by Jenni Keer
‘I’m sorry,’ Maisie said.
‘No good in you apologising. It weren’t your fault. Strange looking back on it all now though. Meredith was engaged, Philly had just met that bastard husband of hers, and poor old Cynth …’ Her voice trailed off, as tears threatened to bubble over.
‘Thought I’d escaped it all. Renting a nice little flat in Camden with a girlfriend after this guy swore I would be the next Twiggy – she was nice, by the way, but my legs were better than hers,’ Irene said as an aside. ‘Starved myself like a sodding refugee but the fags took the edge off and, of course, everyone was smoking back then. Parties every night and the men clamouring to buy you a drink. Ha, should’ve known it was too good to last. Then this happened.’ She reached for her scar. ‘Agency dropped me like a scalding hot potato and I had to come crawling home. Boys weren’t so quick to buy me a drink when I looked like a battered wife …’
Not that the scar was horrific but Maisie understood why it had seen the end of Irene’s modelling ambitions.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. What else could you say to someone lamenting an unfulfilled and disappointing life?
‘Yeah, well, when you’re promised the moon and you just end up with a sodding candle, you’re gonna wander down a few dark alleys …’ She paused for a moment. Possibly to consider the twists and turns of her sad life.
‘So …’ Maisie took a deep breath. ‘… I was hoping you could put me in touch with your sisters so I could try to gather Meredith’s … or Verity’s set together again? It’s something I want to do for her even though she’s not here to appreciate it.’ The guilt of not contacting her neighbour since moving away was weighing heavily on her shoulders.
‘I can give you a number for Essie. Not sure I’ve got a contact for Joanie because we haven’t spoken in donkey’s years. Funny really, you expect twins to be thick as thieves but we never were. Opposites, you see? I was the one putting it about like a trollop, reckoning I was about to be the next big thing on the catwalk and glad to escape this rural hellhole. And Joanie was the quiet one – the stay at home, butter wouldn’t melt, daren’t even make eye contact with a boy kinda gal. But who got herself up the duff out of wedlock?’ She cackled. ‘Not sure Mother ever forgave her for that.’
‘And the remaining two?’ Maisie prompted. With her mother telling her all the sisters were within the county, even a surname or idea of their last known location would be helpful.
‘Ha, good luck with that,’ Irene snorted. ‘Poor old Cynth, after years of carting her poo around in a bag and outliving all the doctors’ predictions, went just after the new millennium started, and our Phyll went the year before last.’
As Maisie digested the news that the oldest three Mayhew sisters had passed away, she realised reuniting the set wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d hoped.
Chapter 19
Unlike Maisie’s mother, who often popped in on the off-chance, Maisie’s dad usually met up with his children in locations where he was unlikely to bump into his rampaging ex-wife – presumably to avoid any unpleasant confrontations and the potential loss of his dangly bits. Her mum had form when it came to her dad, especially if he was flaunting a new paramour about town. Maisie recalled her mother’s embarrassing announcement via the Tannoy of a large department store asking David Meadows to report to customer services as Lydia (his then girlfriend) needed a grown-up to collect her. And her advert in the local paper: For Sale – one really used husband. Unreliable, needs constant servicing. Several careless owners – where her mother listed his mobile number. If she’d had access to his curtains in the aftermath of the divorce, she would have sewn prawns into the hems.
On this occasion, Maisie’s dad offered to shout his youngest daughter lunch at a quaint pub just outside Bury St Edmunds; all low beams, open fireplaces and, much to Maisie’s horror, an enormous dribbling dog wandering loose in the bar area.
‘How’s Donna?’ Maisie asked, as her dad broke into one of his glorious smiles that made you feel you were the most important person in the world. A slightly stale beer smell hung in the air and the not unpleasant aroma of chip fat drifted from the pub kitchen. With a crackling open fire occasionally spitting out embers onto the hearth, it was the perfect Sunday lunch venue.
