My mother had died early and though my aunt Barbara, who came to take charge of the household, did her utmost to turn me into a young lady, not even her best endeavours could keep me away from the workshop or stop my fascination with the whole art and craft of stained-glass window making.

My father was an intelligent man with a great interest in the arts and well acquainted with William Morris and his circle. Under their influence he had turned away from the modern trend of merely painting pictures on to ever larger pieces of glass, giving a dull, flat effect, and instead enthusiastically embraced the return to the purer artistry of earlier times. Smaller pieces of glass, made in the Antique way, uneven in thickness and containing irregularities, gave life, sparkle and depth to a window. The dark lines of the leading formed part of the design and there was need for only minimal overpainting.

I shared his enthusiasm and it became both my lifelong passion and my profession. My marriage turned out to be a brief, mistaken digression along the way, although in saying this, I realize I will be thought very unnatural. But so it was.

2

Clipped Wings

Angelique

Sunday, 7 December 2014

Eighteen months ago, before Julian had his stroke and our lives changed for ever, he was the owl who stayed up late into the night in his office/studio downstairs, while I was the lark, winging off in the early hours of the morning to the stained-glass workshop at the end of the garden. We were Yin and Yang, two sides of the same coin, and our lives were perfectly balanced and happy.

But all that had changed, literally at a stroke.

Now Julian slept so badly that he was often up before me and, on this particular morning, since I’d found the previous day extra exhausting, it was after eight before I groggily surfaced.

It wasn’t yet properly light and looked likely to be another gloomy, cold, grey December day, but Julian’s side of the bed was empty. I switched on the lamp and saw that his stick was gone from where it usually hung on the back of a chair within easy reach.

Bathroom? I wondered.

But when I slid a hand between the sheets there was no warmth where he had lain and the house was silent, except for the ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs and the occasional creak of wooden floors adjusting to the fluctuating central heating.

I felt the familiar scrunch of fear in the pit of my stomach.

Was he lying in a heap somewhere in the house? Or had he risen early and made his way to the workshop like he’d done the previous day, so that I’d finally had to fetch the wheelchair to bring him back, totally exhausted, frustrated and angry.