For today, Sophia has been invited next door to 3 Cedar Drive to see Mrs. Lyon, Mrs. Fische, and Mrs. Minke for tea. She’s already wrapped up a little hostess gift for each of them. Sophia is the consummate guest, never a foot put wrong. Her husband laughs at the care she takes with such things. Such a silly little head my Sophie has on her shoulders. Stop worrying so. They all love us. We’re the life of the party. You don’t have to bring presents every time to everybody. You don’t have to bring any presents at all.
But Sophia understands in the palest cells of marrow of her bones that everything she does, from the speed of her gait to the gifts she chooses to the sway of her hair as she walks down Cedar Drive, reflects upon him. And they do love him. It’s so easy for him! The way Mrs. Crabbe tries to look busy to hide her blushing whenever he passes her in the garden on his way home from the office. The way Mr. Stagg fixes his hair and stands a little straighter when he ducks into their local for something cold and quiet. Sophia knows these are treasures that must be protected. She would never do the smallest thing that might risk how Mrs. Moray’s dark eyes widen and her breath quickens when she glimpses the two of them strolling through the market of a Saturday. Heaven forbid. She would rather die.
He will never know how the gentle determination of her carefulness stokes and keeps the love of their neighbors. He does not need to. Sophia doesn’t ask for praise or credit. Is he the life of the party? Or is she? Such questions! The party is alive, that’s what matters. And whichever way one slices such a rich cake, her company is much in demand. Her social calendar overflows like a cup of wine. Everyone in Arcadia Gardens clamors to have her round. The honor of her presence at their home. The pleasure of her business at their establishment. The profound distress the absence of her witness would cause at this or that small ceremony of life.
Sophia strives to make certain they never have cause to regret her.
She pauses in her thoughts. She reaches out her long fingers to touch her image in the grand mirror. The glass is so cool beneath her skin.
After tea, she plans a stroll round the park, then to Mrs. Lam’s to pick up a bolt or two of the new turquoise wool in stock, a quick pop round the shops for supper supplies, then home to prepare it all before sunset, when it is not permitted to be roaming the streets.
It will be a lovely day. They are all lovely days. That’s how lucky she is. That’s how beautiful Sophia’s life has always been and always will be. Not a minute unaccounted for. Not a season unsavored to the last dregs.
She is happy. Her husband is happy. The world is theirs.
I was made for him.
And then, for no reason whatsoever, no reason at all that she can think of later when she looks back and tries to explain everything that happened afterward and wishes so desperately that she’d never done it, so desperately that she almost faints away with the passion of longing to undo time and causality and uninvent the entire concept of furniture, Sophia looks down at the pull-knob on the top left-hand drawer of her vanity.
It isn’t crystal, like the right-hand drawer. All the knobs on all the drawers are different. Copper, amber, white Bakelite, pewter. It makes a very pretty effect, like everything else her husband builds. The towering bed, the dizzying staircase, the splendid mirror, the high hook for her long robe, the heavy walnut table downstairs—as tall as a plowhorse at the shoulder, where she will later perch briefly, swinging her legs in the air, and eat honey and butter on toast points before heading out into the buttery, honeyed light of the afternoon.
Sophia stares at the top left-hand drawer as though she’s never seen it before. It feels as though she hasn’t. She never uses it, after all. Three pots and a compact hardly require all six drawers to fill. But this is her room. Her place at the mirror, boosted by all those pretty pillows. Every day of her married life, she’s sat in this same place, tied her hair back with the same ribbon, and made herself into the same Sophia while the starlings sang. Every molecule of every object in this house is familiar to her.
So why does that drawer look so much like a filthy, ragged stranger standing suddenly in the corner of a brightly lit hall?
The pull-knob is stone. A rough, dull chunk of grey rock. She brushes it lightly with her fingertips. It is dusty. But Sophia allows nothing to gather dust. Not in this house. Not on her watch. Yet untold layers of dust particles float away into the shafts of sun like ash. Underneath, tiny ammonites press up out of the shale rock.
Sophia tells herself not to open it.
There is nothing inside, after all. She knows that! She knows the contents of every nook and cranny in this vast house. It’s just an empty drawer. No reason whatsoever to waste her time on such a lump of nothing! Not when there is so much to do today! Such a silly little head she has on her shoulders. Doesn’t he always say so?