‘Ah, Donna …’ He gave a ten-thousand-kilowatt smile and a shrug. Maisie’s dad had a knack of lighting up every room like a stadium full of powerful floodlights. ‘It didn’t work out.’
No, it never did, Maisie reflected.
‘Maybe, with hindsight, she was a bit young for me. But that woman at the dry-cleaner’s keeps giving me a discount on my work suits, so I could be in there.’ He winked and his eyes twinkled like a thousand tiny stars in the heavens. She adored her dad unreservedly but was older now and wiser to his faults.
A waitress handed them menus and Maisie scanned it for something that she couldn’t produce at home. For her, the joy of eating out was a naughty chip fix because she didn’t own a deep fat fryer and oven chips were the work of the devil – on a bad day. She ordered the lasagne with chips and then sipped on her pre-dinner soda water as she hunted through her phone for pictures of her recently acquired crockery to show her dad.
She explained how these curious pieces of the long-forgotten tea set had found her again and told him of her decision to reunite it.
‘They came from the Mayhew family. Do you remember Meredith, the woman who lived next door to us in Hickory Street?’
‘Do I ever? Peering out of her net curtains and sizing me up as I walked up the drive. That woman never did like me.’
‘She probably secretly fancied you, Dad. Everyone else over the age of twelve in the neighbourhood did.’ Maisie didn’t add that as she got older this included half the girls in her class. Joking about it now was manageable but she’d struggled when her pre-pubescent cluster of friends constantly probed her for information about her film-star-looks dad. The urban dictionary definition of dilf was uncomfortably close to home.
‘You’ve either got it or you haven’t.’ He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward to help himself to an olive. ‘Problem is, when you start to lose it, you wonder if you abused it when the going was good.’ He ran his hand through greying hair and Maisie let his last statement hang in the air for him to have a jolly good think about. Better late than never.
‘So how are you going to hunt down the crockery, Sherlock? Can you get divining sticks for teacups? Walk up and down the streets of Tattlesham until they flick together and then go and knock on the nearest door?’
Given the inexplicable prickles she got whenever she came near the set, he might not be that wide of the mark.
‘I’ve got some leads. It was split between Meredith and her sisters and it just so happens one of those sisters, Irene, has moved into Willow Tree House.’
‘One of the sexiest women I ever met,’ he said, looking wistfully across at the blazing fire.
‘Irene?’ Maisie squeaked. Blimey, he really was feeling his age and adjusting his potential girlfriend demographic.
‘No – your mother.’ David Meadows’ train of thought having gone to another station when she mentioned the care home.
‘She was saying similar things about you when I saw her last,’ Maisie said, being creative with the truth and seizing an opportunity to encourage future reconciliations.
Her dad looked thoughtful, rubbing his chin with his hand. ‘They were happy years,’ he said. ‘I did love your mum but perhaps not in the ways she wanted me to. And somehow I always felt I wasn’t enough.’
The waitress reappeared with their meals and Maisie’s tummy rumbled as they were placed on the table. Mouth-watering aromas swirled about in the rising steam.
‘Surely enough turbulent water has passed under the dilapidated bridge now? Can’t you at least be friends?’ She stuck her knife into the pasta sheets and a rich, red sauce oozed out. She was hungrier than she thought. ‘What’s going to happen if one of your children gets married? I don
’t think we can pull off two weddings in quite the same way as we manage to repeat Christmas Day for the benefit of everyone.’
‘It’s your mother, not me. It’s been nearly twenty years; she should be over it by now. I think you’ll find she’s the one who’s built a solid concrete dam to stop a single droplet of water flowing under any bridges I’ve tried to erect.’
‘So, in theory, if she softened, you’d be okay with seeing her again?’ The biggest roadblock to achieving a family Christmas was the point-blank refusal of either parent to be in the same hemisphere – never mind room. Maybe if she sowed the seeds now and nurtured them carefully over the coming months, some sort of truce could be reached.
