Precious Things (2 page)

MAGGIE: London, 2015

Maggie applied a slick of red lipstick and checked herself in the hall mirror. She pulled on a tailored riding jacket, then smoothed down her wavy brown hair.

‘That'll have to do – I'm running so late . . . What do you think he wants, Tim?' Maggie asked, snatching her bag from the hook.

‘Stop fussing, you look great. He probably just wants to have you all to himself, the randy old goat,' said Tim, pulling her towards him and burying his stubbled face in her neck.

Maggie laughed and pulled away. ‘Stop, I've got to go,' she said, pushing against his broad chest. ‘Oh lord, I've put lippie on you . . .' She rubbed her finger over his cheek, laughing. ‘Sorry . . . though it does go well with your eyes.'

‘What are you saying?' Tim asked, twinkling at her.

‘Maybe you should pop some mascara on as well . . .'

Tim pretended to consider, before lunging to pinch her bottom.

‘Stop it!' she laughed, pushing him away.

‘Oh, hey, before I forget, I'm going to be late tonight. Sorry, meeting with a client.'

‘No problem,' said Maggie. ‘I'll make dinner.'

Maggie was just checking her phone was in her bag, when the sound of running footsteps barrelling down the hallway reached her and Pearl latched herself on to Maggie's leg with surprising force.

‘Mummy!' she cried.

Maggie wondered how her daughter had a sixth sense for these things. She always seemed to know the exact moment Maggie was about to leave the house, especially when she was running late.

‘Bye, chicken, I've got to go. Here, who's my best girl in the world?' Bending down to give Pearl a hug, she tried to unwrap the tiny arms from her leg. Pearl was having none of it and seemed to be working her way up to a tantrum.

‘Noooo, Mummy, don't go!' she screamed, pulling Maggie down and hugging her desperately. Maggie realised the delicate links of the gold chain around her neck were about to snap.

‘Tim, I need some help here,' she said, feeling the familiar struggle between work and home play out inside her.

Tim unhooked Pearl from Maggie's neck and held her firmly in his arms as she thrashed and wailed. Maggie mouthed, ‘Thanks' and started waving and backing away towards the front door. ‘Bye, my darlings, have a good day. I'll see you both tonight.'

Maggie shut the cobalt blue door behind her and briefly leaned against the heavy wood, wincing as she heard Pearl's screams escalate. She checked her watch again, then skipped down the steps at a run. Pearl's cries followed her halfway down the street before dying out at number 67. Maggie pushed down the feelings of guilt and thanked her lucky stars for the good solid fact of Tim.

She started going through in her mind the running list of things that needed doing. Still walking at a fast clip, she hunted through her bag for her notebook and ran through her list of chores, adeptly weaving past mothers with prams, dawdling schoolchildren and early commuters.
Chase the builders for a quote; guest list for Tim's fortieth; sort the massive pile of washing threatening to overtake the laundry; map out campsites for the Lakes District; find a date for dinner à deux with Tim.
The last item was underlined twice and had been on the list for months.

Maggie looked up from her notebook and noticed the front gardens she was passing. Violets, geraniums and tightly furled buds still shining with dew seemed to be revelling in the early spring sunshine, almost bursting from their planter boxes in enthusiasm. It was her favourite
time of year, when the dark heavy cloak of winter seemed to fall away from London in small daily increments. Even the quality of the light was changing, the low grey skies making way for crisp, blue days. The air seemed to carry a wisp of a promise for the warmer months ahead, and despite the thread of anxiety she felt about being summoned to an early morning meeting with her boss, Maggie felt a little thrill of excitement course through her.

Stopping at the flower stall outside East Putney tube station, she hunted around inside her bag again, looking for her purse – she still had a few minutes left before her train arrived. A short, round man materialised from the gloom of the faux gypsy caravan.

‘Ciao Maggie!' Gino said, holding out his arms warmly. ‘How are you today,
bella
? I like your jacket – look at those buttons, very smart,' he said, fingering a stamped brass button on her red velvet cuff. This was what Maggie loved most about their neighbourhood – the sense of community. And Gino's stall was fantastic. Maggie had a weakness for starting the week with new blooms for her desk, and Gino's were always the freshest. ‘What can I get you today?' he asked.

Maggie's eye fell on some dusky pink peonies and white roses sitting on the counter – her favourites – but told herself that she really should try something different today.

‘How about these?' Gino asked, plucking out a bunch from a bucket sitting by his feet. ‘Unusual colour, from a new supplier. I chose them myself at the markets this morning. I thought when I saw them,
Maggie will like these
.'

‘Oh, thanks – um, let me have a look,' said Maggie, pretending to consider the papery green hydrangeas Gino was proffering. The petals were striated with purple and green, reminding her vaguely of potpourri. She hated potpourri . . . the fusty, dust-collecting smell of it. But she couldn't bring herself to disappoint Gino. ‘Lovely,' she said, smiling brightly. ‘I'll take them.'

Gino smiled broadly. ‘I knew you'd like them,
bella
. Five pounds. For you, I knock off a few quid.'

‘Thanks, Gino, cheers,' she said, trying not to shift from foot to foot with impatience while he painstakingly wrapped the hydrangeas in brown paper and tied them with ribbon.

Pelting down the station steps, Maggie made it onto her train just as the doors closed, and sank with a sigh of relief into a seat. As the tube shuddered its way along the District line, Maggie checked the time again. Damn, she was cutting it fine. When they stopped inexplicably for ten minutes before resuming at a walking pace, she couldn't help groaning out loud in frustration. A pinstriped city worker reading his carefully folded copy of
The Times
looked up in surprise, his eyes dancing with laughter. Maggie smiled back and blushed, before feigning interest in the blooms on her lap.

