The Unlikely Life of Maisie Meadows

by Jenni Keer

  Any hopes Maisie had to see Lisa in the immediate future were dashed. There was a glugging sound as her sister topped up a glass at the other end and Maisie consoled herself with the fact it wasn’t an outright no. Perhaps she could travel up to York and pay her sister a visit. After all, if the mountain wouldn’t come to the bosom of the family, the family could catch a train up to her.

  ‘So – how are things at the antique shop?’ Lisa asked, followed by a slurp.

  ‘Auction house.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  Although a large number of antiques went through their hands, Gildersleeve’s was about so much more. They had an enormous yard, for a start, a concrete space behind the two barns where an open-air auction was held for larger items, like timber and architectural salvage. And Saleroom One was practically a huge charity shop full of household paraphernalia and unwanted domestic appliances. You could hardly describe a second-hand toaster as antique. But even if she took the trouble to explain to Lisa, her sister would forget. It wasn’t something she needed to remember, like when the new season of Love Island was starting, so she invariably switched off.

  ‘I’m finding my feet but I love it. Although, after assaulting one of the managers by mistake I’m lucky to still have a job.’ And she told her sister about her run-in with Theo.

  ‘Ooo. Young? Single? Sexy?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘Five or six years older than me, definitely not single but, yeah, sexy in a Robinson Crusoe kind of way.’

  She could appreciate Theo was attractive even if he was unavailable. In fact, if she was honest, she was torn between the massive disappointment that she wasn’t on his carnal radar, and relief that there would be no boss-employee romantic shenanigans after the Wickerman’s fiasco.

  ‘Shame. Mum told me Gareth turned out to be a non-starter. Actually, that’s not true. She said he was a rotten two-timing git, just like our father, who deserved to have his genitals severed from his body and run up a flagpole to see if anyone would salute them. Then she cried a bit and said she hoped she hadn’t passed on the genetic predisposition to attract skirt-chasers to you. Skirt-chasers? I mean, where does she get her expressions from?’

  That sounded like their mother. The poor woman simply couldn’t let go of the hurt, but it was hard not to smile at some of her more imaginative plans for revenge.

  There were a couple of hearty slurps and then Lisa said, ‘Men can be such pigs.’

  ‘I’m over it now,’ Maisie said, because working at Gildersleeve’s had reminded her there were plenty of decent people about. She’d been unlucky and Gareth was an idiot. ‘It’s having company in the evenings I miss the most. You know? Someone to talk to when—’ She was about to offload to her sister when Lisa cut in.

  ‘Great, don’t let the bastards get you down. Anyway, gotta go. Heading out shortly to try my hand at speed-dating. Never done it before but sounds like it might be a laugh.’ For a woman in her mid-thirties, Lisa certainly lived life to the full, with an almost teenage air about her lifestyle. In their different ways, Ben and Lisa had clung on to the blind optimism and unaccountability of youth and Maisie was slightly jealous. ‘Then I’ll hit the bars and work my way through a few of bottles of Prosecco with the girls. It’s been an exhausting week but the party never stops.’

  Maisie wished she had a fraction of the social life her sister did but consoled herself with the knowledge she had an immaculate, chocolate-box house – albeit rented. Shame she didn’t have more people round to appreciate her top-notch domestic skills. Lisa might have bombed academically but there was no denying she’d soared professionally. Whatever it was Lisa actually did, she was moving in exalted media circles and every member of the Meadows family was proud of her.

  ‘Yes, I need to make a move.’ Maisie looked anxiously at her dashboard clock, as being late was not something she allowed herself to do. She didn’t elaborate on her agenda, however, as Lisa wouldn’t be quite as dazzled by her plans to spend her Saturday evening hanging out with octogenarians and drinking tea.

  A week later and Maisie felt she’d undergone a second settling-in period at work. Just when she’d got things at Gildersleeve’s sussed, a new staff member had been thrown into the mix. Johnny conveniently forgot to mention she’d have to defer to Theo as well and she felt uneasy that the pair of them might be discussing her performance together at home of an evening.

