The Lost and Found Necklace

by Louisa Leaman

  “I’d say so.”

  “And tomorrow?”

  “Well, it’s impossible to say for certain, but for now she’s hanging in there. We’ll call you if anything changes.”

  “I’ll come first thing tomorrow.”

  “Great. That’ll comfort her, I’m sure.”

  ***

  Jess sits back, puts her hand to the necklace, and breathes. She feels relieved, but not relaxed. Her limbs are fired up with adrenaline and Guy is still in her head—the kiss that should never have happened. She cups her mouth, as though to bury the guilt. She was weak. She gave in to him, gave in to the moment. She could—should—go to the Star, catch last call, focus on Tim.

  “Head to Wanstead,” she says to the driver, resisting her reticence.

  The lights of the Thames blur past the window, and as she sinks in her seat, Jess prays that the familiar sight of the Star will somehow cleanse her sins.

  ***

  Over at the window, there is Tim, being “The Man.”

  “You made it!” he says cheerily, a few pints into drunk.

  Jess covers her startled edge with a smile. She hugs him tight, desperate to right her wrong.

  “So did you get it?” he asks.

  “Yes,” she says cautiously.

  “Show me.”

  His gaze drops to the sea-green butterfly at her neck. She waits for his reaction. But his face hardly changes, then he shrugs.

  “That’s it?” he says casually. “That’s what all this fuss has been about?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  She eyes him, wills him to be at least a little impassioned.

  “It’s…elaborate,” he says. “I mean, it’s certainly fussier than the one I got you. Here, have a drink.”

  He scoops her into a hug, hands her his pint. And despite the silent confusion snaking through her mind, she smiles and accepts and does her level best to join in. Familiar, she reassures herself. Not boring. Just familiar. And familiar is good. Familiar is secure.

  ***

  An hour later, they return to Jess’s room in the Hoppit household. Tim is drunker than Jess and in a buoyant mood.

  “I need to ravish you,” he says, pulling her toward him.

  She wants to feel closeness. Closeness might help. So she flicks off her shoes, loosens the straps of her dress, determined to conjure the spark. Tim kisses her foot, but then retreats to the en suite bathroom. She hears him rooting around at the sink. He then pokes his head around the door.

  “Forgotten my dental floss,” he says. “Do you have any?”

  It crosses her mind that, barely a year into their relationship, they should be obsessed with each other, rolling across the bed, stripping naked, making love with throw-it-in-the-air passion.

  “I don’t care about dental floss,” she says.

  “You should. Better than brushing—”

  “I mean, I don’t care about dental floss right now,” she says, layering her words with seductive suggestion.

  “Patience, Jess. Let me get a glass of water and put my phone on charge. I’ll be with you in a second—”

  She flops back, wilting into the ordinary.

  Five minutes later, Tim reappears. He undresses and folds his clothes in a pile—so much for stripping naked! To be fair, with his triangular torso and big shoulders, he is rather lovely naked. And his thighs are undeniably shapely from hours on a racing bike. But the way he stands, pre-prepared, step-by-step, it’s simply x plus y, which was fine last week and the week before. But…

  He slips into the bed beside her, snuggles under the duvet and does nothing. Beer and tiredness have got the better of him and he is soon asleep, mouth sagging, nostrils flaring as though readying to snore. With a sigh, Jess loosens her zip. She will, she realizes, have to undress herself, but at least she’ll have the warm security of his body beside hers. She pushes her dress aside and curls up against him. After a moment, however, she feels something digging into her neck—she is still wearing the necklace. She unclips it, but before placing it on the bedside table for safety, she holds it her chest, runs a finger across its chain links, feels the inscription on its back. Her thoughts surge: the way he slipped behind her, the way he gazed at the necklace, then spun her into his arms, the way they kissed.

  It was a moment. Just a moment, an emotionally illegal moment, but it was one of those. It was a OUI moment!

