The Museum of Ordinary People

by Mike Gayle

Genres: General Fiction; City Life; Family Life

Synopsis

In this “brilliantly original” and warmhearted novel, an old set of encyclopedias leads a young woman to a curious museum and one profoundly moving lesson: that every life is an extraordinary life (New York Times bestselling author Claire Mackintosh).  

Still reeling from the sudden death of her mother, Jess is about to do the hardest thing she's ever done: empty her childhood home so that it can be sold.  As she sorts through a lifetime of memories, everything comes to a halt when she comes across something she just can’t part with: an old set of encyclopedias.  To the world, the books are outdated and ready to be recycled.  To Jess, they represent love and the future that her mother always wanted her to have. 

In the process of finding the books a new home, Jess discovers an unusual archive of letters, photographs, and curious housed in a warehouse and known as the Museum of Ordinary People.  Irresistibly drawn, she becomes the museum's unofficial custodian, along with the warehouse’s mysterious owner.  As they delve into the history of objects in their care, they not only unravel heart-stirring stories that span generations and continents, but also unearth long-buried secrets that lie closer to home.

Inspired by an abandoned box of mementos, The Museum of Ordinary People is a poignant novel about memory and loss, the things we leave behind, and the future we create for ourselves.  
 

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

On the morning of my final day at Mum’s, I awoke suddenly to the sound of footsteps coming along the hallway. For a split second I imagined that it was Mum, and the past few weeks had been just a terrible dream. But then I heard the sound of boyish laughter and remembered how thin the walls in these terraces were and realized that it was the young kids of the family next door.

After packing my things, I lugged my mattress out to the dumpster, then went back inside the house for one final check to make sure there was nothing I had missed. Satisfied that everything was as it should be, I was about to pick up my bags to take them out to the car when there was a knock at the front door.

“Oh, hello, love,” said Maggie, trying her best to sound casual as Dougie looked on. “We know it’s your last day here so we thought we’d just pop over and see how you’re getting on.”

“I’m all done,” I said, trying to sound upbeat, “so I’m afraid I won’t be able to offer you a cup of tea or anything because I gave away the kettle yesterday. But come in anyway.”

As they stepped inside, they looked around the empty front room in disbelief.

“I know it’s a daft thing to say given what you’ve been up to all week,” said Dougie, “but it’s just so bare.”

“Sorry, I should’ve warned you,” I said, suddenly aware that I wasn’t the only one to have suffered Mum’s loss. They had been her friends for years and of course were grieving too.

“It’s okay, love,” said Maggie. “It’s just seeing the place like this takes some getting used to.”

“I can’t believe you’ve done all this on your own,” said Dougie. “We kept calling Luce, asking if you’d changed your mind about needing help, but she insisted you were fine.”

“We thought it might be too much for you,” continued Maggie sadly, “but you’ve proved us wrong.”

“It wasn’t easy,” I admitted, “but I don’t regret it. It was something I wanted to do for Mum, something I needed to do.”

“Of course, love,” said Maggie, wrapping me in a hug. “She would’ve been so proud of you.”

In an effort to ward off tears, I headed to the kitchen and returned carrying the Pyrex dish that Maggie had brought round at the start of the week.

“Thanks so much for the food. It was lovely. Just what I needed to keep me going.”

“I only wish we could’ve done more,” said Maggie, taking the dish. “Your mum meant the world to us.”

“I know she did, and she loved you both too.”

I noticed Maggie staring at the cardboard box by my feet and the five grocery bags stuffed with my set of encyclopedias next to it.

“Is that all you’re keeping of your mum’s?” asked Maggie.

I nodded guiltily, ashamed by my poor attempt to effectively curate the life of my wonderful mum. “I know it’s not much. To be honest, if I had the room, I would’ve kept everything. As it is, I don’t even know where I’ll put this lot.”

Maggie and Dougie fell silent, momentarily lost for words; then finally Dougie sighed heavily and asked if I was driving straight back down to London.

