NOTES:
This is an alternative universe story set after series 6 of ILM and in memories from Barbara's childhood about 25 years earlier (it's not that precise, but should make sense as you read). For the sake of this fic, Barbara and Tommy are closer in age, being just about 2 years apart.
Chapter 2 has been floating around in my thoughts & notes for a while, but it wasn't until Chapter one made its appearance that I had a whole story. Right now I am planning on 3 chapters — 2 that are longish and 1 short one to tie up the ending. I love to read your remarks because I am still an inexperienced writer. Please share comments if you feel like it. Thank you for reading!
Barbara sat on the floor of her flat's small storage closet sorting belongings, many that had been in there since her move-in day years ago. Three boxes sat in front of her: throw away, give away and keep. The first two boxes were quite full, but the third was nearly empty. Barbara had been packing and sorting for days. Surprisingly, she was going to be finished on time to meet her self-imposed deadline, which was looming up at the end of the day.
The storage closet was the last room to be sorted and then she would be done. The cleaners and painters would come over the course of the next week, making the place ready to sell to a new owner or lease out to tenants — she was still on the fence which it would be.
Barbara was tired and her muscles ached from the days of work it had taken for her to get this far into the moving process. She really was happy to be moving, but told anyone who asked, "It's hard giving up the first place you ever owned, you know?" Glad she was in the home stretch, she sighed, stood up and tugged the remaining closed cardboard box down off a shelf just nearly too high for her to reach.
The white paper box labeled "keepsakes" wasn't too heavy and slid easily into Barbara's arms. She eased down onto the floor herself as she placed the box in front of her. The lid came off easily — it was one of those printer paper boxes stamped with the logo of the brand used at the Met. Barbara smiled to herself thinking about the small larceny she had committed years ago when she packed to vacate her parents' house and move into the flat. The Met was reimbursed for recycling all cardboard, so each box recycled netted them, at best, a handful of change in exchange. At the time Barbara had taken ten or so boxes to pack in, she had probably kept the Met from the profits of at least a fiver. But like a lie of omission, she didn't remember experiencing more than a smackerel of guilt at the crime. Now, the memory caused her to shake her head at the irony of having been financially solvent enough to buy a flat, but too broke to buy moving boxes. "C'est la vie!" Barbara mumbled and laughed, realizing the French phrase had lodged into her subconscious thoughts. "That's what I get for spending so much time with a toff!" Thinking of Tommy not for the first time that day, she began working with a smile on her face.
Barbara expected to find inside the box left over bits of her childhood and youth. She was sure most of the contents would go into the give away or throw away boxes. Picking through item after item, though, instead of the detritus she expected, she found pieces of her heart. There was the worn-out, ragged greyish-pink stuffed mouse she had slept with into her teen years, a whistle she used as a school street crossing monitor when she was just out of primary school and the copy of a Nancy Drew mystery book she had read until it was nearly worn out. Wrapped in a piece of pale green tissue, Barbara was pleased to find a cassette mix tape she had made when she was 12 or 13 — two copies had existed at one time; she had given the other copy to her best mate. Barbara thought of the blond haired, brown-eyed girl named Katie whose friendship she had cherished from their kindergarten year until the time Terry was diagnosed with cancer. In the tumultuous years that followed that tragedy, Katie and Barbara had lost touch with one another, the friendship fizzling out like a forgotten candle … like so much else of Barbara's life at the time. Barbara made a promise to herself she would look Katie up once she was settled into her new home after the move.
The last item Barbara pulled from the box was a navy blue vinyl covered man's jewelry box. She recalled the fuss she had had with her paternal grandmother over the choice of the box. Her nan, who was buying 12 year-old Barbara the gift, had wanted her to choose a pink and white monstrosity that came with a pop-up ballerina and played "It's a Small World" on a tinny music box when the lid was lifted. It was her little brother Terry that convinced her to let Barbara get the plain blue box instead, "Come on, Nan! Barbie can fit more in the blue box so it will last longer, and besides, since when do Havers like the ballet? That's too la-dee-da for our Barbara!" His practical and very truthful argument won the day and Barbara got the box she wanted.
Barbara took in a breath before she opened the jewelry box. She knew a few of the items she would find there and wanted to steady herself before she saw them again for the first time in years. She opened the lid slowly and looked inside. Lying in the topmost tray was a white plastic bracelet, the kind worn at hospitals. She held it up to the light to read the fading letters and numbers that designated the bracelet as her brother's from his last stay in hospital. Barbara had asked the funeral home to save it for her when he was prepared for his cremation. Placing it back in the tray, she felt tears well-up in her eyes and she let them fall freely down her face.
