Necessary as Blood

but after a few rings, Pippa answered the phone.
    Gemma identified herself, then asked about the Rivington Street clinic.
    ‘That was one of Sandra‘s good-works projects,‘ Pippa said with asperity. ‘I told her she couldn‘t just give things away, but she wouldn‘t listen.‘
    ‘They paid her a pound. I found the receipt in her desk. What sort of clinic is it?‘
    ‘That sounds about par for Sandra‘s record-keeping. At least she left a proper paper trail for the Inland Revenue.‘ She gave a derisive sniff, then went on. ‘The place is a free sexual-health clinic that caters mostly to local Bangladeshi women.‘
    Gemma had been gazing at the piece on the work table. She described the work-in-progress to Pippa, then asked, ‘Do you suppose she was thinking of the women who go to this clinic? Or that she was making it for the clinic?‘
    ‘It‘s possible,‘ Pippa said thoughtfully. ‘But it sounds as if the piece has a very strong Huguenot theme, which was something Sandra came back to again and again. She was fascinated by the lives and history of the French immigrant weavers, and she felt a personal connection — she wanted there to be a personal connection. Gilles is a French Huguenot name, and because Sandra never knew her father, I think it was important to her to try to find something meaningful in her mother‘s lineage. Not that her mother knew, or cared.‘ Pippa sighed. ‘You might look at her journals.‘
    ‘Journals?‘
    ‘Sandra kept loads of them. Black artists‘ sketchbooks, filled with notes and drawings. That was where she worked out her ideas. They may be worth a good bit of money, if she...‘ There was a pause, then Pippa said, ‘Look. I‘ve got to go. But if you find those books, you‘d better make a note of it for the estate. And have whoever‘s in charge contact me.‘
    Clicking off the phone, Gemma looked round the room, thinking that Pippa Nightingale might be grieving for Naz and Sandra, but she was not about to let it interfere with business.
    She moved away from the desk and work table. Hadn‘t she seen black notebooks somewhere, when she was here before? Yes, there, on the shelf with the boxes of buttons and ribbons and the other objects Sandra used in the collages — at least a dozen identical black books.
    Lifting the top one from the stack, she opened it and thumbed carefully through it. Notes, in many colours, the tiny script crammed into margins and any vertical and horizontal space not filled with drawings. And the drawings... Gemma looked more closely, fascinated. There were designs; some looked like bits of fabric, others seemed to be architectural details — Gemma thought she recognized the ornate curved lintel from a house opposite, and the Arabian curves of the decorative arches in Brick Lane. There were even tiny reproductions of some of the street art that Gemma had seen sprayed along Brick Lane. And there were portraits. Asian women, young and old. A grizzled, shabby man under a striped market awning. A drawing that suggested, in just a few deft lines, the sweet face of a young Asian girl.
    Gemma closed the book and held it, thinking. This was Sandra Gilles — here, in these pages — or at least all that Gemma, or Sandra‘s daughter, might ever know of her. Pippa had suggested that the notebooks would be valuable, objects of desire for collectors, but what about their value to Charlotte? Surely, that was more important.
    Setting aside the notebook, Gemma rummaged in her bag until she found her own little spiral notebook, and the list she had been making for Louise. She stared at the page for a long moment, then put the notebook back.
    Carefully, she gathered all the black sketchbooks from the shelf, added the bundle of pencils from her bag and left the studio.
    On the way down the stairs she retrieved Charlotte‘s flowered holdall and tucked her acquisitions inside.
    Reaching the ground floor, she turned out the lights and locked the garden door, then let herself out of the house and locked the front door as well.
    She glanced up and down, as was her habit, but the street was empty. Walking quickly to her car, she opened the rear door and leaned in, meaning to place the bag securely on the floor. Then a hard shove slammed her forwards, cracking her head against the Escort‘s roof.
    Staggering, shaking her head, she instinctively dropped the bag, clenched her keys in her fist and spun round.
    There were two of them, crowding her, so close she