The note that said “Learn” sat beside the till for a week before I dared to move it.
I’d dust around it carefully, as though it might vanish if I breathed too hard.
Then one morning I came in early — sunlight just beginning to spill through the lace curtains — and there, by the wardrobe, was the old Singer sewing machine.
It had been moved, dragged across the timber by someone who couldn’t possibly lift it. The stool was pulled out, and a spool of golden thread sat waiting on the plate.
I called for Pete, thinking he must have been at it again, but he swore he hadn’t touched it. He said he wouldn’t have even dared — “those old machines bite,” he muttered.
That was when Beckham padded in, tail puffed like a feather duster, then instantly calm again. He walked right up to the stool, meowed once — like a greeting — and curled himself beneath it.
He purred and purred, the steady kind that relaxes you to your core.
⸻
On the worktable nearby lay a small child’s dress in cream cotton and lace, a dress I didn’t remember owning. Fine cotton, machine-stitched French seams, the kind of perfect stitches you can only do by lamplight and patience. Very strong lamplight if you’re me. Around the hem, I could just make out a faint shimmer of hand embroidery in gold thread — words too tiny for my eyes to read.
So I did what I always do these days. I pulled out my phone, took a quick photo, and pinched the screen wider until the letters came clear.
“Names are stitches, and stories are seams.”
I read it out loud before I realised I’d spoken, and just for a moment, the air seemed to sigh — the faintest exhale of lavender and mothballs.
That night I found another scrap of paper in the till. The same handwriting, the same gold thread stitched through. It read:
“Her name was Elsie Wren. Teach her craft.”
⸻
Since then, I’ve kept the stool beside the wardrobe. Every few nights something new appears: a patch repaired, a torn apron neatly folded, a button found that fits like it was waiting for its place.
But lately… the magic feels stronger, like she’s trying to tell me something more.
When the afternoon sun hits the Singer’s metal wheel, it flashes—not once, but three times—like a heartbeat.
And somewhere inside the wardrobe, a faint ticking has begun.
Not a clock.
Something older.
Something waking.
Stay tuned next week for part four⸻
🍂💛