by Jenni Keer
She decided not to comment on her mother’s misplaced guilt. It really wasn’t her business. They were grown-ups and they had to sort this thing out for themselves.
‘Talking of family, I’ve set a date for my family meal. I’m not holding out for Ben any more but gathering five of us together would be a coup of sorts. With Lisa staying it seems like a good time to organise something,’ Maisie said.
‘Good luck getting your bickering sisters together.’ Her mother rolled her eyes. ‘Those two never did get on. I would have put it down to the age gap but you always seem to bring out the best in them. Different personalities, I guess. So what’s the plan? And will there be bouncers on the door to intervene if they start clawing each other’s eyes out?’
That was rich. A few weeks ago it would have been her parents who needed supervision.
‘A low-key Sunday lunch with all fire exits clearly marked, and life jackets and oxygen masks under the seats,’ Maisie joked. ‘Surely everyone can be civil for a couple of hours and if it proves a success, I wondered about a family-orientated Christmas.’ She paused. ‘Do you think I’m being too optimistic?’
‘Not at all, love. Let’s aim for the stars. I wouldn’t start planning anything as adventurous as a six-week family holiday halfway up a mountain in a three-foot-square bivouac, but things with your dad are … developing. We’ve been reminiscing about the old days, and we have great affection for each other. It was only a couple of meaningless flings and perhaps I did inadvertently push him away. Four is a lot of children to manage and very draining on any relationship.’
Maisie was feeling increasingly uncomfortable with her mother’s excuses for her dad’s behaviour so moved the conversation on.
‘I’ve decided on the sixteenth.’ Maisie lowered her voice. ‘As much as I love Lisa staying—’
‘We both know that’s a very generous choice of verb,’ her mum interrupted. ‘And it’s not like I haven’t offered to have her at mine.’
‘I think she needs to head back to York and face whatever it is she’s running away from,’ Maisie said. And get the help she won’t let me give her, she thought.
‘Funny you should say that,’ said her mum. ‘I got the impression she’s hiding something, too.’
Chapter 42
Gildersleeve’s were riding the crest of a very high wave. The auctions were now more popular than ever and it was often a struggle fitting everyone in the barns. Theo’s Wot a Lot! episodes were generating local interest and Arthur’s video posts were garnering hundreds of likes – way beyond Maisie’s wildest dreams. Two local newspapers picked up on the videos and ran a further story. The county loved nothing more than a ‘Suffolk old boy’. On the back of all that, Theo was giving a late-afternoon radio interview in Bury St Edmunds and invited Maisie along for the experience. She was delighted and curious in equal measure so accepted his offer.
The radio DJ, who had the requisite sexy rumble to his voice, ushered Theo through to a side room with a huge illuminated On Air sign. She waited in an anteroom, sipping tea that tasted as if it had been swept from a warehouse floor, and listening to the show go out live from a ceiling-height speaker in the back corner.
Theo was funny and charming and had a great rapport with the interviewer. He talked about his TV appearances but always managed to bring the conversation back to promoting Gildersleeve’s. Sitting by herself and clutching the plastic cup of tepid tea, Maisie closed her eyes and let his voice stream into her head and realised how precious his friendship had become. Would she have embraced it quite so easily if there had been sexual undercurrents? Her initial belief romance was not on the agenda had enabled her to be relaxed and open with him but it had also drawn him dangerously close to her thumping heart. As if on cue, Ed Sheeran’s ‘Perfect’ played from the speakers as the interview ended and shivers ran up her arms, bristling every single hair along the way.
‘You have a great radio presence,’ she said, as he ambled out the studio after the broadcast and her heart returned to its normal rhythm. ‘You’re a natural.’
‘Nothing to it. It’s just a conversation in a room with some bloke about things I love.’
‘Not sure I’d be so chilled.’
‘No,’ Theo agreed. ‘You’d be more of a multiple cue cards kinda gal, I imagine. But then I tend to wing life generally, whereas I suspect you have a ten-point life plan, with a list of potential husbands, seven possible wedding locations lined up, and the names already picked out for your two perfect children – one of each, naturally.’ His lip curled upwards and she silently added his name to the potential husband list.