“That’s the plan.”

“I suppose it’s best to set off early before the traffic really gets going,” he said, and then stepped forward to hug me. “You will look after yourself, won’t you, love?”

“Of course,” I said, and then he let go and Maggie took her turn embracing me again.

“Let us know if you need anything,” she said. “Anything at all, even if it’s just a chat, pick up the phone, any time.”

I waved them goodbye from the doorstep, and once they’d gone I closed the door and sat at the bottom of the stairs having a last moment alone with the house and all its memories. It was eerily quiet without the ticking of Mum’s clock, the gurgling of the old fridge; even the perpetually creaking joints of the place were unusually still. It was as though without Mum the house had lost its life, and now without her things it had lost its soul too.

At the start of the week I’d been convinced that the task I’d taken on was beyond me—to get Mum’s whole house emptied, and every last one of her belongings dealt with in one way or another. But now here I was just a week later and the deed had been done. In the process I’d learned the hard way that Mum was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. She’d been in the largest of objects and the smallest too, and as I’d never known exactly when or where she might appear I could only conclude that my decision to do this job alone had been the right one.

It meant that I could look, listen out for, and sense Mum’s every last farewell without ever having to temper the scale of my reaction. When I’d come across an old family photo that made me want to rage at the injustice of my loss, I’d done so as loudly as I’d liked; when the sight of Mum’s handwriting on an old shopping list stuffed at the back of a kitchen drawer had reduced me to tears, I’d sobbed until my eyes were red and raw; and when, as I’d done many times that week, I’d felt the need to just sit quietly in a room, eyes closed, reliving my favorite memories, then I’d done that too, until the peace and comfort I’d longed for descended on me.

It was just after eleven by the time I made it back home to London. Parking the car in the street, I collected my bags from the trunk, made my way up to the tenth floor in the lift, and let myself into the apartment. Although my life in London with Guy in his Canary Wharf apartment was only a short two-hour drive away from Mum’s little Northampton terrace, it might as well have been on another planet for all that the two places had in common.

He’d bought it just before we got together, with the help of a healthy deposit gifted to him by his wealthy parents, and I’d moved in with him about a year later. Although I quite liked the views across central London the apartment offered, I’d never really warmed to its ultra-modern, slick minimalist styling, preferring old Victorian buildings with rooms that have features and character. Guy’s place used to be the show apartment and he’d bought it fully furnished, which is why it was full of the modern so-called design classics that were clearly used by the developer as shorthand for quality and excellence. When I’d first moved in, I’d tried arranging some of my colorful Indian throws, and other bits and pieces like candles and cushions, around the place to make it feel more homely. But they just looked wrong and so eventually they ended up stuffed in the cupboards above the wardrobe.

As I closed the door behind me, I was greeted by silence, Guy having thankfully taken my advice and gone ahead with his bike ride. Once again I felt guilty for misleading him about my arrival time but I was grateful for having done so. There was still so much to process, so much to understand, to come to terms with, that the silence of the apartment felt like a welcome friend.

It took me three more trips to empty the car and as I dumped everything in the hallway I felt a pang of guilt at having so quickly turned this pristine space into something resembling a jumble sale. Unsure what to do with all the treasures I’d brought back from Mum’s, I decided to concentrate instead on unpacking my clothes and putting on a load of washing. Afterward I stuffed my empty bags into the storage cupboard in the hallway and then turned my attention to the rest of it.

In an ideal world, or at least a world where I only had myself to think about, I would’ve simply decanted the contents of the box around the apartment. I would’ve temporarily put Mum’s vinyl on display on a shelf, with the intention of perhaps ordering some of those frames specifically designed for albums so that I could hang them artfully on the wall.

In an ideal world I would’ve hammered half a dozen nails into one of the walls in the bedroom, then draped Mum’s scarves from them, so that I could not only see them every day but also once in a while be reminded to put one on and wear it to work or on a night out.

