What would her life look like without Molly?
She remembered Molly snatching the Harvard-stamped envelope from Kate’s hand, ripping it open, and her face falling as she realized that what it contained was not an acceptance letter identical to the one she herself had received the year before, but a rejection. “Oh, Kate. I’m sorry. That sucks . . .”
And again, just four years ago, as Molly had clutched the newborn Emma to her chest, trying to work out how to nurse her. Exhausted and clammy, with strands of hair stuck to her forehead, Molly had reached up to Kate and touched her cheek. Kate had lain down beside her sister on the narrow hospital bed with an arm cradled across Emma as she helped the baby attach to Molly’s raw nipple. Kate had remained on the bed, cradling her older sister and her sticky newborn niece, heart flooded with love, promising to keep them safe.
A life without Molly, her partner, Jessica, and little Emma didn’t bear thinking about.
She looked closely at the clipping photograph of the young Gertrude wearing a mortarboard and academic gown. The law graduate had gleaming eyes and creases at her temples that hinted at the anticipation and sadness she recognized in the lines on Essie’s wrinkled face.
Gertrude Murphy had been the only female graduate in her class. Kate wondered what it would have been like to be the lone woman among all those young men in stiff shirts and ties. She thought of her own art history classes—the ones she made it to—where it was commonplace for the class to be filled mostly with women, slouched low at their desks in the unisex Californian uniform of denim cutoffs, sandals, and a loose T-shirt.
It had been refreshing to go to college on the West Coast. Kate took student loans and paid her own way like any other student. It was liberating to be unhooked from the Kirby family back in Boston and the expectations that came with it; to be free to surf and to study whatever subject piqued her interest, from French to Elizabethan Jewelry to Life Drawing.
But lately the tide had turned. Perhaps it was living in the old Louisburg Square house, or a mellowing that came with age, but Kate wanted to lean in toward Essie and her family. Unscrambling the London secrets would be a start.
As she reached for an olive, Kate saw out of the corner of her eye a tall, striking woman in elegant wide-legged pants, heels, and a green blazer striding toward her, briefcase in hand.
“Sorry!” said Bella as she bent to kiss Kate on both cheeks before sitting down. “It’s been quite the afternoon.”
“Tough case?”
“Is there any other kind in family law?” Bella grimaced and waved at the waiter, then pointed to Kate’s drink to indicate she’d like one of the same.
“I guess not.”
Bella leaned back in her chair and breathed in the warm air. “Had to extricate myself from the bailiff, then console a distraught father.”
“God, how awful . . . I’m sorry,” said Kate, thinking of her own father and grandfather. Her grandfather had spent hours every summer teaching Kate and her sister to sail, while the girls’ father had taught them to surf.
Bella noticed the notebooks. “Looks serious! You mentioned in your email that you’re interested in my great-grandmother Gertrude. I’ve been waiting for years for someone to ask me about her! Before she and Dad retired to Majorca, Mum left me with a box full of papers from her family history years; she’s more into scrapbooking and Pilates these days.”
Bella reached down into her bag and pulled out a manila folder on which was written in neat capitals: murphy family tree. She handed it to Kate, who opened it out on her knees and unfolded the family tree that had been laminated into three sections.
Bella smiled. “So, we share great-great-grandparents, Clementine and Conrad Murphy. Clementine was widowed when Conrad died in the Boer War. She had seven children, and the only ones that seem to have survived into adulthood were our great-grandmothers, Gertrude and Esther. See here.” She tapped the first branch of the tree. “Freddie, the eldest, was killed on a worksite near St. Paul’s Cathedral when he was nineteen. Crushed when an unsecured wall of bricks toppled down on him, poor bugger.”
“Then there’s Esther Rose, my great-grandmother,” Kate observed, “followed by Gertrude, who was yours.”
“They were the lucky pair. Their younger sisters Flora and Maggie—twins—didn’t even make it into their teens, and two little girls either side of Gertrude died of measles and whooping cough as babies.”
