Winged unicorn, rose and sword design

It belonged to the trunk in the back bedroom at Lower Penrose, a tin-cornered box with a shield-shaped plate on the lid, a unicorn chased into the brass and two roses worn smooth by a century of thumbs. Nobody had opened it since Gran died. Tomorrow the couple were flying to Lisbon with the trunk following by post, and Sian had made me promise to bring the key, not to lose it in the pile of cards and sherry glasses.

After the vows, Owen came round the side of the lych gate looking white. 'Have you got it?' I did. He turned it over in his palm and said he had dreamed about that trunk since he was nine. He had found two swords inside it once, wrapped in a feed sack, and his father had taken them off him and put them back. Sian came up behind us in her ivory dress, holding her skirt out of the mud, and I watched her face change when she saw the key.

We walked it back up the lane together. In the bedroom Owen fitted the key, turned it, and the lid lifted on a smell of cedar. Inside lay a cream silk scarf, a bundle of letters tied in navy ribbon, and a single enamel rose. Sian pinned the rose to my lapel without asking, laughing at my face, and said that was the only inheritance worth keeping.