Rose set the washing machine to a warm wash and then looked around for something else to do. This evening wouldn’t be too bad, she decided. Talking to the girls had invigorated her. Anyway, there were loads of people who’d love a glamorous night out at a dressy dinner. She was lucky to have such a good social life. She was lucky full stop. People were always telling her so. But then, it was one thing to look as if your life was perfect, it was another thing for it to be so. Looks could be deceptive. Minnie Wilson’s was a prime example: bright on the outside, with some sort of hidden misery clearly lurking on the inside. Rose wondered if everybody’s life was different behind the facade?
The following Monday, Stella Miller was also thinking about how appearances mattered as she waited patiently in the jewellers for a salesperson to help her. It was ten days before Christmas, and everyone and their lawyer was shopping for gifts and the streets were heaving with irate shoppers who didn’t care if their umbrella took someone else’s eye out. The season of goodwill be damned.
Stella had walked in the door of Austyn’s Fine Jewellers at precisely the same time as the expensively-dressed couple currently being served but the only available salesman, with an unerring nose for people about to spend bucketloads of cash, had gravitated instantly towards the well-dressed couple, who were looking for an engagement ring.
The woman’s coat was cashmere and reeked of money. Stella wryly thought that her coat reeked of nothing but good value, having been a sale bargain two years previously. Still, she didn’t mind waiting. Stella had long ago decided that life was easier if she didn’t sweat the small stuff.
Leaning against the counter, she watched the engagement ring show unfold in front of her eyes. The salesman’s eyes shone with joy as he reached into the shop’s main window and let his fingers settle reverently on the pale grey suede cushion. Cushion No 1, resting place of the finest diamond rings in the entire shop.
Carrying it as carefully as if it was a priceless antiquity and he was Indiana Jones, the salesman laid the cushion on the glass counter, discreetly attaching its steel chain to a hook underneath, just in case somebody dared to snatch it and make off with several millions’ worth of flawless diamonds.
The customers sighed at the same moment, sighs of relief at finding the perfect engagement ring. They looked thrilled. The salesman allowed himself a sigh too, thinking of the commission.
‘Would Madam like to try it on?’ he said hopefully.
Stella was close enough to get a really good look at the five rings on their bed of grey suede, each seeking to outdazzle the others. The ring in the centre was her favourite. She’d seen it in the window the week before when she was rushing down the street after meeting a friend for lunch. At the time, there were still at least fourteen shopping days till the holiday, but Stella was one of life’s organised people who colour-coded her underwear drawer, rearranged the freezer contents on a monthly basis, and viewed buying Christmas presents any later than the week before the event as reckless.
Her mother adored those prettily painted enamelled pill boxes and Stella wanted to buy her something extra special to say thanks for the weekend when Rose and Hugh had arrived to take Amelia swimming. Rose had brought a basket with organic eggs, freshly baked bread and lots of her special fruit scones, as well as the wonderful anti-inflammatory drugs, which had helped her neck get better. Rose deserved much more than an ordinary pill box and Austyn’s had a huge selection: flowered ones, ones with strawberries cunningly painted on; you name it, they had it. Stella imagined that if she’d asked for a pill box with a finely painted dead cockroach on it, they’d have had one.
But it was the diamond ring, sitting fatly on Cushion No 1, that had caught her eye amidst the tinsel-strewn display of pendants and rows of bangles on the day when she didn’t have time to stop. Peering in the window and half-thinking that perhaps she should buy a department store gift voucher instead, Stella had spotted it instantly. One luscious marquise-cut diamond surrounded by oval diamond petals, like a wildly expensive flower perched on a fine platinum band. Large but certainly not vulgar; just big enough to proclaim love, devotion and hard cash.
‘Try it on, darling,’ urged the man, now. The woman beamed at him and stretched out manicured fingers.
The salesman expertly unhooked the ring, all the time thinking of what a bumper year this had been for the shop. They were running out of Rolexes and Patek Philippe watches faster than they could import them; he’d personally sold two sapphire-studded gold necklaces yesterday, and now this: a couple interested in the most beautiful (and expensive) ring on the premises.
In one fluid move, the ring was on the woman’s finger. It was exquisite. Stella sighed. Much and all as she adored the costume jewellery she bought for a song in markets and second-hand stalls, there was something irresistibly indulgent about the real stuff.
‘Can I help you, Madam?’
She looked up into the eyes of another salesman, who was in a very bad temper because he should have been the one serving the diamond-ring hopefuls and would have been if the credit card machine hadn’t been taking so long all day.
Stella straightened up, a tall, neat figure in a charcoal woollen coat with a crimson knitted hat adding the only splash of colour to her sober outfit. ‘Yes, I’d like to look at some of the enamelled pill boxes,’ she said.
With one last wistful look at the fabulous diamond being admired by the besotted couple to her left, she followed the salesman to the back of the store, where a display of enamelled boxes waited.
Within five minutes, Stella had chosen a Victorian-style box and was impatiently waiting for her credit card to be run through the machine by the still-grumpy salesman. She was in a rush because tonight was Amelia’s school Nativity play. Stella couldn’t wait to see it. Amelia had talked of nothing else for a month, her dark brown eyes shining when she practised her bit which involved shuffling onstage, kneeling at the front of three rows of angels, and singing a carol off-key. Amelia had inherited Stella’s tone deafness, but she looked so adorable when she sang that it didn’t matter.
Seven years old and cute as a button, Amelia was the image of her mother. In a police line-up, nobody could have failed to notice the similarity between the two, although the younger version had her glossy chestnut hair in pigtails, while her mother’s was styled in a chin-length bob. Amelia’s heart-shaped little face was graver than Stella’s serene oval one, and her huge eyes were watchful, which made people who didn’t know her think she was a quiet child. She was anything but. She was simply shy round strangers. But Amelia was perhaps a little more grown-up than most children her age. That was Stella’s only regret about divorcing Glenn – his absence and their status as a one-parent family had made little Amelia seem older than her years. Not that Amelia seemed to mind only seeing her daddy a few times a year, but Stella still worried about it.
The night before, Amelia had pranced around the living room in her white glittery angel robes and sang ‘Silent Night’ in her breathy voice.
‘David’s dad is going to video-tape it, Mum, and Miss Dennis says she’ll get copies for all of us if we give her a tape.’
‘We have to get two tapes, then, darling,’ Stella had said, hugging Amelia, ‘so we can keep one for us and send one to Daddy.’
‘OK. Will I sing it again?’ Amelia asked.
‘Yes, darling.’
The tape might just spark Daddy out of his habitual languor, Stella thought. He really was useless at remembering how important things like Christmas were to kids. Stella had hoped that Glenn’s beloved father’s sudden death