The Vintage Teacup Club (17 page)

‘Going once …’

Alison gripped the sleeve of my rose-patterned cardigan tightly, and I held my breath.

‘Going twice …’

Maggie, on my left, had my other arm in a vice-like grip.

‘And …’

‘
Ouch
,’ I yelped, as Maggie’s hold got even tighter, pinching my skin.

‘Oops, sorry,’ she whispered to me, as an old lady in the row in front of us gave us a disapproving glance over her shoulder. ‘Nerves.’

‘Sold, to the lady at the back,’ the elderly auctioneer squinted to see, and Alison let go of my cardigan and stood up to give him a better
look, ‘in the fetching red dress.’

We cheered as Alison sat back down and turned to us. ‘Well done us,’ Ali said, with a smile. ‘What a complete bargain.’

We’d come along to the local antiques auction with modest expectations. There’d been a lot of tat for sale, admittedly; cat statuettes and a giant serving plate shaped like a carp. But among it we’d spotted and snapped up a prize 1930s teaset. And Maggie had bought some art deco glass-fronted wooden cabinets for Blue-belle.

Going to the auction wasn’t exactly what I’d felt like doing when I’d woken up that morning. I’d been stiff from a night on the sofa and it felt weird that Dan had already gone out. He plays football every Saturday morning, but normally we find time for a lie-in together with the papers before he heads to the park. This morning I’d slept late though, until just after eleven. I’d dashed to get myself washed and dressed in time for Maggie, who was picking me up in her car.

‘Shall we call it a day, go out on a high?’ I asked the others. I didn’t want to be a killjoy, but I was finding it hard to rustle up my usual enthusiasm for the teacup-hunt this morning.

‘Leave before we bankrupt ourselves, you mean?’ Maggie said. ‘Yes, that’s probably a sensible idea.’ ‘Tea?’ Alison said. We both
nodded.

*

There was a makeshift stand in the adjoining room, which sold polystyrene cups of tea and coffee, and paper plates of cakes and raisin scones. We sat on plastic chairs at a wooden table and Maggie got her sketchbook out. With everyone else still at the auction, we practically had the place to ourselves. Our voices echoed off the walls.

‘The Mad Hatter’s tea party was always my favourite part,’ Alison said, as Maggie showed her some of her sketches for the wedding. ‘When he gets the measuring tape out to measure people’s heads for hats? I loved that. Anyway, I think filling the teacups with flowers is going to look great.’

Maggie spread our treasures out on the wide wooden table – so that we could all take a second look. The lady running the stand had raised her eyebrows a fraction as she brought over our teas and struggled to find a space to put our drinks down. Maggie moved the teacups aside to make room. She looked serene and elegant today, dressed in an emerald green shirt dress with simple gold bangles that jangled to announce her every move. Her hair was held back at the sides with vintage bronze hair-clips. But it wasn’t any of that which made her look so different today – it was the sparkle in her eyes; she seemed softer, magnetic.

I felt the opposite – tired, brittle and hurt after the row. Alison’s dark hair looked sleek, pulled back into a ponytail with a quiff styled
forward, but my guess was that in spite of the make-up and her scarlet dress, she wasn’t at her best either.

‘Thanks for lending me the books, Jenny,’ Maggie said warmly, handing them back to me. ‘I think getting the details right will help give me the edge on Owen.’

‘I thought you said that the bride wanted to see you work better
together
?’ Alison said.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Maggie laughed, her hair glossy under the strip lights, ‘as long as I’m
better
when we’re working together.’

‘Maggie.’ I narrowed my eyes at her. ‘You’re all …
radiant
.’ I pointed at her cheeks. ‘You’ve got this
glowy
thing going on.’ She also seemed to have an irrepressible smile on her face. ‘Is there something you should be telling us?’

‘Ha ha. Sort of,’ she said, coyly. Alison and I exchanged a look.

‘Yeesss?’ Alison and I prompted in unison. By the looks of things Alison needed cheering up with some gossip as badly as I did.

‘Is it Dylan?’ I guessed. Maggie had mentioned that their meet had gone well, but she hadn’t given many details.

