Chapter 11

Anjali sat watching the hands of the clock move towards the hour of the presentation to new owners of the town’s weaving mill. She was being torn between the things that were needed of her and the things that were essential to her.

In one direction lay the enticing possibility of the freedom to move like a loose cannon across all the available planes of creative design. In the other direction stretched the reality that falls with the rain in a valley like Briardale. She had established a comfortable living, repairing garments that needed and warranted repair. The valley’s harsh climate would ensure that need remained for as long as the wind blew and the rain fell.

As she waited, she began mumbling to herself, like someone surrendering to an irresistible prayer.

‘Design is the overcoat I pull on against the winter. It warms, comforts and protects me against a climate of despair. Design is the antidote to the grey and the damp. Design is the sun rising in summer and centring itself in a deep sky.

‘Form and cut and texture and colour are vital to life. They are as vital as the elementary components of water or the crystalline structure of iron.

‘Everyone sees the world in their own way. I see my world through the eye of a needle. It is a view that is roundly defined and fixed in steel.

‘I cannot worry about what should be. All I can worry about is the corner of design which I inhabit. I have fashioned myself a viable existence that is as hard-won as any burrow and just as essential.

‘I also know that I am the seamstress of my own destruction. I have sewn such discord that there is no other way forward - other than the one that leads through the door of this boardroom.

‘There comes a time when there is such strain on the material that a seam will tear apart. Eventually, its life always reaches a breaking point that no amount of stitching can prevent.’