In an ideal world I would’ve shifted Guy’s expensive Eames House Bird ornament, his fancy silver Tom Dixon bowl, and his towering Georg Jensen vase out of the way and replaced them with Mum’s broken duck ornament, her knock-off Mason Cash mixing bowl, and her blue vase from Anglesey. But this was far from an ideal world; if it were, Mum would still be in it. Instead I took the box into the bedroom and slid back the wardrobe door. Unlike Guy’s side, which was perfectly organized—his work shirts, suits, and ties all color coordinated, his off-duty wear of jeans, T-shirts, and jumpers all neatly folded on the shelves—mine was chaotic in the extreme. Every hanger strained under the weight of multiple items of clothing, T-shirts and tops were stuffed randomly into every nook and crevice, and lower down there was a muddled pile of footwear, everything from flip-flops to work shoes.

As I tried my best to make a space amongst my clutter, I couldn’t help wishing I was more like Guy, more thoughtful and ordered in my approach to life rather than dealing with everything it threw at me in a haphazard fashion. Picking up the box of Mum’s things, I wedged it into the wardrobe and then quickly pulled the door back into place. For a moment I felt good, like it was one more thing ticked off my to-do list, but then I remembered the bags of encyclopedias sitting in the hallway. For half an hour I stalked around the apartment looking for somewhere to hide them, but every single centimeter of storage space was already full, mostly of my things from before I moved in with Guy. Out of options, I shoved them up against the wall in the hallway underneath the coat hooks as neatly as I could and told myself I’d deal with them later.

Overcome with exhaustion, I returned to the bedroom, closed the blinds, shed my clothes straight on to the floor, and crawled into bed, then allowed the wave of grief I’d been holding back all day to crash over me.

I’m in the middle of pouring myself a glass of wine when I hear Guy come home from work. The upside of my job as a receptionist is that at five thirty on the dot I’m out of the door whereas Guy, who works in finance, rarely, if ever, makes it home before eight.

“Guess what?” he says excitedly as I open the cupboard door and take out another glass.

“What?”

“The estate agent called to say that all the slots for viewing the apartment at the weekend are already fully booked.”

“Wow, that didn’t take long,” I say, filling up the glass and handing it to him.

“Just think,” he says, pausing to take a quick sip of his drink, “with a bit of luck we could have an offer on the table by Monday. How mad is that? This time next week we could be in a position to make an offer on our very first home together.”

“It’s all happening very quickly,” I say, trying my best not to sound panicked.

“But that’s good, isn’t it? There’s no point in hanging around now that we’ve made the decision, is there? Talking of which…” he says, giving me a look that I can’t quite discern. “I know you really struggled with the decision to put your mum’s house on the market but you should be really proud of yourself for going ahead with it.”

“Thanks,” I say, wondering where this is going, “it was difficult, but like you said at the time, I was just putting off the inevitable.”

“Well,” he continues, “I’m glad you’ve said that because I’ve been wondering if you might be up for making another difficult decision.”

My stomach flips. “What about?”

He pulls a face, a mixture of awkwardness and embarrassment, and then looks pointedly toward the front door and in that instant I realize what this whole pantomime has been about. It’s about books, specifically the thirty-odd volumes of the 1974 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica that have been sitting, stuffed into carrier bags, by the front door since I’d brought them back to London after clearing out Mum’s a year ago.

“Look,” he says. “I feel awful bringing this up. I know what they mean to you, of course I do. It’s just that when the photographer came to take marketing photos of the apartment, I had to keep shifting them to make the place look tidy.”

“And with people coming on Saturday for viewings you need them out of here,” I say, finishing off his thought. “I’m sorry, Guy, I should’ve done something with them months ago. Leave it with me and I’ll get it sorted.”