The spider’s web of lines below Clementine and Conrad Murphy gnawed at Kate. She imagined tiny coffins in the back of a horse and cart bobbing and swaying over cobblestones, headed to a pauper’s graveyard somewhere on the outskirts of London.
Bella caught her eye and winced. “But they did have some happier times. Gertrude and Essie met in Hawaii for a holiday together once a year after they both turned fifty. I guess they were too busy with work and family before that. Gertrude’s notebook and her letters to Essie are now part of a permanent collection at the Serpentine, along with her paintings. We can go together when you’re back in London, if you like?”
“There are paintings too?”
“In her later life she became an artist. Her work is very Modigliani meets Yves Klein. Mum can’t stand them, but I quite like her paintings. I have a couple in my study at home. They feel happy . . . kind of buoyant, if that makes any sense?”
“Looks like the talent ran in the family. I think these were drawn by Essie.” Kate pulled some protective envelopes from her notebook and showed her cousin the sketch of the two laughing girls.
Bella frowned. “That’s Flora and Maggie, I’m sure of it. The notebook gifted to the Serpentine was lined, just like this page, and there are pictures of the girls that look very similar. They could even be the same hand. The notebook definitely belonged to Gertrude, though; her name is written on the front.”
“You think Gertrude drew these, not Essie?” asked Kate, feeling the familiar rush of adrenaline that coursed through her when she made a historical connection between artwork or jewelry, no matter how tenuous. “Would it be possible to compare them with the drawings in the notebook?”
“Of course! I’ll call my contact at the gallery and request access.”
Kate reached for her drink and took a sip, enjoying her gin. The sun was low, softening to twilight, and as she sat across from Bella, something metallic caught her eye.
Kate leaned forward, shading her eyes with her hand. “Your necklace—may I have a look, please?”
“This?” Bella pulled a gold chain from underneath her silk shirt. “It’s a pendant my mother gave me as a graduation present when I finished law school. Her mother gave it to her. It belonged to Gertrude, apparently.” Bella looked down as she continued, “Bit big for me—too flashy for court. But I like it close to my skin for some reason, so I just tuck it under my shirt. Here . . .” She lifted the gold chain over her head and passed it to Kate.
Kate ran her thumb over the gold chain and held the pendant in her palm, her heart fluttering. The pendant was gold, with layers of petals resembling a rose. There were a couple of flecks of white and blue enamel, but otherwise the pendant was bare.
“See these tiny squares?” Kate pointed to a grid pattern in the petals with square shapes. “These indentations in the gold suggest that it was studded with table-cut stones, but they must have been removed at some stage. And this isn’t actually a pendant—it was originally a button.” Kate flipped the pendant over and pointed to the telltale soldering marks at the base of gold hoops that enabled it to be stitched onto cloth. “See?”
Bella’s eyes were wide. “I had no idea. I’m not sure what happened to the original stones; I didn’t know there were any—I just assumed those marks were a pattern. Gertrude was one of the first women at Oxford to read law, so perhaps she flogged them to play for her education? Although it seems unlikely.” She tapped the family tree. “There’s nothing here to suggest the Murphys had two pennies to rub together, let alone a fancy button filled with gemstones. Gertrud
e’s mother, Clementine, died of liver failure in the workhouse, so they weren’t exactly well off. I’d always assumed this was a present from Granny Gertie’s husband—my great-grandfather Hubert.”
“Perhaps there were no stones in this button,” said Kate, “but she might have seen one with the gemstones in place.” She slipped another envelope from her notebook and handed it to Bella. “This sketch was also among Essie’s papers.”
Bella studied the image. “It’s identical. Except for these stones.” She tapped the drawing. “What does it mean? Where did this pendant come from?”
“I don’t know. But apart from the missing gemstones, it’s identical to a collection of buttons I saw at the Museum of London.”
“The same? That could mean . . .”
