Emmie Jacobs 3

The front door closed with a comforting clunk behind her. She made a mental note to scrape that moss off the  front garden path. It seemed to grow faster than ever in the winter and now in the spring its presence had become a slight annoyance. 

Her return to the market had yielded a further handful of new potatoes and a small piece of salmon which she would poach for her tea. She had also treated herself to a lemon, the juice of which would go into the poaching water. In the kitchen, neatly tidy with the breakfast bowl and tea cup resting on the drainer, she unpacked the bag. She put the chop and the salmon on the fridge shelf and the potatoes in the salad box at the bottom. The plastic bag which contained the salmon had dampened a corner of the Radio Times. It was only condensation and would have to dry out on the window sill.

She was just about to hang the bag in the cupboard under the stairs when the sudden clatter of the letter box heralded the arrival of the post causing her to start with alarm. Apart from bills she rarely received post so this lavender envelope with its large, round, unfamiliar handwriting, landing on her doormat immediately aroused her  curiosity. She picked it up and walking  into the dining room slowly turning the envelope over to find a name faintly written in the top left hand corner.
T. M Hedges.
On the dining room table in the small vase decorated with rose petals were a few pencils and a silver paper knife. The paper knife was a rather prized possession being a leaving gift from when she had retired from the office where she was an assistant school secretary. She carefully inserted the knife under the envelope flap and smiled at the comforting rasp sound of the cutting paper. The envelope contained a single sheet of lavender matching paper covered with tiny writing in total contrast to the fat writing on the envelope.

Dear Mrs/Ms Jacobs.

I hope you found your brocade shopping bag which I hung on your gate a week last Tuesday . There was no one in so I thought that would be good place to leave it. I hung it attached to the latch as I shut the gate. My daughter brought it home saying she had found it under her seat on the school bus on her way home. She took a fancy to it, her being into  "Indie Fashion" . I only found the name inside by chance when looking for a scarf Jenny had left in it. I tackled her about it and she denied knowing anything about it but justice prevailed and as I was in your area I took it while she was at school and returned it via your gate. I think some perfume had been spilt inside but it doesn't seemed to have caused any damage apart from the spicy smell. Perhaps you should take more care with such a lovely bag.

Yours faithfully

Theresa Hedges.

They never got the valediction right these days. Didn't they teach them the difference between Faithfully and  Sincerely?  There was no address at the top so no acknowledgement must have been expected. Also there was no mention of the stitches in the bottom corner of the bag. Perhaps the young girl, Jenny had done it,not wanting her mother to ask questions. And perhaps she should take more care with the bag even though it seemed to have a life of its own and got itself left in all manner of places, purely by dint of distraction. 

I wonder, she thought, what had it been up to, into whose hands it had been delivered and what its contents had been. It began to fill her imagination. What about Jenny for instance. Looking into the bag as she was about to hang it up, she noticed, tucked into a hem in the lining a small photograph, black and white and evidently of two young people dressed in the fashion of the nineteen twenties. It was just another little oddity that the bag picked up on its journeys, becoming part of other people's baggage.

JL June 30 12:29