by Jenni Keer
It was possible she would never find out who Verity was, or if she’d even existed at all, but that didn’t matter. Inanimate objects couldn’t affect people’s decisions – real people, with real feelings, made the world go round. The Mayhews had encountered a spectacularly dreadful run of bad luck in a relatively short space of time but it was ludicrous to blame the tea set.
She walked over to the shiny chrome bin in the corner, pressed her toe on the pedal and let the envelope slip from her fingers. It landed with a clunk at the bottom. She lifted her foot and the lid closed.
Arthur and Essie were her first guests – Essie laden with enough freshly baked cakes to feed most of Tattlesham and Theo, Johnny and Ella turning up shortly afterwards in Theo’s battered Capri – the strains of Bon Jovi pulsing through the open car window and Johnny leaping from the car almost immediately, to escape the assault on his eardrums.
It was a glorious summer day so Maisie flung open the narrow French doors to her small decked patio and her guests filtered outside. The rich perfume of her neighbour’s climbing rose drifted gently into her tiny garden. Verity’s set was arranged neatly on her circular plastic garden table and she poured everyone a cup of tea, instructing them all to help themselves to cake.
‘To Meredith,’ Maisie toasted, wondering if she should perhaps be toasting the mysterious Verity as well, whoever she was.
‘To Meredith,’ they chorused in response.
There was a moment of quiet as the tea slipped down their throats, the buzz of a fat bumble bee hovering near the trellis was the only backdrop to their silent contemplation until Ella broke the silence by announcing, ‘I have a difficult relationship with my mother, partly but not exclusively because she has absolutely no idea who my father is.’
No one knew quite what to say – her statement was so out of the blue, especially as Ella was the last person to draw attention to herself. She dropped her head, allowing her hair to partially cover her face and her flushed cheeks.
Johnny cleared his throat, ensuring all eyes were on him, much to Ella’s obvious relief.
‘Continuing in the spirit of unanticipated disclosure, dah-lings, I’ve signed up to Tinder and have my first date next week with an intriguing thirty-eight-year-old woman from Belarus who collects Victorian erotica.’
Wow. Giving Johnny a few smartphone lessons had really opened up his world. But why was everyone suddenly making such candid and personal announcements? Maisie’s mind returned to the disastrous family meal when equally unexpected truths had tumbled out in quick succession around her table.
She looked down at the cup of tea in her hand and another prickle rippled through her body – the sort you get when you suddenly realise you’ve left the gas on at home or the person you’re talking about is standing behind you. The little symbols on the bottom of the cups spelled out that name danced in her mind. Meredith had told her Gamma was very particular about who used the set – almost as if it needed supervision. And that, coupled with her insistence it was never split, made Maisie wonder.
What if verity had never been a name but a noun? What if the consequences of reuniting the set were linked to those innocuous Theban letters on the bottom of each piece of the china? Theo had said something about it meaning truth …
Maisie felt a rising panic in her chest. Her disastrous family meal suddenly made sense. After all, it had been going swimmingly until she poured everyone a cup of tea …
‘I also have a confession to make.’ Arthur gave a nervous cough and his wrinkled eyes scrunched up into a frown, as if he wasn’t in control of his own mouth. ‘And it’s a biggie. I’m not even sure I should rightly be telling you all. Something I did many years ago that I’m not particularly proud of but perhaps now is the time to get it off my chest. It’s been a burden to carry around all these years, especially as I never even told my darling Pam. No harm done in the end but I think it’s important to be honest with Essie now that I’ve found her again …’
He took a deep breath as Maisie tried to attract Theo’s attention with a flash of her startled eyes across the decking, but he was sprawled across her tartan picnic rug, the brim of his ridiculous straw sun hat obscuring his eyes. No, this couldn’t be allowed to happen. She had to stem the flow of these alarming truths before the afternoon descended into the unbridled chaos of her family meal.
Arthur turned to his lady friend.
‘I was so in love with you, Essie darling, but you never gave me a second look. Instead, I spent all those years hanging around your sisters, just to be near you.’ He paused. Essie reached out for his knee, her eyes scrunched up in confusion, and Maisie’s heart thudded so violently, she half expected it to explode through her ribcage. ‘It was bound to happen, I suppose – two lonely souls drifting around the edge of other people’s lives … And Joanie was such a sweet girl …’
Chapter 58
‘This will be awkward,’ said Essie, picking at a loose thread in her pale pink cardigan, anticipating the arrival of her older sister and her niece. ‘Fifty years she’s looked me in the eye and never once said a word.’
Maisie sat next to the youngest Mayhew sister on a wooden bench near the bandstand, overlooking Tattlesham mere. No more secrets, Arthur promised, and insisted Essie came with him. Essie, in turn, insisted Maisie was with her so she didn’t feel like the only superfluous wheel on this runaway train that had broken free of the tracks.
It was yet another glorious August day. The weather, for once, abiding by the calendar and delivering an appropriate climate. Maisie leaned forward to unpack the picnic she’d brought, with proper glasses and not a HobNob in sight. Through her dark sunglasses, she finally spied Joanie and Clare, ambling along the path at the water’s edge.