‘Nothing wrong with being organised,’ she said. ‘Whereas you will amble through life, bump into someone and just know she’s the one.’
‘Probably,’ he admitted. ‘You can’t overthink these things.’
‘Unless, of course, you’ve already met her?’
It was like picking at a scab. She couldn’t help herself – returning to the Ella question time and time again. He’d quite clearly been referring to her when Lisa had asked if his heart was taken. ‘A colleague perhaps?’ She pushed for confirmation.
‘Okay, you’ve sussed me out.’ Theo gathered his man-bag from the table where he’d left it with her for the interview, yanking forcefully to adjust the strap. ‘But let’s not have this conversation – it’s awkward for me. It’s embarrassing having feelings for someone when it’s not an equal attraction.’
The little she knew about Ella, she guessed she wasn’t the kind of girl to launch head first into something. He’d have to be patient.
‘Give it time,’ she said.
He looked cheered by her words. ‘Are you saying I need to back off a bit? Perhaps let things develop more slowly?’
‘Women don’t like being rushed. They take relationships very seriously. When we give our hearts, we give them completely. Sometimes we need to explore our options—’
‘I’d noticed,’ he muttered.
She didn’t immediately understand the reference but then remembered Ella’s crush on the art teacher. It was very unfair that some people had several potential romantic prospects when all she wanted was the one standing in front of her, tugging at his faded T-shirt and totally unaware the laces on his scuffed brogues were undone. Determined not to be churlish, and instead supportive of this embryonic relationship, she smiled. ‘A girl’s got to try on several pairs before she buys the perfect shoes.’
Theo scratched his extraordinary hair and frowned. ‘But I haven’t been rushing anyone. If I’d taken this whole thing any slower, we’d be going sodding backwards.’ He looked at her face, doing the deep, staring thing again. ‘But okay, I’ll apply the brakes,’ and he put up his hands in capitulation. ‘Wouldn’t want to rush anyone whilst they explore options …’
‘Stop,’ Maisie said, as they walked in the cool late spring air and back to his car. The shock she felt was overwhelming and she hardly dared believed the truth. After all, she’d been down to Bury St Edmunds several times already in her futile quest.
‘What is it now, woman?’ Theo joked, back to himself now that the conversation wasn’t so personal.
‘I’m not sure.’ She crossed her arms and rubbed her hands over the tingling.
Sauntering down this side street her mind had been on a billion and one things, only to have Verity’s set violently dragged to the forefront. She was being called again and had to answer.
‘Don’t tell me you’re cold? It’s a lovely evening.’
‘No, it’s not that.’ She walked a few steps further and the feelings intensified. Glancing up she noticed they were opposite a junk shop, and not one she’d visited before, so she headed towards it. Theo trailed behind, as a tinkly bell on the door jangled. There was scant light inside, in contrast to the brightness of the afternoon, and she squinted to make out the shapes before her.
Like a cornucopia for dusty old things no one really needed, the shop was piled high with bric-a-brac and stacked
furniture – rather like the Gildersleeve’s salerooms before she got her hands on them. As she shuffled through the narrow aisles of precariously balanced plastic boxes, a singsong voice drifted from the shadows.
‘Afternoon. Feel free to browse.’
Nearing the counter at the back of the shop, Maisie could see a pair of spectacles and a sleek bob – all very Mary Quant, except the hair was a violent pomegranate red.
‘I’m looking for black and white china,’ Maisie explained. ‘Specifically plates. Abstract in style.’
‘I’m not sure I have anything like that,’ the woman said, rising to her feet and walking around the counter. She peered in glass cabinets and over the piles of clutter.
You jolly well do, Maisie thought. I know it. Instead she followed the woman as she wove up and down the shop.
‘If you’re looking for more of Verity’s set, it’s going to be a needle in a haystack job,’ Theo whispered. ‘You could scour all the antique and collector shops in the country and not find any more. You already know it’s pretty scarce from your online searches.’
