The Vintage Teacup Club

by Vanessa Greene

  ‘You’re horrible, Mum.’ Sophie said, shaking her head at the perceived injustice. ‘You are a total, utter COW.’

  With that, Sophie turned on her DM-clad heel. On her way out she grabbed hold of the studio door, slamming it shut behind her with such force that the windows in the room rattled. George jumped up at the window outside and let out a loud bark. Alison looked towards the window and froze. Then it was as if she was watching everything in slow motion.

  The blue and white cup Pete had held in his hand last night clattered to the floor, shattering to pieces on the bare wooden floorboards. One of the precious forget-me-not set followed, knocking the milk jug next to it and dropping to the floor, crashing. The bracket holding up the middle shelf strained and snapped so that the entire shelf slid down to the right; the cups, like little china lemmings, fell to the floor and shattered one by one. Alison’s hands went to her mouth. She rushed to the shelves and tried to rescue the cups, catching two but watching at close range as others clattered to the floor, smashing one after another. When the last one on the middle shelf had fallen, silence descended.

  The door creaked open again and Sophie’s face appeared. She surveyed the room, taking in the damage she’d caused and her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Oh God, Mum. This is all my fault. I’m so, so, sorry.’

  Chapter 37

  Jenny

  I was sitting on a bench on the green by the fountain, where today two toddlers were dipping their toes in the sparkling water and giggling. I opened up my new Rough Guide to Ireland and underlined a couple of pubs on the east coast that they recommended for live music. It might not be the Maldives, but the closer our honeymoon got, the more excited I was about spending it there, driving between cosy B&Bs and going for walks in the countryside. I picked up a California roll from my sushi set and guided it into my mouth as I turned the page.

  Chloe had been off sick today and things were quiet in the office, so I’d flown through most of my tasks before lunch. I only had a week left at work and was feeling quite relaxed for a change, mainly because I was glowing with my new secret. Yesterday JoJo had emailed over some rough cover ideas for me to see, the visuals were using one of my illustrations of Jake and the designer had used a selection of different fonts that all matched the playful feel of the story. They looked terrific and it was really starting to sink in, for the first time I was able to picture my book up there on the shelves.

  As I dipped a tuna and avocado roll in soy sauce, my mobile beeped with a text. Putting the sushi to one side I got my phone out – Maggie.

  Jen, Ali has some news. It’s urgent. Call me or her when you have a min? x

  I flicked to Maggie’s number and called her right away. ‘Hi Jen,’ she said, and I heard her disappear into what must have been the back room, away from the noise of the shop floor.

  ‘Thanks for calling back,’ Maggie said, her voice giving nothing away. ‘I’m afraid it’s not good news. This morning there was an accident in Alison’s studio—’

  ‘What is it?’ I jumped in, nearly choking on an avocado roll. ‘What’s happened? Is Ali OK?’

  ‘Yes, she’s fine, it’s nothing like that,’ Maggie said, and I let out a relieved sigh. ‘The thing is,’ she continued, ‘she had the teacups out on her shelves, she wanted to look at everything before packing it all up. But she and Sophie had a row and Sophie ended up slamming the door shut really hard.’

  ‘No,’ I said, my heart in my mouth. Our cups – all our work. My wedding. Oh God. My wedding. I forced myself to ask her, ‘What … I mean, how many, how bad is it?’

  Maggie paused before continuing, and I bit my lip. Images flooded my mind of the delicate china smashing. ‘Almost half of the cups have been broken, Jenny.’

  ‘They can’t be,’ I said, panic making my heart race. ‘Please tell me you’re winding me up.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not. I’m so sorry,’ Maggie said, trying to console me.

  There was one week to go until my wedding.

  Ali was even more upset than me, if that was possible. It wasn’t her fault, I tried to reassure her – after all, it had been a joint decision to store the cups at her house, and no one could have predicted how things would turn out. Sophie had made a card for all three of us and had left it in the studio for her mum to find.