‘Yes, it’s Dylan,’ Maggie said, looking as if she might spill over with the news. ‘It’s a long story, and it’s early days, but I’m beginning to think this one
might just have a happy ending.’

*

By the time Maggie had finished filling us in we’d drained a tea each and munched our way through flapjacks, a slice of carrot cake and a slab of millionaire’s shortbread. Alison and I had listened, rapt, as Maggie talked.

‘Like I told you, back when I met Dylan I thought him being The One would make it all go smoothly, but of course it didn’t. At all.’

Alison nodded in that knowing way she had.

‘But now I feel we’re meeting as two different people, people who know better what it takes to make a relationship work.’

‘Four years is a long time,’ I said, thinking back to the early days of my relationship with Dan.

‘It is,’ Maggie continued. ‘And I think we’ve both grown up, realised what it is we want and need. I’ve always been a bit of a romantic, I suppose. I’m not sure that real love ever goes away.’

‘But doesn’t he live in New York?’ Alison said. ‘I mean, I don’t want to put a damper on things, but what does that mean, in terms of the two of you?’

‘New York is still his base, but he might be able to get a few jobs here in England over the summer. He’ll be in Charlesworth tomorrow, as it happens. He wants to see the shop, my house, my life here. I’ve said he can keep his stuff at mine
while he’s travelling around,’ Maggie said, smiling. ‘So he’s not such a hobo, I mean.’

‘Wow, things are moving along pretty quickly,’ Alison was still smiling but she had a questioning look in her eye.

‘Life is short,’ Maggie replied, without any hesitation. ‘And we already know each other through and through. I don’t really see the point in waiting around any longer.’

‘Well he certainly sounds gorgeous,’ I said. New York, his photography, the passionate reunion Maggie had told us about … he did. Living in Charlesworth most of my life I hadn’t really met any men like that. ‘Before I forget,’ I said. ‘Sorry to change the subject, but I’ve got a date for your diaries – my hen night. Saturday July the eighteenth.’

I glanced at my phone as I spoke and the high I felt about my upcoming hen mixed with a sinking feeling when I saw the time. It was two o’clock. Dan hadn’t texted me after his football game. He always texted me.

‘Ooh,’ Alison said. ‘Your hen. Excellent. It’s been a
very
long time since I went on one of those.’ Maggie got her diary out and wrote it in.

‘Hey, isn’t that …?’ Maggie caught sight of someone out of the hall’s grand windows. I turned in time to see Pete walk by. Alison immediately put a hand up to her face and turned her head so that he wouldn’t be able to see her through the glass.

‘Alison!’ Maggie
said, teasing. ‘Are you
hiding
from your husband? What’s going on?’

Alison wasn’t laughing though. The colour had drained from her face. ‘Don’t. I just want a break from everything today.’ Alison’s strength and confidence seemed to dissolve away in an instant.

‘But I thought things were going well,’ Maggie pressed her. ‘The offer from Jamie, the new café. You sounded really excited.’

I nodded. ‘It sounded great, Ali. Was Pete not keen?’ I asked.

‘You know what, it’s just not happening,’ Alison said, her voice flat. ‘I’ve told Jamie I can’t do it.’

I looked out the window and watched Pete’s back disappear from view. He was laughing, I realised then. And he was with a woman whose
dark-red hair fell in waves.

‘But we can’t have people actually falling down a rabbit hole.’ Maggie shook her head. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

She was at Joey’s café with Jack and Owen. Jack had gone to order sandwiches for their lunch, leaving the other two to discuss their ideas.

‘They won’t really be falling down it, Maggie,’ Owen said, speaking slowly like he was talking to a child. ‘It’ll be like a tunnel that they walk through. We’ll build sculpted archways and grow plants over them.’ Maggie listened, trying to picture it. She was struggling. As Owen talked, dark curls of hair fell across his eyes and he pushed them back.

‘A tunnel. And the wedding guests will be like
moles in holes?’ Maggie challenged him, a childish urge to put down his ideas proving impossible to resist.

Owen closed his eyes briefly and breathed out slowly through his mouth before his eyes came to rest on her again. ‘Rather than grown adults hula-hooping, you mean?’

