Precious Things (18 page)

‘I'm sorry, it was unforgivable of me not to stay in touch, I've always regretted it,' Maggie said softly, thinking of Kate's beautifully embellished envelopes that had arrived all throughout her first year of university, no matter which grimy student digs she'd found herself in. Then they'd abruptly stopped, after Don's death . . . Maggie felt herself prickling with guilt all over again.

Kate didn't respond.

‘Kate?
I mean it
,' Maggie insisted, leaning forward, willing her to believe her. ‘It had nothing to do with you, I promise. I loved you and your family, I really did. More than I ever loved anyone before Tim came along. You know that, don't you? I'm not sure how I'd have
coped during that last year of school. You were amazing to me. You saved my life, pretty much. I know that. But it was just such a terrible time for me . . .' Her voice trailed off.

‘I get it. You didn't need us any more, right?' said Kate, sitting back down again and staring at Maggie. Her pale blue gaze was cold and unyielding.

‘No,' said Maggie, eyes brimming with tears. ‘You don't understand. I was wrong to cut you off so drastically, I know that, but I felt desperate at the time . . . It was like I just had to sever the past, all of it – the good bits as well as the bad – in order to survive and go forward.' Maggie realised her legs were shaking and she sat down again.

‘But you were fine,' Kate said, confused again.

‘I really wasn't, Kate. When I first started uni, I knew I was losing it. I couldn't concentrate. I had panic attacks. My doctor wanted me to go on antidepressants, but I wouldn't do it. So he packed me off to counselling. That helped, for a while, but I . . . I almost went over the edge.' Even to her own ears she sounded like a wretched, bleating animal. She thought of the many lonely hours in the middle of the night, when things seemed so much worse, fantasising about where she could go, where no one could ever find her. How she might simply cease to exist. She hadn't even told Tim this much before. And the rest of it was wrapped up into a ball which felt tight and twisted inside her heart.

‘Oh, Maggie.' Kate's face softened.

Maggie shook her head, using a fist to swipe away tears.

‘Are you okay now?' Kate asked.

‘Yes,' said Maggie, twisting her robe between her fingers. ‘It took a few years, and I saw someone really good, a psychologist, but – I can't really explain it – the dark clouds lifted. I just needed space. And time to figure myself out, I think.'

‘And what about your mum and dad?' Kate asked. ‘What's going on with them?'

‘Oh, nothing much. Same as it ever was,' she said, unable to stop the defeated note from creeping into her voice.

My mother
. . . Maggie thought. Valerie had always told Maggie she was too sensitive, like that was a bad thing. ‘Dad's still drinking – he's completely useless, of course – and Mum is like this negative force field, convinced that everything in life is crap. I try, but sometimes I don't know why I bother.'

‘I don't know why you bother! I can't believe you still see them,' said Kate, smiling slightly. ‘I know you only get one set and all, but they were horrible to you. Remember that time your mother went on holiday and left you with your dad for two weeks? And then he disappeared or something, off on one of his benders? You were only ten – child services should have been informed. And you had that flood, as well . . . What if something more serious had happened? It's only now that I work with kids that I realise the way your parents treated you was abusive. I know they weren't physically violent, but they were emotionally abusive. Children end up in all sorts of trouble when they're not being cared for properly. When they don't feel love.'

‘I remember that time,' said Maggie, as it all came rushing back to her. ‘It was awful.' When the kitchen roof had finally caved in during the storm, she'd tried calling her mother on the number she'd left behind. Only to find out she'd left for another hotel – her mother had only given her the one number. And then when her father
had
got home, the awful trouble Maggie had been in for not arranging a tradesman to come out and look at the roof.

‘It was a disgrace,' Kate said, shaking her head.

‘I just wish Mum would change,' Maggie said. ‘I've been trying to get hold of her recently but she doesn't pick up the phone. I wish she could forgive me.' The familiar, mute helplessness at the thought of her parents rushed in.

‘Forgive you?' Kate asked incredulously. ‘What for?'

‘For abandoning them. I basically cut off contact with them around the same time . . . well, around the time I stopped communicating with you. And we never really got back on track after that.'

‘Ugh,' Kate scoffed, reaching over awkwardly. ‘You could hardly stay there, living with the Toxic Two . . . I can't understand why you did a vanishing act on us, but they're another story.' Kate was silent for a moment. ‘I still don't understand why you didn't stay in touch.' She suddenly looked fifteen again; small and vulnerable. ‘I couldn't help thinking it was me you ran away from. When I came out, you seemed to change. I thought that
you
thought . . . Well, that you thought I fancied you.' Kate stopped when she saw the look on Maggie's face.

