Page 8 of So This is Christmas

When she married Martin, Sophie finally got to see what she had been missing when it came to family.

She and Martin were a team. They both adored their son, they never held back on their love and affection.

And at Christmas, Martin made a big fuss the first year they were together because he loved the season and knew how she’d struggled with it as a young girl.

He’d found a Christmas tree at the garden centre that was the biggest of the lot.

They’d got it home between them, on foot, and when they stood it in the lounge, it took up so much room that it covered half of the television screen and there weren’t many other options of where to put it.

But oh how she’d loved it – the smell, the ambience it created, the joy it brought.

Martin had been taken from her and Hayden too soon, but he’d left behind precious memories she would treasure forever.

Sophie buttered the toast and took it to Helena. ‘Shall we shut the window now?’

‘Oh yes, please.’

Sophie closed the window. She hung around a while longer – they chatted, she ensured Helena took her medication, she helped Helena brush her hair and change her clothes.

When all of that was done Sophie took Helena into the main room where residents gathered and the tree gave everyone something else to look at as well as the television.

Sophie and Jessica had found some pre-lit gift boxes to go beneath the tree to make it look really festive and this afternoon, whoever wanted to could go to the art class and make a bauble.

The television was showing the news and Helena stopped. Sophie knew she was about to request she go back to her room when one of the other residents changed the channel to one showing a repeat of Antiques Roadshow.

Helena brightened and almost doubled her pace to get the chair with the best view. ‘If you bring me the remote,’ she whispered to Sophie, ‘I’ll make sure we don’t have any more of that doom and gloom news. Downright depressing.’

Sophie smiled and when Stan wasn’t looking – he’d changed the channel in the first place, and was known for being a channel hopper – she slipped the remote beside Helena in her chair.

She checked on a couple more of the residents.

She had a chat with Bruce in Room 6, helped Cecily in Room 8 get dressed, and then returned to check on Bea.

She wondered whether she would find Bea asleep as she’d looked so tired earlier, and sure enough when she went into her room she was snoozing.

Bea had one of those sheepskin foot warmers for the winter and although her vision wasn’t great, she’d managed to find it from near the bed and had her feet pushed in all snuggly warm as she sat in her chair.

The carols were still playing on the radio, working like a lullaby, and Sophie adjusted the crocheted blanket on her lap to make sure it kept her cosy.

But as she tucked the blanket gently around Bea’s shoulders, Sophie frowned.

She couldn’t see Bea’s necklace, which usually hung outside of her jumper or showed in an open-necked top.

Without disturbing her, she tried to look more closely to check the chain was around her neck, but if it was it must be buried beneath the wool.

It hadn’t been earlier. The chain had been around the outside of the wool; Sophie distinctly remembered Bea’s fingers caressing the jigsaw-piece pendant.

She crouched down to look on the tiled floor, beneath the chair, under the bed in case it had fallen off when Bea was retrieving the foot warmer.

She didn’t want to look down the sides of the chair and disturb Bea any more than she had to, but Bea would be distraught if she’d lost her necklace.

She rarely took it off. She’d had to for some tests recently and had been terrified that it would go missing.

Bea had tried to gift the necklace to Sophie a few months ago, said she wanted to pass it down, and while Sophie had longed to say yes so that she would have something special that would forever remind her of Bea, she had politely said that she had never and would never take something from one of their residents.

She’d already let herself get attached to a resident which was a peril of the job, especially when your own family had never been particularly forthcoming with love and emotion.

Bea had shown Sophie more affection and consideration in the three years she’d been here than Sophie’s own mother had done her entire life.

Sophie looked everywhere in Bea’s room but had no luck. She couldn’t find it. And now she had a sinking feeling about what might have happened to it. She might not have ever taken something from a resident, but she knew somebody who had.

Over the last eighteen months, Sophie had been aware of items going missing .

