Necessary as Blood

End, where the years accumulated in layers like the fabrics on her board.
    Sandra sighed and rubbed her fingers over the scrap of peacock-blue taffeta she held in her hand, contemplating its position in the overall design of her collage. Change was inevitable, she supposed, and she had friends now on both sides of the economic divide — and, if anything, she owed her ability to make her living as an artist to those at the upper end of the scale.
    She glanced at the pile of fabric scraps under the loft casement. Charlotte lay nestled among the silks and voiles, drawn like a cat to the pool of sunlight. She had settled there when she tired of a long and one-sided conversation with her favourite stuffed elephant — Charlotte , like her mother before her, would have nothing to do with dolls.
    Graceful as a cat, too, her little daughter, even asleep with her thumb in her mouth, thought Sandra. At almost three, Charlotte had held on to her thumb-sucking a bit too long, but Sandra found herself reluctant to deprive her precocious child of a last vestige of infant comfort.
    Her frustration with the collage-in-progress momentarily forgotten, Sandra grabbed a sketchbook and pencil from her work table. Quickly, she blocked out the spill of fabric, the small French panes of the casement, the curve of Charlotte‘s small body in dungarees and T-shirt, the delicate and slightly snub-nosed face framed by the mass of toffee-coloured curls.
    The sketch cried out for colour and Sandra exchanged her number 2 for a handful of coloured pencils pulled from a chipped Silver Jubilee mug — a flea-market treasure kept for its accidental misspelling of the Duke of Edinburgh‘s name.
    Red for the dungarees, pink for the T-shirt, bright blues and greens for the puddled silks, warm brown for the polished floorboards.
    Absently, she went back to the silks, her hand attempting to reproduce the half-formed memory of an intricate silk pattern she had seen. It had been sari silk, like those spilled on her floor, but an unusual pattern, tiny birds hand-woven into the apple-green fabric. She‘d asked the girl who wore it where it had come from, and the child had answered in soft, halting English, saying her mother had given it to her. But when Sandra asked if her mother had bought it here, in London, the girl had gone mute and looked frightened, as if she‘d spoken out of turn. And the next time Sandra visited, she had been gone.
    Sandra frowned at the recollection and Charlotte stirred, as if unconsciously responding. Afraid she would lose her opportunity to capture the tableau, Sandra reached for her camera and snapped. She checked the image, nodding as she saw Charlotte‘s sleeping face framed by silk, timeless now.
    Timeless, like the faces in the cages in her collage... A sudden inspiration made her glance at the collage. ‘What if...? What if she used photo transfer for the faces of the women and girls, rather than fabric and paint? She could use the faces of women and children she knew, if they would agree.
    Charlotte stretched and opened her eyes, smiling sleepily. A good-natured child, Charlotte was seldom cross, unless tired or hungry, a blessing that Sandra was sure she had not bestowed on her own mum. Setting down her camera, she knelt and lifted her daughter. ‘Nice nap, sweetie?‘ she asked as Charlotte twined her arms round her neck for a hug. Charlotte‘s hair was damp from sun and sleep, and her pale caramel skin still held a faint scent of baby muskiness, but she didn‘t give her mother much chance to nuzzle.
    Squirming from Sandra‘s arms, she went to the work table.‘Duck pencils, Mummy,‘ she said, eyeing the empty mug. ‘I want to draw, too.‘
    Sandra considered, glancing at the clock, at the sun-brightened windows, and once again at the half-finished collage on the work table. She knew from experience that she‘d reached the point where staring at the board wouldn‘t provide a solution, and besides, she wanted to try out her photo idea. A break was in order.
    It was not quite noon, Charlotte had been up early and Sandra had let her fall asleep before her usual nap time. They‘d agreed to meet Naz for lunch at two — that is, if he could drag himself away from the office. She gave a sharp shake of her head at the thought. He and Lou had both been working much too hard on an upcoming case, and Naz was showing uncharacteristic signs of strain. Family Sundays had always been a priority for them, especially since