  On the front were three women, a collage of magazine images – one tall lady with green eyes and red hair, a little one with blonde hair and a bike, and one in the centre, with dark curls, red lipstick and a frilly 1950s apron. Inside she’d written a message in purple pen:

  To the Vintage Teacup Club. I’m so sorry I ruined everything. I didn’t mean to. I thought the cups were really cool and I never meant to break them. Sorry. Sophie x

  The Vintage Teacup Club, I smiled, in spite of everything. I liked that.

  ‘I spent the morning clearing up,’ Alison said. We’d settled down at the kitchen table and she was pouring out Earl Grey for us. ‘There were some larger pieces, but I can’t see that we’d be able to repair any of the cups with them. I’ve kept the bits in a box and I thought maybe we could use them – Maggie, they might work to decorate a flower bed or something? I don’t know. It seemed a shame to throw them away.’

  Alison looked crestfallen. I couldn’t even bring myself to think about those broken pieces of our precious teasets. There were still forty-odd cups on the shelf, and most of the saucers, but it was nowhere near what we’d need for the two weddings.

  ‘All that time …’ Alison said. Maggie and I hugged her as her voice started to crack. ‘And nothing to show for it.’

  I pulled back from the hug. Yes, this was a disaster, but as Alison said those words I realised how far they were from being true.

  I looked at her. ‘Nothing to show for it. Are you sure?’ I asked, a smile forming on my lips.

  ‘OK, so I suppose when you look at it that way,’ Alison said, wiping away the tears that had started to form and letting out a gentle laugh instead.

  ‘You’re right, Jen,’ Maggie said. ‘We’re strong, ladies. And it’ll take more than a few broken teacups to break us.’

  ‘Look,’ Alison said, the familiar matter-of-fact tone returning to her voice. ‘I know it’s absolutely not the same, but I do have a stash of other cups that might work for your wedding, Jen. I bought them a while ago to make candles, but they weren’t right. I mean they’re fine, but they’re just IKEA-type ones.’

  ‘Oh, OK, great,’ I said, ignoring the lump in my throat. Cups were cups, after all. Weren’t they?

  ‘And Maggie, you’ve got a bit longer until the Darlington Hall wedding, haven’t you? We should be able to find replacements before then,’ Alison said.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ Maggie said. ‘I’m sure I’ll find some more – and with Owen’s research the flowers are now coming in under budget so there’s still a bit of cash to play with.’ Maggie really did seem a lot more relaxed about her work nowadays.

  ‘I’ll tell Jamie and Adam to keep an eye out,’ Alison said, ‘and there’s still one Saturday left before the wedding – shall we give it one last go driving around the local car boot sales and see what we can find? We might just get lucky.’

  ‘Yes, sure, let’s do that,’ I said, trying my best to stay positive.

  ‘Are things all right with Sophie now?’ I asked, changing the subject. ‘I mean, from the card it does look like she’s genuinely sorry.’

  ‘I think she is,’ Alison said. ‘Sorry that she broke the cups, I mean. But I’m not sure she feels the same about what she did in the first place. Can you believe it? Sneaking a boy in here for the night? I would never, ever, have done that at her age.’

  ‘No comment,’ Maggie said with a wink.

  ‘Have you talked to Pete about it?’ I asked.

  ‘No actually, I haven’t had a chance,’ Alison said. ‘I didn’t want to call him at work, they’ve been so busy lately, and it sounds as if he’s really been thrown in the deep end. He�
�s enjoying the work, but says he never gets time to take lunch, and he’s working late quite a lot too.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I said.

  I was sure I could see something flicker across Maggie’s face.

  ‘Let’s meet first thing on Saturday then, shall we?’ Maggie said, quickly changing the subject. ‘And why don’t you ask Sophie if she wants to join us?’

  ‘What was that all about?’ I said to Maggie, my voice hushed, as soon as Ali’s front door was safely closed behind us.

  ‘What was all what about?’ she replied, buttoning up her jacket and not breaking her stride.

  ‘That,’ I said, catching her elbow as we reached the gate. ‘The way you were just then when Alison was talking about Pete working late. Why were you being weird?’

  ‘No reason,’ she said, pulling away and giving me a tight smile before walking off to her car. ‘I mean, I wasn’t being weird.’