  And a OUI moment can’t be minimized or dismissed. Nor can it be defined by a yearning for security or the avoidance of a “type.” If it’s there, it’s there. She bites down on her lip, resolves to find a way out of this mess, a way to end things with Tim. There’s no point settling for the familiar when your heart, in truth, wants something else.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next morning, having slept little, Jess is awake early. Ignoring the fierce pain that is shooting down her lower back and hips, she dresses, tucks the butterfly necklace in her bag, and takes the first train to Sydenham. The walk to Nancy’s care home is an unbearable hobble, but she makes herself do it, one foot in front of the other. As she approaches the reception, the staff are extra welcoming. Ominous, she thinks.

  “Come along,” says a nurse, ushering Jess along the corridor. “It’s good that you’re here. We think it won’t be long now. We were just about to call you.”

  “You mean…it’s time?”

  The nurse nods, holding the door open for her.

  “Right, okay,” says Jess, gulping, collecting herself as she enters the room.

  Instinctively she feels for the butterfly necklace. All the effort it has taken to get hold of it, all worth it for this, the last chance to make a wish come true. Nancy is peaceful, her eyes slightly open. Her breathing is shallow but rhythmic. The room, its beige walls and plastic-coated furnishings, feels still and silent. Jess goes to the bedside, takes out the necklace, holds it to the light.

  “I got it,” she whispers. “Finally, Grandma, I got it for you.”

  Nancy stirs.

  “Oh, Jessy, my lovely Jessy,” she whispers, dry-mouthed, barely audible.

  Jess takes her hand, places the necklace in her grandmother’s palm, and closes her cold, frail fingers around it. Nancy tries to speak again, but it comes out as a gasp. Jess leans closer.

  “What is it, Grandma?”

  “Paul,” she whispers, sighing with the effort, the words so delicate on her lips. “My Paul. He’s waiting for me.”

  “He is,” says Jess, eyes slick with tears.

  “He was my true love, Jessy.”

  “I know.”

  Jess looks on, feels a rawness in her heart. She cannot mistake the similarities of her and Nancy’s faces—that achingly familiar Taylor bone structure, the DNA that unites them.

  Shakily, Nancy draws the necklace to her chest.

  “Minnie,” she explains, shutting her eyes, straining to get her words out, “Minnie poured everything she had into making our necklace. All her hopes, her dreams…and her soul…her soul went into it. And now it lingers inside.”

  Then with a sudden surge in her bone-thin arms, she thrusts it toward Jess.

  “You…you want me to have it?”

  “Oui,” gasps Nancy, before collapsing back to her pillow.

  Awed, Jess cups the necklace’s delicate enamel and metalwork. The wings feel so alive in her hands. And through their energy, a thought starts to pester, that Nancy’s desperation for the necklace was not for her sake but for Jess’s.

  “Nancy—” she begs, so many questions to ask.

  But Nancy is silent.

  “Oh, Nancy,” Jess cries, her voice a siren in the quiet. “Not yet, Nancy. We’ve got some fun to have yet, you and me—”

  At this, Nancy turns, very slightly, and she smiles with half her mouth. It is momentary, all she can manage, but
it is enough to show Jess that she isn’t sad.

  She is at peace.

  One hand holding Nancy’s, the other holding the necklace, Jess waits and listens as Nancy’s breathing starts to slow. She no longer feels anxious, simply aware of what it is to be with someone in their final moments. Silently, softly, the air changes. A hush fills the room. After a moment Jess looks to the window and is struck by the sight of a butterfly landing on the ledge. A small tortoiseshell, it sits perfectly still, then opens its wings and flutters off through the bright-blue sky, entirely unaware that the soul of Nancy Maria Taylor has just left the earth.

  ***

  Jess calls Aggie, then with a sense of banal finality, she fills in the required paperwork, gathers up Nancy’s belongings, and packs them in a box. She exits the care home in a daze, suddenly unsure, after such a monumental event, of what to do. Should she go home, carry on, mark it in some way? With a thud, she sits down on a nearby bench and stares at the sunflowers swaying in the breeze. Plants are growing. Birds are singing.