‘Really?' Maggie asked, amazed. ‘That didn't even cross my mind. At least, I don't think it did.'

She cast her thoughts back to all those years ago. They only had to catch each other's eyes then to know exactly what the other was thinking. All those days and nights spent staying up late, talking and laughing. Being hushed by Jean, who warned she'd put them in separate rooms when Maggie stayed if they didn't stop gossiping. Walking to school together, wearing identically altered uniforms. Loving the same bands and hating the same girls – they'd been like that for most of their teens. Their friendship was one of the few things Maggie could depend on during such unsettling times.

Now, as Maggie looked at her, Kate stared down at her hands in her lap. ‘I mean, I guess I did, once, but that's when I was coming to grips with things myself . . . Fancy you, I mean.'

‘I had no idea, Kate! Truly.' Maggie tried recalling how she'd have felt if she'd known. Strange, definitely. But that wasn't why they'd lost touch.

Kate looked up, her eyes unexpectedly dancing with amusement. ‘If it hadn't all happened so long ago, I think I'd be humiliated. There I was, mooning away, and you didn't even notice! Lucky my crush didn't last long.'

Maggie laughed. ‘Damn. Someone crushing on me, and I didn't notice? Typical!'

‘Too right,' Kate snorted. ‘The guys at school had crushes on you all the time. Remember that dork, Duncan? That one obsessed with cricket? He thought you were gorgeous, but you were totally oblivious. As always.'

‘Really?' Maggie asked, surprised. It hadn't felt that way. Or, at least, she'd never felt she had the right sort of attention – not from the boys she actually fancied. She remembered Duncan and the way he used to tease her . . . She thought he hated her.

Unbidden, an image of Michael and his searching gaze suddenly flashed into her mind, and Maggie flushed.

‘Forget it,' Kate said, misunderstanding the expression on Maggie's face. ‘It was a lifetime ago anyway.'

‘It was,' Maggie said, feeling a wave of exhaustion wash over her now. What was it . . . three or four in the morning?

‘Your house is gorgeous, Mags,' said Kate, changing the subject. ‘From what I've seen of it, anyway. You always wanted something like this – remember?'

Maggie's eyes wandered over to the massive pin board, decorated with Pearl's brightly coloured paintings, various business cards for local tradesmen, flyers for a show at Sadler's Wells and a news clipping about one of Tim's council projects: the trappings of their urban family life. This
was
what she'd always wanted, wasn't it? She'd watched with a touch of envy as so many of their other friends had moved out of London years ago, choosing to be closer to family, swapping a longer commute for bigger homes and larger gardens as their families grew. But she and Tim had resolutely stayed. They loved London; besides, Maggie knew her mother wouldn't have been capable of any kind of help with Pearl. And her dad, well, he seemed to care even less.

Following Maggie's gaze to the pin board, Kate seemed to warm up a bit. ‘Remember when we used to come into London to visit all the galleries and see bands, and walk around the back streets, making up stories about people inside the houses? And they'd be having dinner or playing with their kids?' she asked, a smile creeping into her voice. ‘And now you live in one of those houses! Imagine that.' Kate looked at her, reminding Maggie of that mischievous quality Kate had which she'd always admired.

Maggie did remember – sometimes they'd been caught peeking in. They'd made a teenage pact to get the hell out of Basingstoke which, along with their youthful enthusiasm for arthouse films and love of Seattle grunge music, saw them ostracised in an exclusive group of two all throughout school by their Britpop-obsessed peers. Maggie thought of those homes in the back streets of Kensington and Pimlico. All those lamp-lit interiors winking out at them in the darkness. Scores of perfect people in their perfect homes, smiling as they sat next to one another at dinner. Maggie had dreamed of one day having a home just like them. It was almost painful to recall the need that had run through her back then. Was she really any different now? Maggie wondered. Wasn't she still always yearning, and left wanting, for so many things she hadn't quite attained?

Kate's smile faded from her heart-shaped face, earnest all of a sudden. ‘It's like you've spun all that crap you went through into gold, Maggie, like an alchemist. Your life seems pretty wonderful now. Jeez, Mags, even your fridge is gorgeous.' Kate tilted her cup to indicate the hulking old Kelvinator, painted a pale pink enamel by Maggie herself and topped with a green Murano vase full of overblown peonies.

