sat still, listening.
Benedict looked down at the floorboards, watching as a spider scuttled towards his knee. ‘I made Charlie his supper and tried not to worry,’ he continued. ‘But then, the next morning, one of my parents’ business associates phoned the house. They said that Joseph and Jenny Stone had drowned. They were identified from documents in their rucksacks.’
‘Oh God, Uncle Ben.’ Gemma clasped her hands to her mouth. She shifted around the chest and sat next to him, the top of her arm pressing against his. ‘That sucks.’
‘The worst thing was telling Charlie,’ Benedict said. ‘He probably thought I was getting him up for breakfast. Instead, I told him that both his parents were dead. He cried out and I can still hear the sound.’ He shook his head, as if to get rid of the noise. ‘I felt numb and I can’t remember anything else of that day, except me and Charlie huddled together on the sofa. We just stared into space.
‘After that, friends and distant relatives offered help but they couldn’t bring up two orphaned brothers. I took charge of everything.’
‘You became, like, my dad’s parent?’
‘Yes, sort of. Our parents’ rucksacks arrived back at the house a few weeks later. They were all white and crusty from sand and seawater. There was a small bag full of gemstones in the front pocket of my mother’s rucksack. They’re the ones you brought with you.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘They died looking for pretty coloured pieces of rock.’
He felt Gemma’s fingers creep on top of his, and tightly hold the back of his hand.
‘So now you know what happened,’ he said.
‘And why don’t you and Dad speak? You sounded so close, when you were younger. You went through a lot together. What happened?’
Benedict shrugged. ‘Your dad found a different life, in America, with your mum.’ He could make it sound so simple.
‘But why would he want to move away and never come back? Why couldn’t he visit or something? He could have brought me to meet you.’
There was nothing that Benedict could say, without thinking back to what had happened between him and Charlie to break their friendship and family bond. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, tight-lipped. ‘Why did you come here from America?’
He felt her fingers tense and she pulled her hand away from his.
‘I told you. I came here for an adventure,’ she said frostily. ‘Not to escape or anything.’
‘Escape?’ Benedict frowned. ‘Who said anything about that?’
Gemma shuffled away from him, back into her own space on the opposite side of the chest. ‘You’re twisting my words, Uncle Ben.’
‘I’m only asking you a question. What do you mean by escape?’
‘Nothing. I picked the wrong word, that’s all. Stop prying.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You are.’
‘You barged into my shop and listened in while I was trying to reconcile with my wife,’ Benedict said, exasperated. ‘That’s what I call prying.’
‘Like you were doing such a great job there.’
‘You didn’t give me much opportunity.’
‘Your great master plan to get her back is to do, well, zero.’ She rolled her eyes.
‘Unlike Operation WEB, or whatever it is you called it?’
Gemma’s lips twitched into a small smile and, oddly, he found one too. It sounded so ridiculous.
‘Yep, like that,’ she said. ‘Now can we look in this freakin’ chest?’
Benedict was relieved to stop arguing. He placed the key in the lock and turned it. Together, they heaved the lid open. He caught his breath, unprepared for the wave of emotion that hit him as he saw the green-handled pliers his mother used to use and his father’s rusty hacksaw. There was a battered wooden mallet and a roll of wire.
He stared and a memory came into his head, as vivid as the day it happened. His mother sat by the window in the dining room, the sunlight in her hair. She laughed as she heated and made delicate curls of silver wire. She always laughed – at birds hopping around the garden, if she burned their dinner, at her sons and their antics. As time went by, he recalled less and less of what his parents and Charlie looked like. He could look at photographs, but they were two-dimensional, a moment frozen in time.
‘You’re quiet,’ Gemma said. ‘Say something.’
He delved inside the chest, scooped up a handful of gemstones and held them out on the flat of his palm. Most were already polished and cut to shape, smooth or with their facets glinting. Others were dull. They looked like ordinary stones dug out of the ground, their potential not yet unleashed. Some had holes drilled through them, ready to hang in the gem tree. For a moment, Benedict wished he could be small again. Innocent. ‘You’re right. It’s a treasure chest,’ he said.
Gemma reached out and touched the gems. ‘Cool. Can you use these in your jewellery?’
‘Stone Jewellery has survived for long enough without gemstones.’ He shook them back into the chest. Next, he pulled out a large ball of tissue paper. It looked like a cheerleader’s pompom. This was something he hadn’t seen for a long time.
‘What is that?’
Inside it were separate bundles of soft tissue paper. Benedict took one out and peeled it apart. A silver clam-shell brooch nestled in the folds. It was a test piece he had made with his mother. Benedict was about to say that it was nothing, to crumple the tissue back up and hide it away, but Gemma snatched it from him.
‘This is so cool.’ She placed the clam shell on her palm. ‘Did my grandmother make it?’
‘No, I did,’ Benedict said. ‘It was a long time ago, when I was learning. You can see that it’s clumsy.’
‘It’s different to the jewellery in your shop.’ She turned it over in her hands. ‘That’s all kinda boring.’
‘Thanks for your kind words.’
‘I mean, compared to this.’
‘I’m not sure that’s any more complimentary.’ He took it back off her. ‘I was probably only sixteen or seventeen when I made this.’
‘My age,’ Gemma sighed. She shook her head. ‘You know, everyone at home keeps asking what I wanna do next. All my friends are going to college, but I don’t know what I want. I mess up everything I do…’
Benedict ran his finger over the edges of the silver. His niece’s confidence seemed to have melted as quickly as an icicle in the sun. ‘You’re being too tough on yourself,’ he said. ‘What have you messed up?’
Gemma stared at him. She opened her mouth and slowly tilted her head from side to side, like a metronome, as if considering whether
