The Last Letter

by Kirsten McKenzie

  It seemed her gravel burns had made their way back to England with her, given the pain she was in. Gritting her teeth, she stood up and made her way to the bathroom. Turning on the shower, she stripped off and waited for the water to warm up. Her colonial clothes lay in a bloodied heap on the checkered lino floor.

  This she loved – it’d been one of the few things she’d done to the flat above The Old Curiosity Shop when she’d moved in after her father vanished. She wasn’t up for paying for the floors to be sanded and varnished, but a small piece of black and white lino gave the bathroom a retro modern feel, if there was such a thing.

  She put her hand under the shower head. Still cold. The water’s stone cold. She fiddled with the ancient taps, turning the cold all the way off, and the hot tap all the way round. Ouch! Her hands stung. She needed to get the gravel out a.s.a.p.

  ‘Fuck it,’ she said loudly. Eventually she realised someone had turned the water heater off and, standing bloodied and naked in the bathroom, that there was only one thing she could do. Steeling herself, she climbed under the freezing water. Teeth chattering, she sat in the bathtub, and sluiced the blood from the numerous parts of her body. She wasn’t sure what was worse, the cold water or the pain of picking the gravel from her wounds, with the shower head clamped firmly between her knees.

  Finally she could bear the cold no longer, so, struggling to her feet, she rinsed off. There was no way she was using any form of soap or shampoo when her wounds were this fresh. Her hair would be fine in a ponytail and, for the most part, she was clean. There was nothing more she could do for the burn on her cheek but hope like hell that it wouldn't scar.

  Drying herself off carefully, she dressed in the loosest clothing she could find. An old pair of Singapore Airlines business class pyjama pants a boyfriend had left behind, and her father’s old sweatshirt, one of the only things of his she’d kept, made all the more poignant now she knew he was alive. Slipping her feet into oversized bed socks, she made her way into the kitchenette. No milk. She made herself a black tea, with copious spoonfuls of sugar to make it palatable.

  Carrying her favourite ‘Antiques Roadshow’ mug into the lounge, she slumped on the couch. The light outside told the time better than the railway clock on the wall – frozen at five thirty-eight. Like most of the objects, the oak case was covered in a thin sheen of dust. The piece had been one of her early purchases after she’d taken over the shop, and she’d paid way too much for it, a trap for the uneducated, so it was also one of the only things she’d kept for herself.

  Old railway clocks were wildly popular, and barely a week went by without someone asking her for one. And, as was the way of things, she’d never seen another. This one had come from a defunct railway station in Harlington, salvaged by the retiring station master. She’d also scored railway-branded china cups, monogrammed silver-plated teapots and the most spectacular wooden filing cabinet. That had literally flown out the door, off to some industrial-turned-residential warehouse on Canary Wharf.

  She fought off sleep, her stomach competing for attention. When did I last eat? Sleep won. Curled up on the couch she drifted off, the couch a welcome change from the lumpy horsehair-filled mattress in colonial Auckland.

  THE DESIGNER

  Patricia unlocked the door of The Old Curiosity Shop, resentment filling every fibre of her body. Every minute she spent here was one less in her own shop. One less minute designing the clothes she loved. One less serving her loyal customers. To remove such negative feelings at this imposition brought about by her missing friend, she’d hired a girl to run the antique shop, but hadn’t yet felt comfortable handing over full access. That was going to change today. She couldn’t be faffed bothering with this every day. Hardly a girl though – Nicole Pilcher had recently moved to London from Tamworth for love, and had come highly recommended from her previous job at the historic Tamworth Castle, where she’d been the curator of the museum. It’s really time to trust her with a set of keys, she thought through gritted teeth, as she struggled with one of the padlocks on the door.

  As usual, she quickly scouted around the shop, hoping against hope that her friend might have reappeared. But, like every other day, nothing. She and Andrew Harvard had agonised over what to tell Nicole but had decided on the simplest explanation; that Sarah had gone travelling, and they had no idea when she would return.