She'd never quite got the hang of the tube, perhaps because she'd grown up outside of London. All that deathly silence and stiff upper-lipped reserve, pretending not to notice if your neighbour was quietly sobbing in the corner of the train, or their shopping was digging into your knee . . . Some days she wanted to break into song just to stir things up a bit. Maggie reminded herself again how lucky she was to have landed on her feet in the capital. Good home, good job, good friends; she and Tim were blessed, really. But what on earth could Bonningham want?

When her autocratic boss had messaged her late the night before to say he wanted to see her first thing in the morning, Maggie's mind had instantly jumped to panicked conclusions.
Must be bad news,
she'd thought, unable to stop worrying about their mortgage and the extension they'd just taken to do the renovation . . . As Maggie pulled at the pilling on the inside of her jacket sleeve, she tried thinking of other things, like the way Pearl had woken her up this morning, fluttering her eyelashes against Maggie's cheek and shouting ‘Butterfly kiss!' in her ear.

After changing lines at Notting Hill Gate for her Bond Street destination, Maggie belted up the steps two at a time towards the exit, clutching the hydrangeas to her chest. She weaved expertly through the streams of commuters and pulled open the glass doors of
Bonninghams Auction House at 7.30 am precisely, thinking of Charles Bonningham's zero-tolerance attitude towards poor punctuality. She threw her bag on her desk and patted down her hair, reached for the locket on its gold chain hanging against her ribcage and rubbed at it for reassurance. It was only as she was standing outside her managing director's wood-panelled corner office with her hand poised to knock that she realised she was still holding the flowers.

‘Margaret, is that you? Come in please.'

No, no, no,
she thought, looking around for somewhere to leave them, but it was too late.

‘Sorry, Mr Bonningham,' she said, opening the door and reading the time on the clock above his patrician silver head: 7.33 am.

Sitting in her office later, Maggie could hardly remember a single thing that had happened in the past hour. Of course, she must have finished the meeting with Bonningham and wandered down the hallway to her much-less-grand office (with its lack of windows or any view at all really, apart from the dusty photocopier in the hall). And she must have made herself a cup of tea at some stage, because there was one within reach that had grown stone-cold in the interim. The flowers she'd bought this morning were also sitting in a pretty hand-painted vase on her desk. But Maggie was damned if she could remember doing any of those things.

Her mind was still reeling from her conversation with Bonningham. He had the knack of somehow always putting her off balance.

‘You must know I've thought of you as a protégé for some time now,' he'd said without preamble as soon as she'd sat down – the man was never one for mincing words.

‘Sorry?' Maggie had replied. His grand mahogany display cases filled to the brim with priceless antiques always overawed her. She was so rarely invited into his office that when she did have the opportunity, she couldn't help but be distracted by all the wonders they contained.
Spanish doubloons, one of the first Winchester rifles ever produced, and a broken stone carving – an original piece of the Elgin marbles, if authentication was correct . . .

She'd been a valuer and auctioneer at Bonninghams Auction House for seven years. It was a strange sort of job, somehow both gofer and managerial, but there was also a kind of glorious unpredictability about it. One day you could find a Sévres vase in the back hall of a country estate, being used to store a motley collection of umbrellas and walking sticks, and the next day you'd be assessing job lots of dusty old hardbacks worth two quid, if that. Maggie loved the treasure-hunt aspect of her job, as well as the wild swings of fortune, and she also relished the way, at the end of each sale, the decks were literally cleared afresh. Every Monday morning the auction floor at Bonninghams was empty and it was time to start anew, a pattern Maggie knew fulfilled her constant urge for rejuvenation – taking something old and tatty and, with a bit of love and clever display, making it appear new and desirable once again.

‘We're doing well,' Bonningham continued, tapping his fountain pen on the leather blotter for emphasis. ‘You keep the floor running like a machine, Maggie, and you've introduced all the new systems for us: the online catalogue, the database. It's the only thing keeping us competitive at the moment. I'm sure you realise we'd be a very different place without you.'

Maggie reddened at that point, unsure about whether she was supposed to agree with him or stay quiet. ‘Thank you,' she said awkwardly.

Bonningham dropped the pen on his desk and leaned forward. ‘So that's why I'm offering you a new role: head auctioneer. You'll be in charge of the floor from now on. How does that sound?'

Protégé? A promotion?
thought Maggie, dazed. She'd had no idea he regarded her so highly. The man was utterly inscrutable most of the time, and here he was telling her he admired her work?

‘I'll still do the occasional sale – the annual art fair, the fine wines,' Bonningham continued, ‘but I'll be focusing more on my duties as chair of the board.'

Maggie nodded, attempting to swallow down the lump forming in her throat. Why did she feel so . . . emotional all of a sudden? The prospect of taking on more work was daunting – she felt as though she was already struggling to keep up as it was. But no, that wasn't it. She'd never shied away from hard work. But Maggie could hear a tiny voice inside her head, asking,
Are you really ready? Do you deserve this?
It was the voice of her mother. Critical and scathing.

Bonningham must have sensed her hesitation because he frowned. ‘I'll still be here, you know,' he said, sizing her up as though wondering if he'd made a mistake about her. ‘And I can help you with advice about staff management and such until you find your feet.'

Maggie looked at him blankly, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly. ‘Do I infer from your silence that's a yes?'

Maggie startled to attention. ‘Yes, yes of course,' she said quickly, knowing there was little else she could say. ‘That's marvellous, thank you . . .'

‘Good, good,' said Bonningham, a smile on his face.

Her enthusiasm had done the trick, but Maggie felt light-headed all of a sudden.
God, what have I done?