I kneel down at my grandmother’s feet, reaching a hand to my pendant, which now feels like a lead weight around my neck. Everything I thought it represented was wrong. It was the source of more conflict than love, and I don’t want it if it wasn’t meant for me. I unclip the two pieces of metal from the necklace and press them into my grandmother’s hand.
“I’m sorry if my mother took these from you. You should have them back.”
Sue feels the pieces between her fingers and starts to cry, a silent trickle glistening between the creases of her pale, papery cheek.
“I can’t even see them.” Her mouth falls open, and she holds her head in her hand as her face crumples. “I missed knowing my granddaughter over two pieces of silver. I am a foolish Judas.”
“Now, now.” Monica strides over and puts an arm around her sister’s shoulder. “She’s here now, no point regretting what’s past.”
“Yes, I’m here now,” I say, reaching out to squeeze my grandmother’s hand. “I’m only sorry I didn’t ask Mum more questions about you all. I didn’t know any of this.”
Sue presses the coins back into my palm.
“You must keep them. I have learned my lesson not to put trinkets over flesh and blood.”
Her words make me think of my mother, the magpie. She chose the coin for me, over my Jersey family. Have I, like her, been too intent on trying to keep hold of a history, a story, by having something tangible to lock it in? Then again, without the coin, I wouldn’t even be here.
Monica brings us all a slice of chocolate log to go with our tea, and the mood shifts to cheerier terrain. Both women want to hear all about my life, about growing up in Bristol, my work, my interests. I end up telling them all about the jewelry Mum and I used to make together, the fairs we’d go to every weekend, hunting out shiny things.
“Perhaps that is the Blampied in you,” Sue says fondly, “my father’s jeweler streak.”
“Well, I think I have a long way to go before I’d be considered a proper Jersey bean,” I say. “I’ve been calling myself Le Ques-ne all my life, I only learned it was pronounced Le Cane this weekend.”
Sue finds this so funny that she chokes on her piece of cake, and it takes a good few minutes for her to regain her composure.
* * *
* * *
After tea, Monica sits down next to me with a photo album she’s picked out.
“I’ve spent the last few years writing people’s names on the back of all these old photos. Once we’ve gone, no one will remember who anyone is otherwise.”
She takes me through pages of photos; there are several of William Blampied, who started it all, dressed in his army uniform before he left for the war. There is a picture of William and Margorie’s wedding day, at a Jersey church in 1936. Pictures of Sue, Monica, and their brother, Graham, as children on holidays in Greece and France. Finally, we get to pictures of my dad as a child; I’ve only ever seen a handful of photos of him, and I stare in wonder at eyes so similar to my own, looking back at me from a faded photograph.
“Do shout if this is dull, dear,” says Monica.
“It’s not dull at all. I know so little about Dad’s family. Does your brother, Graham, have children? Do I have cousins?”
“Oh yes, Deidre, Oliver, and James, and they all have children of their own. I’m sure they’ll want to meet you.”
I have cousins. I have family beyond Gran. The thought brings a lump to my throat.
“Oh, would you mind fetching the box from your car, Monica?” Sue asks, and Monica waves a finger in the air as though remembering it herself.
“I kept a box of your father’s things. I suppose I thought you might come for it one day,” Sue says.
Monica returns from the car with a battered cardboard box in her arms, and I jump up to help her with it.
“It’s probably not much worth keeping, just things I couldn’t throw away at the time,” Sue explains.
Monica and I open it together. Inside are a few well-thumbed books, mainly thrillers and murder mysteries. School certificates, a journal of handwritten recipes, and a small tin of baby teeth, which makes Monica and me both grimace and then laugh.
“Why do people keep these?” I ask, shaking my head.
“What’s that?” asks Sue.
“Teeth,” says Monica wrinkling her nose. “Hedgehogs have flat teeth like humans, you know. Some people think they have sharp teeth like rodents, but they don’t. They’re just like us.”
I bite my lip to stop myself from smiling, imagining Monica with tins full of hedgehog teeth hidden all around her house.
This box feels like the remnants of a room thrown hastily together. Beneath the paperback books is a plastic file with an “A” written on the front. It is full of letters, some typed, some handwritten. There are clippings from the Jersey Evening News, articles about the coin that I have seen before, and then, unmistakably, my mother’s handwriting. Monica pats my shoulder.
“We’ll leave Laura in peace to have a looksee, shall we, Sue?” she says, taking her sister by the arm and guiding her through the sliding door, out into the garden. “Birds need feeding in any case.”
In the file I find letters my mother sent my father, the bones of their breakup drawn in ink, clipped neatly together. Why would Dad have kept these? There are also letters from him, which she returned unread. He kept everything. The words I read fill the holes in the narrative that no one would explicitly say: Dad did not want me.
As I read, I feel a weight settle on my shoulders. Now I truly understand why Mum lied, why she wanted to paint me a prettier picture, why she didn’t stay in touch with his family.
Not only was I not wanted, but the coin I wear, the symbol of their “fairy tale,” is in fact what tore the family apart. But if they fought so bitterly over it, how did I end up with both halves?
I fold the letters away. I’ve read enough. I stretch my arms above my head and look out into the garden, where Sue and Monica are still refilling a bird feeder, one seed at a time.
“Anything of interest?” Monica asks as I walk out to join them.
“They hated each other.”
“They didn’t,” says Sue, as Monica puts an arm around me.
“That summer—I’ve never seen two people more in love. It might not have lasted, but there was certainly love there,” says Monica.
I rub my palms over my eyes, feeling them prickle with emotion.
“I’m sorry, it’s just, I thought I was coming to Jersey to write an epic love story. Instead I’ve found—I don’t know—some fantasy my mum invented.”