… the answer’s starin’ us right in the face if yer did but know it.’
When Molly frowned, Bessie gabbled on, ‘What about the locket? The one that yer found in the bag with her on the night yer brought her home? It’s been hidden away all these years and you always intended to give it to her one day, so why not for her comin’ of age? I meself can’t think of a better present, an’ I don’t mind bettin’, Amy would treasure it.’
Molly sat silent, thinking deeply on Bessie’s words, and then slowly a smile spread across her wrinkled old face. ‘Do yer know, Bessie, I think you could just be right,’ she agreed.
When Bessie left a short while later, Molly hoisted herself up the stairs and going to the far side of the attic, she reached into the dark corner of the sloping roof and withdrew the tapestry bag that held so many memories for her. Her hand sought about inside until it came to rest on a small velvet box.
With unsteady fingers she snapped open the lid and instantly the emerald set in the centre of the locket flashed like fire in the glow from the candle. Molly turned it this way and that for a while as she admired it, then fumbling with the tiny clasp, she sprang the locket open to reveal the two small portraits, one either side. Molly’s breath caught in her throat. The young woman was so like Amy that it might have been the girl herself smiling up at her. The other side of the locket revealed a gentle-faced young man. She squeezed her eyes tight shut as memories of that fateful night when she had found Amy in the church doorway came flooding back. Since then, the girl had been her whole life, and now Molly could not envisage living without her, although she still worried about the poor girl who had obviously been Amy’s mother, and who had disappeared from the doorway without trace – never to be heard of again.
As a sob caught in her throat she closed the locket and put it back into the tiny box then, after dropping it deep into her pinnie pocket, she returned the faded bag to the shadows. Bessie was right. There could surely be no other present that Amy would cherish more than this. With a sad smile, the old woman lifted the candle and creaked her way back down the stairs to wait for Amy to come home.
With only three weeks to go until Christmas, Amy’s heart was light and she was humming cheerfully as she hurried through the woods on her way to Forrester’s Folly. The snow lay deep on the ground and everywhere looked clean and bright. As Mary’s cottage came into view she smiled at the sight of the twins who were in the garden, warmly wrapped in bright little scarves and hats, busily building, or attempting to build, a snowman. They were so enthralled with what they were doing that they didn’t even see Amy as she emerged from the woods, but Mary and Beatrice did and they raised their hands in greeting.
‘This is damn hard work, this is,’ Mary called merrily. ‘I think it was easier when I was workin’ up at the house.’
‘I’ve no doubt it was,’ Amy grinned. ‘But I know you wouldn’t swap the job you’re doing now.’
Beatrice came to the gate in the little picket fence that Joe had erected around the garden to try and keep the children in.
Amy returned her smile before asking pleasantly, ‘What are you doing here?’ The girls rarely got to see each other any more but they were still close.
‘It’s my day off,’ Beatrice informed her. ‘So I was up an’ out o’ the house at the crack o’ dawn an’ thought I’d spend a little time wi’ Mary and the nippers before goin’ home to see me mam.’
‘You’re looking very well,’ Amy commented. There seemed to be a glow about her friend and there was a twinkle in her soft grey eyes.
‘Well …’ Beatrice wondered if she should confide in her but then rushed on, ‘I’m walkin’ out wi’ Jake now, the young gardener that works under Tom, but I ain’t told me mam yet, so you’ll not say anythin’ fer a while, will yer?’
‘Of course I won’t, and I’m really pleased for you.’ Amy assured her. ‘I’m sure your mam will be too when you tell her.’
‘Hm. The trouble is, she’ll be