Free Blood-Tied by Wendy Percival

knew Gemma hadn’t yet come to terms with what had happened to her mother and what she had since learnt about her. Not that Elizabeth’s being adopted troubled her, because, as Esme had already pointed out, it didn’t change the fact that Elizabeth was her mother. It was the deception Gemma was struggling with, as was Esme herself.
    But Esme had few qualms about prying, as Gemma termed it. She was desperate for some answers and if Elizabeth wasn’t able to give them at present, Esme saw no harm in making her own enquiries.
    She peered into the boxes on the floor. There was obviously still some work to do in this room; there were still items on the shelves. But she wanted to explore the rest of the cottage first.
    There were three rooms downstairs, the sitting room which she had already explored, an empty room to the left and a tiny kitchen to the rear. There was a bathroom extension beyond, obviously installed long ago. The atmosphere was cold and uninviting, and the smell of damp palpable.
    Upstairs there were two bedrooms. In the first, the only furniture remaining was a wooden trunk pushed against a wall. Esme guessed this had been Mrs Roberts’s room. There was no evidence of her presence, of course. Her clothes and personal things would have gone with her to the home, but the wallpaper was brighter above the trunk than on the remainder of the wall, indicating that there had once been a different piece of furniture there once, a chest of drawers or a dressing-table perhaps, which Mrs Roberts might have taken with her. Christine Rowcliffe had explained that residents were encouraged to bring items of their own furniture where feasible.
    The trunk held no secrets, being completely empty, so Esme wandered across the tiny landing into the next bedroom. This room held more furniture. The bed had been stripped. A patchwork eiderdown lay concertina-style across the end of the bed. Esme stroked the fabric squares. She wondered if each piece had a story. She’d once been in a school play called The Patchwork Quilt . She couldn’t recall the details, only that every square held something about the past: a piece from a favourite summer skirt, another from child’s dress, another square made from a cushion cover, one side faded but the other side serviceable enough for reuse, such as rag rugs. It was more than ‘mend and make do’. The homes of the women who made these furnishings had soul. Now society simply swept into a high-street store and chose furniture on a whim, or because of a television advertisement. In times past, wardrobes, trunks, tables and chairs were lovingly cared for and passed down through the generations, like threads which joined their living histories.
    Boxes on the bed held folded blankets and sheets. Esme glanced around the room. Objects were piled up on the dressing-table: brushes, gloves, lavender bags and scarves. In the wardrobe there were clothes still hanging, and the drawers of the dressing-table were still full. This room must have been Daisy’s, Elizabeth’s mother.
    Esme decided to begin here and spent the next couple of hours folding, packing, and clearing the wardrobe. As she stood back to congratulate herself on a job well done, she looked up at the deep cornice around the top of the wardrobe. She ought to check that nothing had been left on top, obscured from view.
    She reached up and felt over the cornice, cringing as the sticky texture of dust and cobwebs clung to her fingers. Her fingertip touched something hard. She stretched as far as she could, trying to curl her fingers around the edge of whatever it was and bring it closer, but the object refused to co-operate.
    She looked around the room. There was a walking stick propped up in the corner of the room. She picked it up and tried to use it as an extended arm but it was too inflexible. She was concerned that she might knock the object on to the floor. She propped the walking stick against the wardrobe door while she considered