FINDING THE LIGHT

It lay there, in the grass, glinting in the bright sunshine. She bent down to pick it up. She squinted at it, looking at it through her tired old eyes. She turned it over....a pretty little thing - a heart shaped locket. Could it be silver? She hoped so, it certainly would help a bit. She turned over and there was writing on the back. She could just make out the words. Oh, if only she hadn't lost her glasses. It said "open me". Well that was strange, in her long experience, Victorian lockets like this one had names of loved ones inscribed on the back. She squinted again and could just make out the slit, in which she could insert her long grubby fingernail. There was a tiny hinge on the other side. She was tired and hungry ....this little thing might be worth enough at the pawn shop, to buy her some food and even a night at the shelter. Did she really want to waste time trying to open it? Oh well why not? She tucked her fingernail into the narrow opening. It was hard, but eventually with pulling and twisting, she managed to open the locket to see what what is inside...usually a lock of hair. But no, inside was a tightly folded piece of paper. Curiosity was winning against hunger and tiredness and she opened the piece of paper. It wasn't an ordinary piece of paper, a letter or anything; it looked like some kind of very formal document, with stamps and seals on it. How did all that fit into this tiny locket, she wondered.

She had been having a hard time. It had been a very good life, a somewhat ordinary, suburban life, in a suburban house with a kind, suburban husband, whom she had allowed to take care of their ordinary suburban life. No children He went to work in a bank, until all the banks suddenly seemed disappear and became 'online' banks, which meant nothing to her. What did 'online' mean? Her nice, kind husband took care of all that, he seemed to understand online, computers and mobile phones and the like. We will do very nicely he said, after he had been called into his Manager's office, to be told he wasn't needed anymore. They needed only a skeleton staff in the tiny office, which they now called a bank, with very young people who helped older people with the machines that spat out cash and with getting online to their accounts with numbers and passwords. Still, she did not worry, her nice, kind husband understood all that. He had been growing their little savings account online with online share accounts, which he understood very well and buying something called Bitcoin..they were going to be very, very rich. She didn't really want to be very, very rich. They had enough, their lives were simple and just fine as far as she was concerned. However her husband was excited, he was so excited that one day, he got over-excited and clutched his heart saying as he passed from this life to the next " Sarah I am so sorry, I think I have made a terrible mistake.....", the words dwindled away with his life and she was left alone with her grief and the online stuff she didn't understand.

She lay back on the soft grass and thought about the recent events in her life, which had brought her to this her current existence. Because that's all it was now really, an existence.....a wandering from one day into the next, with only the thought of filling the bare necessities in life, food and shelter. She had enjoyed her nice little suburban house, filled with nice furniture and pretty things, which she dusted and polished regularly. She cooked nice food for her nice husband, made sure he had a proper breakfast before leaving for work in the bank and had a proper, home-cooked meal for him when he returned from work. It was all fresh food, none of that ready made stuff. Life had been orderly, rather predictable, but they liked the routine, the simplicity of a life without too many surprises. Life had been just fine, until that awful day when her husband died so suddenly and left her with a life full of very nasty surprises.

It seemed that her nice suburban husband did not understand online trading and he had put their nice, tidy little life in harm's way and had risked all of their money and their house in the pursuit of becoming very, very rich. She had to now venture into a world she did not understand, a world of bureaucracy, Wills, probate, solicitors, letters demanding money for unpaid bills and unpaid taxes. She did not know that there was now a mortgage on her home and that she owed the lender a lot of money. She did not know that she now owed the bank and the online trading company a lot of money, borrowed by her clever kind husband. She was awash with unpaid bills and no money to pay them. And so in time she found herself homeless, friendless and exhausted.  She shut down, sputtered to a halt like an old car. Friends tried to help, even the bureaucrats, but she was numb with shock and ignored their well meant gestures.

She looked again at her new locket and the piece of paper, that had been hidden in it. She buffed the locket with her not too clean sleeve.  It shone brightly and seemed to wink and smile at her. It had been so long since she'd had anything pretty to enjoy, that she felt reluctant to sell it. She had had to sell every other possession in her life, perhaps she would keep this and go hungry for another day and sleep rough for another night. What did it matter? The days drifted one into the other and the gnawing hunger was losing its grip on her. In fact she was settling into quite a dreamy state, in which food and shelter were becoming of little importance, life really was quite good again now. Different, but okay. She held her locket and it seemed warm and comforting and she looked again at the paper from inside the locket. She didn't understand it, she clutched it tightly. She relaxed back in the soft wet grass and closed her eyes, at peace at last.  

And that is where they found her. A man looked closely at the piece of paper clutched in her hand. And looked again. It was a share certificate worth five thousand pounds! The man scratched his head and said " well I'm ...". But she didn't care, she was well beyond all that now. All that was left was a still body in the grass, as she walked out free into the bright sunshine.