““Handbag by Ruth Fainlight My mother's old leather handbag, crowded with letters she carried all through the war. The smell of my mother's handbag: mints and liptsick and Coty powder. The look of those letters, softened and worn at the edges, opened, read, and refolded so often. Letters from my father. Odour of leather and powder, which ever since then has meant womanliness, and love, and anguish, and war.””
