by Jenni Keer
‘That’s more like it,’ Theo said, sensing a small but significant change in her mood. ‘Right, grab your bag, missus. You’re coming with me to the experience the unbridled joy that is a probate valuation.’ He pulled his faded denim jacket from the back of his chair and slung it over his shoulder.
‘I’ve got this update to finish.’
‘It can wait. I’m your boss and it’s an order.’
Gildersleeve’s was often engaged to produce a declaration of the value of someone’s estate on the date of their death – the probate valuation – for which the company charged a fee. After probate was granted, the inland revenue swooped in and collected the relevant tax. Sometimes the auction house would then be instructed to clear the property and items would end up in their sales. It was a time-consuming task and the thing that took Johnny or Theo off site the most, so Maisie was curious to see exactly what this process involved.
With one elbow sticking out the window of his vintage Ford Capri and an audio cassette of The Jam’s ‘The Eton Rifles’ thumping out of the crackly car sound system, Theo looked totally at ease. He was particularly excited about this visit, not only because it was in a glorious part-Tudor property in the middle of the Suffolk countryside, but also because the deceased gentleman concerned had run a successful antiques business for many years and had lived amongst the residue of his stock. Maisie understood that just because his personal preference was twentieth century, it didn’t mean he couldn’t get excited about the wonderful history of everything that had gone before.
‘Families, eh?’ he said, in between watching the road and turning to study her face when he thought she wasn’t looking.
‘Is it that obvious?’
‘I’ve met your sister, remember?’
‘Mmm … we’re quite different people. I’d forgotten how different until she was around me twenty-four/seven.’
‘I’m not a fan of houseguests either. You have to pretend to be all neat and stuff. Too stressful.’
Maisie put her hands to her head and rubbed ineffectually at her temples. Her problem was the exact opposite; she wasn’t the one making the mess.
‘It’s more complicated than that. I’ve lumbered myself with a hefty dose of be careful what you wish for. My mission to gather my fragmented family back together has led to repercussions I hadn’t anticipated.’ Theo looked over to her as he waited at a junction so she explained in more detail.
‘My parents divorced when I was seven and my older siblings ended up strewn across the globe. I had this grand plan to organise a reunion and it was starting to come together. Unfortunately, there are unanticipated side effects. My youngest sister has returned from Australia but her marriage is over. My parents are speaking again but it’s all too much, too soon. And Lisa has driven down from York, dumped herself on my doorstep and as lovely as it is to see her, she shows no sign of leaving. She’s crashing on the sofa and her stuff is everywhere. From the tidy house you saw on Saturday, I’m now living in a refugee camp. Honestly, I walk in and I could cry.’ Then she remembered Theo was hardly Hyacinth Bucket.
‘You stress about things too much. A coaster out of place is not going to lead to the collapse of the international stock market or speed up global warming. I bet you’re the sort of person who gets out poncy matching guest towels when someone stays, irons the bedding and plans the whole week’s menu in advance?’
Maisie looked into the foot-well and didn’t answer but noticed his smile out the corner of her eye. How could he be so relaxed all the time? It didn’t take much for him to wear that easy-going, all is good with the world face. Here he was, in a beat-up old car, listening to his favourite music and grinning from one side of his frizzy head to the other as if he’d won the lottery. Perhaps she needed to be less uptight about things that didn’t matter. Chill more. Not stress out if she accidentally stuck a stamp on the envelope upside down. Try to enjoy her time with Lisa instead of rushing around after her to reassemble the neatly ordered life that her sister was carelessly cluttering.
‘I’ve so got you pegged, lady. No wonder you look traumatised. So, if she’s on the sofa I’m guessing the Red Room of Pain is still barricaded shut? Why don’t you bung the handcuffs and whips in a cupboard and throw a dust sheet over the red leather Tally Ho chair? At least that way you can keep your sister contained.’
