As if it were too important, too precious, to part with? Hidden it and never told a living soul. Because if she had someone would have sold it long ago. If her grandma had known about it she wouldn't have sacrificed the house to raise money when she'd needed it. Would have passed on the secret when she knew she was dying…

She sighed. She didn't need more questions. It was answers she wanted. And upstairs, in the bottom of her gran's wardrobe, was an old Gladstone bag, stuffed with the kind of stuff that women couldn't part with. Dried flowers. Letters. Embroidered handkerchiefs. Bits of lace and ribbon. Wedding invitations, school reports-whoever would want to keep those!-theatre programmes. Greetings cards for every possible occasion. Great-Great-Grandad's Military Medal.

Generations of the stuff.

There had been a time, when she was a little girl, when it had been a magic bag, and being allowed to "tidy" it had been a special treat.

Then it had become an emotional ambush to be avoided at all costs. Full of things that just to look at, hold, brought tears welling to the surface: a postcard from her mother on honeymoon in Venice; a Mother's Day card she'd made when she was so little she'd needed her gran to help with the letters; a button from her father's jacket that she'd hidden there.

At the bottom, hidden by a false base, was the big envelope that she had not been allowed to open. The one containing family documents. The certificates- birth, marriage, death-that said who they were, where they came from. An envelope that her grandma had said she could open "when she was older".

Except, of course, the temptation had been too much for a curious ten-year-old. Which was how she knew about the Arabic letter, although at the time she hadn't realised what it was. How she knew why her grandmother had had to raise money in such a hurry…

She had a new document to add to the family archive, but she'd been putting it off. She'd been ignoring the bag ever since her grandmother had died, delaying the moment when she became the family matriarch. The keeper of its history. Its awful secrets.