When I finally got around to putting Mum’s house on the market a fortnight ago, I never thought for a moment it would lead to this. Really, all I’d been hoping to do was draw a line under my grief, to shake the feeling of exhaustion that had been with me all year. Because that’s the thing about grief no one ever tells you: it’s greedy. You don’t notice at first because you’re still in shock, and there’s so much to do, from obtaining death certificates to canceling utility contracts, but hour by hour, day by day, it eats up every last scrap of energy you have, leaving you spent and empty. Perhaps that in part was why, as time passed and the world kept turning, as friends got engaged and others had babies, selling Mum’s house simply got pushed to the bottom of my ever-growing to-do list.

Instead, I’d concentrated what little strength I possessed on getting myself through twelve months of firsts without Mum: the first Mother’s Day, the first birthday, and then of course Christmas, all the while being only too aware that the hardest “first” of all, the first anniversary of losing her, was still ahead of me. As the day grew nearer, I’d made myself all sorts of promises. If I got through it—and I hadn’t been at all sure that I would—I told myself I’d start looking forward to the future. The truth is, I was tired of being sad all the time, of feeling like I was just going through the motions, of constantly being trapped in the past. I don’t know how long grief is supposed to last—some say three months and others six—but I really was pinning all my hopes on twelve being the magic number, the point in time that would mark a kind of new beginning. I needed to try to get some of my old life back, to be a better friend, a better partner, to really start living again.

While the first anniversary of losing Mum was every bit as awful as I’d imagined it would be, I’d made it through. It didn’t finish me off. It didn’t send me spiraling off the deep end or leave me permanently curled up in a ball. And so, the very next day I’d put Mum’s house up for sale, and to my surprise a week later someone had made an offer. At first I was thrown; I’d thought I’d have longer to get used to the idea, to convince myself I was doing the right thing, and for a while I’d even considered turning it down. But then I’d thought about the past year, and how much I wanted this coming one to be different, and so I’d accepted, never thinking for a moment that it would result in Guy asking me to buy a house with him.

After dinner I help Guy clear the table; then he opens his laptop to do an hour or two of work, leaving me free to take a closer look at the encyclopedias. I pick one up at random. The faded gold lettering on the barely hanging-together spine reads, “Livingstone—Metalwork,” and when I open it up a page falls out and flutters to the floor.

Sitting down in the hallway, hugging the volume to my chest, I think about the day this set of encyclopedias first came into my life. I remember it like it was yesterday. Aged eleven, I’d come home from school one afternoon to discover them piled high on the dining room table along with a card that read, “For you, my sweet Jess, never stop learning! All my love, Mum.”

Mum had never been what you might call a big reader. She’d left school at sixteen with barely any qualifications, and had always complained that books were too slow for her liking. While she was more than happy to take me to the library every week, the only books in the house that actually belonged to us were a dog-eared edition of Gone with the Wind she’d been cajoled into buying at a school fête, a copy of the New Testament she’d been given by the local vicar on leaving primary school, and a coverless copy of the Be-Ro baking book that had been my gran’s. So, the sight of all of these books sitting on a table in my house took my breath away.

At that age I’d only ever seen encyclopedias at school or in the library and it had never occurred to me that normal people like Mum and me were allowed to own such things. And though they were clearly second-hand and had seen better days, I absolutely adored them.

When she’d arrived home from work at the supermarket later that afternoon, she found me sprawled on the carpet in the living room poring over them. She’d told me she’d bought them to help me with my homework.

“You’ll be at secondary school soon,” she said, “and studying things I won’t be able to help you with, so I’m hoping these will come in handy.”

At the time her explanation made complete sense and I took it at face value. It wasn’t until I was much older, and far less self-absorbed, that it dawned on me that this gift had been Mum sending a message: that coming from a black working-class single-parent family didn’t have to define me. That I didn’t have to get pregnant at sixteen like so many girls at my school did. That I didn’t have to take any job, anywhere just to make ends meet as she herself had done over the years. In short, she was saying that I didn’t have to compromise. That I could be a doctor, an astronaut, or anything else I dreamed of becoming for that matter, if I studied hard and wanted it badly enough. I think that’s probably why I brought them back to London with me. Because they were more than just a set of tatty out-of-date books. They were a symbol of Mum’s hopes and dreams for me. But did I really need to hang on to them to remember how much Mum had loved me? Did they need to physically occupy space in my home when what they represented took up so much space in my heart?