She refused to rise to the bait. ‘But then where would I take my lover for our nights of unbridled and risqué passion? I get ratty when I’ve gone too long without my S&M fix.’
‘Ah, yeah, forgot about him,’ Theo appeared to go along with the joke but he suddenly looked more serious and his smile slid down into his lap.
Despite the fast beat of the music, everything in the car seemed to slow to a halt as their words drifted around the interior and gave them both too much to think about. She cleared her throat and Theo appeared to give himself a mental shake. The moment passed and he found his trademark smile again.
‘You’re not going to tell me what’s behind that locked door, are you?’ he said.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘But only because you want to know so badly.’ They both chuckled and the awkward atmosphere dispersed. She looked across at this kind man, affection born of friendship, even though her erogenous zones were crying out for more, and she reconsidered. ‘Tell you what – follow me home after this and I’ll let you see inside the room.’
‘Really?’ he said, leaning forward and more animated now.
‘Really,’ she said, her stomach giving a nervous roll.
Theo changed down through the gears and turned into a quiet lane, dappled by shade from the overhead trees.
‘Hey, don’t stress about all that family stuff. Not worth it. Personally, I can’t be doing with the guilt it brings, not that my family is the size of yours. I don’t have siblings and my parents live abroad, which they have done since I was eighteen, so I don’t see them very often. They put the house on the market as soon as I went to uni.’
Maisie was horrified. ‘They just left you?’
‘It’s fine. I knew it was coming. They kinda did what they were legally obligated to do when I was little and then moved on. Don’t pull that face – it’s not like they don’t love me, but I guess I was either an inconvenient mistake or more of a responsibility than they’d bargained for. They are free spirits and me coming along put paid to their itinerant lifestyle. Let’s just say I was never the centre of their universe.’
Maisie glanced over to him as he concentrated on the road and the music switched to a Police track. Poor Theo. Not having siblings was one of those things but for your own parents to make you feel you were an inconvenience was sad. He noticed her concerned expression.
‘I was a latch-key kid as soon as I could reach the door handle,’ he said, ‘with a mother who kept disappearing to the shed to express herself through her pottery and indulging in Yoga retreats in isolated locations. My father worked away a lot, popping home occasionally to ruffle my hair – although my hair is pretty ruffle-resistant, but you know what I mean.’ Theo grinned. ‘He occasionally chucked me the odd tenner but that was pretty much the extent of his parenting skills.’
Thinking of her own childhood, Maisie realised that even though her dad wasn’t on the scene on a day-to-day basis, he was a good father. Dropping whatever he was up to and focusing on his kids when they visited, always generous with his bottomless wallet, and still being a big part of their upbringing. Even now, he was always keen to hear what was happening in their lives and offer support and advice where he could – although he was always the first to acknowledge relationships weren’t his strongest suit.
‘Mum was never one for ironing or cooking,’ Theo continued. ‘The plus side is I was more independent for my age than most of my mates. If I wanted something doing, I had to do it myself – including my laundry. Guess that’s where the odd sock thing came from. An angst-ridden thirteen-year-old doesn’t have time to pair socks.’
Was that why he was
so laid-back? He’d never had anyone on his case? And whilst he probably benefited from the enforced independence (Ben spent most of his first year away ringing up Mum in the early hours asking if he could cook chicken from frozen or how long it took to boil an egg), he also had no one looking over his shoulder, guiding him and telling him that matching socks and a clean-shaven face were a good idea every day, not just when he stumbled across two socks vaguely the same colour or a razor.
‘So you’re not a huge fan of the whole marriage and kids thing then?’ she concluded.
‘You misunderstand me. It works well for some people – my parents’ marriage is rock solid. That is almost the problem; they love each other so much they don’t need anyone else. I’m quite a fan of that particular institution myself – with the right person, of course.’
Such a shame, she reflected, as he pulled up outside a glorious L-shaped red-brick country house, she clearly wasn’t his right person.