  She takes out the necklace, and in the bright sun, she can see how tarnished the silver is, yet all the more beautiful for it. A mark of its life. And what a life! Jess thinks back to all she has learned, thanks to this necklace. About Minnie, so single-minded in her creative ambition, giving up on gossip in Parisian drawing rooms, abandoning convention, escaping to an Arts and Crafts commune in North Wales, falling in love, really falling in love, pouring everything she had into making this heirloom—all her hopes, her dreams, all the “yes” in her soul, which now lingers within the necklace’s timeworn links and curves.

  Is that what the inscription meant to Nancy, she wonders; that for the short time in the 1950s and ’60s that Nancy and Paul Angel were together, they were a “yes” couple? And what of Anna, fiery with ambition, chasing her Hollywood jewelry dreams, ingratiating herself with movie producers, living the high life: marble staircases, gilded toilets, and A-list cocktails. Definitely a “yes” girl when it came to parties, but did she ever get a True Love “yes” moment with her soul mate? Poor Anna.

  And finally, of course, Jess thinks of her mother, Carmen. She takes comfort in the thought that, perhaps, somewhere, in some unfathomable part of the universe, Carmen and Nancy are now together again, mother and daughter. She strokes her fingers along the tips of the butterfly wings, remembers the way her mother would cradle it in her hands; how she’d admire it, talk about it, treasure it, but never, to Jess’s knowledge, wear it. Who, she wonders, did her mother have her “yes” moment with? Surely not with her father, the intractable and uninspiring Richard Barrow? It would be good to know, she thinks. She should ask—

  She stops, shudders. Because there is no one now to ask.

  ***

  In the days that follow, any lingering resentments and recriminations are pushed aside, placed on pause, as the new family landscape emerges. Aggie cuddles her children in a way she doesn’t usually, which is strange and intense for them, and they wish things would go back to normal. Tim comes to the Hoppit house with flowers for both sisters and a huge tin of shortbread, should it be required. He sees Jess’s teary face and, without a word, pulls her into an embrace. She feels comforted, enormously cocooned. And in his arms, it feels safe to release, to let it all out.

  She wears the necklace all the time, even in bed at night, because, although she understands that Nancy is gone, something of her energy seems to remain within it. Aggie occupies herself with arrangements for the funeral, channeling any excess emotion into being purposeful. On Thursday afternoon she summons Jess to the kitchen island on the proviso of choosing buffet options for the wake. Once that business is out of the way, she slaps her hands on her knees, clearly poised to say something deep and meaningful.

  “Anyway—”

  Jess watches with caution, sensing an incoming lecture.

  “Tim’s been a star throughout all of this, hasn’t he?”

  Jess murmurs.

  “All good between you two?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because—”

  Here we go.

  “I’ve been doing some research.” She gives Jess a hard, meaningful stare.

  “Have you now?”

  “On your new ‘friend.’ Guy van der…whatever…”

  Jess bristles. She’s been at the mercy of her big sister’s “research” in the past, and it’s never been pleasant. Aggie’s discovery that Andrew the band promoter had a serious gambling habit, or that Mac the Irish musician had many, many, many baby mamas. All intentions good, no doubt to help, to show Jess what she seems so ignorant of herself: that the men she’s attracted to are riddled with issues. Still, she sighs, puzzled as to why it should be such a point of interest.

  “Aggie, I really don’t think it’s necessary for you to go giving him the third degree. You’re wasting your time.”

  “Except…you met him in LA, didn’t you? I saw it on your phone. And then this gala you went to? And goodness knows where else. And all those secretive text messages and the way you’ve been acting weird. My hunch is you’ve been avidly interacting with him—”

  “It was to get the necklace.”

  “Oh, Jess, you can’t tell me it was simply about the necklace, because…I’m your sister. I know there’s something between you two.” She sighs. “But what you need to know is—”

  She pauses.

  Jess bows her head.

  “He’s not who you think he is.”

  Aggie pushes her tablet in front of Jess and scrolls through her Pinterest board of “evidence.”