The next item was a lock of strawberry blond hair, still curled and tied with a blue cloth ribbon. Barbara remembered yelling at her dad to stop shaving Terry's head — she was so angry at the both of them when they decided to preemptively remove his hair. The chemotherapy he was getting at the time was making him lose his hair in clumps and he had asked his dad to shave it off completely. Barbara had cried and told them she didn't want her brother looking like a skinhead; her dad, in his particularly direct way had said, "It's better than him looking like a fekking mangy dog!" Barbara had run to her bedroom and stifled her sobs in her pillow, crying herself to sleep. She woke up later to find a note beside her stuffed mouse that was from her dad but written in Terry's messy lettering, and the lock of hair tied with the ribbon, "Barbie, thought you might want this. Dad and Terry x."
Barbara placed a kiss on the lock of hair and placed it back on the jewelry box tray. Next she found a homemade Valentine from Terry. She remembered him coming to her when he was about 5 years old asking her to help him make a Valentine for his favorite girl. Barbara, with all the knowledge of a big sister who was a few years older and wiser, remembered teasing him but saying yes, she would help him make the card for his sweetheart. It had been fun helping him color and cut out hearts to glue onto a piece of ivory stationary they'd nicked from their mum's limited cache of writing materials. Terry had carefully written, "I luv you best! Luv Terry" on the Valentine and folded it into the handmade envelope Barbara had made him. When the night before Valentine's Day came around, Barbara had placed a small chocolate heart beside Terry's bedside after he fell asleep. She had wanted the little boy to find something on Valentine's morning. Her friend Katie had given Barbara the heart at school, but Barbara wanted Terry to have it, just in case his sweetheart didn't think of him at his kindergarten's Valentine's Day party later that day. Barbara fondly remembered her surprise when she woke up the next morning and found Terry's homemade Valentine in her shoe when she was dressing for the day.
In the dusty storage closet, Barbara closed her eyes and thought of that day and others. Terry had been a wonderful little brother and she adored him. Barbara said a prayer of sorts, to thank God for letting her have a brother such as Terry, even if it was only for a short while. She added the Valentine back to the jewelry box tray and lifted the tray to look at the compartment below it.
The compartment below contained some less moving, but nonetheless sentimental keepsakes. There was a painted pet rock she had made when they were all the rage but she couldn't afford to purchase a store-bought one. She found ticket stubs to movies and arcades from early outings, and snapshots of trips to the caravan park with her family. There was even a school ribbon she won in a class debate about British society and its inherent restrictions on the working class (that item made her laugh out loud). Several pairs, or in some cases, partial pairs of cheap department store earrings were pegged on a cloth ribbon that lay tangled upon itself. Barbara remembered being so proud of getting her ears pierced for her tenth birthday; it was one of the few times she and her mum had gone on an outing alone. Afterwards they bought a packet of sterling silver earrings "guaranteed" by the piercing salon not to turn her ears green and to promote healing, and they went to a cafe to have tea and cakes. Overtime, she had added to her small collection of earrings — some from her grandmother of the jewelry box gift — until she lost interest in wearing them much. That had been after Terry had died. Barbara sighed again, and decided she was glad she had the department store earrings. Though they were of little value, to be reminded of even one good day with her mum made them valuable to her.
Barbara found herself smiling as she handled each item. It was so pleasant to realize many of the bad memories had in fact developed a poignancy that allowed her to treasure them along side the good ones. Whether a product of the natural passage of time or the perspective she had developed from seeing some truly terrible events in her career working as a detective, Barbara felt for the first time that just maybe her life hadn't been so bad.
Before she put the top tray back into the jewelry box, she looked at the items in the lower compartment one last time. She realized as she did so that she had missed a small plastic ball in the corner under the ticket stubs. Picking it up, she found herself grinning from ear to ear. The ball wasn't actually a ball. It was a hinged container from a one pence vending machine that had within it Barbara's only proof that a boy had liked her when she was a young girl. She was going to have to show this to Tommy — he was sure to get a kick out of it, too!
Like the other keepsakes, this one carried with it a special memory. Barbara let the recollection play across her mind like a favorite movie. Although it happened years ago when she was barely twelve years old, she thought she remembered every moment of that day, and the special boy who had given her the ring in the plastic ball. For that was what it was, her first, and, until quite recently, only gift of jewelry from a boy. Barbara pried the plastic ball's two hinged sections apart and held the small ring in her hand. Looking at it, she recalled the day and the boy —
"No way!" She gasped. "That's impossible!"