  Patricia sat behind the counter, counting down the minutes till Nicole started. She was normally on time, as one is prone to be when starting a new job. She flipped through the sales book. Things had improved since Nicole had taken over, that was for sure, although there were her wages to take into consideration. She groaned and let her head bang against the counter as she considered how much energy she’d expended on her friend’s business instead of her own.

  The door flew open, and in bounced Nicole, with the passion and excitement peculiar to the young.

  ‘Good morning, Patricia, thanks for opening up for me again. How was your weekend?’ Nicole bubbled over with joy.

  Patricia plastered a smile on her face, ‘All good, thanks. Just checking ... do you have any calls planned for this week?’

  Now there was a licensed dealer in the shop, Patricia was only required to be in the shop when Nicole went out on calls to buy new stock. In asking the question, she deep down hoped that the answer would be ‘no’.

  ‘There’s only the one on Wednesday, but I made it for first thing, so I thought, if you didn’t open up till about eleven, that would work better for both of us?’

  ‘What have they got?’

  ‘They said they had some Lladro, a pile of crystal ... and a collection of sterling silver pin cushions. It’s those that I’m really excited about. At the last auction I went to, a sterling silver pin cushion, shaped like a camel, of all things, sold for nearly seven hundred pounds. So, fingers crossed, these ones are silver and not plate.’ Nicole threw her jacket over the stool behind the counter, and flicked on a set of cabinet lights Patricia had forgotten.

  ‘Right, well, I’ll be next door if you need me ...’ Patricia paused, considering her words carefully. ‘Look, it seems silly you not having your own set of keys, and mucking around with me opening and closing for you.’ Handing over a set of keys, she couldn’t help but smile at Nicole’s face – like a child with a new puppy. ‘This way, you won’t need to worry about arranging calls around me. Anyway, see you later.’ Patricia slipped next door, to open up her own shop.

  Something feels different this morning. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something in the air. She wished it were Sarah, but knew better than to wish for the impossible.

  THE ASSISTANT

  Nicole Pilcher busied herself behind the counter. Even after all this time, she still had no idea where everything was. The shop was nothing like she’d expected. To start with, it was a complete disaster. Stuff everywhere. There was no rhyme nor reason to the shelving. It was dim, and hard to get around. Stock flowed onto the floors, shelves were heaving so badly that they threatened to break every time she placed anything new on them. There wasn’t a day where she didn’t expect one of the glass shelves in the window to crack completely and waterfall stock down onto the ones below. She was so fearful of this she’d started emptying them, leaving artfully displayed pieces on the freshly cleaned glass. The window looked fantastic but she’d been left with a counter covered with the stock she’d pulled out. What to do with it now? Her training told her to send it all off to auction and hope for the best. She wasn’t sure if Patricia would go for that, but then again, she probably wouldn’t even know.

  Locking the front door, she ventured downstairs, where she’d seen a mountain of cardboard cartons. This was a treasure trove of unpriced stock. In her second week, she’d come to the conclusion that everything down here needed to be transferred upstairs, priced up, and put out for sale. She was no fool. She’d Googled the shop before accepting the position, and knew Sarah was considered missing by the police and there was
genuine concern foul play was involved. Nicole was firmly in the camp that believed Sarah was never coming back. If she did a good job here, her tightly held dream was that she’d be able to buy the shop.

  With the front door locked, she spent a happy hour ferreting through the boxes stored by Sarah’s father downstairs, stock he’d specifically kept aside for selling on a rainy day – his ‘retirement fund’ he’d called it.

  Opening one crate, her breath caught in her throat. There was Ruth – Ruth from the bible, who’d married Boaz, the great-grandmother of David. An exquisite hand-painted porcelain tile depicting Ruth with a sheaf of wheat under one arm, lovingly presented in an ornate gilt frame. Got to be worth about five thousand pounds, give or take. She ran a hand gently along the brushstrokes. The oil paint ghosted under her fingers; ridges and valleys she could feel, but which were only visible under a magnifying glass.

  She lifted it from its bed of bubble wrap. Unseen, the auction receipt fluttered to the floor, slipping under a shelving unit.