They sat in silence, both looking from the drawing to the button in Kate’s hand. Kate tried to push away the whispered thought: liable to prosecution. Essie’s family had been poor. Was it such a stretch to imagine she might have kept something precious that she stumbled across at work or found in the street—or that had been dug up, by someone she knew, from a cellar near Cheapside? Or stolen it? And, if so, who was the rightful owner now?
For the insurance report for her Swiss client, Kate had been tracing the origin of a medieval skull ring over the last few months, a memento mori, distinguished by the engraved words nosce te ipsum. Know thyself. The ring was featured in a 1574 oil painting of a Flemish gentleman before being sold on to a Jewish collector in Holland. The paper trail had stopped abruptly in 1940. Her client looked embarrassed at the suggestion he had come by this ring illegally when it was sold by an unscrupulous Nazi soldier to his dealer. Kate recommended in her report that her client start the process of repatriation. It belonged—in her opinion and perhaps under international law—with the family of the Jewish collector who was the last known rightful owner.
As if she could read Kate’s thoughts, Bella said, “So who’s the rightful owner of Gertie’s gold button? Where’d it come from?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. Maybe the answer does lie with the Cheapside collection. But there would have been hundreds of almost-identical ones worn by wealthy merchants and their wives throughout Elizabethan London. We have no proof.”
Bella, perhaps sensing Kate’s hesitation, went back to the manila folder from which she’d taken the family tree and pulled out a sepia photo of a gaunt woman leaning against a spinning wheel. She was dressed in a thick woolen skirt, an apron, and worn boots. “This is Clementine Murphy. Our Irish great-great-grandmother.”
“She looks like such a frail old woman. It was criminal how hard they made them work.”
Bella’s face clouded over. “Clementine was just over forty in this photo.”
Kate felt like she’d just been slapped. She peered at the photo of Clementine Murphy. “That’s just five years older than I am now.”
“Be grateful you weren’t born to the lower classes in Edwardian times, if that’s what a booming economy, free education, and ‘Rule Britannia’ looked like . . . I can’t imagine what it must have been like to watch your babies die.”
As soon as she said it, Bella flushed a deep red and covered her face with both hands for a moment before removing them and looking Kate squarely in the eye.
Her look made Kate nauseated. She tugged at the curl sitting over her eyebrow and smoothed it behind her ear. She knew what would follow, and her head scrambled to find some words. A new topic. Anything to stave off the conversation to come.
But it was too late.
“I’m sorry,” said Bella softly, her voice cracking with empathy as she reached out and put her hand over Kate’s, covering the button. “There’s no grief like the loss of a child.”
All the grief and guilt that had been bundled together and buried for four years was suddenly uncovered and exposed. Kate thought of her baby’s tiny pale face poking out from the swaddling, his head crowned with a mass of thick darks curls—her curls, Essie’s curls. She recalled his heavenly newborn smell. Purple lips. Eyes that never opened.
The left side of Kate’s torso started to ache. She had lain a whole night on this side in her hospital bed, clutching her newborn, pressing him close as if she could spirit some life into him.
Jonathan had sat in a chair in the corner, head between his knees, unable to speak. All his years of medical training had borne down on him, like a glacier of guilt. Kate knew she should have said something that night to console him, to assure him that none of this was his fault. To show how much she cherished him. But how could she? All her words had fled.
The midwife had understood. She had said nothing, yet sat beside Kate for hours with a hand on her shoulder as Kate shivered and shuddered until there were no more tears. Her simple gesture had kept Kate yoked to humanity on that blackest of nights.
Somehow, Kate now forced herself to lift her face to bask in the sun’s last rays, forced herself to breathe in, to inhale the heady scent of summer. After a moment, she blinked back her tears.
It was a routine she’d perfected in the last four years. Blinking away her tears, pushing her sadness back into the bottle and screwing on the lid. Her grief would strike, with crippling force, in unexpected places. It was like being struck over the head and knocked out when you were merely strolling down the street. At other times, it felt like the gentle undertow of the ocean dragging her under. Her doctors and therapists said the grief would become tolerable with time. They said she had to move on with her life. That she mustn’t blame herself.