Arthur stopped his restless pacing as they approached, and Joanie stopped to face him, her eyes anxious and her hands shaking.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t my intention to cause anyone pain – quite the opposite. But it was never love, was it? How could it be?’ Joanie’s eyes flicked over to her sister and they exchanged understanding but fleeting smiles, Essie gripping Maisie’s hand a little tighter.
‘Now, Joanie, don’t be fretting. We got there in the end, eh? And I understand your reasons. Think it would have broken Pam, although obviously I’ve told her all about it now. No point living a life of regrets. Grab the here and now – ask Pam, she’ll tell you.’ He ran a shaky hand through his thinning hair and swallowed. ‘So, who have we got here, then?’ And he turned to Clare, lurking behind her mother, her eyes cast to the floor.
‘Arthur, this is your daughter – Clare.’ Joanie stepped to one side. ‘She’s got your eyes. And your relentlessly cheery nature.’
Arthur stood in front of the daughter he’d never known – a woman of fifty, who had amassed, over her lifetime, everything she’d ever wanted – except a father.
‘Hello, love,’ said Arthur. ‘I’ve got so much to tell you, although Pam and Essie both say I chatter too much, so I shan’t mind if you tell me to stop talking. I do sometimes get a bit carried away with my—’
Clare rushed forward and interrupted Arthur’s speech by clinging to her daddy as if she was eight years old and he was about to leave for the moon – the poor man unable to stop a stream of tears falling from his crinkly eyes and wobbling about as Clare squeezed tighter and tighter.
No one dared speak or break the moment, and Maisie knew this embrace would last some time.
After all, Clare had fifty years of missed hugs to make up for.
Epilogue
Christmas Day – 4 months later
Maisie looked at the myriad of happy faces squeezed around her dining table. Last Christmas she’d been so desperate to gather her scattered family together that she’d made it her mission over the following months to do just that. Instead, through her job at Gildersleeve’s, she’d inadvertently assembled an eclectic but much treasured group of friends – friends so dear to her they felt like family.
&n
bsp; It was early evening. Theo had told Maisie not to stress over producing a lavish Christmas dinner with all the trimmings for the two of them. Frozen pizza would do and, much to his surprise, Maisie agreed. Instead of a morning slavishly following a complicated schedule of cooking times, she was whisked off for a brisk walk around the mere, leaving a crumpled and unmade pine-scented bed behind. She wore Theo’s fur-lined trapper hat because it had special memories, and Theo wore matching socks because they were a gift from Maisie and he was still in those early stages of their romance where he tried to meet his girlfriend’s expectations for at least some of the time.
Christmas Eve had been a girlie affair: Mum, Zoe and Maisie. Lisa rang to wish them all an early happy Christmas because the following day was, after all, one of the busiest days of the year for her boyfriend.
‘How’s Craig?’ Maisie had asked.
‘Pushing for counselling to confront the drinking. Telling me how wonderful I am. Sorting out my debts and helping me look for work. God gets a mention now and then.’
‘Give yourself a break and let him love you, sis.’
‘I’ll try. And say hi to Irene for me when you see her. I sense in her a kindred spirit – we’re both too spiky for our own good but at least no one can accuse us of being boring.’
Everyone knew Lisa still had a lot of issues and a long way to go but finally letting someone love her was a tentative first step in her journey.
Maisie’s mum was working a Christmas Day shift at Willow Tree House. She didn’t mind a bit and was looking forward to spending the day with her cherished residents. Every year she put her heart and soul into the day, knowing for some it would be their last Christmas on this earth and so needed to be special.
Maisie finally stumbled upon a use for four boxes of naughty gnomes and they were now a permanent feature in a secret corner of the Willow Tree House grounds. It was surprising how many of the old dears who regularly tutted at Naked Man motivated themselves to get outside for some fresh air since their arrival. Irene thought they were a bunch of hypocrites. ‘We all still think about it even if we can’t do it any more,’ she said. ‘Some of us are a bit more honest about it, that’s all.’
Sadly, Mrs Leggit passed away suddenly at the end of November but Theo, helping Maisie move the gnomes from her shed, spotted a late Victorian Royal Crown Derby plate in the box of tat Phyllis’s grabbing grandson had thrust upon her. There was karma at play because it was put into the auction and sold for several hundred pounds. Maisie donated the entire sum to the Adopt A Gran scheme, knowing Phyllis would have approved. After all, if her grabbing grandson had spotted its value it would only have gone on handbags.
It was early days but Maisie’s half-brother, Josh, seemed genuine. They’d met a couple of times for coffee and she was paving the way for a relationship with her more reluctant siblings. Even Ben had shown interest in his half-brother and they’d agreed to meet when he finally returned to the UK. Dad, much to everyone’s surprise, had been single since the summer – his longest ever spell as a bachelor. Boxing Day would be Maisie, Dad, Josh and a curious Zoe …
Families, Maisie reflected, were complicated things. A group of people who looked similar but who often had very different personalities. Sometimes this random combination worked and sometimes it didn’t. The Meadows were all great people in their own way; they had their virtues and their weaknesses, like every other human being on the planet, but forcing them together was like tossing a handful of magnets into a box. There were strong forces at work, repelling some and attracting others. Maisie accepted, whilst she loved each and every one of them in their turn, they simply weren’t a family that worked well when placed in a confined space. Much like the tea set – each component came from the whole, was beautiful and unique in its own way, but alarmingly dangerous when assembled together.