Cash usually, but sometimes residents’ possessions – a watch from former resident Mr Mackey, a vintage sewing box from Emily Galbraith who was still here and still asking whether it had shown up, a small carriage clock from another resident whose family had moved him to a different care home.

The accusations had been looked into by Amber – that was the assurance she gave residents or their loved ones who raised concerns – and she was so convincing that she almost had Sophie believing her as well as everyone else.

Sophie could’ve reported her, but she’d been down that road before and she knew she needed irrefutable evidence if Amber wasn’t going to worm her way out of it again.

And she had none. Amber was careful, she didn’t slip up enough.

Sophie had seen the carriage clock in her bag beside her desk in the office when she’d gone to put some paperwork in Amber’s in tray, she’d seen her take the vintage sewing box, she’d seen her put cash in her pocket, but Amber was swift and items disappeared as quickly as possible leaving no trail, or not one Sophie had been able to follow, anyway.

It was a big accusation to make and unfortunately Amber now knew more about Sophie’s personal history than Sophie was comfortable with.

Amber could open her mouth and tell anyone she liked about the very thing that Sophie wanted to keep buried, and Sophie couldn’t risk it.

She couldn’t risk losing the job she needed to pay her bills and financially support Hayden.

She’d only just got rid of her mortgage by using the money left to her by her mother – she’d resisted for a long time, left the money lingering in an account, because what her mother had provided monetary-wise couldn’t ever make up for the lack of tenderness Sophie had suffered over the years.

Sophie briefly considered going into Amber’s office right now and looking for the necklace herself but she had to believe that even Amber wouldn’t do something so cold as to remove a necklace from someone actually wearing it.

She was stressing about what to do when she spotted the bin near the bed beside which the foot warmer would have been before Bea picked it up to move it over to the floor near the chair.

Could the necklace have dropped in there?

The clasp had come loose before and Sophie had squeezed it back together, but what if the same thing had happened again? It was possible.

She picked up the bin and her hopes faded. It was empty. ‘No…’ Someone had come in and taken the rubbish while she was helping Helena.

She left Bea sleeping. She ducked into several other rooms looking for the cleaner who would have a trolley, a bigger bin into which all the rubbish went. But there was no sign of him which meant he’d likely already deposited all the rubbish into the enormous bin at the rear of the Tapestry Lodge.

She raced out of the fire escape door at the back. Goose pimples prickled her bare arms as she approached the skip bin which, despite the plummeting November temperatures, clung on to its putrid smell.

She gagged as she rifled through. At least it was dry contents only – empty packaging, pieces of tissue, wrappers, and then…

pink tissues! Those were Bea’s – she liked pink tissues in her room, and while Sophie tried to forget what might be on them, she delicately picked up each one to see whether a necklace was entangled.

When her hands began to go numb and Amber appeared at the back door giving her a peculiar look through the glass – although thankfully no sarcastic comment, or worse, a demand to know what she was doing – Sophie went back inside and washed her hands twice.

Bea was going to be so upset.

She went back to Bea’s room. Bea was still asleep and this was news that could wait, but as she adjusted the crocheted blanket yet again something shiny caught her eye beside the back leg of Bea’s chair.

She crouched down. And there it was, the beautiful gold necklace, the shiny puzzle piece with a B and the precious stone that would fit perfectly with the puzzle piece engraved with Greta’s G.

That was odd. She’d checked under the chair already, hadn’t she?

She picked up the necklace and with practised ease, as gently as she could, she fastened it back around Bea’s neck without her stirring.

The necklace hadn’t disappeared after all, which was a relief, and she felt a shift towards happiness. But the feeling didn’t last because now she wasn’t wondering whether she’d checked beneath the chair – she knew she had done it, she could remember it clearly.

So how did it end up there while she was out raking through contents of the skip bin?

Amber.

It had to be. She’d taken it and then when she’d seen Sophie rooting around in the bin outside, she must have sneaked into Bea’s room and put it on the floor.

Was there no end to the lengths she’d go?