But how to move on when so much had been lost?
How to be a mother with no child?
She thought of Essie. Perhaps Essie hadn’t talked much about life in London because she too had been carrying some sadness. Why rake over all that pain and stir it up? It was hard enough just to wade through an ordinary day.
Kate swallowed to clear her throat, but still no words would come. She thought of the journal buried deep in her bag. She carried it everywhere, yet rarely opened it. She didn’t need to. The carefree person who had bought that diary to record her thoughts on pregnancy was a ghost. So, too, were the black-and-white shadows of the ultrasound images she had pasted on its pages for safekeeping.
“It’s okay,” said Bella, her warm hand still resting on Kate’s.
Kate looked at the hand covering her own, and thought of Jonathan squeezing this same hand to console her when they had no words left, only tears or silence. He’d squeezed her hand again as he’d handed back the keys to the Louisburg Square house when he left for New Zealand, their marriage broken beyond repair.
Bella met Kate’s eyes and Kate managed a weak smile.
“I’m so sorry you lost Noah.”
And there it was. Their Noah. Their precious baby boy.
* * *
A waiter approached and ushered them to another table for dinner. Once they’d ordered, Bella asked softly, “Have you spoken to Molly lately?”
“We’ve texted.”
“She’s worried about you. Thinks you’re holding her at arm’s length.”
“What? That’s ridiculous. I’ve just been traveling so much . . . the projects just keep coming.”
“That’s what worries her. And me, to be honest. I mean, none of us are immune from being workaholics.” She took a sip of her wine. “But are you working because you love it or because you don’t want to sit still? Because both can be true. And as far as I can tell you haven’t stopped traveling since Jonathan left.”
Kate nodded and said softly, “I can’t help it. It’s selfish, but when I see Emma . . .”
Bella squeezed Kate’s hand. “I understand. Of course it hurts; your babies were born only months apart. Each birthday must be a reminder.”
“I love them so much. Jessica, too. It’s just that when I look at their family I can’t . . . I can’t forget my own.”
“No one expects you to forget. But you’re part of Molly’s family too. Don’t forget that. Your sister loves you like cra
zy. Remember when she punched me in the nose when I was teasing you about . . . ?” Bella paused, screwing up her nose. “I don’t even remember what for. I can only remember taunting you one minute, then lying spread-eagled on the sand the next. She was vicious.”
“Still is. Don’t mess with her girls.”
They both laughed as a waiter arrived with their shared plates. The clatter of cutlery on tabletops offered a reprieve as dishes filled with fresh burrata and char-grilled scallops were placed in front of them.
Both women ate with gusto as they veered into more comfortable territory, swapping work stories and catching up on holiday plans. When the waiter came to clear some empty plates, Kate and Bella each ordered a glass of rosé and more focaccia to mop up the juices. Grief and focaccia went together quite well, Kate was discovering.
As the waiter withdrew, Bella scooped some squeaky burrata into her mouth.
“Mmm, this is heavenly. Trust the out-of-towner to know the best places to go. If it had been left to me we’d be at my local Italian. Which is good, but not this good.”
She wiped some crumbs from her lips with her napkin and pushed the white cheese toward Kate. “Have some before I eat it all.”
The waiter returned with their rosé.
Kate took a sip and felt herself growing calmer. She wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol, or the courtyard brimming with greenery, good food, and twilight.
She sat still, trying to lasso her emotions within the walls of the courtyard. It was crushing to have the world look at you with pity. People meant well when they shook their heads and said sorrowfully, “I don’t know how you get out of bed every morning.”
The truth was, neither did Kate.
But she did get out of bed, day after day, and she had kept moving until she’d started to feel a little less numb. Since Noah’s birth, Kate had sought out small things to make her smile. The perfect espresso. Sitting on her front stoop with the autumn sun on her face while Emma rolled around in the tiny golden leaves that covered Louisburg Square. Valrhona chocolate.
The Lost Jewels Page 8