Maggie opened her mouth ready to let the insults fly. Just then Jack arrived back at the table, putting plates of sandwiches between them.

‘Was it the lychee and passion smoothie you wanted, Maggie?’ She nodded. ‘And apple juice for you, Owen?’ Owen nodded too, unable to hide his irritation with Maggie. Jack looked puzzled and turned back towards the counter.

Owen started to explain again, leaning towards her, his tanned forearms resting on the table. Maggie bristled. She hated having to keep quiet, but it was the only sensible thing to do. This boy must have been at least six years her junior, couldn’t have worked on nearly as many weddings … in fact, come to think of it, had he even worked on
any
? And yet
he
was patronising
her
? She felt the annoyance start to build up again. She bit her tongue, so that Jack wouldn’t see them at odds again – the whole point of the meeting was to show that they could get on.

‘The point of the tunnel is really only visible on the inside,’ Owen explained. ‘As guests walk through, they’ll see that the walls are covered in flowers, as well as
the books and jam jars, the things that Alice notices when she falls. There will be spaces in the structure, so that shafts of sunlight are coming through to light up the inside.’ Owen indicated with his hand how the tunnel would work.

‘It’ll be angled downhill, so guests will have the experience of downward movement, and it means that when they land at the bottom – on the chessboard floor – they’ll be through and into Alice’s world, with croquet, mushrooms and everything else.’

Maggie had to admit that she was starting to warm to the idea. But she still wasn’t completely convinced it would work. ‘What about elderly guests? Lucy’s grandparents? Will they be whizzing down the rabbit hole too?’

‘It’s a slope, Maggie, not a fairground ride,’ Owen said, his voice softening a little. ‘And if anyone has mobility issues they can just go down the ramp to reach the Alice garden instead.’

‘Hmm,’ Maggie said, finding nothing else to object to. ‘It does sound like quite a good idea, I suppose,’ she conceded. Owen raised an eyebrow. He sat back in his chair, but he looked tired, not smug like Maggie had expected.

‘I hope orange juice will do,’ Jack said, returning to the table, putting the drinks down and pulling up a chair to join them. ‘I honestly don’t know why Joey’s even write a menu when they never seem to have anything
on it.’

Maggie heard her phone ring in her bag – when she got it Dylan’s name flashed up on the screen. ‘Excuse me a minute, would you? It’s a work call I have to answer.’ Moving away from the table she pressed the green button. ‘Hello?’

Outside, a couple of people were smoking in front of the café, so she moved to the side of them, stopping outside the window right in front of Owen and Jack.

‘Hi M.’ Dylan’s voice sent a tingle over her skin. ‘How’s your day going?’

‘Good, thanks, I’m at a meeting about the Darlington Hall wedding I told you about. The big one, with that intolerable guy? But otherwise it’s all going well.’

A little girl dropped her lollipop on the pavement by Maggie’s feet while her mother’s back was turned. As she picked it up, dirt and a leaf clinging to it, Maggie reached down to stop the girl putting it back in her mouth. The mother spun round, threw Maggie a dirty look, and pulled her child away. The little girl was sucking on her lolly, and looked pretty content. As Maggie stood to her full height again she caught Owen looking at her through the glass, and quickly turned her back to the window.

‘Ah the challenges of working life,’ Dylan said, ‘I wish you luck with it, sweetheart.’

‘And how’s your day?’ Maggie enquired. ‘Are you still in Brick Lane?’

‘Yes,’ Dylan said, animated. ‘It’s a
great shoot actually, it’s good to be back in the East End. There’s so much to photograph here, and there’s nothing quite like it in the States. But listen, Maggie, are you still on for tonight? Maybe we could have a romantic dinner at yours?’

‘Yes, sure,’ Maggie said, ‘I’ll pick up some food for us on the way home.’

‘Perfect. There’s something I want to talk to you about, actually.’ Dylan said.

‘OK,’ Maggie said, checking her watch and realising she should bring the conversation to a close, even though she could have talked for hours. ‘Just come over whenever you’re ready. I’ll be back by seven or so.’