On Top of Everything (2 page)

Within two minutes, the shop was dead silent again, with nothing more than a distant car alarm filling the air between my white-faced partner and me.

‘I can’t do this any more, Florence,’ Charlotte said flatly. ‘I’m sorry to put it to you like this but it’s been on my mind for a long time. I think it really would be best if you left.’

‘If I left? What are you talking about?’ I started to laugh, albeit nervously, but Charlotte didn’t join in. Instead she fixed me with her steely glare, her perfect lips more pinched than ever.

‘Are you
firing
me, Charlotte? You can’t fire me. We’re partners!’

‘Partners? I want to buy and sell antiques for a profit but you are quite happy just sitting here drinking tea with the local tramps and whoever wanders in off the street. You are holding me back, Florence, you really are. The truth is, you don’t care about the business — the profit, the trends, the stock — and I do. I truly do. I don’t want you as a partner. I want out. No, I’m sorry, that’s not true. I want you out.’

I can’t tell you how shocked I was, not to mention hurt. Charlotte and I were friends, for a start, close friends, sort of. We didn’t socialise as much as we used to because Martin was always working. And even when he wasn’t, he and Harry were sort of at odds now that Harry was a writer not a lawyer. But I was godmother to their middle daughter Abigail, whom I loved to bits. I had also assumed that Charlotte appreciated the way I dealt with the customers. It wasn’t her strength. She was good at buying the antiques, at the dealing. The profit
was
her motivation. But it wasn’t mine, mine was the customers. And without customers we would never have sold anything
to anyone, big or small. Didn’t that make us good partners? Didn’t that mean we shared the load?

Apparently not. The load, according to Charlotte, was not evenly distributed and she was shouldering too much of it, plus being stifled by my evil cake-making enterprise. Most buying and selling of antiques was being done on the internet these days anyway, she said, and I would know that if I showed more than the slightest bit of interest. My skills in terms of the partnership, she felt, had become more or less redundant. Well, not so much of the less, actually.

So, shortly after Whiffy O’Farrell threw the Victorian chamber pot into the Regency mirror, Charlotte offered me £30,000 to go away and leave her alone.

And despite being totally unprepared, having no other prospects, and not being legally obliged in any way to do so, I took it.

People think that just because you look a certain way or smell a certain way or walk a certain way or talk a certain way or don’t talk a certain way or lie on a park bench farting happily in the sun or should that be
The Sun
a certain way that there’s nothing inside you but they’re wrong. So I don’t know exactly who I was or why I’m here now or how my fingernails got so dirty; and I can’t seem to reach into my brain to pull out any of the answers to the million questions I have rattling around inside my head. But I do know some things. I know there was a house and there were some little ones and I might have been one of them and there was an old man and a fob chain and I can picture them all separately but when I try to put them in a group they all fly off to different corners and I have to start again.

Some days I think I know more about the past than others, but you know that doesn’t really make me feel any better. And some days I know nothing at all and that makes me feel just the same.

They had fob chains in the antique store on Warwick Place and for a long time I used to go and look at them through the window until one day the dark-haired lady who works there came outside and asked me would I like a cup of tea and some cake. It had maybe been a long time since someone asked me that so I didn’t really say anything as I seem to have lost the knack but I went in anyway and after I had looked at the fob chains I had 
some of the tea and some of the cake and it tasted very good and the dark-haired lady didn’t ask me any questions or anything — just talked a bit about tea cups and then did some dusting.

Most people think I’m invisible so I’m inclined to think that myself but the dark-haired lady in the antiques shop saw me and that was a pretty nice feeling because it happened more than once with her. There was always tea and cake or biscuits or once a crumbly coconut thing that I didn’t like as much which didn’t mean it wasn’t good because it was just not as good as the cakes.

The last time I was in the antiques shop I had some of her fruitcake and that was good too but then the blonde-haired lady who also works there started shouting and pushing at me and I don’t like it when blonde-haired ladies shout and push at me. That is not a nice feeling.

