Showing how lost things can be a treasure

Ruth Hogan ON THE day his fiancée Therese died, Anthony Peardew lost something of hers he had promised to cherish for ever.

It was a small thing, not valuable, but of enormous importance to Anthony.

And his losing it made him aware that small things – a child’s umbrella, a couple of hair bobbles – could be important to the people who lost them.

So Anthony has become the keeper of lost things.

Every time he finds something small he takes it home, labels it, and puts it on a shelf in his study.

Because one day he wants to return all the items, the latest of which is a biscuit tin left behind on a train, which appears to contain human ashes.

But 40 years on, Anthony is tired and feels it is time he joined Therese.

He has a 30-something secretary-cum-housekeeper called Laura who, like Anthony, prefers to have things done properly.

Anthony believes that he can pass on his life’s work to Laura so he leaves her his lovely old house and an income, and shuffles off. Anthony never allowed her into the study, and the first time she enters it she is overwhelmed by the stuff.

How will she ever live up to Anthony’s wishes? But she is helped by Freddy, the gardener, and Sunshine, a young neighbour with Down syndrome, who has insight, Laura can only marvel at. And so they set up a website to try to attract the owners of the lost things.

This is a charming novel, full of warmth and poignancy and humour. Interspersed with the story of Laura, Freddy and Sunshine are tales of the items on the shelves and the people who lost them; and there is a second, longrunning narrative of Eunice and Bomber, who run a publishing company.

Eunice was passing on the pavement the day Therese collapsed and died, and you wonder if the stories will eventually cross.

Which of course they do, in a most satisfactory way.

A delightful read. – Vivien Horler