On the other side of the Pacific, Lucy had closed her eyes and frowned. Love shouldn’t be such an effort. But she didn’t think love was the point – she suspected it was self-esteem. Petra will stick with Rob, Lucy thought, because Petra loathes the thought of splitting up. Petra wants to feel loved regardless of whether the object of her affection is actually worthy of hers.
‘It’s his birthday on Friday,’ Petra said, aware of Lucy’s silence and changing tack because of it. ‘I won’t see him until then. He’s too busy. He says.’
‘Will you be going out to celebrate?’ Lucy asked, her tone light. If she couldn’t physically be there to pick up the pieces, then she couldn’t very well dish out the home truths.
‘Yes. Somewhere in town, I guess. He hasn’t decided. He’s not really into birthdays.’
‘Don’t take that personally,’ Lucy said.
‘I’ve bought him a leather document case. Cost a bomb. And I might let myself into his flat beforehand,’ Petra told her. ‘You know – prepare it for later.’
‘What, balloons and banners?’
‘And rose petals!’ Petra enthused, missing Lucy’s sarcasm.
‘He’s a lucky boy,’ said Lucy and she really meant it.
‘Thanks, Luce,’ Petra said.
‘Call me,’ Lucy said, with a touch of urgency, ‘whenever. Seriously. Any time.’
Perhaps Rob’s mobile was on silent. But he’d said he’d be working late, so Petra wondered why on earth she was trying to distract him with phone calls anyway.
‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘may as well go to bed.’ But first she went from room to room, collecting her damaged paperbacks which had been splayed over the radiators all evening to dry. She took them all into the sitting room. In drying, they had fanned themselves out, some almost 360 degrees, like drab versions of Christmas paper lanterns which take form when folded in on themselves. She scouted the room for heavy items to place on them. Some she put into piles, placing chair legs on top. Her Tony Parsons paperbacks she lay side by side underneath the television set and she set her John Irving collection upright, against the skirting board, wedging the sofa against them.
There were still another sixteen paperbacks remaining, fanned out like Elizabethan ruffs, but all the heavy items in the sitting room had been put to good use. Petra checked her mobile. It was still blank. Gathering the books, she took them into her bedroom and laid them in a shambolic pile on the pew while she upturned her mattress and jostled it off the bed frame and up against the wall.
On her bed base, she put Barbara Trapido shoulder to shoulder with Nick Hornby and was just about to add Hilary Mantel to make an interesting threesome when she was distracted. Near the head of the bed and over to one side was a black velvet pouch with a thin gold silken cord. Petra leant across Nick Hornby, nudging Barbara Trapido out of the way as she did so, and took the pouch. She didn’t open it; initially she just brushed the velvet against her cheek, her lips, as she sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed.
After a while, she slipped out the knot in the cord and eased open the neck of the pouch. With a little shake, she tipped out the contents. A white cotton handkerchief wrapped carefully around something hard. As she began, slowly, to unfurl the handkerchief, taking time to trace the embroidered ‘P’, she was about to detour in her mind’s eye back to the John Lewis department store, to shopping with her mother, to the time when her mother bought her this handkerchief, a time when her mother wore glamorous red shoes and didn’t have alfalfa for hair – but Petra pulled herself back from that memory because there was somewhere else she’d rather be. The handkerchief was now open and there, glinting and breathtakingly beautiful, lay Petra’s tanzanite. The size and gloss of a quail’s egg: 39.43 carats of it, beautifully worked into a stunning pear cut with a dazzling array of light-reflecting facets. Internally flawless; brilliantly blue with a seductive wink of violet too.
On her bed, she cupped her hand as a cradle for the gem. It felt warm and rock-solidly reassuring to hold while she travelled back seventeen years, back to the day she first heard about tanzanite.
‘Mrs McNeil?’ Petra called through the letter-box. ‘Lillian? Hullo? It’s me, it’s Petra.’
The door opened less than ajar. ‘So it is,’ said Lillian McNeil. ‘Come on in, dear.’ And she opened the door precisely wide enough for Petra to sidle her slim, fifteen-year-old body through sideways.
‘Oh, Mrs McNeil,’ Petra said softly, sadly, raising her hand gently to the bruising around the lady’s right eye. ‘It looks worse today than the day before yesterday.’
Mrs McNeil swept at the air as if her black eye looked far worse than it felt. ‘The good news is they caught the little scamps.’
‘Lock them up and throw the key away,’ Petra said angrily.
‘There was only a few bob in my purse. And my watch was cheap as chips – it just looked fancy. And my eye – well, I fell, you see. That part was just bad luck. They didn’t actually touch me at all.’
‘I’d quite like to swear now.’
‘Absolutely not. Swearing does not become you, Petra Flint.’
‘I’m just so angry.’
‘Let it pass, Petra. If I have – you must.’
‘Well, I bought you something – Walnut Whips. I bought you a packet of milk ones and look, new plain ones too.’
Lillian’s eyes sparkled rather than watered now. ‘You’ll have to help me eat them.’
‘OK! Oh, and I brought you this. I took it out on my library card.’ She handed Mrs McNeil an audio-cassette of Pride and Prejudice. ‘I thought – if your eye was sore. I thought – if you didn’t feel like reading. I know how you love your books.’
‘Bless you, little Miss Flint.’
Petra shrugged off the compliment. ‘Let’s eat the Walnut Whips,’ she said and she let Mrs McNeil choose between the plain and milk chocolate packets. ‘Shall I make tea, too?’
‘No, dear,’ Lillian said, ‘I’ll do that. Young people just don’t have the knack.’
‘We’re not taught properly,’ Petra agreed. ‘Before I met you, I’d never seen loose tea, just bags.’
While Mrs McNeil was pottering and clattering around the kitchenette, Petra browsed the room. She’d been visiting Mrs McNeil for nearly two terms. In fact, the summer holidays had just started, but it didn’t occur to Petra not to visit. It might be the school holidays but it wasn’t as if she was going on a family holiday this year. That in itself would be a contradiction in terms. It couldn’t be much of a holiday if there wasn’t much of a family. And anyway, there was something really nice about visiting out of school hours and not having the time restraints of double maths or netball or pottery at Milton College to rush away for. And, though there had been the unpleasant incident with Mrs McNeil’s bag at the bus stop the previous
