moment, I lifted the box down. Alongside her name – Felicity – was scrawled ‘papers/photos etc. for Harriet’ in my father’s handwriting.
I ran my fingers over the words and my eyes filled with tears at the sight of her name, and mine, written there. The wide brown tape had lost its stickiness over the years and it lifted away from the cardboard as I touched it, crackling softly. I brushed away my tears with my sleeve and opened the box.
The pile of papers within looked as though they’d been hastily – and somewhat randomly – thrown in in no particular order, the roughly sorted remnants of my mother’s life that had made it on to the ‘keep for Harriet’ pile landing in a brown box instead of a black bin bag.
I spread them out across my bedroom floor, sorting official documents – her out-of-date driving licence and passport – from copies of my old school reports and the handmade birthday cards that I’d given her over the years. I cried again at the sight of the clumsy, childish drawings of the two of us hand in hand, alone together. But I smiled through my tears as I realised that even at that early age I’d added fashionable touches in the form of large buttons down the front of our dresses and brightly coloured handbags to match. The handwriting inside the cards ranged from laborious nursery school printing to a rounded primary school script, heartfelt messages of love that she’d treasured enough to hold on to for safekeeping. Maybe I imagined it but it seemed to me that, even after all these years, those pictures were scented – very faintly – with the perfume that she’d always worn. The sweetly floral smell brought back a vivid memory of the black bottle with a silver top sitting on her dressing table, a French perfume called Arpège.
And yet, my pictures and messages hadn’t been enough. They hadn’t been able to pull her out of the quicksand of loneliness and sorrow that had eventually overwhelmed her, dragging her down so deep that the only escape she could find was death. Her name was one of the ultimate ironies in a life that had been anything but felicitous. The only time she had seemed really happy was when she played her piano, losing herself in the music she made as her hands floated effortlessly across the keys. My throat closed around a lump of grief as solid as a stone as I sorted the cards into a careful pile: the evidence that my mother had loved me so much, but that love, ultimately, hadn’t been able to save her.
When, at last, I was able to set the other papers aside and dry my eyes, I turned my attention to a bundle of photographs at the bottom of the box.
At the top of the pile there was one which made me catch my breath. It was a picture of her cradling me in her arms, my baby hair a halo of thistledown, catching the sunlight which streamed in from the window alongside us. The light, which made her look like a Renaissance Madonna, bathed my baby features in gold as well and it was as if I was illuminated by the love that shone from her eyes as she gazed at me. On her wrist, clearly visible, was the gold charm bracelet that I now wear. My father gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday, explaining that it had belonged to my mother and to her mother before her. I’ve worn it every day since. In the photograph, I could make out some of the charms that hang round my own wrist today – the tiny Eiffel Tower, the bobbin of thread and the thimble.
My father must have taken the picture, I realised, once upon a time when it was just the three of us and we were enough. When we were everything.
I set the print aside. I’d find a frame for it and take it back to school with me so that it could sit on the windowsill by my bed and I could see it each day without having to worry about it upsetting my father or irritating my stepmother, this reminder of a Before which they would prefer to forget. As if my presence in their house wasn’t already enough.
There were several school photos in the box too: pictures of me in my white blouse and navy jumper, sitting stiffly in front