I felt bad about the dark-haired lady because she stopped being at the antiques shop although that’s good in a way because a nice lady like that shouldn’t have to work with someone like the blonde-haired lady.

A nice lady like that should just make tea and cakes.

For a while I went back to looking at the fob chains through the window but now the antiques shop doesn’t even have fob chains. Just great big cupboards and tables that look like they were built by monks.

CHAPTER TWO

Rotten things tend to happen in threes in my family. They always have.

‘Oh, Florence, you can’t truly believe that!’ Harry had been known to exclaim when I aired this theory. Things, rotten or otherwise, happened whenever they happened for a variety of reasons, according to him, and couldn’t really be corralled neatly into groups just to suit me. Rotten things could come in twos or fives or tens, according to Harry. ‘Or even singles, Floss. It just depends when you start counting them and when you stop.’

He’s entitled to his opinion, of course he is, we all are, but after nearly forty years on the planet my own personal tragedies had a rhythm to them that I think I understood pretty jolly well.

Consider this: in the space of just one awful month not long after I turned sixteen, our cat was run over by a drunken
cyclist; our budgie pecked open his door and flew the coop, never to be seen again; and the tortoise who’d lived at the bottom of our garden since 1972 moved next door and wouldn’t come back.

Shortly afterwards I came down with a terrible flu, which was followed by chicken pox and then, finally, appendicitis.

No sooner had I recovered from that spectacularly awful roll than I lost three grandparents in the space of two weeks.

Pets, health, grandparents: sometimes even our threes happened in threes.

So when I was fired from a job where I was theoretically my own boss, which in anyone’s book definitely counted as a rotten thing, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that this was the first in a hat trick of horribleness.

The question was, what would come next?

What came immediately, which could have been a second rotten thing of the most truly rotten variety, was a fast-moving white van (is there any other sort?). I had left the shop, Charlotte’s cheque in my hand, somewhat in a daze, and was looking across the road thinking how much I didn’t want to go home and sit in our empty house. Harry was at a creative writing workshop in Aldeburgh and our nineteen-year-old son Monty was away in Australia doing fun things during his gap year, which was thankfully about to come to an end. Never had I missed him more.

The only one at home would be Sparky, the world’s droopiest terrier. Something terribly sad had clearly happened to Sparky before we got him and he had never really cheered up. Had we known he lacked so much as a single spark, we might have rethought his name but Monty had always wanted a dog called Sparky so when we finally relented and got him one, Sparky it was — but sparky he wasn’t. He was the Eeyore
of the dog world: his eyes deep pools of gloom and his brow permanently knitted in sorrow. If you felt just the tiniest bit sorry for yourself, Sparky was perfect company because he liked nothing more than cuddling up to you as you sobbed delicately into his soft grey coat. If you had lost the will to live and required encouragement to carry on, though, his was not the face you wanted to peer into.

All this must have been going through my mind as I stepped thoughtlessly into the path of the fast-moving white van. With a screech of brakes it swerved dramatically across the lane, only just avoiding me, the driver honking his fury, stopping for a split second then speeding off again, a cloud of profanities issuing out the windows on both sides.

I stepped back on to the footpath, my heart knocking against my ribs, my breath coming in short panicky bursts. I couldn’t think what to do. I just knew I didn’t want Charlotte coming out the door, which until minutes before had been half mine, to find me clinging to a lamppost hyperventilating and sweating profusely. There was no dignity in that.

As the up-tempo beat of a girl band pop song trickled into my consciousness followed by the heady aroma of freshly poured beer, I turned to look through the open doors of the Warwick Castle, the pub right next to our shop. I would maintain my dignity in there, I decided, although I suppose that’s not really what pubs are for.

With a slightly trembling voice, I ordered a gin and tonic from the tattooed barman and avoided the eye of the
middle-aged
midday tippler already three sheets to the wind beside me.

Grabbing my drink I moved into the sunny little annexe next to the main bar. To my surprise there, under the Pale & Burton Ales mirror, sat Marguerite.

