Extract from The Necklace

Jonell McLain, 58, moved purposefully through the shopping mall, browsing only for a box of chocolates for a real estate client. She paused to glance in the window of Van Gundy and Sons, a venerable family-owned jewellery store in Ventura, California. Usually, Jonell’s glances were as quick as her strides, but this time she stopped and stared.

In the centre display case, a diamond necklace glittered against black velvet. The diamonds were strung in a single strand all the way to the clasp, the centre diamond the largest, the two closest to the clasp the smallest. The gradations were minuscule, the effect breathtaking.

Jonell owned a few pieces of good jewellery, but a luxury necklace was something else. She wondered, What would it feel like to wear something so extravagant, so lovely? On a whim, she entered the store. “May I see the necklace in the window?” she asked.

When the diamond stunner was around her neck, Jonell took a deep breath and, exhaling, she asked the price.

“Thirty-seven thousand dollars,” ($42,000) said the saleswoman.

Jonell gasped. Who buys a $37,000 necklace?

Looking in the mirror again, she couldn’t help but think of the choices she’d made in her life – choices that guaranteed she could never afford a necklace like this. She was a real estate agent, married with two children. In her spare time, she mentored disadvantaged kids. Though she lived a comfortable life, there wasn’t room for excessive spending on things such as fancy jewellery.

Deep in thought, she heard just snippets of the saleswoman’s words: “The necklace has 118 diamonds … brilliant-cut … mined from non-conflict areas … 15.24 carats.” But none of it mattered. In a world overflowing with need, Jonell felt that owning a $37,000 necklace was morally indefensible.

She handed it back and left the store. But she couldn’t forget it.

Back at the shopping mall with her 86-year-old mother a few weeks later, Jonell casually strolled by Van Gundy’s and saw the diamond necklace still in the window. “I want to show you something,” she said.

Inside the store, she asked for the necklace once more. “Try it on,” she told her mother.

The older woman’s eyes widened as she clicked the clasp. “It’s beautiful,” she said. She thought the piece was a classic. Now the price had dropped considerably, to $22,000, and the store was taking bids on items on display.

Jonell reflected on how odd it was that we stand shoulder to shoulder enjoying a museum masterpiece or a great landscape, yet we can’t share a personal luxury. And then she got an idea.

I could wear a fabulous item like this if I bought it with other women, she mused. No-one needs a 15-carat diamond necklace all the time. But what about every now and then? I can’t spend $22,000, but I can spend $1000. If I can convince 11 other women to go in with me, I could bid $12,000. The necklace had come down $15,000. Why not another $10,000?