The Unlikely Life of Maisie Meadows. Jenni Keer

heart, slowing slightly after the excitement of the bidding frenzy, began to race again. He was looking directly at her.

      ‘Umm …’ A high-pitched whine came out. Oh my God. Had she just bid for the damn things?

      ‘Ah, it’s okay, Maisie, I already have your number on my sheet.’

      Yup.

      A few lots later, during which time Maisie could barely look up from her now not happily swinging feet, Arthur slid beside her. She’d spotted him moving around the room when she’d first come in, chatting to people as he went.

      ‘Interesting collection,’ he said, nodding to the front and clearly referring to her recent purchase. ‘Pleased you got them if they were something you wanted. Wouldn’t have put you down as that sort of girl myself. I saw you as more flowers and veg – pots of primulas and window boxes of cherry tomatoes – but you never can tell. And I’d never judge anyone for their personal taste.’

      ‘Oh, the gnomes. No, that was a mistake.’ Her face was pale and her stomach leaden. ‘I didn’t even raise my arm.’

      Arthur chuckled. ‘Well, there’s a rum do and no mistake. Poor love. Fancy being lumbered with all them. I’m quite broad-minded but there are a couple of those that made me blush. I daren’t tell our Pam. Not her sort of thing at all. She didn’t even like it when I bought one of them novelty corkscrews. Made me titter but she’s very much a lady and I’ve always respected that.’ He stroked his chin as he pondered her predicament. ‘It’s an eye contact thing. Did you make eye contact?’

      ‘Well, yes, but—’

      ‘Ah. It’s the dealers, see? Don’t like other dealers knowing their business. Watch them. They barely move an eyelash but the auctioneer knows they’re bidding. Not like the general public, jumping up and down with their printed bidder numbers in the air, ever anxious the auctioneer won’t see them and they’ll miss out on their bargain Bavarian cuckoo clock.’

      As she watched a few further lots, she realised Arthur was right; the extremely tall man beside them successfully bid for a collection of reproduction oil lamps yet barely twitched. But watching his face and Johnny’s, she could now see their interaction. Lesson learned, but an expensive and possibly humiliating one.

      ‘Tell Johnny and he’ll sort something out. I’ve seen buyers put things back into the sale the following week and even turn a profit. You did have competition.’

      ‘Please don’t say anything. I’d rather not have everyone thinking I was so green I bid on them by mistake.’

      ‘As opposed to them thinking you are a collector of naughty gnomes?’

      It was a tough call but she nodded. She would just have to put her marketing skills to the test and see if she couldn’t make her money back somehow. She liked a challenge; after all, that’s why she took this job in the first place.

      ‘It’s right lovely to see someone who doesn’t let little mishaps in life get her down. I was telling my Pam that a bright young girl had started at work and what a lovely smile you had – just like a sunrise over the back fields – all glowing and lifty.’ Maisie felt a tiny grin spread across her cheeks despite her glum mood. ‘And you’ve got a keen eye. I saw you with that kiddies’ train set earlier. It looks smashing laid out on that glass-topped table. Might not be worth much but I reckon it’ll attract a fair bit of interest now.’

      Arthur was on her wavelength. With the porters previously responsible for arranging the items in the salerooms, she’d noticed a distinct lack of the female touch. And Maisie was nothing if not organised. ‘Yes, I—’

      ‘And I thought to myself, that girl knows what she’s doing. She’ll be running the company before the week’s out …’

      ‘I hardly think—’

      ‘Because this company really needs more female input. The lovely ladies in the office don’t get the opportunity to leave their desks much, and when they do they always seem so busy. Always scurrying past me, with no time to talk. I guess they must be—’

      ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Johnny’s voice cut through the chattering hum of the room. ‘A little bit too much voluminous babble. May I suggest you take your chit-chat outside if your conversation is vital?’ Maisie was pretty certain voluminous was more a measure of quantity rather than level of noise, but Johnny liked his fancy words and seemed to get away with it – his flamboyant vocabulary rivalling his flamboyant clothes.

      ‘That’s told them,’ Arthur whispered, oblivious he was a sizeable part of the general level of increased chatter. ‘But then, you should have heard him when I first got the job. He was telling everyone to bugger off out of his saleroom if they couldn’t behave like decorous citizens – don’t mind admitting to you, I had to look that particular word up. But he’s toned down a bit in recent years. Definitely Theo’s input.’ Maisie threw him a questioning look. ‘Let’s just say Johnny’s tendency to say what he thinks don’t always go down well with the customers. And when he insulted a painting last year, the vendor was in the room, eager to see how much his masterpiece raised. Turns out not only was he selling it, he’d also painted it …’

      Johnny proceeded to rattle through three hundred lots in the space of the morning. Everything from furniture to miscellaneous boxes of goodness only knew what. Often, it was house clearance, and Maisie found it heart-breaking that boxes of personal possessions were sold to people for whom the items held no significance. What of the trinkets bought on a honeymoon to remind the happy couple of their holiday? The book won at school decades ago for academic achievement, its ornate bookplate inscribed with the proud pupil’s name and treasured in a bookcase throughout the years? The sepia photographs of Victorian families, stiff and formal, but the names and relationships of the subjects long-since forgotten?

      It was the memories attached to things that gave them their greatest value. Sometimes just looking at a possession could move a person to tears, or make a couple reach out for each other’s hands, reliving a special memory. And when no one was left to remember, they reverted back to objects with only a material value. It was, she suspected, why the teapot was so important to her. No one else would have those memories – it was merely a teapot – but to her it symbolised a tiny light at a time in her life when things had been dark.

      At the end of the day, Maisie paid her unexpectedly hefty bill and wandered over to the barn to collect her goods. Theo and Johnny had their arms about each other so she coughed to make them aware of her presence, but neither seemed embarrassed by the embrace.

      ‘Here she comes,’ Theo teased, ‘to hang out with her gnomies.’ She tried not to react as she handed him the stamped invoice. ‘If you’re going to take them gnome with you, you’ll need to bring your car to the front – gnome pun intended,’ he said, smirking. He held her gaze rather longer than she anticipated and her tummy did a double handspring.

      ‘I can manage,’ she said.

      ‘All four boxes?’

      ‘FOUR?’ She snatched the invoice back and sure enough, Lot 245: Four boxes of miscellaneous garden gnomes were listed – any marketing idea she came up with to shift them would have to be pretty damn good. The box containing the teapot made five. Ten minutes later, lugging the last one into the back of her Fiat 500 and trying not to focus too hard on what the blue-hatted gnome was doing to the smaller red-hatted gnome, she slammed down the boot.

      Climbing into the driver’s seat, she reflected how sad it was that Meredith’s possessions had been shoved into cardboard boxes and carted down to the local auction house to be sold for peanuts and scattered to the four winds. Those visits had only lasted a couple of years, until her parents’ divorce had been finalised, and the house in Hickory Street, with only Mum, Maisie and Zoe rattling around, had been sold. They moved into a modern box-like flat closer to the town centre and the secondary school. But in those two years, the neighbour who had previously only called a cheery hello over the fence offered a refuge