  Nicole carried it upstairs. Something like this needed to be on display, not hidden in a tea chest. She looked for an empty hook. That was another thing this place had plenty of; hooks. Scattered randomly everywhere, but also inconveniently in some instances.

  A faded Delft plate caught her eye. Normally, the blue and white Delft held its vivid blue regardless of age, but maybe this one was a copy? She lifted it from its hook, replacing it with Ruth, who looked angelic in the half light of the shop. Satisfied, Nicole put the 1967 commemorative Christmas Delft plate on top of a pile she’d started, planning to send it all off to the nearest auction house, and didn’t give it another thought.

  After unlocking the front door she decided her focus today would be the cabinet full of French Limoges pieces. She was by no means an expert but, despite its garish images and dated colour schemes, Limoges was incredibly popular with the Chinese customers who ventured into the shop. As a start, she emptied the cabinet, cleaning the shelves, and examining each piece with a critical eye. No one, other than the Limoges factory itself, needed three hundred pieces of chinaware on a shelf. She’d halve the stock and no one would be any the wiser. Anything that was a double up went into a box; anything missing its gold trim, or marred by knife marks, also went into the box. She shook her head as she put two large knife-blemished wall plates into the box. Who on earth uses gold gilt display plates for actually eating off?

  Humming tunelessly, she contemplated how much she loved her work. She missed the hustle of the tourist season at Tamworth Castle, but here she had more autonomy and was handling objects that didn’t, as a matter of course, have five hundred years of history behind them. And that suited her just perfectly.

  Her humming drowned the creak as Sarah Lester made her way down the narrow staircase into the shop. As she shielded her eyes from the brightness of the fluorescent lights, she tripped over one of Nicole’s ‘auction boxes’ lazily left at the bottom of the stairs.

  Nicole dropped a Limoges pepper grinder in fright, smashing it to smithereens as it hit a threadbare patch of carpet.

  The women eyeballed each other. Nicole had the advantage of suspecting who the dishevelled woman on the floor was. Sarah was at a complete loss. The fall had knocked the fresh scabs off her grazes and she sat on the floor cradling her sore hands.

  ‘Hello, I’m Nicole. Looks odd me being here, but Patricia employed me to look after the place until you came back. It’s been a baptism of fire since I’ve been here. You’ve some peculiar customers – you know that, right? Let me help you up.’

  Nicole helped Sarah sit down on a rickety wooden stepladder, scrawled with “Not For Sale” in permanent marker on every slat.

  Sarah looked up at her, and around the shop. Everywhere she looked, there were glimpses of shelves and clear space. Patches of carpet which had spent the previous twenty years covered with nail boxes, now tufted up like they were newly laid. It was her shop, but it had transformed into some place she barely recognised.

  ‘How long did you say you’d been working here?’

  ‘A few months now. I’m ... well, I’ve done some tidying up,’ Nicole gestured broadly around the shop.

  Sarah sniffed, her hands held loosely in her lap. She’d have clenched her fists in frustration if they hadn’t hurt so much. Her gaze took in the shelves behind the counter. Her voice trembled, ‘Where’s the pen and ink sketch of the sailing ship from behind the counter?’

  ‘Oh that? I sold it. It wasn’t priced, but some ex-Navy guy offered me ninety pounds for it, which I thought was a good price for an unsigned piece. It’s all in the sales book. I’ve tried to follow the way you had things. I can take you through it all. Of course, that only covers the time I’ve been here. Patricia and Andrew were running it before I got here, so I don’t know how they were doing things ...’

  Sarah held up her damaged hands, putting a halt to Nicole’s ramblings.

  Nicole’s eyes widened in shock. ‘Oh my goodness, your hands! Wait right here, I’ll find the first-aid kit.’

  ‘It’s behind the counter, on the shelf above the reference books,’ Sarah volunteered helpfully.

  Nicole looked chagrined, ‘I think that’s one of the shelves I tidied up. A lot of those books were out of date. I mean, the 2003 Miller’s Antiques Price Guide was hardly relevant any more ...’

