glared at him and he looked slightly abashed, clasping both hands together and bending forward to help her mount the cubicle door by way of an apology.
One exuberant heave and she was half over the top. She leaned forward, shifting her centre of gravity to help propel herself forward. As her legs lifted, her floaty wool skirt slid towards her waist and revealed her sturdy underwear. Was it better or worse, she wondered for that suspended moment, that she was wearing tights?
‘Oh, I say!’ exclaimed Johnny from the other side, as her kicking legs disappeared over the top. ‘Look away, people. Preserve the dignity of this fair maiden.’ She fell awkwardly to the floor, next to a remorseful Arthur, sitting on the closed lavatory seat, with his head in his hands.
Two minutes later and she’d liberated the pair of them to embarrassing whoops from the porter.
‘Would one of you take the dear fellow to the back office? There’s a comfortable old armchair in the corner somewhere, under a pile of coats. Someone should sit with him for a while and revive his flagging spirits,’ Johnny said.
‘I’ll take him,’ volunteered Maisie. ‘Come on, Arthur. Let’s get you a cup of tea. You could do with one, I imagine.’
Arthur looked over to his rescuer and smiled a watery smile.
‘I’m a silly old fool, aren’t I? Don’t know what my Pam will say.’
‘Nonsense,’ Maisie said. ‘It could have happened to anyone.’
‘Here’s the camera I was talking about.’ Johnny handed Maisie a large, black digital camera. ‘But you might prefer your i-Thingy to upload pictures. A selection of photographs for the catalogue, focusing on our more lucrative items, if you would be so kind.’
‘Oh – me? Right.’ Maisie was hoping to crack on with updating the website. There wasn’t even a section detailing staff members – a must if they wanted to create a friendly, family feel about the business.
‘Everyone else is so dreadfully busy today. It won’t cause you an unnecessary degree of inconvenience, will it? The lot numbers are already in place, so all you have to do is fly around the saleroom with the speed of Hermes and take some photos of the more interesting pieces. It should be a breeze for someone as capable as your good self.’ Johnny’s round face broke into a charming smile and his fluffy eyebrows gave a little jump. Flatterer, thought Maisie – feeling suitably flattered.
‘I mustn’t linger, for I have a probate valuation in Norwich shortly. Deaths and doddery old dears,’ he joked. ‘Families can’t cope with a lifetime of accumulated possessions and are happy for us to dispose of it all – forever hoping there is an undiscovered masterpiece in the attic or some scandalous and valuable correspondence from an illustrious historical figure deposited in the secret drawer of a roll-top desk.’
‘And is there, ever?’ she asked. ‘A hidden gem that turns around the fortunes of the family?’
‘Closest we ever came was a little Constable sketch. Fetched thousands. The family were so delighted they quite forgot to grieve.’ He winked and slid a gold pocket watch from the pocket of his waistcoat and glanced at it. ‘But I must away – the traffic can be such a bore.’ He tugged on an outsized dark blue Barbour wax jacket, flung the tasselled end of a banana-yellow silk scarf over his shoulder and floated towards the door like an enormous and colourful hot air balloon.
‘And you’re still okay with me rearranging things, to get them looking their best?’ Maisie asked. She’d been itching to play about with the salerooms and put her marketing experience into practice, but was conscious of overstepping the mark.
‘Absolutely, dah-ling. I told you at the interview, you have carte blanche. We are so terribly behind the times. It’s why you got the job. I knew deep in my very soul you would be the restorative tonic this business needs.’
Heaving back the huge door to the first saleroom, Maisie squinted to adjust to the dim interior. The day was sunny and bright but, typical of February, the underlying temperatures were colder than the bottom drawer of a freezer in the Arctic. There was a dusty smell, not unpleasant and reminiscent of old hymn books, the church feel accentuated by the loftiness of the barn ceiling and bare walls. Her eyes took a while to adjust to the darkness and then she walked over to the light switches, allowing the artificial blue-white light to invade the space.
Remembering her lesson from Johnny on how to handle the items (ironically, not by the handle) she took several photographs, marking each item off on the sheet as she did so.
She was halfway down the second aisle when a shiver of something rippled through her. The sensation came upon her so decidedly that she almost stopped mid-step. Her skin danced as a thousand tiny pinpricks exploded over her arms. It was a feeling she’d experienced many years before and one she’d all but forgotten about. Bending down, she pulled out a box of household objects from under a trestle table, the prickles moving up her arms like an army of inchworms. As she rifled through the mismatched saucers and dated kitchen paraphernalia, something at the bottom caught her eye and her heart gave a funny little jolt of recognition. It was a teapot, nestled between a yellow plastic colander and a cake tin – and one that was startlingly familiar.
Kneeling on the cold concrete floor, she carefully lifted out the surrounding contents. With one hand about the body of the teapot and the other keeping the lid secure, she placed it on the trestle table and sat back on her heels.
The china was white but the bold abstract pattern was in black, and it was a good size for a teapot, possibly holding five or six cups of tea. The squiggles and shapes that covered one side and crept over the lid were like jigsaw puzzle pieces, but not quite. And then sections of the pattern tailed off down and round to the predominantly white side – as if pieces of the pattern were drifting away from the whole.
Her heart was beating like Ben’s thudding kick drum. She knew this teapot of old – she was damn sure of it. There was nothing else in the box that matched it – no china that would imply it was part of a set. But then the one she remembered from her childhood had also been a solitary item. Long-forgotten words floated into her brain – words the owner of the teapot had said to her all those years ago, and her heart began a slow tattoo.
‘It isn’t a set any more and my darling teapot so misses her companions.’
How strange that Meredith Mayhew’s teapot should come up for auction and Maisie should stumble across it. No, strange wasn’t the word; it was disconcerting. Memories flooded back as her thumb traced the pattern around the pot and up the handle. Although not unhappy memories, they sat uncomfortably with her because they took her back to a troubled time in her life nearly twenty years ago …
Meredith Mayhew had lived next door for as long as Maisie could remember. A funny old dear with tortoiseshell cat-eye glasses either perched on her elegant nose or on her aluminium-coloured shampoo-and-set hair. She always had a neatly pressed collar on her polyester print dress or floral cotton blouse, and there was invariably a string of beads hanging under the collar and around her neck. Sometimes jet black like small, shiny olives; sometimes bright