She was perched at a tiny table bearing a pot of tea and two cups. I didn’t know you could even get tea at the Warwick. I had certainly never seen any of the Sunday lunch crowd, who spilled out onto the pavement and yabbered loudly during the summer months, swilling tea. They favoured pints of light and bitter and long-winded stories about football matches going wrong, as far as I could tell.

Marguerite waved as though she had been expecting me. There was really nothing for it but to join her.

‘I just about got run over by a van,’ I told her, my hand shaking as I pulled back my chair. ‘Honestly, I’m all of a twitter. It’s turning into the most horrendous day. I’m so sorry about what happened in the shop and I can’t thank you enough for what you did with Whiffy. Oh, that’s what we call him, the chamber-pot man. Actually, it’s mean now I come to think of it but he’s never told me his name and it’s not because I haven’t asked. And he is whiffy. Plus Sinead, our lovely cleaning lady — well, girl really — at the shop, thought he looked like an O’Farrell who’d lived across the road from her when she was little. But still. Yes, the shop. Look, Marguerite, you’ll have to forgive Charlotte, she’s not always like that, she’s just under a lot of pressure right now. Of course, that doesn’t give her the right to … Well, anyway, it doesn’t matter as it turns out. I’m no longer … We’re no longer. Yes. Well. I hardly ever come in here. Isn’t this nice? Just the one rotten thing so far then.’

I was talking utter nonsense, I did that sometimes when my nerves were jangled, but Marguerite didn’t seem to mind. She simply pushed a cup of tea towards me. ‘This is for you,’ she said, smiling.

‘For me?’ I started to protest but she wouldn’t hear of it so instead I abandoned my gin and tonic and took a sip. I didn’t even really like gin and tonic, I was desperate for a cup of tea in
fact, now that one was being thrust in front of me. I then told her, in a somewhat calmer fashion, what had transpired with Charlotte after she and Whiffy had left. To my embarrassment I even snivelled a little bit. That could have been the near miss with the van or it could have been the firing. It all just seemed so sordid. Why had Charlotte treated me like that? Why had I let her? Why couldn’t van drivers keep to 30mph in a narrow lane?

I didn’t really know Marguerite very well and as I blathered on it struck me that she had quite a peculiar manner about her that I’d never noticed before. As I told her my story of woe, she simply smiled at me in an almost trance-like fashion. Then she took my tea cup away before I’d quite finished with it and started swishing and swirling and pouring what was left of the amber liquid back into the saucer. I was mortified but of course far too polite to say anything. Anything about that, I mean. I didn’t seem to have any trouble burbling on about antiques and careers and husbands and sons and university fees and electricity bills.

‘But Florence,’ Marguerite put her hand on my arm,
mid-burble
, to get my attention, ‘I just have to tell you that this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Marguerite was squirming in her chair and buzzing with an excitement that seemed totally out of place. She didn’t look like a drug addict but I suppose you never know.

Seeing the look on my face, she made a visible attempt to collect herself. ‘Look, it’s all here in your leaves,’ she said, her fervour instantly gaining momentum again as she showed me the inside of the tea cup with the tea leaves splayed around in a haphazard fashion. ‘Of course, it’s not the best cup for reading, you really want a much finer one, more fluted, and
not too heavily patterned. The violets you just pointed out next door would actually work quite well. But anyway this should do nicely in the meantime.’

‘You read tea leaves?’ I asked, trying to stifle my disbelief.

‘Yes, I do,’ she replied. ‘It’s my little secret. Actually, I’ve noticed signs of change in your leaves at the shop but I’ve never had the chance to look this closely. Most people’s leaves will read change in some form or other but for you it’s big changes, and today I can see exactly which ones.’

‘You can?’ I was too astonished to be entirely sceptical.

‘I can.’ She was so pleased I couldn’t help but feel pleased too, even though she was possibly quite mad and in need of locking up. She didn’t look mad though. She was always delightfully put together, Marguerite. Even when she was pregnant with twins she’d looked like a supermodel. T e babies were at home with a nanny today, I supposed, and Marguerite looked as stunning as ever. Her long blonde hair hung loose in rich curls and she was wearing a pink linen coat over a floaty floral dress. She looked less mad than I did. And infinitely better dressed.

