Chapter 16

Anjali drove out of the town heading up the valley, following the direction she had once taken as a four-year-old. The sun was shining coolly through the windscreen as she approached this point where the river ran along a plush green meadow, its edges shaded by willows.

In that morning’s meeting with Eileen, with the clattering of old machinery reaching through the walls, she felt - even from the Factory Manager’s Personal Assistant - a woman who had been so convinced of the power of the design they shared - a sprinkling of doubt that had never been there before. The memory of the events was being rewritten somewhere that she could not reach. She could no longer sense that there was a fine acceptance, in that clattering weaving shed, of the possibility of influence through fashion. It was an idea that could not fit within the narrow confines of this damp valley.

She had witnessed the colour and texture and form that had surrounded that Board meeting in a chiffon of conviction.

‘It is the rise and fall of the waves of the sea as they reach the beach,’ she said to herself. ‘The wave swells and pushes you into a position where you can practise something new and with such power. Then the moment passes, and they fall back, the waves disappearing into the sea waters. All that remains - all I can hear - is the rolling of gravel from far away down the shore.’

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She looked down into the quiet river, hoping that some explanation would be swirling in its steady depths. There was just the empty flow of water against the scattered stone of the riverbed. The confidence she once found there had cleared with the fast-flowing water of the winter. Her belief in - her firm understanding of - what she had achieved with the clothing designs, which conveyed the presentation to the Danish Board to its successful conclusion, had evaporated like a late spring mist.

She needed to return to the sure feeling of fabric. When you stand amongst it, touch it, smell it, you know that those who deny its power are the ones that lack the honesty that fabric has in its every stitch. The most beautiful of fabrics will always support you. You just need to reach out to them.

There was a ripple of wind across the valley. The flat surface of the waters creased and a light drizzle, which had come from nowhere, trimmed the surface with a sequin of circles. The pattern had altered. The river was running with reflections again.

Anjali stared deeply into the weaving waters and the outline of an idea soaked into her mind.

‘Did you think I would forget you,’ said the river.