surprise. ‘Now that just doesn’t seem— ‘With regards to Mummy’s party, ’ Rose flapped a hand, desperate to avoid a new dip into argument, ‘I thought I might bake a cake, Victoria sponge, her fav—’
‘Do you remember,’ said Daphne with sudden brightness, ‘that knife, the one with the ribbon—’
‘The red ribbon,’ said Iris.
‘—and the bone handle. She used to insist on it, every birth-day.’ ‘She said it was magical, that it could grant wishes.’
‘You know, I believed that for such a long time.’ Daphne rested her chin on the back of her hand with a pretty sigh. ‘I wonder whatever happened to that funny old knife.’
‘It disappeared,’ said Iris; ‘I remember that now. One year it just wasn’t there, and when I asked her she said it had been lost.’
‘No doubt it took up with the thousand pens and kirby grips that went AWOL from this house,’ said Laurel quickly. She cleared her throat. ‘I’m parched. More wine anyone?’
‘Wouldn’t it be something if we could find it …’ she heard as she crossed the hall.
‘What a splendid idea! We could take it in for her cake …’
Laurel reached the kitchen and was therefore spared excited preparations for the search party. (‘How far could it have gone?’ Daphne was enthusing.)
She flicked the switch and the room shuffled to life like a trusty old retainer who’d stuck around long past his use-by date. Empty of other people and with the fluorescent tube settling at a weak half-light, the kitchen looked sadder than Laurel remembered; the tile grouting was grey and the canister lids were dull with a film of greasy dust. She had the uncomfortable feeling that what she was seeing was the evidence of her mother’s failing eyesight. She should have organised a cleaner. Why hadn’t she thought to do that? And while she was self-castigating—why stop there?—she ought to have come to visit more often, cleaned the place herself.
The fridge, at least, was a new one; Laurel had seen to that. When the old Kelvinator finally gave up the ghost, she’d ordered a replacement over the phone from London: energy-efficient and with a fancy ice-maker that her mother never used.
Laurel found the bottle of wine and swung the door closed. A little too hard, perhaps, for a magnet fell and a piece of paper swept to the floor. It disappeared beneath the fridge and she cursed. She got down on all-fours to pat about amongst the dust bunnies. The newspaper clipping was from the Sudbury Chronicle and featured a photograph of Iris looking very head-mistressy in brown tweed and black tights at the front of her school. It was none the worse for its adventure and Laurel sought a gap to reposition it in. The task was easier said than done. The Nicolson fridge had always been a busy place, even before someone, somewhere, got the idea of selling magnets for the express purpose of clutter creation: anything deemed worthy of attention had been Sellotaped to the big white door for family notice. Photographs, accolades, cards, and certainly any mention in the media.
From nowhere the memory came, a summer’s morning in June 1961—a month before Gerry’s birthday party: the seven of them sitting around the breakfast table spooning strawberry jam onto buttery toast as Daddy cut the article from the local newspaper; the photograph of Dorothy, smiling as she held aloft her prize-winning runner bean; Daddy taping it to the fridge afterwards as the rest of them cleaned up.
‘Are you all right?’
Laurel spun around to see Rose standing in the door frame.
‘Fine. Why?’
‘You’ve been gone a while.’ She wrinkled her nose, regarding Laurel carefully. ‘And, I must say, you’re looking a little peaky.’
‘That’s just the light in here,’ said Laurel. ‘It gives one the most charming consumptive glow.’ She busied herself with the corkscrew, turning her back so Rose couldn’t read her expression. ‘I trust plans for the Great Knife Hunt are coming along?’
‘Oh, yes. Really when the two of them get together …’
‘If we could only harness the power and use it for good.’
‘Quite.’
There was a gust of steam as Rose opened the oven to check on the raspberry cobbler, their mother’s trademark pudding. The sugary smell of warming fruit filled the air and Laurel closed her eyes.
It had taken her months to summon the courage to ask about the incident. Such was her parents’ fierce determination to look onwards and upwards, to deny the whole event, that she might never have done so had she not begun dreaming