‘What exactly do you see?’ I asked her, on those grounds. ‘Do you see Charlotte giving me the heave-ho?’

‘Well, not exactly. Look, I’ll show you.’ She tipped the cup in my direction again and pointed at one of the blobs of dregs. ‘That’s a house,’ she said. I agreed that it was a rectangular sort of a blob not completely un-house-shaped. ‘A tall house, three storeys maybe,’ she continued. ‘I often see generic houses but this is a particular house. There are enormous trees on either side of it. And there’s an over-sized door; see, it takes up nearly all three storeys?’ She twisted the cup slightly. ‘Now the house and the door are one thing but look here, Florence. There’s a hammer, can you see it?’

If I squinted, I almost could. I nodded and she twisted the cup again.

‘And here — oh, it’s so exciting, Florence — there’s a teapot; see the spout? It’s perfectly clear. And next to it, can you pick the rose?’

I thought perhaps I could see the spout but the rose was beyond me. In fact, I had already lost the hammer. That was quite a lot of things to have in one tea cup, I felt.

‘But what does it all mean?’ I asked her.

‘This is what it means: there is a house, your house I think. It has a big tree outside or a forest nearby perhaps and it is close to a lake. No, that can’t be right, you do live in London, I assume? It won’t be a forest or a lake. Are you near a body of water? No, I suppose not.’ She looked thoughtfully out the open doors of the pub, across the top of the wine barrels and the jaunty pots of red geraniums on the footpath, a frown crossing her lovely face. ‘Actually, it’s a lot like that house right over there,’ she said, pointing across the street. ‘The one with the big ashes in the back garden and that other splendid tree in the front. How odd. The Grand Junction where the two canals meet is just over there, isn’t it? Hm, maybe I have my wires crossed.’

‘But that’s where I live, Marguerite,’ I said, flummoxed.

‘What do you mean? Where?’

‘In that house right across the street.’

‘You do? That one right there?’

‘I do. That one right there.’

‘With the ash trees in the back and the whatever-it-is in the front?’

‘It’s called a tree of heaven,’ I said. I’d loved that tree ever since my grandmother first told me its name. How wildly romantic, we had decided, for a tree so angelically named to
be growing right there in front of her — now my — house.

‘Gosh,’ exclaimed Marguerite, ‘how marvellous!’

‘Well, don’t marvel too much because unless I find another job in the next five minutes someone else will be living there and I and my unsuspecting family will be in the poorhouse drinking bowls of watery gruel,’ I said, fervently hoping that poorhouses no longer existed or if they did, the food had improved since Oliver Twist’s days.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, although I didn’t particularly think I was being the silly one. She was reading tea leaves after all. It was spooky she’d picked my house, mind you — unless she already knew I lived there, but I couldn’t recall ever mentioning it. I rarely told people where we lived because they assumed we were rich and invited us to places I didn’t have the clothes for.

‘Go on, then,’ I said, momentarily encouraged.

‘Well, in the light of what’s just happened,’ she continued, ‘I believe the tea leaves are saying that the antiques door has closed for you, Florence, but that doesn’t matter because your heart was never really in antiques.’

I had long suspected this but then sort of forgotten about it, although I supposed that was what Charlotte had been saying. I was just not the ambitious type, Harry was always telling me that. The truth was, I’d been happy enough to trot across the street and work in the shop so had never bothered to consider doing anything else. But what was wrong with that? Happy enough is happier than most people ever managed.

‘Your heart’s like mine, I suspect,’ Marguerite was saying. ‘It’s in tea. The door that is now opening for you is the teapot door. No, don’t look like that, Florence. It will all make sense in a moment.’

Now, I liked a cup of tea as much as the next person, possibly more because I was fussy about the cup, but I couldn’t picture
what door a teapot could open that I would be interested in walking through.