  “For a start, his name is not Guy van der Meer, as he claims all over his website and social media. He’s not from a Dutch diamond dynasty, as various gossip columns imply. His name is Guy Davis. He went to school in Ramsgate, had a Saturday job in a chip shop, and got zero qualifications. So whatever elaborate backstory he’s been telling you about, it’s a load of old crock.”

  Jess’s mouth drops open.

  “So…he changed his name,” she reasons. “Big deal. People do that all the time.”

  “The point is, Jess, if he’s lying about his name and his family background, what else is he lying about? I’ve looked through his profile. I see it for what it is. He thinks he’s some kind of international treasure-hunting playboy, living the jet-set dream. Look at this—”

  She scrolls through photo after photo, Guy posing and partying, always surrounded by exotic locations, glamorous houses, sophisticated people.

  “As exciting as he might seem, Jess, you can see he’s just a showboater. Definitely not a keeper. I won’t let you risk your future happiness.”

  Taut with frustration, her thoughts in free fall, Jess throws up her hands.

  “Well, it really doesn’t matter,” she scolds, “because, as I’ve told you time and time again, there is nothing romantic going on between me and Guy van der…Davis…or whatever! We’re friends. In fact, we’re not even friends. So just…drop it, will you!”

  She storms away, forcing one of the bifolds open, out to the garden, where the sky is metal gray. Aggie’s revelation spins in her head. The warning is immovable: he really is a bullshitter. Another one. How did he manage to burrow so deeply under her skin? She clutches the necklace, panged by uncertainty, all that teasing, toxic desire bound up in its shimmering wings.

  Of course it shouldn’t matter. The passion she’d felt with Guy was an anomaly. A mistake. How could she ever doubt Tim? Tim who has been magnanimous since Nancy’s death. Tim who at every turn has shown himself to be loyal and honest and emotionally mature. Tim who has all the traits that any salient person should want from their partner, who doesn’t play games or kiss other people’s girlfriends or turn up an hour late or sneak off to LA after-parties and act like it’s no big deal.

  But still…that kiss at the gala, it burns in her heart; that kiss was a “yes” moment.


  Chapter Seventeen

  As Guy lazes in the young grass of Green Park, hands clasped behind his head, Jess is in his thoughts. Her bright eyes and quick mind, the way they kissed when he slipped her the necklace. Normally at this stage in a flirtation, he’d be on the case, enveloping the object of his affections in a charm-offensive of calls, texts, and perfect dates. But with Jess, he doesn’t dare. He doesn’t want to scare or overwhelm her or get it wrong. She’s already made it clear she has a certain opinion of him, and perhaps he’s brought that on himself, but now he has to undo it. He has to prove to her that he’s not really the player she thinks he is.

  He has thought about little else for days, but has so far kept the reverie to himself, Stella being ultra-insecure this week. Here she comes with two ice-cold water bottles, having aborted her whimsical desire to Rollerblade (after the painful discovery that she wasn’t good at it—and that there were paparazzi lurking). It has been a week of “doing things” with Stella, feeding her ego, keeping her buoyant and well-distracted from the news about her dot-com billionaire, Yannis, who has reportedly proposed to a Colombian swimwear model.

  “Why the constant smiling?” Stella demands, thrusting a water into Guy’s hand.

  “I’m thinking about someone.”

  “Who? Tell me. Come on. It’s time you spilled the beans.”

  “If you must know, it’s Jess,” he says. “Jess Taylor. I introduced you to her at the Capital Gala.”

  “Jess? I don’t remember any Jess. Is she worth remembering?”

  He sighs.

  “She is to me.”

  “And where did you meet her?” Stella asks, flicking her immaculate chestnut hair. “I don’t think she’s on my radar.”

  Guy hesitates, unsure whether to mention the necklace. It has been a sore point between them since he smuggled it to Jess at the gala. He had rather hoped Stella would forget about it, end of story, Jess and her necklace reunited forever, but…Stella has been unusually picky. The night she had to give up the necklace for “repairs” was the night she also learned of Yannis’s Colombian indiscretion. And now she keeps pestering for the necklace, almost as though she’s convinced herself that the two events are interlinked; that getting the butterfly back, all “fixed,” might also fix her and Yannis.