Maggie reddened again, thinking it was a poor substitute if you still felt like you didn't amount to much – weren't quite enough, somehow – on the inside. They were just . . . possessions. It was a thought which had always plagued her: if her parents didn't want her in their life – their only child – what did that say about her?

Realising she hadn't yet asked Kate a thing about her own life in return, she delicately enquired about Kate's job and her friends, only to find out her old friend had just met someone new. It was early days, Kate said, but she had a feeling it would turn into something serious. Maggie was thrilled – it was great to see Kate's face so animated again.

Kate's phone pinged with a new text message – the cab they'd called earlier had just arrived.

Picking up a notepad from the table, Maggie slid it towards Kate with a ballpoint pen. ‘Can I have your number?' she asked, feeling childish again. ‘We could catch up . . .' she faltered, ‘. . . for a proper drink. If you feel like you might be able to forgive me.'

‘All right,' Kate replied, neutral. The flush of warmth and connection they'd had only moments ago seemed to disappear, as Kate retreated back inside her carapace.
She always was quite self-contained. Always so sure of herself
, Maggie thought.
What did she ever see in me?

Kate took the pad and started scribbling. ‘That's my mobile.' She pointed to one of two numbers on the page. ‘Or work, if you can't get hold of me.' Maggie noted there was an email on there as well.

Kate stood up, scraping her chair across the kitchen floor, and Maggie escorted her to the door. Standing with her hand raised in farewell long after the taxi's red tail lights disappeared around the corner, Maggie reflected on how good it had felt to see Kate again, despite the unfortunate circumstances. She resolved to give her a ring this week.

Just talking about her parents with Kate had made her feel better, somehow. A problem shared . . . That was one thing, at least, that hadn't changed between them.

A bell chimed gently as Maggie stepped in through the red and gilt-painted doorway. A Portobello institution, the old antiques shop was a fixture of the long Notting Hill Road and had been for as long as Maggie could remember. The same family who'd kept the place running for almost a century now still owned it, and indeed it was hard to imagine the area without thinking of Spencer's first, so ingrained in the life and soul of the street had it become.

‘Hello . . . hello?' Maggie called, looking around for a trace of Spencer or one of his daughters, but she couldn't spy a living soul anywhere amid all the clutter. Maggie knew the shop was deceptively large, its counter right down at the very end, sitting tucked behind a set of noir-ish wooden filing cabinets like something out of a hardboiled detective novel. Spencer could usually be found there, peering over a set of gold-rimmed bifocals at a tiny wind-up toy or a broken watch he was mending in the only cleared space available in the entire store. Sitting beside the ancient cash register in his tweedy waistcoat, he had the look of a man frozen in time.

Vintage ephemera crowded the shelves and displays all around her – everything from dented fifties tea tins, cheerful bunting and black top hats, to reproduction busts of Winston Churchill and phrenology heads. M's British bulldog from the James Bond films, covered in the red, white and blue stripes of the Union Jack, stared at her stoically from its eye-level perch, almost causing her to trip into a miniature hot-air balloon hanging from the ceiling. Ancient tricycles and pre– Soviet Union globes butted up against reproduction laundry items and a wicker basket full of dull red cricket balls.

Maggie was used to feeling hemmed in by objects and having to watch her step – her office was often stacked with boxes full of printers' catalogues and bits and pieces of furniture if the floor became too jammed at Bonninghams – but Spencer's was on a different level altogether. It was a complete mess of glorious, insane clutter. Even the ceiling was almost invisible amid the riot of crystal chandeliers, Art Deco brass lights and rusted agricultural implements hanging overhead. She could waste hours in here, just digging about.

‘People love a rummage,' Spencer had said to Maggie once. ‘They like to think they've discovered something overlooked. It's part of the appeal of Portobello – the wonder of what you might find.'

Maggie paused beside an old dressing table with a bowler hat tipped rakishly on a stand nearby. On a whim, she put the hat on her head and leaned down to look at herself in the dusty mirror, seeing a suddenly younger self looking back at her. When she and Kate used to train it into London and hit the markets, it had been such a glorious thrill to find unusual things they knew no one else had, things you just couldn't buy back in Basingstoke. Most of the teens from their school would spend all their time hanging around the one boring strip of shops on the high street, blowing their entire summer job earnings on cheap tat and throwaway fashion from the chain stores.

