"If you drop it, you'll break my toe," groaned Asma. She glanced at her sister, Reem. They were standing at the top of the stairs with a large yellow sofa between them.
[1] "Mum said if we turn the sofa on its side, it will be so much easier to get it through the door."
"Stop complaining, Asma." Reem rolled her eyes.
A few minutes later, Asma and Reem put the sofa down against the wall of the living room. They sat down and started to laugh. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" grinned Asma.
"Hang on, what's this thing here? It feels like there's something inside it!" said Reem.
Asma and Reem unzipped the cushion and to their surprise, they found a black leather handbag. "What do you think is inside it?" whispered Asma, staring at the bag. Reem looked at her. "There's only one way to find out."
Neither girl could believe their eyes when they spread the contents of the handbag on the table.
[2] They gazed in disbelief at what they had found.
There was a purse and a collection of jewellery: three diamond rings, five pearl necklaces of different sizes, several pairs of earrings and some bracelets made of gold and silver.
"This jewellery is beautiful, isn't it?" sighed Reem. "And look, there's 5,000 JD in here. Obviously, we'll have to give it back to the rightful owner."
Asma shook her head. "But we don't know whose money it is," she said. "If we knew who it belonged to, we could give it back to them but we don't know!" She raised an eyebrow. "Anyway, why would an honest person put all this money and jewellery into a handbag inside a sofa? [3] 'Nobody will ever know.'"
"Mum bought the sofa from a good second-hand furniture place online."
[4] "Do you think it was stolen?"
Asma frowned and then shrugged her shoulders. "That's a good question but we must try and find out."
After talking about the situation with their mum, the next day, the girls took the handbag with the money and the jewellery to the police. It was cold outside and they shivered as they waited for the bus to return home. When they got back to their flat, they tried not to think about the handbag they had found inside their sofa.
"I guess we'll never solve the mystery," said Asma.
Three days later, Reem and Asma's mum opened the door. There was a TV crew there waiting to speak to the girls.
"Asma and Reem Allabban?" asked the reporter. "Yes," they both replied. There was a red light flashing as the cameraman filmed them.
"This is Majeda Alfarran." The reporter pulled the young woman forward. "It's about the handbag you found."
Majeda explained that the handbag had belonged to her grandmother. "We didn't know Grandma had hidden all her money and jewellery inside the old sofa. We were going to throw it away but luckily we decided to sell it."
[5] She thanked them for handing in the handbag to the police.
"My grandma wants to reward you for your honesty," said Majeda. She handed them an envelope with 100JD for each of them.
The two sisters hugged each other. "We should give it to someone who really needs it," Reem said. "I mean, it's not really ours, is it?"