  ‘You—’

  ‘Want a lift home?’ she interrupted, her face blank. ‘We can stick your bike in the back.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, shaking my head a little. I couldn’t have been imagining it. I could read Maggie like a book and there was definitely something she’d wanted to say but hadn’t.

  In silence we put my bike across the back seat of her car and then got inside, strapping ourselves in. Maggie turned the key in the ignition and we set off down the country lane.

  ‘Look,’ she said, once the tension between us got intolerable. ‘I didn’t want to say anything, because I’ve probably got entirely the wrong end of the stick.’

  Right, so I wasn’t going mad here.

  ‘I’ve been totally wrong about this sort of thing before, and I’m sure it’s just my own paranoia.’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Maybe if you tell me we can work out if you’re barking up the wrong tree or not.’

  She shook her head, not taking her eyes off the road. ‘I’m sure I’ve got this one wrong.’

  I waited until she eventually spoke.

  ‘It’s Alison. She said Pete never takes his lunch break – that since he started his new job he’s been too busy. You heard her say that, didn’t you?’

  I nodded. Then, realising she couldn’t see me as she kept her eye on the road, I said, ‘Sorry, yes, I heard that. And?’

  ‘It’s just that I saw him, Jenny. The other day, in the Queen’s Head – I was there for lunch with Owen and Pete was there with another woman. I mean not doing anything, but he was certainly out for lunch with someone else.’

  I shrugged it off, relieved that it wasn’t anything more serious Maggie had been hiding. I was sure that Alison would think it was sweet, actually, that Maggie cared so much about her to worry unnecessarily. ‘Pete’s completely devoted to Ali. I’m sure he didn’t mean he never, ever takes lunch, he was probably just saying that as a general thing, you know, how—’

  A memory caught me then, and I felt a heaviness in the pit of my stomach. The window at the auction hall, Pete’s face as he walked by. Alison had been so upset that day she’d hardly looked at him, but through the glass panes I’d seen that he was with someone else.

  ‘Maggie,’ I said, staying calm but a cold chill running through me. ‘Just out of curiosity, what was the woman’s hair like?’

  ‘Red,’ she said, not missing a beat, but more relaxed now. ‘But not like mine. That kind of dark chestnuttyred that comes from a bottle.’

  Chapter 38

  Maggie

  Maggie had stayed at Owen’s place almost every night since she’d told him about the baby. She liked waking up there, in his quiet attic room, and it felt like a world away everything – although she was one down on her list of stresses anyway now that Jenny had dismissed her worry about Pete.

  Owen had the top flat of a cottage by the converted stables where his workshop was, overlooking the cobbled courtyard, and in the evenings they’d make dinner together there. The flat was a real little hideaway, miles from her home and the little traces of Dylan that lingered – she wasn’t ready to make her house anybody else’s just yet, and eight months was long enough to get her head around that idea, she’d decided.

  Mork had started to complain about Maggie’s neglect, miaowing endlessly when she swung by her house to give him his food and collect a change of clothes after closing up at the shop. But for so many years the shoe had been on the other foot – her fickle Burmese had been out for the night tormenting the neighbourhood females when Maggie could have done with some company on the sofa. So she shrugged off the pet-owner’s guilt.

  It was still early on a warm Friday evening and Maggie and Owen were lying tangled up in his bedsheets, plates of food half eaten on the dining table. Owen moved his hand down to her bare stomach and then leaned down to kiss it, and Maggie laughed and stroked his hair. He came back, leant down to kiss her on the mouth and then lay his head next to hers on the pillow.

  ‘I spoke to Anna this week,’ she said, her mind switching back into work mode, not entirely free of the week yet.

  ‘Mmm-hmm,’ Owen said, his hand idly stroking her shoulder.

  ‘And she’s fine about covering my holiday to Italy,’ Maggie said. ‘But I’m thinking – seeing as I’m training her up to run the shop anyway, maybe I can start handing over more responsibility to her, before the baby comes, I mean.’

  ‘Relinquishing control,’ Owen said, smiling. ‘Is this the same Maggie I fell in love with?’

