Vida laughed and shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s the men who get the glory and the women who do the work in that business, Netta! It’s a long, hard training for very little reward. I was glad to marry Izzy and leave it all behind but a decent training’s never lost. It’s seeing me through until he comes home.’

There was no one prouder at the church door than Vida Bloom, fussing over the photographing of her creation, with Netta bursting with pride at her own bead-sewing efforts. Aileen looked like a film star on the arm of her gallant officer. His cronies all winked in Netta’s direction. How she yearned to wear a gown as perfect as that when her turn came along.

May 1949, Friday

‘Are you asleep, Auntie Netta?’ Gus was shaking her awake from her day-dreaming. He was standing over her, blue eyes peeping out from beneath a black helmet.

‘What’s that you’ve got on your head, young man?’

‘I found it by that suitcase over there. Look, it’s real! Brmm… brmm!’

Netta knelt up and lifted it from his head as if removing a crown, hugging it lovingly, sniffing the hard black leather, examining the ear flaps and chin straps; there was still an oily petrol smell to the inside. How did this come to be here? And what else was here?

She turned to the battered leather suitcase, pressed the rusty sneck and the hinges sprang open. She lifted the lid cautiously as if it were Pandora’s Box. There was a layer of tissue paper, and folded neatly underneath a dress and jacket in lavender blue wool: her own wedding outfit. Why was this still up in the loft when it should be with her in Griseley?

How strange that she should be dreaming about the Forsyths’ bridal extravaganza and forgetting her own humble outfit cobbled together in such haste. Through her tears, the colour of the dress shone like amethyst. Red hair and lilac was a bold combination but she had not been afraid of colour then. She shook out the dress and sniffed the mothballs. It looked so old-fashioned, so short and homespun, but it had been sewn in secret with such love. There were many more threads like this, tying her life together, still hidden here for the taking.

You don’t choose the moment when love races like a rip tide, flooding over the shore, she thought. You don’t choose your passion. It pulses like blood through your veins and roars up behind you in a leather helmet, setting the heather on fire with its heat.

All the coloured beads of her life’s journey started here with this suitcase, and a lilac dress bore silent witness to her desperate time.

2

Stepping Stones Garnet

‘Colour of blood, and earth,
Birth and violent death.
An amulet worn on life’s journey,
protecting from evil and fearful
dreams.’

Rae, 1944