber gloves.’ Edie said, mildly embarrassed by the comparison between Dolly’s home and Lena’s immaculate haven. Or was she embarrassed by the prospect of finding his company desirable? Not that it mattered. She wasn’t Rose. She was the annoying one.
‘No problem, I’ve seen worse. Finish your breakfast and we’ll crack on with it.’ he said, leaning over and stealing a piece of toast from Edie’s plate.
Lena frowned at him and poured them all more tea.
Edie led Sam into the dingy front room with its dusty tat and old-fashioned furniture. Ugly old cabinets bulged with kitsch china objects d’art, and bookshelves bowed under the weight of mouldering magazines and foxed hardbacks. ‘I thought we’d start in here, it seems the least sullied.’
Sam scanned the room. ‘Don’t you want to get the worst over with first?’
Edie shook her head. ‘I did that yesterday; the kitchen was an absolute biohazard. I probably should have donated it to science as a research project. Besides, I have to build myself up to face the rest of it.’
Sam smiled at her. ‘Where do you want to start?’
Edie patted a cushion, releasing a cloud of dust and fluff into the musty room. ‘With a dust mask?’ she suggested.
Sam laughed and pulled a huge handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Your wish is my command, I came prepared.’ He moved towards her and folded the fabric into a triangle, ‘Here, I’ll tie it on for you.’
Edie almost stepped back, but didn’t and submitted, grateful that the handkerchief was covering her glowing cheeks. She hadn’t been in such close proximity to a man in some time, and was ashamed of how she was reacting. At forty-six she thought she might be over such silliness but Sam had grown up rather nicely, better than she had. There was little of the gawky boy left in the man and his unexpected proximity was having a strange and unguarded effect on her.
‘There, sorted. You look like a bandit.’ he said, resting his hands on her shoulders and looking at her. He was at least six inches taller than she was and she was forced to look up.
‘What about you?’ Edie asked, aware that she was blushing like a loon under her mask.
‘Thought of that, I pinched this from Mum.’ He pulled a tea towel out from his back pocket and tied it around his own face. ‘There, ready for action. Shall I start with the books?’
Edie nodded and turned to one of the cabinets, glad of the distraction. ‘I’ll fetch some black bags. Most of this looks like rubbish.’
After an hour it looked like they had made more mess than they had started with. Sam was insistent that some of the books were worth money and he had pointed out that several of the ornaments that Edie had been throwing away with conscious malcontent might be worth something. ‘How am I supposed to tell the difference? It all looks hideous to me.’ she said. It did, but not just because it was old and tacky. Each piece felt like a few ounces of recrimination. For every ornament she held in her hands an equal weight of guilt settled in her heart. She had not cared about the people who had lived in the house; she had let them die. One by one, alone and neglected.
Sam climbed down from the chair he had been using to reach the top shelves and knelt down beside her. He took the ugly china spaniel from her hands and turned it over. ‘Look, this is Staffordshire, you can see by the mark.’ He pointed to the base of the object. ‘People collect this stuff, they pay good money for it.’
‘Lord knows why, it’s horrible.’ Edie said, grimacing at the creature’s painted gaze.
‘I agree, but horses for courses. Who are we to argue if people want to part with their cash? The object of the exercise is to raise as much money as possible, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose.’ Edie said. ‘You’re right, but I just want to get it over with as quickly as I can.’
Sam pulled off his impromptu mask and sat back on his heels. ‘I can see that, it’s not the most stimulating task, raking through other people’s belongings, is it? Why don’t you make us a drink and I’ll sort through the rest and pick out anything that might be worth keeping.’
Edie was glad of the reprieve, every time Sam came within a foot of her she started to feel like an overheated teenager and it was making her feel both stupid and uncomfortable. Even the smell of his damned handkerchief was making her feel queer, she pulled it down and let it settle around her neck while she tried to get a grip on herself and make the drinks.
When she returned to the front room Sam was pulling something out of the bottom of the china dog’s twin. ‘What on earth is that?’
‘I don’t know, it looks like a scarf. Someone must have poked it inside.’ He pulled the fabric out as if he were performing a low budget magic trick.
‘Who on earth would do something like that?’ she asked.
‘No idea, someone who wanted to hide something?’
‘Why hide a scarf?’ The strip of fabric lay creased and colourful on the dirty carpet.
Sam shrugged and picked it up. ‘Who knows? I hate to say it but your relatives were a strange bunch at the best of times.’
Edie took the scarf from him and threw it into the box where she had been collecting the smaller ornaments that she figured were probably worthless. She thought about the wooden heads upstairs wearing their scalped hair and of Dickie’s strange inventions. ‘Yep, they were an odd lot.’ She passed Sam his tea and wandered towards the window, moving the grimy net curtain aside to get a view of the street. The murder tourists were back, congregating around the drain, eager to hear its grisly history.
Sam came up behind her and draped an arm casually about her shoulder, leaning forward to follow her gaze. ‘I see the ghouls are out in force.’
Edie was acutely aware of the weight of his arm. ‘Doesn’t it bother you, that they do this right outside the house?’
‘Not a lot we can do about it, they are all legal, it’s a perfectly legitimate business. No one cares about the morality of it.’ he said, giving her shoulder a squeeze before dropping his arm.