  ‘Maybe things have changed a little bit,’ Maggie said, narrowing her eyes at him playfully. ‘You know, I think it’s about time I let someone else take the reins for a bit. In the long term, I’d like to be able to focus on the events side of things, have someone else handle the shop.’

  ‘But what about the London branch?’ Owen asked, propping himself up on his elbow. ‘I thought that was your big dream?’

  ‘I thought it was too,’ Maggie said. ‘But I just wanted to prove myself to someone who wouldn’t even be here to see it.’ Owen furrowed his brow, confused.

  ‘My dad,’ she said. ‘Long story, but he thought I was throwing my education away by setting up on my own. He loved me, but we never saw eye to eye about the business. Expanding to London felt like, I don’t know, like enough to prove I was right. Anyway, I’ve realised it’s pretty unlikely I’m going to convince him beyond the grave, so I’m going to go my own way, instead.’

  Owen put his arm around her and pulled her closer. ‘Good for you,’ he said. ‘And I’ll be with you every step of the way.’

  Maggie had fallen into a doze, and when she woke up, Owen was gone.

  Tired from the pregnancy and a week of work, she had closed her eyes and let herself be lulled to sleep by the heat of the summer’s evening.

  An hour later, bleary-eyed, she was faced with an empty pillow next to her. Almost empty; where Owen’s head had been there lay a brown card luggage tag. She propped herself up, looking around the room and through into the bathroom, but saw that they were both empty, and the flat was silent apart from the hum of a solitary trapped bee.

  She picked up the card tag and looked at it. There was writing in black pen on the underside:

  ‘Oh my ears and whiskers,’ she read to herself, ‘how late it’s getting.’

  There was a hand-drawn picture of a white rabbit next to it.

  Maggie got out of bed, rubbing her eyes, and slipped her flowery maxi dress back on. Still dazed, she wondered through to the kitchen to get a glass of water and drank it down in one. It was getting late, she thought, looking out the velux window at the sun setting. How had she fallen asleep like that?

  She filled her glass again and looked over at the kitchen wall clock – nine-thirty. Then she spotted it; there, tied on with string, was another note, the same as the last.

  Who dares to taint

  with vulgar paint

  the royal flower bed?

  This time she recognised the words right away: of course, the red queen from Alice in Wonderland! Off with their heads, she
recalled. Maggie slipped on her sandals and, with the clues in her hand, rushed down the stairs and out of Owen’s cottage into the courtyard. Across it, over at the stables, she could see that the door to Owen’s workshop was slightly open; she smiled as she realised he must be over there waiting for her.

  She closed the cottage door behind her, and saw that to the side of it was a child’s wooden writing desk. On it was a violet-coloured glass, with a label around the base. ‘Drink me,’ it said. She flipped the label over, and as she read the other side she smiled: ‘(I’m non-alcoholic, by the way)’. She took a sip of the drink, cooling elderflower cordial.

  Maggie took the glass with her as she crossed the courtyard. As she reached the door to Owen’s workshop she remembered how she’d once slammed it in fury, on a day that already seemed a lifetime ago. This time she pushed it open gently, and felt something flutter down onto her shoulder, then another soft touch against her face, her arms, against her head. She looked down at the ground where a rain of diamonds, clubs, spades and hearts, had fallen all around her. You’re nothing but a pack of cards, she thought to herself, picking up an ace.

  Owen’s workshop was empty, but the back door was open and she could hear the soothing sounds of jazz playing in the garden. Maggie put her empty glass down on the side and walked over towards the music, knowing exactly where she was heading. At the back of Owen’s walled garden was a sprawling white rose bush. She made straight for it, nearly tripping up on a loose paving stone. She looked at each of the flowers and then crouched down to check the ones closer to the ground. It was then she saw the single red rose hidden low; next to it was a small pot of red paint and an abandoned paintbrush with another tag round it. On the card were the words: ‘Who’s been painting my roses red?’

  Maggie looked back at the red rose and saw that the paint was still wet. There, hung around one of the leaves on the stem, something was shining. Reaching for it, she saw it was a bracelet, inlaid with polished pieces of amber, a perfect match for the necklace her grandmother had given her, the one she was wearing right now.