For Margaret, Who Moved

The first one came in March. Small box, brown paper, handwritten label: Margaret Ellis, Flat 2, and my address. No return. I did the right thing, which is to say I wrote NOT KNOWN AT THIS ADDRESS on it in marker and put it back in the postbox, and felt briefly like a good citizen. The second one came in April. Same handwriting. Same size. Third in May. By then I'd asked the neighbours. Mr Dyer downstairs, who's been here since the building was converted, said "Margaret? Little Scottish woman? She moved out years ago. 2013, 2014. Went to be near her son, I think. Lancashire, somewhere." I sent the third one back too. In June, the fourth arrived, and on the label, under the address, in the same hand, small: "Please. It's important." I'm not proud of what I did next but I'd like to think you'd have done the same. Inside was a tin. A biscuit tin, the round kind, and inside that, wrapped in tissue paper, was a single teacup. Bone china, a pattern of small blue flowers. And a note, folded once. "Margaret. This is the fourth. I know you've moved but the post office won't tell me where and Alan won't answer my letters. I'm sending them anyway. One a month, until the set's done. You took the saucers and I kept the cups and that's been forty years of neither of us having a proper tea. I'm eighty-one now. I don't want to die with six cups and no saucers. Please write. Rosemary." I sat on the kitchen floor with the cup in my hands for quite a while. Here's what I know from the letters, because yes, I opened the rest, and I'll answer for that. Rosemary and Margaret were sisters. Something happened around 1985, something about a house and a will and who'd looked after their mother, and they split, and the tea set split with them, six cups one way and six saucers the other, which is either the pettiest or the saddest thing I've ever heard and I still can't decide. Rosemary is in a care home in Fife. Alan is Margaret's son. Alan doesn't want the past reopened.

I found Margaret. It took three weeks and involved an electoral roll website, a Facebook group for a village near Preston, and a very awkward phone call to a hairdresser's. She's eighty-four. She lives with Alan and his wife. Alan answered the phone. "She doesn't need this," he said. "It was decades ago." "There's four cups on my kitchen table," I said, "and a woman in Fife with two more, and she's eighty-one. I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm asking if I can send the cups on." There was a long silence on the line. Then a voice in the background, a woman's, Scottish, saying "Alan, who is it," and him saying "nobody, Mum," and her saying "give it here." I talked to Margaret for eleven minutes. I didn't say much. She asked what the pattern was and I described it and she said "Royal Albert, the blue ones, we got them for her wedding," and her voice went somewhere I couldn't follow. I posted the cups on the Thursday. Recorded delivery. I put a note in of my own, which just said who I was and that I hoped it was alright. In August I got a card. Rosemary's handwriting. Inside was a photo, two very old women on a bench outside what looked like a care home, both holding a cup and saucer, both looking at the camera like they'd been told to and weren't sure why. On the back: "Twelve. Thank you. R & M." I've got it on the fridge. Mr Dyer asked what it was and I said it was a long story and he said he had time, and so I told him, and he said, "Bloody hell," which about covers it.