The Jeweller – Part 1: Facets

The workroom was at the back of the shop, behind two locked doors, a small bright room with a long bench, a bank of lamps, trays of loose stones and a window onto a courtyard. Cordelia sat at the bench with a loupe over one eye and a ring in her tweezers. The shop was closed. The safe was shut. A kettle sat on a little gas ring in the corner.

She was fifty-one, a master jeweller with thirty years' practice, small, grey-haired and exacting, with a voice that never rose. Anthony was forty-three, her partner of eight years, a quiet cataloguer of old books, who had once told her, watching her grade a diamond, that he wished she would look at him like that.

"Sit," said Cordelia.

He sat on the stool opposite. She slid a square of velvet across the bench, and on it a typed card. Terms of Valuation. His limits and hers: no marks, nothing painful, no real humiliation, nothing beyond the room, no one else. The word was Flawless.

"Say it."

"Flawless."

"If you say it, the Jeweller puts down the loupe. I am Cordelia. We drink tea."

"I understand."

"And every half hour I ask if you wish to continue. You answer honestly."

"Yes, Madam."

"Not yet." She pulled on a pair of thin white cotton gloves and flipped the loupe over her eye. Her voice dropped, low and level. "Mr Weir. I am going to examine you."

"Yes, Madam."

"You will hold still."

He held still. She stood and walked slowly round him, tilting her head, looking him over, her loupe glinting in the lamplight, as she would a rough stone brought in off the street. She said nothing for a very long time. The lamps hummed. The kettle ticked on its ring.

"Chin up."

He lifted his chin.

"Turn your head. To the left. Slowly."

He turned. She studied the line of his jaw with absolute concentration, and he felt the room narrow to the circle of her attention.

"Are you content, Mr Weir?"

"Content, Madam."

"Good. A valuation cannot be rushed."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Setting.