The Unlikely Life of Maisie Meadows. Jenni Keer
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this than she ever did from alphabetizing a bookcase or ironing the bed linen.
Pulling her long hair back into a ponytail and placing a one-and-a-half-metre-square board in the centre of the room, she grabbed a tube of vivid violet acrylic paint, took a deep breath, focused, and with a ferocious sweep of the arm sprayed a satisfying run of paint across both board and floor.
It felt amazing.
As she added to her creation, grabbing more tubes and squirting them just as wildly, a glorious array of colours emerged on the floor before her. The greens and purples seeped into one another, wild and untamed, and her heartbeat began to accelerate.
She flicked on her iPod and the docking station speakers pumped loud rock music into the room. A further frenetic burst of activity followed; dripping and smudging, flicking and scraping. A damp rag in her left hand was used to wipe clean the brushes and spatulas and, as she reached the crescendo with a forceful thumbprint on the bottom right-hand corner, her hands.
If the resulting mess hadn’t been such a rainbow of colours, the room would have resembled a horrific and brutal murder scene. Daubs of true ochre were on her cheek and spatters of black plum had caught the skirting board. (She’d promised the landlord this room would be totally redecorated should she leave, but then he was so delighted with what she’d done to neaten up the tiny garden that he hadn’t made a fuss about her messy pastime.)
Now that, she thought to herself, was intensely satisfying. Although the paints had very little odour, she walked over to open the window and let in some fresh air. Her abandoned mobile buzzed and her brother’s name flashed up.
‘Benjamin Meadows. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’ she said, running the back of her hand across her sweaty brow and inadvertently streaking herself with pistachio mint.
‘Sis …’ Whilst not everyone could be as verbose as Johnny, her brother rather took it to the other extreme.
At thirty-three, he was the perennial teenager who’d ambled through life with minimum effort. He didn’t have far-reaching ambitions or crave great wealth. He was happy with a Beef and Tomato King Pot Noodle and a four-pack. Luckily for him, his high-school band had picked up a few gigs as he’d drifted through sixth form and things took off unexpectedly. In their heyday, they’d even opened for Quo and were consistently massive in Bulgaria. Although perhaps not to Ed Sheeran proportions, for the last fifteen years it had earned him a moderate living. Consequently, he’d never had to attend a formal interview in his life and had bypassed the need to get to grips with the structure of a proper sentence.
‘How’s the tour?’ she said, to kick-start the conversation.
‘Good.’ There was a pause. ‘Mum said you’d given Gareth the heave-ho?’
Maisie was one of the few people who understood that below Ben’s thick veneer of not giving a flying ferret about the world, beat the heart of a man who noticed things – little things. She wouldn’t hear from him for weeks at a time, but when there was cause for concern or even celebration (like the bunch of flowers that arrived the day after she got her A-level results), he came through for her. It was often under false pretences, as if he couldn’t bear anyone to know how much he cared, but it was apparent to Maisie now he was checking in to see if she was okay after Mr Two-Timing Pants had betrayed her.
‘I felt hurt at the time but he wasn’t right for me – I see that now. I trusted him. I gave my heart to him. And he stabbed it with a pickle fork. Fundamentally, I think—’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t need the gory details or to talk emotions and stuff. Just checking you don’t want me to thump him for you.’ From across the Channel, it would have to be one hell of a left hook. ‘So, up to much?’ He’d satisfied himself she wasn’t about to launch herself off a high-rise and was making an effort at small talk, but his social skills were nanoscopic.
Maisie swallowed and looked at the paint-encrusted canvas on the floor. ‘Oh, you know me. Running the hoover around and combing the grass,’ she joked. She couldn’t possibly divulge her hobby to Ben. How could she insist washing was hung on the line in colour groups and size order, or that every pen in her desk-tidy at Gildersleeve’s was the right way up, when her spare room looked like Mr Creosote had eaten his last wafer-thin mint at her desk? She returned to the centre of the room but there was a squelching sound as her bare foot landed in a puddle of blue. ‘Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask if there’s any chance of you popping back to the UK soon? I’ve decided we need to do more family stuff together.’
He snorted down the line. ‘You ARE yanking my chain? It would be like trying to organise a social outing for a pride of lions and herd of gazelles. You can count me out.’
And as a blob of crimson red dribbled down the wall, so did Maisie’s hopes.
Maisie quickly found her auctioneering feet and began to make wholesale improvements to Gildersleeve’s. She mentioned the possibility of bringing in a mobile coffee shop to keep the bidders fed and watered but Johnny was one step ahead. Planning permission for a small café at the end of the car park was already in place and work was due to start in the spring.
She embarked upon a serious clean and tidy of the salerooms, an area Arthur struggled with, admitting Pam had always done the housework and it really wasn’t his forte. Once the barns were more presentable, she experimented with dressing the barn. She laid a dinner service out on a dining table that was in the sale and knew it made both lots look so much more appealing. With Arthur’s help, she dragged a sofa and two non-matching armchairs into a horseshoe, placing a glass-topped nest of tables in the middle, and arranged some ornaments on the low tables.
Johnny wandered in, clutching the digital camera, and stopped in front of the homely arrangement.
‘Oh, magnificent work, young lady. Why we did not have the perspicacity to think of such an ingenious yet simple idea, I do not know. So embarrassingly obvious now I give it thought.’ He stuck out a plump hand to shake hers vigorously.
‘I’m glad you approve,’ she said, hoping people could now envisage the items in their homes and that would increase their appeal. As an added benefit, it would improve the catalogue photos and make Gildersleeve’s look more like an upmarket antique shop and less like a bargain warehouse.
‘I do indeed, my little budding Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. Talking of which, a couple of interesting items came in late this morning and I’d like them photographed. The lot numbers are on the sheet and I’m certain you’ll whiz through them in no time,’ Johnny said. He thrust the camera at her and words such as ‘inspired’ and ‘marketing genius’ tumbled from his lips. Whizzing wasn’t the word she’d use. It took longer than you thought to take decent photographs but she was again suitably flattered so didn’t protest.
Saleroom Two was peaceful and she worked undisturbed, glad of her extra layers as the industrial oil-fired heaters struggled to keep the hangar-like space warm. There were plans afoot to update the insulation of both barns – also scheduled for the better weather – so sturdy thermal knickers and thick black tights under her smart trousers were the order of the day.
As she stood back to get a shot of an Edwardian wardrobe, she heard footsteps echo down the far end and looked across the barn to see a dark figure moving about. Letting the camera hang from her neck by the strap, and giving her hands a quick rub in an attempt to get some blood flowing back into her stiff fingers, she walked up to see if it was one of the porters. Perhaps they could help shuffle the wardrobe forward into the light. She was toying with hanging a Nineteen-Fifties faux fur coat inside and taking the photo with the door ajar, to give it a Narnia-esque appeal.
An unshaven young man, wearing a thick-knit striped woolly hat, and a shabby camel-coloured duffel coat, was behind the glass cabinet. Johnny had left it unlocked as she needed access to a couple of the lots.
‘Excuse