Butterfly and filigree heart locket on an arm

The shop has gone quiet at last, the late buses have stopped groaning up Clerkenhill, and I am sat under the lamp with the locket you sent me, which I have not yet been brave enough to post back. You were right about the filigree. Somebody cut those scrolls by hand a hundred years ago, and the silver has never once been bright enough to hide the work underneath.

Dad would have known the maker's mark on sight. I spent three nights with the jeweller's loupe trying to find it, and tonight, finally, I found a tiny butterfly stamped inside the hinge, no bigger than a grain of rice. It was the only thing on the whole piece that wasn't a heart or a scroll, and I laughed out loud, alone at the bench, like a fool.

The beaded chain is the part that worries me. Someone has replaced three links with brass, which is why it snagged in the window display, and the girl who brought it in on Tuesday wouldn't say where it came from. She just kept turning the butterfly over with her thumb and asking whether the hinge would hold. I told her it would. I hope I was not lying.

I am posting this with the locket, registered, so you will have it by Friday. Don't you dare sell it to the man from Ludgate. Tell Auntie I'm eating.

Love, Tess