The Lost Sister. Kathleen McGurl

eaves. Three boxes of books and bric-a-brac she’d once sorted out to sell at a car boot sale that somehow she’d never got round to doing, were stacked in the middle. A pile of crates that she’d brought from her own mother’s house twenty years ago, meaning to sort them out, had never got further than her own attic and now sat in what had once been intended as a clear walkway through the space.

      ‘Well. Where shall we start?’ said Sally, as she emerged through the hatch and stood beside Harriet, hands on hips, gazing about her and trying unsuccessfully to hide her astonishment at the amount of stuff there was to deal with. ‘This is, I hate to say it, even more cluttered than I remember.’

      ‘I know. But I kind of know where things are – there’s sort of a system,’ Harriet said, sounding uncertain even to herself. ‘Over there’s Christmas decorations. All that lot is from your nan’s house. Stuff relating to you and Davina is in that corner. Photos and slides and the projector and whatnot over there.’

      ‘What’s this pile?’ Sally had her hand on a precariously stacked pile of boxes. The bottom one had ‘old stuff’ helpfully written on the side in marker pen.

      ‘No idea,’ Harriet had to admit. She had a horrible feeling the ‘old stuff’ box might have remained packed and sealed since she and John moved out of their last house and into this one, nearly forty years ago.

      ‘Well then, shall we start here?’ Not waiting for an answer, Sally heaved the top box off the pile, opened it and peered inside. ‘Vases. Salt and pepper shakers in the shape of church towers. A picture of the Coliseum.’

      ‘Ah. Mum’s old bits and pieces. I thought it was just that pile.’ Harriet gestured to boxes that sat on top of an old travelling trunk. ‘But yes, we can start here.’

      ‘So what’s the plan?’ Sally asked, holding the cruet set. ‘One pile for keep, one to go to charity or car boot sale, one to go to the tip? And only keep what’s valuable or really sentimental?’

      Harriet smiled. Sally was so much more efficient than she was. Her daughter’s house was always tidy and clutter-free. ‘That sounds good to me. For a start, you can put that cruet set in the charity pile. I always loathed it. Mum bought them when on holiday in York many years ago.’

      ‘I quite like them,’ Sally said, ‘but I’m not keeping them.’ She looked around her, found an empty box that had once held an old cathode ray tube television set, and put them in. With a marker pen she pulled from her pocket she wrote ‘Charity’ on the side, then held up an ugly green glass vase with a crack down one side.

      ‘Bin,’ said Harriet, and Sally nodded. That was put into a different box.

      They progressed quickly through the first pile of boxes, and by the end Harriet was pleased to find she was only keeping two small items: a pie funnel in the shape of a blackbird that she remembered her grandmother using, and a framed photo of her parents in their wedding outfits. The boxes marked ‘For the Tip’ and ‘Charity’ were full. ‘Let’s get these downstairs to give ourselves more space, have a cup of tea and then get back to it,’ Sally suggested.

      Harriet agreed, and stayed in the attic while Sally went down, then passed the boxes down to her daughter. ‘The deal is,’ Sally said, ‘you need to dispose of these boxes as you go along. So when we’re finished today, drop those off at the charity shop and those at the tip before you do any more sorting.’

      ‘Yes, boss,’ Harriet said, making a mock salute. It was always easier to just go along with whatever Sally suggested. She had to agree with the sense of the system however. Little by little, bit by bit, was the only way, as Sally had told her. And actually, it was cathartic. With five boxes sorted there was a long way to go, but it was actually quite fun doing it with Sally. It’d be harder once they got to things that held all the memories of her life with John, she suspected. Though most of that was downstairs still, anyway. She’d be better off doing that herself, taking her time over it, enjoying the memories as she sorted through. Sally would make her rush it too much, and there’d be a danger she might throw away things she’d later regret.

      After a reviving cup of tea (and after Sally had eaten another chocolate croissant), they returned to the attic.

      ‘What next?’ Sally asked.

      Harriet looked around. It hardly looked as though they’d done anything, despite having worked for a couple of hours. ‘I suppose that lot. Keep going with Mum’s old stuff. Unless you want to tackle your old toys?’

      Sally laughed. ‘Don’t say you’ve still got our old dolls up here! Surely they could have gone to a school fete or something?’

      Harriet shrugged. ‘I always meant to. But then …’ She sighed. ‘Davina had her daughters, and I suppose I thought I’d keep the dolls …’

      ‘In case she ever turned up here with your other grandchildren in tow?’ Sally snorted. ‘Unlikely. She’s so bloody selfish. Those kids must be, what, eight and ten by now? And you’ve never been allowed to even meet them?’

      ‘I know, I know.’ Harriet waved a hand to stop Sally saying anything more. If she dwelt too long on the facts, she inevitably found herself sobbing. It hurt, it really did – the way Davina had left home as a teenager and cut off all contact other than occasional calls from a withheld number. How she’d let Harriet know by postcard about the birth of her first grandchild, two months after the event. How ten years on, she still had not met little Autumn, or her sister Summer. And that horrible day … the event that had hardened Davina’s resolve to stay away. The estrangement wasn’t entirely down to Davina’s selfishness, if she was honest. They’d all played a part in it.

      But Sally kept talking. ‘Has she even called you recently?’

      ‘Not for a bit, no,’ Harriet had to admit.

      ‘Does she know? About Jerome, I mean?’ Sally’s tone was confrontational.

      ‘No. I haven’t had a chance to tell her.’

      Sally rolled her eyes. A muscle twitched in her jaw as though she was trying to get her anger under control. A moment later she sighed and shook her head. ‘You’re right, Mum. We’ll not think about her any more. Let’s just get on with sorting out Nanna’s things. Right then. This box next.’ Sally opened a box marked ‘Ornaments’ and they continued the process of separating them into keep, charity, and tip piles.

      Three boxes later they had finished all of Harriet’s mother’s stuff. Harriet was pleased to find she had only decided to keep half a dozen items from it all for sentimental purposes.

      ‘So now, this? What is it, some sort of travelling trunk?’ Sally patted the trunk that the boxes had been stacked on top of.

      Harriet nodded. ‘That was my grandmother’s sea trunk I think. Mum had it stored in her attic and after I cleared her house, I just moved it here.’

      ‘What’s in it?’

      ‘No idea. I’ve never looked. It’s locked, and I don’t have a key. But we’ll never manage to get it downstairs and out of here. Maybe we can just push it to a corner of the attic and leave it here when I sell up.’

      Sally stared at her mother, an expression of utmost horror on her face. ‘Absolutely no way, Mum. We are not just leaving this. There could be some real gems in here. What do you mean, her sea trunk?’

      ‘My grandmother worked on board ocean liners when she was young,’ Harriet replied. ‘I guess this is what she packed her stuff in, to take on board ship. Grandpa worked on them too – it’s where they met.’

      ‘Yes, there are labels on it – White Star Line. That rings a bell,’ Sally said, frowning as she peered at the sides of the trunk.

      ‘That’s the one. Gran worked on the Olympic, which used to sail back and forth across the Atlantic from Southampton to New York.’

      ‘Hmm. But you say you don’t have the key?’

      ‘Not