Julie - Senses

‘I’m just popping to the shop,’ Gran shouted up the stairs.

‘OK,’ Cassie shouted back.  ‘See you later.’  She calculated this gave her at least ten minutes to examine the contents of the green ‘Norvic’ shoe box she had found that morning in Gran’s attic when she had been sent up to get an old table lamp.  The box held particular interest as it had written on the lid in capitals the words ‘Property of Christine Mitchell.  Private.’

As Cassie sat on her bed, she could still taste the dust from the attic, tickling her nostrils and making her sneeze.  She held her breath, listening intently until she heard the faint thud of the back door as Gran went out.  She exhaled, breaking the silence which now enveloped the house, and slid the box out from its temporary hiding place under her bed.  Sitting cross-legged, she undid the bow on the yellowing string which was tied around the box, and lifted off the lid.

The box was around quarter full.  On the top was a neatly written envelope addressed to ‘Miss Cassie Mitchell, care of Mrs Margery Wilson, 49 Church Road, Shoteham, Norfolk’ – Gran’s name, and the address of the house in which Cassie now found herself.  There was an old three penny stamp in the corner of the envelope, embossed with a postmark of January 1962.  Cassie traced her own name with her finger, feeling the roughness where the fountain pen had scratched the paper.  The envelope was unopened, a situation which, after a moment’s hesitation, she altered, since it had been intended for her.  She slid out a pink card.  Above a picture of a baby in a crib were the words ‘For baby’s first birthday’.  Inside the card was written ‘I think of you every single day. C x’.  Cassie tasted salt at the back of her throat as she struggled not to cry.   She laid the card on the pink candlewick bedspread and, unfolding her legs, leaned back against the smooth warmth of the wooden headboard with her eyes shut.  Tears escaped through her eyelashes, tickling her cheeks. 

Ever since she had found out that ‘Auntie’ Christine was actually her mother, Cassie had wanted to know more about her.  She knew that Christine had left home when she became pregnant.  In her anger at the family for their deception, Cassie had never considered that Christine had any feelings towards her and assumed she had been handed over to Helen and David without a backward glance.  This card changed that assumption.  It brought to the fore a new idea, that the family had been actively involved in preventing Cassie from seeing her real mother.  Gran must have known what this card was and put it in the shoebox with the rest of Christine’s things.  Cassie wondered whether, in those days when Gran had been able to get in the loft, she had looked through the contents of the shoebox as Cassie was now doing. 

Downstairs, in the hallway, the grandfather clock chimed three, bringing Cassie back to the present.  She wiped the warm tears away with her hand and, sitting up again, turned her attention once more to the shoebox. 

She sorted through the remaining items quickly, preparing a mental inventory for future reference: a well-thumbed book of poetry, a black and white photograph, an old school exercise book and another envelope – smaller and, Cassie noted, smelling slightly of lily of the valley – her favourite flower.  She laid the objects in an arc in front of her and examined each in turn.  The poetry book had a musty smell and, as she flicked through it, she noticed certain passages underlined in pencil.  Some of the pages bore the brown spots of age.  Near the front, on the title page, was written ‘To my darling Chrissie.  Two hearts as one. 14^th February 1957.’  The message was unsigned. 

The photograph was of two men standing in front of a large sailing boat.  One of the figures she recognised as her step-father, David.  As the photograph was dated October 1958, she assumed the other figure was Charles Fletcher, taken during their trip to the Caribbean.

She leafed through the exercise book, noting that it had been used by Christine as a journal with the top of each page headed with a carefully underlined date, sometimes weeks apart.  One page contained a dried daisy, held to the paper with sellotape which had gone crisp and brown with age.  With a start, Cassie realised that some of this book had probably been written in that very room, when Christine had been around the age that Cassie was now.  Suddenly feeling a pang of guilt, she wondered whether she had any right to be sorting through Christine’s things.  She knew how she would feel if someone looked through the biscuit tin she had safely hidden in the back of the wardrobe.  Cassie brushed her hand back and forth over the bedspread, absently feeling the ridges and grooves of the pattern in a comforting sort of way, while she considered whether to carry on.

Finally, she picked up the last item, the letter, inhaling deeply, as if to extract all the scent of lily of the valley from the paper.  The envelope, which was completely blank, was unsealed and contained a single sheet of thick, pale blue paper folded in half.  As Cassie unfolded it, noticing it contained the same neat writing as her birthday card and the journal, she was startled by a light tap at her bedroom door and Gran asking, ‘Is everything all right, dear?’  Cassie gathered the items quickly together and thrust them back into the shoe box with the string.  She put the lid on and shoved the box quickly under her bed.  Feigning a sleepy voice she yawned extravagantly and replied, ‘Yes thanks, Gran.  I’ve just woken up.’