The Necklace: A true story of 13 women, 1 diamond necklace and a fabulous idea. Cheryl Jarvis

teacher and an avid reader of literary fiction. She had no interest in self-help books. ‘If I’d wanted a reading group,’ she thought, ‘I would’ve joined one.’ But she kept quiet.

      Nancy Huff was quiet, too, while thinking the same thing.

      In fact, the group’s reaction to the reading assignment was less than enthusiastic, with almost half the group failing to read the book and the other half not even turning up to the meeting where it was to be discussed.

      Patti wasn’t in the habit of reading self-help books either. She liked escapist novels and crime fiction. But since they’d just sold the dental practice she had time on her hands, so she was one of the few who read the book.

      She read that Americans are the most voracious consumers on earth, that most of us suffer from owning too much, that everything we own ends up owning us. She read that never before has so much stuff meant so little to so many, and that the relentless pursuit of more would exact a price much steeper than the cost of the goods.

      ‘Reading that book was a turning point,’ she says. ‘Until I read it, I never saw myself as a consumer. If I saw a ten-thousand-square-foot home, the excess would not have resonated. “How much is enough?” was a whole new concept for me.

      ‘For the first time I started thinking about my possessions. When I was younger, I worked at accumulating. If the object I wanted was a “great bargain”, I’d buy two. The book got me thinking for the first time about the excess in my life. I realised that where I’ve been most excessive is with my accessories. I have enough to accessorise every woman in the group. I have at least twenty pair of sunglasses, and how many do I wear? The same pair all the time.

      ‘What I’ve concluded is that there’s nothing I need any more. I have too much already. I don’t wear what I have. Some things I shouldn’t have bought in the first place. Like a pair of multi-coloured lizardskin high heels. I don’t even wear high heels but I had to have those shoes. The urge to buy is like the urge to have a cigarette. It’s a need for instant gratification, but if you wait, the urge will go away. We do have a choice. When I was younger I never saw this day coming.

      ‘My mantra used to be “accessorise, accessorise”. Now it’s “I have enough”. Today when I look in my closet, I feel sick. Mortified.

      ‘I knew buying the necklace would lead to something unexpected, but I didn’t suspect it would change my view of buying. When I was younger I saw what I didn’t have and shopped to fill in the gaps. Today I see what I do have and go shopping just to look. Since owning the necklace and having so many conversations about it, I’ve started to give away my accessories. That’s made me feel lighter, made me feel free. If only giving up smoking were as easy!’

      CHAPTER THREE Priscilla Van Gundy, the loner

       Finding out what’s truly precious

      PRISCILLA COULDN’T GET EXCITED about anything, and that included the first e-mail from Jonell. Scheduling time to spend with a group of women was crazy. She’d always thought so. And now that she and Tom were busy overhauling the shop she was working sixty hours a week. Who had time? She was beginning to feel like the Bill Murray character in Groundhog Day: every morning, even Sundays, waking up to the same life, the same grind. Last year she’d taken off just twelve days, total. The pace had been gruelling.

      And now one of the store managers had handed in his notice, which meant adding selling to everything else she had to do. Priscilla didn’t like being on the shop floor interacting with customers; she found selling stressful and exhausting – so many women wanting to talk. Occasionally, if the customer were an older man whose wife had recently died, Tom would do the listening. But usually the customer was a woman, and Priscilla was the one to pull up a chair. The same two or three trudged in every week with their slumped shoulders, their sad eyes. They’d talk and talk, sometimes for as long as an hour and a half. Then they’d cry. Their husbands had died or left them. Their children were out of town or out of touch. These women were so lost, their loneliness so palpable. Priscilla knew they were shopping just to fill their days. They didn’t want a watch or a ring. They wanted a friend. Priscilla listened and nodded and soothed. Then one day in early December, Priscilla handed one of them a box of tissues to wipe her tears, and in that moment saw the woman as a character out of Dickens – the Ghost of Christmas Future. Would Priscilla be this woman in ten or twenty years? She had a job, a husband and three children who lived nearby, but who knew what lay ahead?

      Just months before, Priscilla’s sister Doreen had died. After her diagnosis with a rare form of cancer, she’d valiantly battled a slow and agonising death as the disease spread from one vital organ to another.

      ‘Doreen was the life of our family, the actress, the jokester, ’ says Priscilla. ‘With her death I shut down completely. Every day I got up and did what I had to do, but I was just going through the motions. After work each night I’d go straight to the bedroom, put on my pyjamas, and climb into bed to watch American Idol or Seinfeld repeats. I cut myself off from everyone, even my husband.

      ‘One thing I was good at was isolating myself. I’d done it my whole life. It was easier to click on the remote control than to reach out to people. But there comes a time when you realise you’ve spent so much time alone that you’ve built your entire life around it. And that’s not good.’

      After the tearful customer left that day, Priscilla retreated to the back room, feeling that she had to make some kind of change to avoid becoming just like that woman. She checked her e-mails and, lo and behold, there was a message from Jonell.

      From: [email protected]

      To: Women of Jewelia

       Well, I thought it was really fun, how about you? Mary and Priscilla, we definitely missed you. I think we got a lot done. (Consider this the minutes.)

      1. The name Jewelia…

      2. The schedule…to follow from Mary K.

      3. The considerations, i.e. sharing and not sharing and the promise never to do either without careful thought.

      4. Maybe we could do some possibility thinking. Where do you want to take Jewelia? What else could we share? What should everyone share?

       I don’t know why I took my shirt off. Whose suggestion was that? Someone is supposed to be giving me better advice than that.

       We look forward to being together again before Christmas. Further information to follow. You are all fabulous!

       Have fun.

       Jonell

      Priscilla stared at her computer. Could she be missing out on something?

      

      Priscilla de los Santos (‘of the Saints’) had grown up in east Ventura, in a predominantly Hispanic farm community. Her Mexican grandparents had settled in Ventura after working as itinerant farmers during the Depression. Her parents started off farming too, but over time they’d moved on to other work: her mother, packing lemons, cleaning houses, then running a diner; her dad, pouring cement and working on building sites. The oldest of six, Priscilla spent most of her time at home taking care of her younger siblings. Their family of eight – nine for the five years a cousin lived with them – had to share one bathroom. ‘So many people were living in that little house,’ she says. ‘It was probably one of the reasons I married young – to have my own place.’

      Her extended family included gang members – too many of them. Her mother was determined her children would not go the way of so many of their cousins. She sacrificed to send them to a really good school, a Catholic