Chapter 32
After a fascinating day at the Hall, Maisie felt her friendship with Theo had returned to the level it had been before her silly crush made her feel uncomfortable and awkward. The crush hadn’t gone anywhere, but her sensible head had returned – it always won out.
Theo complimented Maisie on her efficiency as she trailed behind him, studiously noting everything down, and they worked their way around each of the twenty-three rooms in the house (even the boot cupboard counted but then it was bigger than her bedroom). The son of the recently deceased owner kept them supplied with hot cups of tea and chocolate digestives and by the end of the day they had a complete schedule of all the items in the house.
Expecting Lisa to be lounging about at home, Maisie was surprised to find a hastily scribbled note propped up against the kettle to say she’d gone to visit their dad – doubtless having run out of money again and hoping for a top-up. Not much tidying had been done, she noticed, and she apologised to Theo for the mess.
She politely offered him a drink but he declined and she could tell he was itching to enter her spare room. Now he was metres away from her alarming compositions, she felt anxious and embarrassed. Perhaps it hadn’t been such a good idea after all. He still occasionally teased her about the gnomes; there was no way he’d let a comedy opportunity like this pass him by.
Maisie retrieved the key, turned it in the lock and swung the door inwards, watching as Theo’s eyes scanned the utter disarray before him.
‘What the fu—’
‘Don’t make me regret bringing you up here,’ she warned.
‘Sorry.’ He looked abashed.
Before them was strewn a clutter of colour and mess: huge six-foot canvases leaning against paint-spattered walls, the floor covered in swathes of plastic sheeting, rows of acrylic paint tubes neatly laid across high shelving – the only ordered aspect of the space. Drippy tins stood around the edge of the floor and a mop and bucket were propped up in the far corner.
‘Blimey, woman. I really want to say this is a load of Pollocks but I’m betting that joke’s been made before.’
‘You’re the first person I’ve shown these to,’ she said. ‘Ever.’ It didn’t matter to her what he thought of her dubious masterpieces but it did matter that he appreciated what a big deal this was – she was sharing a tiny piece of her soul.
He gave her one of his trademark looks – the intensive, Your Words Are The Most Important Thing To Me In The World At This Moment look.
‘Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed by all this, um, whatever it is?’
She shrugged and didn’t answer. Instead, she stepped gingerly onto the sheeting. It was her way of inviting him in. Theo paused at the door. Clearly he’d been expecting many things to be revealed behind her locked door but not this.
‘So, I … erm … paint,’ she mumbled.
‘Yeah, the bloody walls and ceiling, by the looks of it. Are you an interior decorator and these huge, white canvases got caught in the fallout, or were you trying to paint the canvases and you catastrophically missed?’
That lopsided smile sat lazily across his face, eyes twinkling like hyperactive fairy lights as he continued to assess the room with all the wonder of an awestruck child.
‘It’s abstract,’ she explained.
‘Sure is.’ He looked at the largest canvas, resting against the side wall: great looping smears of purple and green, flicks of bright orange, and perfect circles of bright white shining through everything.
‘Do you even use a brush?’
‘Not often,’ she admitted. ‘I dribble the paint, or squirt it when I’m feeling particularly emotional. Mostly, I use my hands and sometimes … other things.’
Theo stepped into the room, a curious eyebrow dancing along his forehead, as he bent down to peer at two round imprints at the left-hand side of the picture.
‘I’m not even going to ask,’ he said.
‘Good,’ she said, fidgeting from foot to foot. ‘But the acrylics are water-based so as long as they don’t dry, they come off with a good scrub in the shower.’
Theo, who rarely looked anything other than totally chilled, let his mouth drop open and squirmed uncomfortably at her last comment.
‘Not the kind of hobby I would have pegged a neat freak like you for. You’re expressing a side of you that you keep buried. VERY buried – mineshaft deep underground, only accessible by highly trained underwater divers and experts in potholing.’
