And then I photographed it, and the box, and the ribbon, and the brand, and I sent the photographs to Cressida.
And about ninety seconds later she sent me back a photograph of her own.
The same box. The same brand. The same ribbon.
Taken on her kitchen table that morning. She had kept it for nine years.
It had never been opened.
And the other thing in that box, under the tray, which I found when I was putting the receipt back.
A card. The small kind that comes with flowers.
Cream, with the store’s crest on the front. And inside, in fountain pen, in a hand I would recognise anywhere because it has been on every birthday card I have had for four years:
***For the morning. G.***
For the morning.
Not for Liesel. Not sorry. Not even from Dorian.
For the morning.
She wrote that on the Thursday afternoon, standing at a counter, with a fountain pen she carries in her handbag.
And she put it in the box, and gave the box to her son, and he put it somewhere in the house for two days, and on the Sunday he handed it to me without ever opening it himself.