Over the past year they’d crossed my mind several times. I’d thought about piling them artfully in the corner of the bedroom, or perhaps clearing a space on the sideboard in the living room and arranging them in pride of place. But every time I thought about doing it I’d imagined how at odds they’d look set against the backdrop of Guy’s apartment, with all of its clean lines and designer furniture, and I ended up just leaving them where they were.

Perhaps Guy is right, I think, returning the copy in my hand to the bag I’d taken it from. This is just like Mum’s house; I’m hanging on to them just for the sake of it. Maybe now is the time to finally let them go.

The following evening after work I head over to Soho to meet Luce for drinks.

“Sorry I’m late, mate,” she says, plonking herself down on the sofa next to me and hugging me tightly. “Work was like being trapped in some sort of never-ending nightmare. Every time I thought we were wrapping things up, someone else would bring an issue to me and that would be another twenty minutes gone. Three times it happened! At one point I felt like screaming: ‘Will you people just stop banging on about your problems so I can go and get smashed with my bestie!’”

“You sound like you need a drink,” I say, rummaging in my bag for my purse. “What are you having?”

“I’m just telling you now, I’ll be needing more than just ‘a’ drink tonight, more like half a dozen!” She takes off the red wooly hat she’s wearing and runs her fingers through her short blond curls. “Work has been manic all day. And if anyone is going to be getting the first round in, it’s me.” She hugs me again. “It’s so good to see you looking brighter, mate. You’ve been through the wars but you’ve come through it.”

I reach into my bag, take out a small tissue-wrapped parcel, and hand it to her. “For you,” I say brightly. “I’ve been meaning to give it to you since forever.”

Luce eagerly tears into the paper, eventually removing a small ceramic duck.

“Captain Quackers!” she says, holding up the ornament that had sat on Mum’s mantelpiece throughout virtually all of our childhoods. “How much did we love playing with him when we were kids? I can’t take him. He belongs with you.”

“Don’t be daft, he’s yours. I’ve got more than enough to remember Mum by and anyway, it’s the least I can do given it was your dad’s superglue that saved me from being grounded for life.”

Luce smiles warmly at the memory. “Ah, the great indoor gymnastics incident of ’96. Even thinking about it now makes me shudder. Can’t believe your mum never found out!”

I point to Captain Quackers’ wonky beak. “Look at the state of that! Of course she knew; she just didn’t say anything, that’s all.”

“That was your mum all over,” says Luce fondly. “Always willing to give people a second chance.”

I feel a sudden flood of warmth toward my old friend who knew Mum almost as well as me. There weren’t many people in my life here in London who did; even Guy had only met her a handful of times.

“This is going to take pride of place in the flat,” she says, carefully rewrapping the duck and slipping it into her bag. “Leon can find somewhere else to stick pictures of his stupid nephews; this duck is going to go where everyone can see it.” She stands up and picks up her bag. “Right, I’m going to get us a drink and then we’ll raise a glass to the one and only Maria Anne Baxter!”

Luce is my oldest and closest friend in the world. Our parents were best friends and we grew up living across the road from each other. As kids, if ever my mum wanted to know where I was, her first port of call would be Luce’s, and if ever Maggie and Dougie wanted to find Luce, it was always my house they came to first. Across the years we’d always remained close, even sharing a flat together when I’d first moved to London. Now she works for a homeless charity as a fundraiser and lives in Brixton with her long-suffering boyfriend, Leon.

When Luce returns from the bar, she’s carrying two large luminous yellow cocktails she picked at random from the menu, and after raising a toast to Mum we catch up on each other’s news. She tells me all about the promotion at work she’s thinking of going for, Leon’s agonizing over what to do after his PhD, and her parents, who have recently made the decision to get fit.