  ‘Excuse me, Maisie,’ Arthur said, knocking respectfully on the office door, even though it was wide open. The week had seen the whole spectrum of weather from wet and windy to dry and crisp – sometimes within the space of minutes, but at that moment bright sunshine was forcing its way into the dim room, shooting a heavenly beam of light down to spotlight Johnny’s desk where she was sitting with her boss.

  ‘I know you’re terribly busy and whatever you’re doing is probably far more important and urgent than my silly prattling, but I wondered if you’d got a minute?’ Which invariably meant fifteen, bless him.

  She’d actually spent the last hour teaching Johnny how to use his smartphone and done barely any productive work all morning – whilst important to Johnny, it hadn’t diminished her ever-increasing workload. He insisted that if Theo consistently refused to grasp the internet nettle, he would be the one to rise to the challenge. Like a kitten in a wool shop, he was positively bouncing about in his chair when he realised the tiny rectangle of glass and metal did so much more than make phone calls. Between them they’d installed a selection of apps – news, weather, banking – he’d even insisted she set him up on Facebook. Johnny was delighted, although his sausage-sized fingers struggled with the minuscule keyboard.

  ‘Of course, Arthur. I’ve fried Johnny’s brain sufficiently for today. What can I do for you?’

  ‘It’s more a case of what I can do for you. At least, I hope I’m doing you a service. I spotted some cups and saucers that looked rather like that curious teapot you bought the other week. I know how delighted you were with the purchase and wondered if you’d seen them. It’s amongst the lots from a house clearance Johnny did a couple of weeks ago – some old dear that’s gone into a care home. And I thought perhaps you’d be interested?’

  ‘Really?’ There was a slight quickening of her heart and a flutter in her throat. ‘I’d love to take a look. Thanks, Arthur.’ Maisie handed Johnny his phone and slid her chair out from his desk. The biggest grin spread across Arthur’s face.

  ‘You want to look now?’

  ‘If it’s convenient?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m not busy but I rather thought you would be. I know you important office staff always have deadlines and targets and spreadsheets to, erm … spread out. I didn’t intend to take you from your work.’

  As they walked through the front office, Maisie tried to make eye contact with Ella again but she turned her head and started scribbling away in a notebook. She didn’t take it personally. Ella didn’t talk to anyone unless she had to – and instead glided around the office like a silent, pale and beautiful ghost.

  As Maisie stepped outside the reception, Arthur pointed out a tiny patch of snowdrops under the gnarly sweet chestnut that stood at the edge of the car park.

  ‘I’m always cheered when the first blooms of the year appear,’ he said.

  Although pretty in their way, they were too delicate and colourless for Maisie. ‘It’s the vibrant purple crocuses, the bright orange centres of the daffodils and smudges of yellow primroses I adore most,’ she said. ‘Brightening up those gloomy areas and damp, dark spaces winter has overpowered.’

  Colour was everything, even though she’d bitten back this passion when executing her home décor. One simply did not paint rainbows of colour across the walls of a room – far too uncontrolled. Although her landlord was generally delighted with her requests to redecorate, a full-height mural of random shapes, paint dribbles and brilliant colours might be pushing it.

  ‘Yes.’ Arthur paused, seemingly and unusually lost for words. ‘I’m partial to primroses
too.’

  They walked into Saleroom One and came across Theo hanging pictures from the long steel pole running along the back wall. Last week it had been put to good use displaying a small selection of Turkish rugs. He put down the framed print he was holding.

  ‘I’m not stealing it. Don’t hit me. Or pelt me with sexually deviant gnomes.’ He put up his arms and cowered as if Maisie was about to attack him. She put her hands on her hips, tipped her head to one side and out-stared him.

  ‘Very funny, I’m sure, but I genuinely thought you were stealing from the cabinet the other day.’

  ‘Chill, I’m teasing. I’m not used to women throwing themselves at me. It was fun.’ Hmm, was that an invitation? She was tempted. And then maybe afterwards she could offer to run the iron over his clothes and sew up the rip on the cuff of his shirt. ‘Although, as well as assaulting staff members, I see you’ve been playing dolls’ houses with my salerooms,’ he said, over his shoulder.

  ‘What?’ She was confused.

