The Unlikely Life of Maisie Meadows. Jenni Keer
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drawer of a roll-top desk.’
‘And is there, ever?’ she asked. ‘A hidden gem that turns around the fortunes of the family?’
‘Closest we ever came was a little Constable sketch. Fetched thousands. The family were so delighted they quite forgot to grieve.’ He winked and slid a gold pocket watch from the pocket of his waistcoat and glanced at it. ‘But I must away – the traffic can be such a bore.’ He tugged on an outsized dark blue Barbour wax jacket, flung the tasselled end of a banana-yellow silk scarf over his shoulder and floated towards the door like an enormous and colourful hot air balloon.
‘And you’re still okay with me rearranging things, to get them looking their best?’ Maisie asked. She’d been itching to play about with the salerooms and put her marketing experience into practice, but was conscious of overstepping the mark.
‘Absolutely, dah-ling. I told you at the interview, you have carte blanche. We are so terribly behind the times. It’s why you got the job. I knew deep in my very soul you would be the restorative tonic this business needs.’
Heaving back the huge door to the first saleroom, Maisie squinted to adjust to the dim interior. The day was sunny and bright but, typical of February, the underlying temperatures were colder than the bottom drawer of a freezer in the Arctic. There was a dusty smell, not unpleasant and reminiscent of old hymn books, the church feel accentuated by the loftiness of the barn ceiling and bare walls. Her eyes took a while to adjust to the darkness and then she walked over to the light switches, allowing the artificial blue-white light to invade the space.
Remembering her lesson from Johnny on how to handle the items (ironically, not by the handle) she took several photographs, marking each item off on the sheet as she did so.
She was halfway down the second aisle when a shiver of something rippled through her. The sensation came upon her so decidedly that she almost stopped mid-step. Her skin danced as a thousand tiny pinpricks exploded over her arms. It was a feeling she’d experienced many years before and one she’d all but forgotten about. Bending down, she pulled out a box of household objects from under a trestle table, the prickles moving up her arms like an army of inchworms. As she rifled through the mismatched saucers and dated kitchen paraphernalia, something at the bottom caught her eye and her heart gave a funny little jolt of recognition. It was a teapot, nestled between a yellow plastic colander and a cake tin – and one that was startlingly familiar.
Kneeling on the cold concrete floor, she carefully lifted out the surrounding contents. With one hand about the body of the teapot and the other keeping the lid secure, she placed it on the trestle table and sat back on her heels.
The china was white but the bold abstract pattern was in black, and it was a good size for a teapot, possibly holding five or six cups of tea. The squiggles and shapes that covered one side and crept over the lid were like jigsaw puzzle pieces, but not quite. And then sections of the pattern tailed off down and round to the predominantly white side – as if pieces of the pattern were drifting away from the whole.
Her heart was beating like Ben’s thudding kick drum. She knew this teapot of old – she was damn sure of it. There was nothing else in the box that matched it – no china that would imply it was part of a set. But then the one she remembered from her childhood had also been a solitary item. Long-forgotten words floated into her brain – words the owner of the teapot had said to her all those years ago, and her heart began a slow tattoo.
‘It isn’t a set any more and my darling teapot so misses her companions.’
How strange that Meredith Mayhew’s teapot should come up for auction and Maisie should stumble across it. No, strange wasn’t the word; it was disconcerting. Memories flooded back as her thumb traced the pattern around the pot and up the handle. Although not unhappy memories, they sat uncomfortably with her because they took her back to a troubled time in her life nearly twenty years ago …
Meredith Mayhew had lived next door for as long as Maisie could remember. A funny old dear with tortoiseshell cat-eye glasses either perched on her elegant nose or on her aluminium-coloured shampoo-and-set hair. She always had a neatly pressed collar on her polyester print dress or floral cotton blouse, and there was invariably a string of beads hanging under the collar and around her neck. Sometimes jet black like small, shiny olives; sometimes bright red like ripe cranberries; occasionally, on high days and holidays, iridescent pearls. And, like many older ladies of Maisie’s acquaintance, she always smelled of Parma Violets and talcum powder.
There were several years of exchanged pleasantries over the garden fence between Meredith and her mother, often as Maisie tumbled cartwheels across the lawn, or sat cross-legged, threading daisy stems together to make chains whilst her mother hung out a never-ending line of cotton tops, branded jeans and more odd socks than she had pegs for. (How is that growing family of yours doing? Oh, you know. Eating me out of house and home. Cue an eye-roll and a flustered expression. You’re always welcome to pop in for a cup of tea. If only I had the time, Meredith, but I never get so much as five minutes to myself …)
All this changed on a blustery morning in April, as the scampering wind scraped the branches of an overgrown buddleia across the wall outside her bedroom window, even though the day was bright and inviting. A seven-year-old Maisie woke to Zoe perched on the edge of the twin bed, headphones on and staring straight ahead. Competing with the buffeting wind from outside was the sound of someone pummelling on the front door.
‘Come on, Bev. Be reasonable.’ The voice was pleady and distant.
‘I’ll give you sodding reasonable,’ her mother’s voice shrieked from the hall. Bleary-eyed and half-asleep, Maisie stumbled out of her bedroom to witness her irate mother launching a brown leather shoe out the landing window – three black sacks of clothes and books at her slippered feet.
‘Owww. That got me across the shoulder. Look what you’re doing, woman.’ Her dad’s troubled voice floated in through the open window and across to a bemused Maisie. What was Daddy doing on the outside?
‘It was meant to land smack bang across your lying, cheating mouth and break a few of those perfect teeth of yours,’ her mother yelled, pulling back a Russian shot putter’s arm, pausing to take considered aim, and launching its companion on a similar trajectory. Open-mouthed, Maisie watched as her mother heaved up one of the sacks and tipped the contents out the window, giving the bag a final shake, before it was caught by a gust of wind and carried into the stratosphere.
‘And I’m changing the locks. You’ll have to find somewhere else to live because you aren’t welcome here any longer.’
‘Why does Daddy have to live somewhere else?’ Still in her Hello Kitty pyjamas, Maisie returned to her bedroom to ask Zoe what the confusing scene was all about – it was Saturday so neither Lisa nor Ben would surface until the afternoon. Zoe wasn’t quite a teenager like her older siblings but she was at high school so practically a grown-up. She kissed boys and everything.
‘He’s got this … friend that Mummy doesn’t like. In fact, she’s only just found out about her. But it’s complicated,’ Zoe sighed.
Maisie thought about this for a moment and her eyes expanded as she processed the information and its consequences. Inwardly, she resolved to steer clear of that new girl in her class. All showy-offy and sly. Mummy wouldn’t like her at all.
The verbal warfare continued through the open window as her mother stomped backwards and forwards along the landing, scouring the house to seek out all vestiges of her husband. The lawn was now a colourful and abstract display of one man’s possessions as the owner chased loose sheets of paper across lawns and pavements. Amused neighbours gathered at the edges of their gardens, intrigued by the spectacle, as he repeatedly begged his wife to let him in.
But the lady was not for turning. Her father eventually scraped together his scattered belongings from the front lawn and drove off in his company