Susan said to her mother, “There is something inside there I need to get. I left it here before. It is inside a locked box.”
She could feel herself tugged towards the building, it was here, she knew it; the diary she had seen. She walked off without reply, leaving her mother in the car. He mother parked the car and followed her.
She found the front entrance and let herself in. A middle aged man came to the counter to help, “Yes, how may I assist?”
The words came out unbidden, “It is Locked Box 972532, I need to open it and retrieve the contents. The security code is 679013.”
The man looked up his list, wrote down the numbers she had given then nodded. As he went to speak Susan’s mother joined them, so he paused until she was alongside as well.
The man said, “That box was in use with that security code for two years, until a bit over a year ago. However at the end of that rental period the owner had not returned to collect it. So its contents were removed. It is now in use again with a different security code.”
Susan felt panic flood into her mind, It could not be possible that the contents were gone, she wanted, no she needed to see the diary that she knew was inside.
She calmed herself. “Do you know what has happened to the contents since they were removed?”
The man shook his head. “No, but I can find out. Generally we hold the contents for a further 12 months before we dispose of them. However in some cases where the contents are clearly valuable and we know that we can recover the cost if needed we will hold them for longer.”
He picked up the phone and spoke a few words. In another minute they were joined by a lady of similar age who was introduced as the person who managed the recovered objects. This lady brought them into an office and keyed the details into a computer.
“Yes,” she said, “I can see what happened. The security box had two things inside, a book that looked like an old diary and a pouch with some jewelry inside. Our preliminary estimate was that the diary is of no particular value but the jewelry is highly valuable. So we stored them in a new secure storage compartment in the off limits area. It is our policy to hold items of this value for five years before we consider disposing of them.”
Susan could feel relief flooding into her. She did not know why these things were important but she knew they were. They were a vital part of her life from before and, even if she could not remember them, she needed to have them back and see what they told her.
She asked, “So are we able to collect them now?”
The lady looked carefully at her, as if assessing what to do. “Well there are two things to cover; one is to confirm your entitlement to the objects. The second is to pay the outstanding fees for their storage. You have confirmed you know the security code, so that is a start. In addition at the time you stored the objects we recorded your driver’s license number as an independent way of confirming your identity should the need arise.”
Now Susan felt flummoxed again, she had no memory of a license.
She said, “I don’t have my license with me, do you need to see it.”
The lady shook her head. “No just the number will suffice.”
Unbidden the number came into Susan’s head. She recited it and the lady wrote it down. It was checked against a field on the computer screen.
“Well that is all correct. So there is just a matter of $300 pounds; that is for two further years of storage fees and an additional charge for the removal and storage in a new location.”
Her mother pulled out her credit card and made the payment.
In a five minutes Susan was holding these two objects in her hands.
Her mother looked at her, curious, “Do you want to check the contents?”
Susan shook her head, “No I just want to bring them home. I will look at them later.”
Her mother shrugged and they drove home.
*
Susan sat alone in her room in the late night. She had suppressed her desire to look at the diary and the bag of stones that she had carried home. She knew it had been a subject of conversation with her mother and father and her Gran who had stayed for dinner, she had walked into the room as they were talking and felt the conversation fall into a lull on her entrance.
Finally her father had blurted out, “Your Mum was just telling us about your visit to Wokingham today, meeting the Kashmiri man and his kind offer to translate the book, and also about your stop off at the storage place on the way home, how you remembered that you had left things there before you went away.”
He stopped there, waiting for her to say something. A silence ensued. Finally, realizing she was being ungracious, she said. “I don’t really remember what it is. But I feel like I need to have a look with Vic before I show whatever it is to others. He may be able to help me understand what it means.
“So I plan to bring it home tomorrow on the train and then we can have a look together. Once we do that I promise I will tell you about it.”
They all nodded but she could see a disbelieving look on all faces. She felt bad. She could not remember lying deliberately before. Doing it to these people, who had been so wonderful to her, felt unworthy.
But she could not bear to open something so significant and private with anyone else looking on, not even Vic. This book was a story of the life she had lost. She must know what it said, just she and only she, to begin with.
After that no one raised the contents of the locked box any further. The night proceeded with laughter and humor, entertaining the children as her parents and Gran told stories about here when she was little. Now they were all gone to bed, the children in their own room, Vic lying in the crib alongside her bed, sleeping soundly.
She sat on her bed with the book in her hands, looking at a reddish brown cover with only “Mark B”, handwritten, to distinguish it. It was just as she had remembered it from when she had photographed the other book. She knew that inside would be the words of writing her mind had glimpsed.
She felt no real interest in the stones in the cloth pouch. The lady had said they were jewels, but they felt like small stones to her. One day soon, when she had read the book, she was happy to open the pouch and show the stones to others. She did not care about them. If they were valuable, all the better, but it was of minor importance. The story must come first. She knew, with a deep clarity, that this was her story, the key to unlocking a part of her mind. She held the book in her hands and immersed herself in its presence. It had its own presence, the essence of a vanished spirit, perhaps Mark B.