By contrast, Maggie and Kate would defiantly parade a look that flung together tattered vintage tutus, men's waistcoats and designer silk ties, which they found among the tangle of heaped clothing arranged on trestle tables under the tube flyover. Wearing their day's purchases from Portobello on the train back home, layered over what they'd come in, the mad mishmash made Maggie laugh until she felt giddy. The wild pastiche of styles inspired her. Made her feel less alone or out of place, less like a weirdo. She knew Kate felt it too.

Maggie closed her eyes now, remembering Kate striking a pose in a worn, Aran-style fisherman's jumper she'd worn over black cropped pants. ‘Here, don't you think I look like Jean Seberg in this?' she'd asked. Leaning into the stall mirror, Kate had dug out
a kohl stick from her bag and added to the dramatic black wings of liner shaping the corners of her eyes.

Only years later did it occur to Maggie how proudly they had flaunted their difference, their exclusion from the crowd. No wonder the two of them hadn't been very popular. The memory gave her a pang of sympathy for Stella all of a sudden, who didn't seem to have many friends herself.

Where had that energy she'd once had for clothes shopping gone, Maggie wondered, putting back the bowler hat and smoothing down her hair.
Time
, she thought wistfully – if only she had more of it to potter about in market stalls or grotty charity shops, just like she and Kate used to do. Rather than always rushing away to an appointment or straight home from work, late again.

Maggie looked guiltily at her watch: she'd have to be back soon. She only had a few minutes left of her lunch break. But the search for Francesca's past had somehow got a hold of her, compelling her to find answers even when it had nothing to do with her.

Just as she was about to call out, Maggie heard a clump of footsteps coming down the narrow wooden staircase behind the counter and saw Spencer's knobbly arthritic hand sliding along the banister.

‘Maggie! What are you doing here?' Spencer asked, eyes shining. ‘Come to tell me about a special shipment I can't miss out on? I'm not used to home visits,' he chuckled.

‘No, no,' Maggie said, reaching over to kiss him on the cheek and taking in the dusty, old-fashioned scent of him – shaving cream and Old Spice, and the unmistakable smell of Gentleman's Relish. ‘I have a question for you. I'm trying to find out about the history of something I found a while back. It's a textile piece, not really your sort of thing,' – Spencer tended to leave the lace and linen up to other people in the street – ‘but I think you might be able to help me.'

Maggie told him about Francesca coming into Bonninghams to ask her about the coronet, and her conviction that it held the key to finding out more about her past. ‘I was able to trace the piece back to its last owner. She was a supermodel in the seventies, believe it or not,
and says she got it from around here . . .' Maggie felt almost breathless as her words rushed out in a tumble. ‘From a stall on the street. Do you remember a stall owner by the name of Lily? She used to sell clothes and bric-a-brac down by Ladbroke Grove tube station. I vaguely remember her myself – she was an old gypsy woman – but she must have died years ago. I was wondering if you knew anything more, or what might have happened to her. Did she leave any family behind? I know it's quite unlikely they'll remember anything, but I thought it was worth a try.' Maggie ran out of words and fell silent.

Spencer leaned forward, his head cocked towards her, eyes gleaming. ‘Lily, you say? Old gypsy woman?' He abruptly roared with laughter, making Maggie jump back in surprise.

‘Of course I remember her! She's still alive, you know. Lives in the council estate at the end of the road with her son. She's a good old girl – I visit her occasionally. Still completely compos mentis, too, although her eyesight's failing. Do you want to meet her? I'll take you there myself. I was going to head out for a bite anyway.' Spencer got up and started patting his pockets for his wallet and glasses. ‘Let's go, Miss Marple,' he grinned, nudging Maggie forwards.

‘You're joking, how amazing.' Maggie felt dumbfounded. What were the chances? She hadn't really expected Spencer to remember or know of Lily, that was extraordinary enough as it was, but for her to still be alive . . . Maggie shook her head, still taken by surprise. To be honest, her visit to Spencer's had been a long shot, but now, it seemed, there really was a proper lead for her to follow.

Maggie felt a familiar tingle – the thrill of the chase – run through her. But then she glanced at her watch and winced.

‘I'm so sorry, Spencer, I can't. Not now. But next week . . . would that be okay?'

‘Of course,' he said, clearly disappointed. He'd been so sprightly and eager all of a sudden, seeming much younger than his seventy years.

This detecting business was addictive, if you didn't watch yourself
, Maggie thought, and reached out to give the old man a kiss goodbye.