‘Yes, I get the point.’ She knew her painting was the antithesis of everything she stood for. It’s why it felt so decadent, so naughty, so deliciously forbidden. And so right.
‘So?’
‘So what?’
‘What’s the story? With these, erm … paintings?’
Maisie leaned her bottom on the cool metal of the radiator under the window and exhaled slowly; in for a penny, in for a pound.
‘Remember me telling you about the art book from Meredith?’
‘Teapot lady?’
‘The very same. When I got older I would flick through the book and see reflected in the jumble of the shapes and colours, my jumbled, uncontrollable life. It’s hard for kids when parents separate. I was only little and I didn’t really understand the art in the pages of that book, any more than I understood why my mum threw my dad out of the house. I guess the art grew out of that. I didn’t do it to be seen by anyone …’
‘Thank God for that,’ Theo muttered. ‘They’re enough to send persons of a fragile nervous disposition completely over the edge. In fact that one at the back makes me feel quite nauseous.’
He was joking, she knew that, but any illusions she harboured that perhaps she was an undiscovered genius were quickly dispelled.
‘It’s a kind of therapy, I suppose. I get totally lost when I’m creating them. Nothing outside the room matters and I feel free and unencumbered.’
‘What I don’t get is why you control everything in your life apart from what you splatter on these canvases.’
She sighed and turned her face from his. ‘This is why I don’t talk about it. I know people won’t understand. The physical act of painting is cathartic and mentally liberating, I suppose.’
‘And then you lock it all up in your spare room like a guilty secret?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘You really are a surprising girl, Maisie,’ he said.
And a smile that had been dancing at the corners of his mouth for some time finally stopped flirting with his face and embraced it.
Chapter 33
Later in the week, Maisie’s landline (which came with the house and Maisie hardly ever used) rang only for the caller to hang up as soon as she answered. The caller ID was withheld – not a drama in itself but that was the third time that week, including a mumbled, ‘wrong number – sorry’ and it was starting to unnerve her. She mentioned the call to Lisa – still lounging about the house and still very much in residence. Zoe had given Maisie a wide berth since Lisa’s arrival, saying work was hectic, but Maisie suspected she had o
ther reasons for not stopping by. She’d met Zoe at the gym again but the novelty of exercise had worn off quickly for Maisie. Perhaps all three sisters needed a bit of time to adjust to their proximity. She was astute enough to realise forcing relations too early might backfire.
‘Oh, I’ve had that,’ Lisa said, her feet on the coffee table, foamy separators fanning out her toes as the first coat of Sable Shimmer dried. ‘I thought you’d got a stalker or something. I’m sure there was a bit of heavy breathing the last time.’
‘What makes you think some creepy stalker is ringing for me? You’re practically living here at the moment. Perhaps it’s someone fixated on you?’
‘Oh no, he’s not got my … I mean, no one knows I’m here. I’m keeping a low profile – remember?’
‘Yeah—’ Maisie gave a chuckle ‘—the loud music with all the living room windows flung open, catwalk strutting up and down the road in gravity-defying outfits and the regular social media posts. Really off the radar, sis. Practically underground.’
‘Stop getting on at me. You don’t know the pressures I’m under.’ Lisa blinked her watery baby-deer eyes as she gave a dramatic tilt of the chin. Maisie, who’d been flitting around with a duster and tidying up chocolate bar wrappers, paused to look at her sister.
‘Truth is, I’ve been signed off work with, um, stress,’ Lisa said.
‘Oh, sorry. I didn’t realise. I was unforgivably flippant.’
Maisie put the duster down and walked over to the sofa, bending down to give Lisa a hug, as a couple of tears dribbled down Lisa’s immaculately made-up face. That certainly explained the vague, open-ended visit. She would try to be more understanding and kinder to her sister. Poor love was burning out and she felt guilty she hadn’t spotted the signs. She must be really struggling because tears weren’t Lisa’s thing – launching random objects at people’s heads and slamming doors was her preferred form of emotional release.