‘Hmm … I have these?’ the woman said, holding a black and white cup and saucer aloft. ‘Four Royal Albert Night and Day trios and a solitary sugar bowl.’
It was pretty enough; black exteriors to the cups with white ferns, and the reverse image on the saucer and plate. But it wasn’t part of Verity’s set.
‘Are you sure you don’t have anything else? Out the back maybe?’ Maisie asked, trying to look pleady without being pushy.
‘My stockroom is a nightmare,’ the sleek-haired lady replied. ‘It would take weeks to sort through it.’
Maisie’s heart fell. ‘Let me show you what I’m after, and I’ll leave a contact number in case you ever have anything like it pass through your hands.’
She slid her phone from her pocket and looked through her photos until she found one of the tea set she’d taken for research purposes. ‘I collect it and I’m only missing a few tea plates now.’
She twisted the screen so the tiny lady could get a better look.
‘Oh, that pattern,’ she said. ‘You aren’t going to believe this, but I own some of that – a tiered cake stand and three matching tea plates I bought donkey’s years ago from a jumble sale. They’re in my flat upstairs. How odd.’
‘How odd indeed,’ said Theo, giving Maisie the most piercing, mossy-green stare.
Chapter 43
Maisie and Theo stood outside the junk shop, the low sun basking them in a warm light. The temperature had dropped slightly and the previously bustling street was almost deserted, as it was now nearly six o’clock. Food aromas drifted past on the breeze as the various take-away establishments opened their doors for the evening trade.
‘I’ve done it,’ Maisie said, with the biggest grin on her face. ‘I have the complete set.’ If she was more like Zoe, she would be physically bouncing up and down and possibly performing an impromptu triple front flip.
‘At last – now you can have a decent night’s sleep after months of pacing in front of your mantelpiece and wringing your hands over the incompleteness of it all. Don’t forget—’ he raised an eyebrow ‘—I know you.’
‘I’m not that bad.’ She playfully punched his shoulder with her free hand, the other still clutching the handle of the supermarket bag for life that contained her newspaper-wrapped purchases. ‘In fact, since Lisa’s arrival I have taken a step back from my inner control freak. However, I won’t deny it feels good to be holding the last pieces. I’m so lucky the shop owner was happy to part with them.’
‘Once a dealer, always a dealer.’ Theo smiled. ‘As long as the price is right, most of them would happily sell their left kidney. And well done for haggling. I didn’t want to interfere, but I thought she was going to shaft you with her initial price.’
‘Yeah, I’m learning,’ she said, thinking back to Phyllis’s grabbing grandson.
‘How did you know, though?’ he asked.
‘Know what?’
‘That the plates were in there?’
‘I didn’t.’ She gave him her best innocent face, the one she’d perfected as a child when Zoe asked what had happened to her favourite sparkly top.
‘Well, there’s something going on.’ He eyed her suspiciously. ‘There we were merrily walking down the street and you took a sudden detour into a random shop and insisted she hand over your missing pieces.’
‘No, I didn’t. I popped into a likely-looking shop because I’ve been scouring junk shops and charity shops for weeks on the off-chance. I was lucky, that’s all.’
‘Hmm …’ He was clearly unconvinced. ‘You unsettle me, Maisie Meadows. In lots of ways …’
‘Good,’ she replied. ‘I wouldn’t want to be predictable.’
‘So, I think your extraordinarily lucky find—’ he glanced at her through narrowed eyes ‘—calls for a celebration. I know how much Meredith meant to you. Let’s put the bag in my car and I’ll take you for a drink in this idyllic little courtyard restaurant I know.’
The evening was glorious but the company was making her nervous. How silly to have a hundred flapping butterflies in her chest when all she was doing was grabbing an after-work drink with the boss. They dropped off the plates and walked to a huge Georgian-fronted pub at the far end of the city.
The setting sun cast her embers of light across the cobblestone courtyard. They were surrounded by high flinty walls, edged with a beautiful Suffolk red brick, as the clatter of her shoes and the squeak of the metal chair legs over the cobbles echoed around them. It felt a safe and comforting space, shutting them off from their work lives and just letting them be.
