The extremely old lady from across the hall had always cherished the locket he had given her.
It was probably the nicest thing she’d ever owned. She loved showing it to people, telling them how her late husband had scrimped and saved to buy it for her. She would often take it off so that visitors could admire it. Because of her failing memory, she would sometimes repeat the offer to those who had already seen it. She couldn’t easily get out any more, so she really enjoyed receiving visitors. This was the first real visit from the man sitting opposite. He had only moved in recently. Like her, he was getting on in years, but he was younger than her and had also outlived his partner. This was something she had in common with many of her friends. She removed it and held it out, smiling with pride.
Her visitor took it and turned it over in his hands.
“Anything inside?” he asked, looking at the tiny hinges.
“Don’t thinks so, dear. We never managed to get it open. I don’t think it opens anymore. It’s very old, you know.” She yawned.
He nodded. “Yes, it looks old. Did he buy it new or was it bought as an antique?”
She hesitated. She didn’t think she’d ever been asked that before. There was a lot that she wasn’t saying. There were things that she would never tell. “New, I think… long time ago that was.” She sighed and settled back into the armchair. “He’s been gone twelve years now, you know,” she mumbled, as her eyes closed and she drifted off for a while. She would tell people that this was something she did. She began to snore softly.
He was sitting, twiddling the trinket around in his hands, wondering whether he should leave or sit patiently for a while, when to his surprise the thing suddenly popped open. Inside, there was a faded remnant of what would once have been a photo and a small scrap of paper that had a few scrawled words. He was shocked by what he read. He sat thinking for several long minutes before putting the note back in and closing it back up, snapping it with a firm click. What should he say? What should he do? His answer came… nothing!
He stood and placed it on the table beside her chair before leaving, quietly.
Sometime later she woke and saw that he had gone. She found the locket where he had placed it. She clasped her hands around it and remembered; not the time he had given it to her, but the time he had spoken some of his last words. Tears formed as she recalled the time he was dying. The time he had admitted that he had allowed a lie to remain between them. A deception about the locket. He hadn’t bought it at all. The truth was he had found it, out there on the pavement. It was just lying there, glistening in the sun. He must have been the first person to come across it. He had sobbed with the admission. He said how sorry he was to have deceived her for so long. She remembered how she had said that she forgave him. She said how much she loved him. She had told him that she forgave him completely, and she had meant it.
Meanwhile, back in his room, her neighbour sat thinking about the message he’d read, and how it would stay with him. Just a few simple words… ‘Please help me, I’m being held at 16 Frobisher street, top floor.’