The Lost Sapphire by Belinda Murrell

in the street.
    Violet felt helpless.
    â€˜What would you like to do, Miss Violet?’ asked Nikolai. ‘We have an hour before I need to pick up your father. Shall I take you home?’
    Violet shook her head. ‘No, we’ll stay here for a little while, Nikolai. Then we can give Sally a lift home so she can spend more time with her mother.’
    â€˜Very well, Miss Violet.’
    They sat in silence for a few moments. Outside, the local children continued their game of cricket, with Sally’s siblings joining in. Nikolai sat still, staring through the windscreen, his book beside him on the seat. Of course he couldn’t read while Violet was sitting in the car.
    â€˜Let’s get out and stretch our legs,’ Violet suggested.
    Nikolai opened the door for her and tipped his cap. Violet wandered up and down the laneway, watching the children play and examining the tiny terraces, with their peeling paint and falling down fences. They looked like abandoned cubbyhouses.
    Fortunately the stench from the tanneries was fainterhere, but Violet could still smell the whiff of coal smoke, mixed with rotting garbage and the outdoor lavatories behind the terraces. A woman sat on the narrow porch of one terrace house, shelling a basin of peas. A baby sat in a push-chair beside her, waving a wooden spoon. Violet called a friendly good afternoon, but the woman only replied with a surly nod.
    The cricket ball skidded up beside her, and Violet leaned down to pick it up. It was made of tightly rolled rags tied with string. Of course a rag ball didn’t bounce, so it had to be bowled on the full. She threw it back towards the wicketkeeper, who caught it easily and hurled it at the fruit crate, sending it flying. The kids threw their arms in the air and cheered.
    Violet remembered her Brownie tucked away in her bag on the back seat of the car. This would be an excellent opportunity to practise using it. She had already taken some photographs when her father was out – of the house and garden, of Romeo and Juliet, but she was keen to try taking some more natural photographs.
    She fetched the camera and took it out of its brown leather case, folding the lens out. For a few minutes she wandered up and down the street, stopping every now and again to practise framing up a shot, even though she didn’t actually take any photographs.
    She moved back and forth, checking the framing through the viewfinder to see if it looked better close up or further away, or as a portrait or landscape shot. Violet fiddled with the shutter, aperture and focus and pretended to take shots, the camera at her waist, holding her breath to keep it totally still.
    Sally’s sister finally noticed what Violet was doing. ‘Look, she’s takin’ our photo!’
    â€˜No,’ Violet replied hurriedly. She felt it might be impolite to take people’s photographs without asking permission. ‘I didn’t take any. I was just practising.’
    â€˜Oh,’ groaned Sally’s brother, disappointed. ‘I’ve never ’ad my picture taken.’
    â€˜Would you like to me to take your photograph?’ Violet asked the children.
    A buzz of enthusiasm rippled through the gang as they crowded around her.
    â€˜Yes. Yes,’ came a cacophony of exuberant shouts.
    Nikolai moved closer from where he had been waiting beside the car. Violet felt more confident with his tall frame and authoritative uniform behind her.
    â€˜So you’re Sally’s brother, aren’t you?’ Violet asked, trying to remember which of the children in the crowd were Sally’s family.
    â€˜Yes, I’m Frank, an’ this is my brother Billy – he’s ten – an’ little sister Maisie, who’s eight,’ Frank replied. ‘My other sister Peggy is fourteen, but she’s at work – she just started at Hamilton’s Gloves as an apprentice machinist.’
    â€˜At Hamilton’s Fine