  Sarah looked at her incredulously, her bleeding hands quite forgotten, ‘You got rid of my reference books?’

  Nicole squirmed uncomfortably under Sarah’s glare, and nodded.

  ‘Well then, I guess you’ll know where you put the first-aid kit then,’ Sarah mumbled.

  Nicole rushed off and Sarah gazed miserably around the shop. This is a disaster. Every time she’d ‘disappeared’ before, it’d only been for a fraction of time and there’d been no change in her circumstances. This was a whole different kettle of fish. Now her father’s favourite piece of art had been sold, her reference books hocked off. She shuddered as she considered the infinite possibilities of what this girl might also have done.

  Nicole returned with the sparse first-aid kit, the one which Sarah always meant to replenish, but had never quite got round to doing.

  ‘The antiseptic cream expired two years ago, but there are plasters and cotton buds’ Nicole offered.

  ‘The antiseptic will be fine. Pass it here and I’ll put it on. If you could put the plasters on for me that’d be great. Then I’ll need to see Patricia. She’ll be wondering what’s happened to me, I expect.’

  ‘I think there's a lot of people who have been wondering that ... I can ring her for you?’

  ‘No, I’ll pop next door, surprise her. Best you stay here, but perhaps you could tell me how the shop is doing?’ She steeled herself for the worst case scenario, which, in reality, couldn’t be any worse than when she was last here. So many thoughts reeled through her brain. What happened about the katar and the candelabra? And the sampler? Sarah groaned.

  Nicole froze mid-plaster application, ‘Sorry, did I hurt you?’

  ‘No, no, I just remembered I never found out how the auction of some things went. I’ll need to check with Trish, see if she heard anything from the guy at Christie’s.’

  Nicole looked skeptical. How couldn’t she know about what had happened at Christie’s? Is she for real? Nicole thought back to her second week in the shop, when she’d received a visit from some investigators from the Art Loss Register. They’d wanted to know all about the systems in the shop. ‘What systems?’ had been her response. Although Patricia had done her best to show her the ropes, nothing in The Old Curiosity Shop made sense. Not the sales register, nor the stock register. Crates of stock from who knows where cluttered every corner. Then there was all the stuff stored downstairs. The place was a mess. Not that it was her business of course, but the shop was literally an advertisement for ‘How Not To Run A Business’.

  Nicole was used to worldwide museum-standard catalogue systems. Obviously her dreams of one day purchasing the sh
op were going down the drain, but maybe she’d be able to keep her job.

  Opting for a minimalist answer, she replied, ‘I’ve met one man from Christie’s, Andrew Harvard – he and Patricia both interviewed me for the job here. He’s been helping look after things while you’ve been away.’

  None of it made any sense, but at least her friend hadn’t had to do it on her own. There seemed to be enough money coming in to employ a retail assistant – the one thing she’d planned to do herself after the auction of the katar, if it’d been a success. Maybe things aren’t as bad as I thought. As for her father’s sketch of the sailing boat, sometimes you needed to let go of the past to let the future in. She knew her father was alive, albeit not in this time. He’d forgive the sale of the sketch if it meant the survival of his business; the only thing he loved more than his family – with golf a close third.

  With her hands covered in plasters, held in place with old strapping tape, Sarah gingerly stood up, her body aching like she'd gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. She made her way out of the shop, choosing to ignore the artful displays dotted about, and the newly visible areas of floor. Perhaps this was the way of the future, although what her regular customers thought of it was something she refused to consider.

  Tentatively, she opened Patricia’s door, the bell heralding her entrance. Two women were by the mirror admiring the Victorian era-inspired skirt being tried on by the taller one. Twittering away to each other, they paid no attention to Sarah as she limped towards the workroom. Pushing open the door, she started to greet her old friend, who was hunched over her sewing machine and a swath of snowy white fabric. ‘Hello ...’

  ‘Sorry, this area is private. I’ll be with you in just a moment. Just got to finish this seam.’ Patricia never looked up from her sewing machine.