HARRIET AND I LOVED the occasion and always made each other a special gift. When we were younger, it might have been a tiny doll created from shells, or a picture we’d drawn, framed in some old fencing. Once I gave Harriet a story I’d written about two princesses who had been secretly stowed away on an isolated cape when they were babies so that they would not be harmed before they could take their rightful place as Queens of their lands. That morning I had given Harriet a handkerchief I had stitched with our initials intertwined in vivid indigo cotton on one corner. It had taken me an age to get the tiny stitches right, and Mother had helped me with the design, a green vine curling around the straight lines, dotted with tiny yellow flowers, like those that spotted our cape come the spring. ‘So you don’t forget us while you are away,’ I said as she unwrapped it. ‘Never,’ Harriet said. ‘I love it.’ She examined the needlework and ran her finger across the monogram. ‘I will keep it forever.’ I could not help blushing with pleasure, her approval and delight the best presents I would receive that day.