Instead of answering the question directly, he took a slight detour. ‘Highly emotional woman, your mother. When we first fell in love, she loved me with her whole heart, and I suppose I found that suffocating. But when things weren’t so rosy, she embraced those emotions equally fervently. I often wonder if she was the one that got away …’ he said, those amazing eyes of his temporarily losing their luminescence.
Maisie shuffled forward and tried not to look too hopeful.
There was a long pause as he fiddled with his cufflinks, picked up his cutlery and subtly changed the subject. ‘And you’re okay for money? You know, after the change of job?’ For all his faults, he’d always been a generous man. Consistently one of the highest earning pharmaceutical reps in the country, he had a healthy wage and a sizeable bonus. It paid for his comfortable home life, subsidised his alarmingly expensive love life and meant his kids had never gone without.
‘I’m fine, Dad.’
‘You never did tell me what happened to make the brewery job end so suddenly. I thought you’d got yourself a lifelong career there.’ He wrinkled up his nose. ‘I miss your staff perks. Wickerman’s Festival Porter is one of my all-time favourite beers.’
‘I needed a change,’ she simply said, because answering that her boss was a cheating, can’t keep it in his pants, double-crossing flirt to her father would be awkward.
Chapter 20
‘Why the glum faces?’ Maisie asked, coming through from the back office and perching on the edge of the reception desk. Everyone was clustered together and facing the large front window.
‘Have you seen the weather outside, dah-ling? It’s positively biblical. Makes it so much harder for us to take the deliveries in and plays merry hell with the lots in The Yard. Arthur went terribly country bumpkin on me earlier, told me “when chimney smoke descends, the nice weather ends” so a storm was on its way.’ Johnny rolled his eyes. ‘I used that weather app you helped me install and he was only inexplicably correct. All those highly polished mahogany table tops and boxes of paperbacks – not compatible with a deluge of epic proportions.’
‘He means they don’t like getting wet,’ Theo explained and rolled his eyes. ‘It’s always a pain taking in lots for the outside auction when the weather is bad. Wood and water do not mix.’
Not having a view from the back office, and with it being consistently dark in that room, she hadn’t noticed the sudden change in the weather but now she could hear the rain beating against the large glass windows and see the ominous sky.
‘I’m sure we can come up with a solution. Anyone got some big golfing umbrellas? I might have one in the boot of my car,’ she suggested, bouncing over to the window.
‘Ah, a ray of sunshine on a gloomy day,’ Theo said, that wonky smile on his lips.
‘Ha – I’m no Mary Poppins, despite my brolly ownership,’ Maisie said, knowing it was her work environment making her so upbeat. The other day they’d taken delivery of a coffin and, despite the sombre nature of the lot, there had been a jovial air about the saleroom and an ensuing bidding frenzy – Johnny convinced he’d got a saleroom of closet (or should that be coffin?) vampires. In the end, it went to a middle-aged Goth who announced it would be transformed into a coffee table. How could you fail to be cheered by such amusing interludes? ‘Let me see if the brolly is still there from last weekend.’
As she said this, Arthur trudged past in a bright yellow sou’wester with matching waterproof jacket and galoshes.
‘What is the temerarious fool up to now?’ exclaimed Johnny. ‘Honestly, it’s like being on the set of The Perfect Storm.’
It was as if an imaginary light bulb suddenly pinged above Maisie’s head as she jumped up and snatched her phone from her pocket. ‘It’s fabulous. In fact it’s positively inspired! Now THAT’S what we need to kick-start our social media.’
‘Please tell me you do not have plans to Twitter Arthur wearing that ensemble?’ Johnny asked.
‘That’s exactly the plan,’ and she swept out the main door and into a sheet of driving rain, calling Arthur’s name, catching up with him out in The Yard as he heaved a rusty cast-iron garden roller across the gravel.
‘Stop right there,’ she said.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘What on earth for?’ she asked.
‘For whatever it is I’ve gone and done now. I do get in muddles and I’ve probably done something daft.’
