They had both been so full of life that even now there were times when she found it almost impossible to accept that they were dead.
It had been her grandmother who had coldly delivered the news of their deaths; and her cousin, Greg, who had later smuggled to her a newspaper article describing how the wooden floor of the building they were in, packed tight with those who, like them, had rallied to champion the cause of the working man and to demand better wages and conditions, had collapsed, plunging Amber’s parents and twenty-six other people to their deaths.
Amber moved away from the window and back to her desk, looking down at the design on which she had been working: an interweaving of mauve and silver in the form of a Celtic knot, which would ultimately form part of a border.
Her father had been a gifted designer, a Russian émigré who had been working for a small silk manufacturer in London when he and her mother had first met and fallen in love, defying her mother’s mother to be together.
Amber had always loved hearing the story of her parents’ romance. She remembered sitting in bed, her mother brushing Amber’s long golden hair with her antique silver brush and telling her about the day they had met.
They had both been attending a fabric fair in London, her father as a designer, and her mother as a representative of Denby Mill, the famous Macclesfield silk mill that belonged to Amber’s grandmother Blanche.
Silk had been the thread that had bound them together, her mother had often said to Amber, and silk was the strongest and best of all threads, as pure and strong as love itself.
Amber’s father had been in the first rank of a new wave of forward-thinking designers, and her mother had loved to tell her of the praise that had been given to his work.
It was their hope that Amber would follow in his footsteps, they had both always told her. They had passed to their daughter their passionate desire to combine silk and design to produce fabrics that were in their own right works of art. That had been their gift to her, and she was determined that hers to them would be her fulfilment of their dreams.
From the first moment she could hold a pencil, from the first moment she had been able to understand the concept of beauty and design, Amber’s father had guided and taught her, just as her mother had shown her how to recognise the unique splendour that was silk.
Whilst other young children learned their dull lessons, Amber’s parents taught her the history of silk, and with it the history of life, and how it bound together so many cultures and civilisations; how it stretched in the longest of journeys across deserts and seas, and how it inspired in humankind the greatest of passions, from love to greed.
The story Amber had loved best was of how the manufacture of silk had been brought out of China, firstly to Khotan, so it was said, via the silkworm eggs concealed in the headdress of a Chinese princess who had married a prince of Khotan, and then to the Byzantine Empire when the Emperor Justinian had persuaded two monks to journey to Khotan to steal the secret of sericulture. The monks had returned first with mulberry seeds and then with silkworm eggs concealed inside hollow bamboo sticks.
‘See how it mirrors life,’ Amber’s mother had told her, the child on her knee as she let the fabric slip richly through Amber’s tiny hand. ‘It runs through the fingers like water, yet stretched tight it has such strength, and yet that strength is so supple that it escapes capture. The human spirit is like silk, Amber,’ she had declared. ‘It too cannot be captured; it too has great strength, and great beauty for those with the gift to see it. Always remember that, my darling …’
‘Amber? Are you in there?’
The sound of her cousin Greg’s voice brought her back to the present.
Greg was twenty-three years old, and a year down from Oxford, a handsome young man with broad shoulders and thick wavy fair year, confident in that way that a certain type of indulged young man from a wealthy background often was. He was his grandmother’s favourite just as his father, Marcus, had been her favourite child.
Greg’s father had died when Greg had been a child, killed in action in the trenches during the Great War, and his mother had died giving birth to her stillborn much-longed-for second child when the news had reached them of her husband’s death, leaving Greg to be brought up by their grandmother.
Athletic and extrovert, always ready to have a joke and eager to have fun, Greg had got over the initial boredom he had felt leaving Oxford and his friends behind to return home to Macclesfield, by becoming friends with a group of young men, like himself from moneyed backgrounds, who spent their time indulging in the pleasures of racing cars, learning to fly, playing tennis and attending house parties to flirt with pretty girls. Financed by family wealth, and not required to work for a living, Greg and his set were determined not to look back over their shoulders to the terrible war that had taken so many of those born a generation before them, young men dead before they had properly lived. That was never going to happen to them, and the hectic pace of their lives was proof of their determination to make sure that it didn’t. If they were haunted by the horror of what they had been spared it was never spoken of. Life was for living and that was exactly what they intended to do. The only thing they took seriously was ‘having fun’.
Amber looked on Greg more as an older brother than a cousin. He was good company, and he had always been kind to her.
In addition to inheriting Denby Mill, Greg would also inherit Denham Place, its lands and the bulk of the vast fortune their grandmother had inherited, first from her father and then later from her maternal uncle, a Liverpool ship owner. Amber, meanwhile, had her own dreams. She’d make her own way.
‘Happy birthday,’ Greg grinned, handing her a small, prettily wrapped box, before walking over to the fireplace with a confident swagger.
Amber had seen him drive off earlier in his new roadster and, knowing Greg as she did, she suspected that her birthday gift had probably been a spur-of-the-moment purchase, bought in Macclesfield that morning whilst he had been in the town attending a Conservative Party meeting. Greg was to become a Member of Parliament when the existing Member stepped down in six months’ time, or at least that was what their grandmother said.
‘Oh, Greg,’ she thanked him, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him on the cheek. ‘But I can’t open it yet. I’ve got to go and see Grandmother about my birthday surprise.’
Amber couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. She had longed so much for this moment, talking about it, and dreaming about it even before she had left her select boarding school in the summer.
‘I can hardly believe that in a few weeks’ time I’ll be going to London to study art. Which art school do you think Grandmother will have chosen? I do hope it’s the Slade, although I’m not sure I’d be good enough. She never asked me for any of my art work to show them, but I suppose she will have asked Monsieur Lafitte at school to vouch for me. He always said that he would. Greg, I’m so excited, it’s all I’ve ever wanted, and my parents—’
‘Steady on, old girl. I don’t want to spoil your fun, but I don’t think you should get your hopes up too high.’
Amber frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
Greg cursed himself under his breath. He wished now that he hadn’t said anything. The trouble with Amber was that she just wasn’t the smart sort of girl who knew what was what. If she had been then she’d have known what he was trying to hint. But then, of course, if she had known he wouldn’t have needed to do any hinting – or any warning.
‘Dash it all, Amber,’ he protested uncomfortably, ‘you can’t really think that Grandmother would let you go to art school. You know what she’s like.’
‘But