The pressure of his fingers burned and tingled like an old scar on her skin. She shivered and turned back to the room. ‘I’m going to dump this box outside and make some space, hopefully someone will take it off my hands.’ she said, hauling the box of tat into her arms and carrying it out of the room. She manoeuvred it out of the front door and dumped it by the gate, hearing the satisfying chink of broken china as it hit the concrete. Removing the weight from her arms hadn’t lessened the heaviness in her heart, she was acutely aware that she had just unceremoniously dumped a handful of the totems that had marked her family’s existence. It felt wrong and it felt brutal. She noticed that the tour guide was staring over again, looking as though he hadn’t yet forgiven her for her previous sarcasm. She turned away from his gaze and went back into the house.
Sam had sorted through the books and offered to take them to the nearest charity shop. Edie was both grateful for the offer of help and the opportunity for a break from his company. Sam Campion was having a strange effect on her and it was becoming a most disconcerting experience.
When he had loaded the books and left, she took the opportunity to pause her activity and review the situation. When she had agreed to the task of clearing the house, she’d had no idea that she would be letting herself in for this level of challenge. Not only was the house a daunting nightmare of effort, she hadn’t bargained for the discovery that she still had feelings and female reactions that she had believed were withered and gone. For some reason she’d thought her dysfunctional relationship with Simon had killed the possibility, and was mildly surprised that he hadn’t stifled her regard for men in general. Not that being attracted to Sam was a scenario worth thinking about – she was here to dispose of the past, not cultivate thoughts of a future.
The room looked almost naked now, stripped bare of its fripperies and exposed. Its representation as a slice of life had been obliterated by the hatchet job she and Sam had performed. Now that she was alone her determination to get on with her task felt brutal, two generations of her family had lived and loved in the house and this dismantling felt like desecration. With abject disregard she had simply thrown away Dolly’s treasures. In a fit of regret she ran outside to retrieve the box of trinkets, only to find that it had already gone. Someone had been as eager to take it as she had been to get rid of it; she hoped that they wouldn’t regret their actions as much as she regretted hers.
Back inside there was little option but to carry on, but this time with a little more reverence. While she waited for Sam to return she concentrated on sorting the wheat from the chaff. By the time he came back she had rolled up the rug, piled it on top of the chaise longue and set the pieces of furniture worth money against one wall. Across the divide of dusty floorboards, under the window, lay the rest of the junk. In the middle of the room was a single box containing letters and photographs that Rose might want, on its side Edie had written KEEP ME.
Sam smiled and nodded his approval at the progress she had made. ‘Nice work Edie, I didn’t think we’d get this far.’ He wandered over to the box and peered in.
‘Not bad progress I suppose, but I’ve had enough for today. It kind of gets to you after a while – throwing away the bits of people’s lives that we find irrelevant and valueless.’ she said, feeling bizarrely emotional for a moment and hugging herself to contain it.
Sam didn’t notice, he was busy rifling through the photographs. ‘Hey look, here’s one of Mum when she was a kid.’ He moved over to where Edie stood and showed her the picture.
Five children, forever frozen in monochrome, leaned against the railings that enclosed the garden at the centre of the Square, each squinted at the camera, telling them the photograph had been taken in summer. ‘Which one is Lena?’ she asked.
Sam pointed to a skinny girl in a smocked dress and ankle socks. She was scowling at the camera. ‘That’s her, you can tell by the expression on her face. She still pulls that face when she’s pissed off with something. That one there is Sally.’ He pointed to another of the three girls in the picture. Sally had looked a little like Lena, but had more meat on her bones and a rounder, prettier face. Edie thought about the drain outside and suppressed a shudder.
‘I’m assuming that’s Dolly then, and that one is Dickie.’ She pointed to the last girl, thin and dark haired – she looked timid. Dickie just looked like a younger version of the man she remembered. ‘So who’s the other boy?’ The second boy was dark too, swarthy looking and with an intense, confident stare. He was a good looking child, whoever he was. As she peered at the picture she could see that the sun had created a halo-like aura around the boy’s head. It was quite a strange trick of the light.
‘No idea, never seen him before. I’ll ask Mum later.’ He put the photograph back in the box. ‘Right, if you’ve had enough for the day why don’t we get cleaned up and head off to the pub, you can buy me a pint for all my hard work.’
As appealing as the idea was, Edie hesitated. ‘What about Lena, won’t she mind?’
Sam chuckled and shook his head. ‘Edie Byrne, how old are you, twelve? I’ve been able to come and go as I please for a long time now, and I don’t even live there.’
Edie flushed with embarrassment, it wasn’t what she’d meant. ‘I know, but I am staying there and I don’t want her to think I’m treating it like a hotel.’
‘Don’t worry about it – besides, it’s Wednesday, she’ll be at the community centre playing bingo until six.’
Across the square, in a third floor window, a curtain twitched and someone watched as Edie and Sam left the house and made their way along the street to the pub on the corner. When they were out of sight he let the curtain go and turned to face the room. He called the place his office, but in reality it was a museum stuffed to the gills with a chaotically un-collated mess of detritus. What other people called rubbish, he deemed important artefacts of social history. Where other people saw junk, he saw evidence. One such item was now sitting on his cluttered desk forming a puddle of colour amidst the piles of buff folders and grey document boxes. He would like to think that the scarf was final proof, the one piece of evidence that he needed, but long and bitter experience told him that it wasn’t enough. Nothing ever seemed to be enough.
He looked at the fabric, at the swirling colours and the distinctive pattern and compared it to the photograph above the desk. The photograph was old, the paper yellowed and the ancient ink formed an indistinct, grainy image. Jean Lockwood had owned a scarf like this; she was wearing it in the photograph. There could be no colour match, the picture was in black and white, but the pattern was familiar, it had the same hypnotic print as the scarf on his desk. As evidence it might not be enough on its own, but it was an addition to the body of proof. Every little helped the cause.
