An interesting tale and a nicely balanced piece. It was lovely to see that Harriet appreciated the value of her mother's necklace as much as Melusina saw value in items of sentimental value. I would have loved to have seen more development of the relationship between Harriet and her mother and Harriet and Mrs Madeline. More show and less tell. I think this would have provided greater context and more insight into the importance of pastry to Harriet, and the nature of her relationship with her mother, and hence the high sentimental value placed on her mother's necklace. Another thing that would elevate your story it is if you ran it through a grammar checker to correct the punctuation in the piece. Commas have very specific purposes in literature and a grammar checker would help you to identify where they are being misused and how to make correct use of them in your pieces going forward. Have you tried creating your drafts in Google docs or using Grammarly to check your work?

In fiction writing, the convention is also to write numbers as text rather than numerals, and not to abbreviate thousands to k.

Thank you for writing in the Ink Well. We look forward to your next story.