A tight-trousered waiter shimmied across the courtyard, a black circular tray balanced across his arm, and heavenly wafts of garlic and lemon floated past.
‘Let me buy you dinner?’ Theo offered, as Maisie pulled her gaze away from the waiter’s firm buttocks and took a sip of her Prosecco. Theo was on the non-alcoholic beer as he was driving but insisted she had something suitably celebratory and bubbly. His gaze was intense and made her feel uncomfortable. She knew he stared at everyone like that – one of his endearing features, that he was truly engaged in what you were saying and gave you his full attention. Perhaps it was those first two mouthfuls of Prosecco, zipping down to her knees and making them feel disobedient, or perhaps it was because she wanted there to be more to those simple words, but his eyes had a further reach than hers. They had positively dived into her heart and made everything whirly and wobbly.
‘Okay, but we go Dutch,’ she insisted, the lingering smell of citrus and apple from the Prosecco making her stomach flip. What with everything that was going on, her insides were more tumultuous than a spinning drum of tumble-drying towels.
‘Tulips in a cheesy Edam sauce?’ He leaned back in that relaxed manner of his, one leg tossed carelessly across the knee of the other, and gave her a friendly wink. She rolled her eyes.
Fifteen minutes later, and with the conversation strangely more formal and awkward than it had been in recent weeks, the alarmingly close-fitting trousers of the waiter presented themselves at eye height to the pair. A plate of mushroom ravioli was slid in front of her and steak-frites were presented to Theo.
‘Here’s to you.’ Theo lifted his beer and clinked her glass with the edge of his. ‘Gildersleeve’s is all the better for your input.’
‘Even when I prostitute us on social media?’
‘Yes, even then. I … we would miss you terribly if you left.’
‘I’m not going anywhere for a while,’ she said, adding the ‘for a while’ to keep him on his toes.
‘I heard that bloke trying to lure you back to Wickerman’s the other day.’ He began to cut into his steak, dropping his eyes.
‘Then you also heard me say I was happy where I was.’
‘Even though we are a disorganised shambles?’ It was a phrase she’d used a couple of times when she’d first started.
‘I find the les
s formal atmosphere of Gildersleeve’s endearing. And I’m learning to chill about these things. I had some serious childhood control issues to work through but I’m getting there.’ He looked quizzical. ‘My parents’ divorce,’ she reminded him. ‘I hadn’t realised until recently it was something I had no control over and it naturally turned my life upside down. In the following few years when my siblings started to disperse, I guess I focused on things I could control. When you gather up inanimate objects and arrange them how you want them, neat and orderly, they stay there. People don’t behave in the same way – rather frustratingly.’
Theo rested his fork on the side of his plate and stroked his stubbly chin. ‘Okay, I understand where your happy-families vibe comes from. But as I explained, my own lack of family and parental disinterest had the opposite effect.’
‘But you’re a more chilled personality than me.’
‘If you can’t control it, why stress over it? I’m not going to be playing happy families any time soon and that’s fine. Family can be a drag as well as a blessing. The old “you can choose your friends …” adage is true. I choose my “family” and it’s made of friends. Hey, I even started up a scheme so I could pick my own grandmother.’ He grinned. ‘And I’d much rather spend time with an interesting man like Johnny than my own father. For all his bluff and big words, Johnny’s a fun and generous man. Taking a chance on a struggling auction house was the best thing I ever did. I can’t imagine being stuck in a desk job. It’s the variety and people that bring my day alive.’
‘And the stardom? And the hundreds of sexually ravenous fans throwing themselves at your feet on a daily basis?’
‘Yeah, and that.’ That grin accentuating the asymmetry of his face was balanced by a flick upwards of the opposing eyebrow and Maisie nearly launched herself across the tablecloth to offer the very same services as his imaginary groupies. She let out a long, slow breath to rein in her inner emotions and the low candle flickered horizontally between them, nearly going out.