‘You haven’t done anything wrong, Arthur. In fact, you’ve done everything right.’
‘I have?’ His wrinkled face broke out into a ten-kilowatt smile. ‘Well, now. That’d be a first, I reckon.’
Maisie raised her phone and pointed it at Arthur, ignoring the blobby drops of rain running down her face. ‘I’m going to take some photos and then with your permission, I’d like to post them online.’
‘You want to put my picture on the interweb?’ His eyes were wide and incredulous.
‘If that’s okay with you?’ For a moment, her heart slowed to a thud. This magnificent idea would be scuppered by Arthur’s perfectly legitimate refusal to participate. Theo had already made it clear he wasn’t keen on being slapped all over Facebook. Despite setting up the social media sites, engagement was still mediocre. Part of the rural mentality – slow to adapt and embrace new things, she suspected.
‘Well, that would just be dandy. Fancy – me on the web. Wait until I tell my Pam.’
Her heart lifted again and she took the picture as a bolt of lightning beautifully illuminated the dark sky overhead. Taking several shots to make sure she had a good one, she finally wiped away claggy knots of hair from her face as a deep rumble of thunder reverberated in the distance.
‘Inside, you two,’ ordered Theo, appearing from nowhere with a big spotty umbrella. ‘You are totally insane to be out here taking extreme selfies, and both far too precious to be turned into blackened and crispy human kebabs for the sake of a stupid photograph.’
He put his strong arm about her shoulders to draw her under the brolly and she felt the heat from his chest as she was squashed up against it. He did have feelings for her, she was certain. The way he held her so protectively, even if it was born of friendship, meant she genuinely mattered to him. They half-walked, half-scampered back to the offices, tumbling through the door as another bolt of lightning lit up the sky like the backdrop to a Gothic horror film.
All three shook raindrops from their bodies like hyperactive wet dogs and wiped sodden feet on the thick coir entrance mat as Ella appeared with a tray of teas. She placed it on the reception desk and floated away again. Maisie noticed Ella often did thoughtful things but went out of her way not to highlight that they were done by her. When the accounts lady had been full of cold the previous week a brand-new box of tissues had appeared on her desk. And when Arthur had ripped his jacket sleeve on a rusty nail, it had been magically repaired over lunch hour – a lunch hour when both Ella and the jacket had disappeared.
‘Thank you so much, ‘Maisie said, again trying to engage with her. ‘This will warm us up. Really considerate,’ but Ella was already head low behind the screen.
‘Join us?’ Maisie pressed and everyone in the office turned to look expectantly at Ella except Theo, who silently picked up a cup and took it over to her. She smiled a shy smile and pushed ou
t a coaster.
‘Was it worth it?’ Theo asked Maisie. ‘Nearly being struck by lightning to get a picture of old Arthur here, in his Norfolk Fisherman fancy dress?’
‘It most certainly was,’ she replied, holding up her mobile showing the image of Arthur, a jagged bolt of light caught perfectly in the background. As the rain hammered relentlessly on the doors and windows, Maisie uploaded it to their social media platforms.
And within a few moments seven likes pinged through.
By the afternoon, the weather had behaved in a typically British fashion and the sun was out, reflecting its rippled light in the countless puddles that highlighted how badly the car park needed resurfacing. There was a clean, fresh smell to the air, hints of wet soil and traces of plant oils lingering in the atmosphere. Maisie was typing away at her desk when Theo appeared and shuffled his bottom onto the corner of his own desk, nudging the detritus out of the way. She’d been surprised to discover Theo had a desk not far from hers, as it was so hidden under clutter, it had been indistinguishable.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You get a gold star.’
‘What?’
‘Ella’s just shown me our Twitter page.’ How did he manage to engage with her, when she ran like a frightened rabbit from everyone else? ‘That picture of a yellow rain-coated Arthur, with the caption about how a tiny drop of rain doesn’t stop Gildersleeve’s staff getting on with their work, with a flipping great lightning bolt behind him, has gone viral.’