  ‘Getting out the dinner services and laying the table? Filling up bookshelves with rows of books? Shall we make the beds up and tuck a teddy in between the covers?’

  ‘Sorry. I thought …’

  ‘Don’t look so worried.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m teasing. Again. Let’s see if it makes a difference.’ He sloped off to a table of household electricals on the other side of the barn, exaggerating the limp and throwing a pained look back to gauge her reaction, but the joke was no longer funny.

  ‘It was here somewhere.’ Arthur was tugging out boxes and scratching his thinning hair. ‘Aha! Thought I was going senile there for a moment. I saw the cup nestling on the top of the box and thought to myself young Maisie fell in love with a similar teapot. I might be wrong, I usually am, but I thought it was worth mentioning.’

  ‘Thank you, Arthur. It’s clever of you to remember.’

  She walked over to the box at his feet, and there, in amongst some heavy Denby plates and a couple of cut glass vases, was a teacup that perfectly matched the black and white almost-jigsaw scribbles of her teapot. She’d felt tingly following him up the aisle but assumed it was the anticipation of a potential match giving her goose bumps. Now she wasn’t so sure. She bent down and lifted out the cup, which she was surprised to find was painted black inside.

  ‘There’s more in there. I’m sure of it. I didn’t like to poke about too much because I’d probably break something. I’m such a clumsy old bugger. But I definitely spied a saucer or two.’

  Three cups, two with black interiors and one with white, and three matching saucers were located. Excited by the find, Maisie tried to hide her disappointment it was an odd number of cups, the others doubtless broken over time. Odd numbers sat uneasily with her and her need for order.

  ‘Well done, Arthur. A perfect match. Fancy you remembering.’ She smiled up at him as she slid the box and its contents back under the trestle table. Arthur puffed out his chest and grinned. ‘I’ll place another written bid and, if I get them, how about you come over one Saturday afternoon and road test them with me?’ A written bid was a safer bet than attending the auction again. Not only was she rushed off her feet with the website now but she didn’t want to end up accidentally bidding for a lifetime’s collection of plastic dinosaurs, a trailer-load of poultry incubators or more stupid X-rated gnomes.

  As she made the offer, Theo looked up from a battered leather suitcase of old photographs he was cataloguing. He studied her face intently for a moment or two and she caught his eye, before his gaze returned to the task in hand. How could a look from her out-of-reach boss so casually flip the trip switch to her dormant erogenous zones?

  ‘You mean come around for a cup of tea?’ Arthur asked, his inflection indicating his disbelief.

  ‘Sorry, perhaps that was a bit presumptuous of me.’ She tore her eyes from Theo and returned her attention to the conversation.

  ‘No, no, I’d love to. Pam’s always saying I need to get out more to make up for the fact she can’t. I’m generally busy pottering about, fixing stuff at the weekends and getting a bit of shopping in, but I could pop by on my way into town.’

  They agreed a day and Maisie turned back to the box containing the teacups, trying to ignore the weird sensation dancing up her arms.

  They’re coming back to me, she thought. Meredith said this would happen.

  Chapter 13

  Maisie’s mother had been to see a solicitor. It was two months since she’d discovered her husband’s lads’ weekend away had actually involved a lass. The shock had now subsided enough to spur her into action and things were moving quickly.

  ‘What with all the stress and then bumping into him in town, I don’t mind telling you I’ve been weeping swimming pools-full, never mind buckets. So I thought I’d pop by for one of your cuppas, Meredith. Don’t know what blend you use but it’s incredibly calming.’

  ‘It’s just supermarket tea,’ her neighbour replied.

  ‘I bet it’s the magical-ness of the teapot,’ Maisie said, looking up from her jigsaw puzzle.

  ‘I’m not so sure. I think a good old cup of tea has merely worked its way into the psyche of the British people,’ Meredith said. ‘There’s a placebo effect at work. We think a cup of tea will solve everything and so it invariably does. I’m fairly certain tea got the British population through two World Wars and the Thatcher years.’

