When my sister and I were young, we loved going to our Nan’s place for the holidays. Nan was from England, and her house was a treasure trove of antiques that she had bought from her home country. But there was one item that stood out for me: an ancient mahogany tea chest. I could spend hours studying the swirling patterns engraved in the dark wood, making up stories about the figures and animals represented in the panels, or pretending I was a pirate, and that it was full of treasure.
My sister, Felicity, two years older, thought my fascination with the tea chest was pathetic. She spent her holidays trawling through Nan’s jewellery box, picking out, she would declare, the best jewellery she would have when Nan died. It horrified me to think of Nan that way, and I would never have dreamed to ask for the chest. But Felicity was endlessly pestering her about an heirloom engagement ring she had found. Poor Nan had wanted to give that ring to another daughter of hers — not our mother — who had daughters of her own, which meant Felicity would never have any claim on that ring at all. But fifteen-year-old Felicity, stubborn and persistent, drove her into submission with requests, outright rudeness, and full-scale tantrums. Nan was the kindest woman in the world, and she actually thought she was breaking Felicity’s heart by saying ‘no’. So she said ‘yes’.
Felicity rarely went and visited our grandmother after this. It was as though, after spending every summer of our lives entertaining us, Nan had no more value beyond the diamond ring. But it didn’t end there. As we moved into our twenties, Felicity became impatient that she didn’t have the ring yet.
“When’s the old battleaxe going to die?” she would moan, always out of earshot of anyone but me.
“How can you say that?” I would respond furiously, to which Felicity would always begin taunting me that I was going to get nothing, and I was jealous. I couldn’t believe my sister had grown into such a greedy woman, who cared for nothing but possessions. I hoped my Nan was lying about giving her the precious piece of jewellery.
When I was in my late twenties, my beloved Nan passed away. I was inconsolable for the loss, and didn’t want any of her things, but at the reading of the will found out that, after all these years Nan had remembered my childhood love of the tea chest, and left it to me.
“Ha!” Felicity smirked. “All you get is a chest full of mouldy old sheets. Nan must have loved you!”
But there was a snag in Felicity’s own long-held plan. The ring had gone missing. Felicity had raced to the house before anyone else could “get their mitts on it”, but it was already gone. Fuelled by Felicity’s rage, the whole family spent hours turning precious Nan’s house upside down, but the ring could not be found. Felicity got nothing.
I took Nan’s tea chest home, and found that Felicity was right — it was full of old and mouldy blankets and sheets. Most of them, I knew, would have to be thrown out, but that didn’t bother me; my memories belonged with the chest itself.
A few weeks after my father and partner had heaved it into my living-room, I decided I was up for the challenge of cleaning out the chest. I made two piles of linen: those good enough to keep, and those that needed to be discarded. There were only a small number of items not affected by years of moths and being kept in a musty, airless box. As I took this pile into the laundry to be washed, something fell onto the tiles with clink. I saw, with great astonishment, that it was my Nan’s lost ring!
I sat with the ring for hours, wondering what I should do with it. It had been wrapped in a lace tablecloth that was right at the bottom of the box, so it had obviously been there for a long time. Perhaps, I thought, ever since we were teenagers, and Felicity had begun pestering her about getting the ring? I wanted to believe that Nan had intended for me to have the ring too — why else would it be in the chest she left me — but I also knew that Felicity was the last person on earth who deserved it. I was going to keep it!
Felicity spent years moaning about the loss of her ring, and viewed the whole family with bitter suspicion — except, ironically, for me, who she knew had never had any interest in the ring. When my boyfriend Dan proposed a few months after Nan’s death, we tidied the ring up a bit, and had the diamonds reset in a new band — the original was ancient, scratched and bent. I suppose in this way, the ring ceased to be the one that Felicity had pined over for most of her life, and lost, but I still got great pleasure every time I flashed my left hand and she had no idea I was wearing the ring that was supposed to be hers!
Image: Getty / Picture posed by model
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