Talisman

Even Mrs Pearson's little toes have turquoise-set rings on them. But it's her fingers and thumbs that clatter and glitter with silver and turquoise-blue the most. She wears nearly half a kilogram of the stuff, carved into icons or left au naturel, on silver chains at her neck. Often too an aegis-shaped brooch or three are pinned to her blouse and jumper.

She reeks of vanilla and sometimes lilies. Turquoise has no smell, but her pieces resonate to her favourite scents through long association. Despite the olfactory chorus she is still able to smell the difference between real turquoise and its paltry imitators, howlite and chrysocolla, or dyed chalcedony or (mercy!) plastic.

Mrs Pearson's turquoise is her talisman. It protects her from arthritis and gout, the unwelcome advances of lechers, the pretensions of her subordinates, the jealous attacks of her rivals, and the humourless attentions of the tax-man. Piece by piece she is assembling a personal tomb-shroud or mummy-wrap of turquoise and silver, by which she subconsciously hopes to defeat Time and Death as well. She dreams of endless, eternal reaches of blue-green stony silence and yearns for their sanctity.