  Meredith handed Maisie’s mum a dainty cup with matching saucer and Maisie a plastic tumbler of weak orange squash. Maisie didn’t mind because the old lady always had an exciting biscuit tin to make up for the blandness of the drink. Would it be sponge fingers, with one side coated in glorious granulated sugar, pink wafers that dissolved in your mouth, or sticky Jammie Dodgers with jam so thick and solid it was impossible to pull the two biscuit sides apart without serious crumblage? She peered in the tin and helped herself to four chocolate chip cookies, tilting her body so her mother couldn’t see, and returned to the floor to look for more pieces of edge.

  ‘He was with that … that woman. In public. All bosoms and low-cut tops. I should have known – he was never short of female admirers. I used to think how lucky I was he’d chosen me. He was such a good-looking man, with those perfect teeth and twinkly eyes …’

  A quiet child, as it wasn’t worth trying to compete with the general level of noise in the household, Maisie was often forgotten and consequently privy to many inappropriate conversations. She sat silently in the corner or tucked herself behind the sofa and learned far more about life than many children her age. Only the other day she’d been colouring in butterflies under the dining room table and overheard Lisa talking about doing stuff with her boyfriend in the back of his Fiesta. The ‘stuff’ wasn’t specified but Lisa’s friend got very excited about the announcement they’d got the third base. Maisie knew about Ben smoking weeds (was that dandelions? Stinging nettles? Or that stupid sticky stuff that clung to your clothes like Velcro?) and her mother’s anxiety over flushing hot things and lots of early men on pause.

  Maisie was the forgotten child, watching from the wings, absorbing the atmosphere and listening as rowdy voices carried up the stairs or doors slammed – all the time wondering why everyone was so unpleasant and shouty. And then she would close her bedroom door – assuming Zoe wasn’t sprawled across one of the twin beds, headphones on indicating she was off-limits for conversation – and play with her Sylvanian Family to reassure herself this was how it was supposed to be. They never threw their Sony Walkmans across the bedroom, burst into tears for absolutely no reason or slammed down the remote control, storming out the house saying ‘the oestrogen levels in this house are suffocating’. And Mummy Cottontail rabbit would never launch Daddy Cottontail’s belongings out the window of Rose Cottage and make him live somewhere else.

  ‘Little ears,’ reminded Meredith, and Maisie’s mum glanced across at Maisie, having momentarily forgotten her youngest daughter was with them. ‘Don’t let your tea get cold, Bev.’

 
Meredith returned the teapot to the tray, pulled the suction lid from a metal biscuit tin decorated with a Victorian ice-skating scene and offered it to Maisie again as her four cookies had mysteriously disappeared … She abandoned her puzzle and skipped across to see what other exciting treats lay within. Bourbons – yummy. Unlike the Jammie Dodgers, these would pull apart and she could lick all the chocolaty scrumminess off before devouring the crunchy biscuit bits.

  ‘You know you said your mummy split up the tea set between your sisters?’ Maisie asked her elderly neighbour, thinking of her Sylvanian families. The Cottontail family had a miniature tea set that was made of actual, real china. All the pieces were white, and every single cup and saucer was carefully returned to the miniature dresser after she’d finished playing. Since Daddy had moved out, she’d become obsessed with keeping things together.

  ‘Yes.’ Meredith settled into her dark green velvet easy chair.

  ‘Can’t you just put it all back together again?’ Maisie paused to lick her Bourbon and then scrunched up her face. ‘Ask your sisters for the cups and saucers back and have it all in your house? It’s what your granny wanted.’

  ‘If only it was that simple, but you know what sisters are like.’ Meredith rolled her eyes and gave Maisie a conspiratorial smile. ‘They’d rather force down the last cream bun and make themselves sick than share with a sibling. Besides,’ she continued, ‘Gamma used to say it was the sort of tea set that would always find its way to the right person and I spent so many years hoping that person was me. I asked my sisters from time to time if they were willing to part with their pieces but Essie wanted to pass her cups down to her own children, not that she had any in the end, and Irene took great pleasure in announcing she’d given them away. So I guess it wasn’t meant to be.’

  Maisie felt for the old lady. It was horrid when you couldn’t get things to stay together. And, yes, she understood all too well that sisters – especially big ones – could be mean and uncooperative.