The Lost Jewels - Kirsty Manning Page 0,24

she tried to scold her brother, her shoulders softened at the sight of his wan cheeks and tired eyes. Freddie had tried to step into Pa’s shoes and find a job that paid enough to support them all, but he was still just a lad himself, with no skills or education, and with his dreamy demeanour and hapless optimism he had more in common with Gertie than their soldier father. Still, he was trying.

‘Freddie,’ Essie said softly. ‘You need to eat …’

‘Shh,’ said Freddie as he held a finger up to his mouth.

Essie held her breath as she noticed how like their father her older brother looked. The bridge of the nose, square jaw and strong hands. In different clothes he could be an aristocrat.

‘Hands,’ he barked, like their pa used to, and the girls straightened like soldiers and obediently held their hands out and closed their eyes. Maggie popped one open before squeezing it shut.

‘Button, button … who has the button?’

He dropped the button into Gertie’s hand and she clasped her fingers around it, squeezing it for a few beats before opening her eyes.

If Gertie were the God-fearing type, Essie would have sworn her sister was praying for something. More food, most likely.

‘Right, now you play with your sisters, Gertie-girl, while I have my wash,’ instructed Freddie as he tried to peel the twins from his legs. But the twins were having none of it. They ignored Gertie and dropped to their brother’s feet, kneeling on the cold dirt floor like a couple of puppies and bickering over who would be the one to untie the laces of his filthy boots.

As Essie pulled the bathtub from its hook on the wall and turned to boil up hot water for Freddie to bathe, she noticed Gertie’s usually composed face light up with a smile as she slipped a shining gold button into her apron pocket. For a moment Essie glimpsed the cheeky, carefree girl Gertie kept hidden away under her pinafore.

Gertie must have forgotten to return the button to Freddie, though, because here it was now, tucked under the corner of her book.

Carefully, so as not to distract her sister, Essie moved forwards for a closer look.

The button was a double-layered flower: a rose fashioned from gold, with just the faintest traces of blue and white paint. At the centre of the flower and dotted along the petals were blue, red and white stones. Were they precious stones, or coloured paste? Each of the inner circles also had gold indents, as if there were more to come.

Who did this button belong to? Also, if this was just a button, what on earth had the dress it was intended for looked like?

Freddie must have accidentally pocketed this on his worksite yesterday and then, in his excitement upon finding it, hadn’t been able to resist showing it off to the girls. It was so typical of Freddie to forget to take it back from Gertie when they’d finished their game. Instead, he’d wearily trudged straight upstairs to bed after his supper of bread and dripping. Essie would force Gertie to give the button back to Freddie the minute he arrived home this evening.

She took a minute to look at a sketch of the button Gertie had made below her spelling list. Their accountant neighbour, Mr Yarwood, had insisted on giving Gertie the ledger book to use for her drawings when she and her sisters had been over for a supper of pea and ham soup, followed by a sponge loaded with bilberries and cream last week. ‘Silly me, I bought the wrong one. Only good for your sketches, Miss Gertie.’

Even in black ink, Gertie had managed to capture the curve of the petal, the grand skeleton of the gold framework. The divots for the missing parts had been marked with shadows to indicate their depth.

Essie remembered Danny holding the clump of soil over his head yesterday. The river of gemstones and jewellery falling from the soil.

The man with green eyes.

Freddie had taken this button from that soil. Stolen it.

Had he taken anything else?

Essie felt her chest tighten with a dangerous mix of fear and hope as she looked across the classroom to where the twins were squabbling. They knew their days in this classroom were nearing an end.

She looked at the button and resolved to speak with Freddie tonight. Were the pretty jewels coloured glass paste, or precious stones? Freddie wasn’t reckless and wouldn’t intentionally forget something so valuable; it was just