Nigel’s wheel was doing four hundred miles an hour. Maisie smiled at her whirring ginger friend as she walked past his cage to put a plate of hot sausage rolls and a potato salad on the table, and surveyed her guests; Arthur and Essie fresh from a lavish lunch with Clare at the hotel, Ella deep in conversation with a velvet-bedecked Johnny, and her own darling flocculent Theo. These people were her harlequin family. Like Theo’s chairs, they were all different but similar enough to work. There would be no storming out, slapping of faces or unpleasant scenes that afternoon – especially as her precious tea set was staying firmly on the shelf.
As unhappy as the Mayhew lives had been, sometimes there was no one to blame. It all depended on your point of view. Yes, Cynthia’s diagnosis was awful but she had outlived all the doctor’s predictions. Meredith had been happy in her way. Her career had been fulfilling and she’d been a positive influence on several generations of young lives – not least Maisie’s. Essie had found real love twice, even though she hadn’t been able to have children. And Joanie led an extremely comfortable life and successfully raised a loving and caring daughter. Although Joanie never found true love herself, Clare now had the most attentive of fathers. A curious love triangle that had somehow worked out in the end.
Content guests chatted away to the backdrop of frenetic whirr of Nigel’s wheel, followed by a gentle thud as he stopped running and the perpetual motion launched him against the bars of his cage.
He shook his little whiskers, dazed and surprised, and trotted back to mount the wheel again, because Nigel knew that whenever life sent you flying, it was best to hop back on and keep going. And Maisie Meadows, watching her fluffy little energetic friend, determined that whatever unlikely things life threw at her in the future, she would embrace her inner Nigel.
Acknowledgements
So that was it, folks. That notoriously tricky second book. I hope I got there in the end and I and couldn’t have achieved it without the help of the following people.
Thanks to my editor, Phoebe Morgan, who helped me knock Maisie Meadows into shape, and the exuberant team at Avon – who consistently go above and beyond. To my agent, Louise Buckley, for her constant pom-pom waving and calm reassurance. And, of course, much owed to The Brutal One – beta reader of the highest order.
A shout out to Clare who meets me every day in the virtual office and shares her virtual biscuits, and Heidi-Jo who trod this daunting path before me and passes on her wisdom when I flounder. Just two of the myriad of amazing RNA peeps who continue to love, support and advise.
From a research point of view, this book benefited from the expert knowledge of Elizabeth Talbot and James Bassam of TW Gaze (Diss Auction Rooms) – both of whom gave up their time to answer endless questions and give me an insight into the running of an auction house. Only a fraction of the research made it into the book, so maybe there is another book in there somewhere. Gaze’s has been part of my life on and off for over twenty years and it has been wonderful to see the company evolve and grow during this time – giving me the inspiration for this story. It really is quite an adrenalin rush to attend an auction and if you have never been to one, I would encourage you to go.
Also, grateful thanks to Lara – antipodean extraordinaire, and Ken Mellor, for the drink driving guidance. As ever, any mistakes within the book are mine alone.
To Sharon, Marcus and Anthony for being so cool when I took my book on holiday to Italy with me. Thanks guys – sorry I missed out on that fab day but the hammock and the manuscript needed me. Besides, you left me with plenty of Puglian wine so all was good.
To family and friends, who put up with me when I’m grumpy and up against deadlines, who avoid me when I’m shouting at my outdated laptop and who wisely leave me in peace when I’m looking dreamily into space. Every day, life presents me with housework and my unfettered imagination. Most days I choose the latter – thank you all for understanding.
Last, but not least, thank you, dear readers, for buying and reading the words I have wrestled with and cried over. When you buy an author’s book, borrow it from a library, review it online, or simply contact them to say how much you enjoyed
reading it – it truly makes their day
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If you enjoyed The Unlikely Life of Maisie Meadows and would like to read more from Jenni Keer, why not try The Hopes and Dreams of Lucy Baker – turn the page for further details …
Meet Lucy, aged 25, and Brenda, aged 79. Neighbours, and unlikely friends …
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About the Author
After gaining a history degree, Jenni Keer embarked on a career in contract flooring before settling in the middle of the Suffolk countryside with her husband, an antique-restorer. She valiantly attempted to master the ancient art of housework but with four teenage boys in the house, it remains a mystery. Instead, she spends her time at the keyboard writing women’s fiction to combat the testosterone-fuelled atmosphere, with #blindcat Seymour by her side. She adores any excuse for fancy-dress, and is part of a disco formation dance team.
By the same author:
The Hopes and Dreams of Lucy Baker
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
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Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
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