“They’ve even got themselves a personal trainer,” she says incredulously. “That said, they did get him through Groupon and Mum said when he turned up for their first session he had a bigger beer belly than Dad’s.”

We laugh so hard over this we end up doubled over, coughing and spluttering, our faces wet with tears. It feels good to laugh. Life-affirming even. For a while there I genuinely thought I might have forgotten how to.

“Anyway,” says Luce once we’ve recovered. “That’s enough about me; tell me what’s going on with you? How’s all the house stuff going?”

“Pretty well actually,” I say. “Guy’s place only went on the market yesterday and he’s already been inundated with people wanting to see it… which reminds me, I need to ask you a question. You remember my old encyclopedias?”

“How could I forget?” says Luce. “Those things are part of our history. Do you remember that one summer when instead of playing outside like normal kids we used them to set each other projects like we were at school?”

I smile fondly at the memory. “We were such little geeks back then.”

“True, but at least it kept us out of trouble. Anyway, what about them? They live in your hallway now, don’t they?”

“Well, they have been,” I reply. “But with people coming round to view the apartment at the weekend, I sort of need them gone and I was wondering if you’d like them.”

Luce sets down her glass. “You’re getting rid of them?”

“To be honest, I’m not even sure why I brought them back from Mum’s in the first place. They’ve just been sitting in the same spot for over a year now doing nothing. I haven’t even taken them out of the bags I lugged them back in. The fact is I’m never going to do anything with them, so I thought I’d try and find them a good home.”

Luce looks completely unconvinced. “Firstly, you know yourself how small my place is. Leon and I barely have room for our own stuff. Add in a full set of encyclopedias and we’d have to sleep standing up. Besides, I don’t buy what you’re saying for a second.”

“What do you mean?”

“This whole ‘I’m not quite sure why I brought them back with me’ act. You know exactly why you didn’t want to get rid of them; it’s because they mean something to you. This has Little Lord Fauntleroy’s fingerprints all over it.”

Luce and Guy have never really hit it off, although for the most part they tolerate each other for my sake. Luce thinks that Guy is “a bit up himself,” while Guy thinks Luce is “a bit full-on.” The funny thing is each of them probably has a point but I love them both regardless.

“Don’t call him that,” I snap. “It’s not Guy’s doing, okay, it’s mine. I’m the one who’s decided that I don’t want to keep them anymore.”

“Well, if that’s true, then it’s a mistake,” says Luce. “Just like… well, just like… you buying a place with Guy is a mistake.”

“Don’t start this again,” I say. “I thought we agreed you’d let it go.”

“Let it go?” repeats Luce. “How can I let it go when you’re about to make the biggest financial commitment of your life with a man who this time last year you were on the verge of leaving?”

It’s raining as I emerge from Holborn Station on my way to work the following morning. Popping up my umbrella, I cross the road and walk the short distance to Capital Tower, the twenty-story office block on Kingsway where I work. It had never been my intention for this to be anything other than a temp job, a way to tide me over until I finally got my career off the ground, but somehow five years later I’m still here.

I swipe my card to open the door, then, shaking off my umbrella, duck inside and make my way to the staff room where I find the other two receptionists, Maria and Zofia, having a coffee before our workday starts.

“Morning,” I say, nodding toward the ancient coffee machine as I hang up my coat. “I see you managed to get that thing working again.”

“I almost lost a nail doing it,” says Maria. “But yeah, I got it done. Want one?”

“Oh, yes please,” I say, gratefully taking a steaming mug of work’s distinctly average coffee from her. “It’s really coming down out there, and this should at least warm me up.”

Before I can even take a sip of the scalding-hot liquid, however, the door opens and Christine, the office manager, pokes her head round.

“And here was me thinking you’d all been abducted by aliens,” she says. “There’s an empty reception desk that needs staffing, ladies, so drink up and let’s get to work.”

One by one we troop down to reception, slip on our headsets, and turn on our computers. For the next few hours I’m busy greeting clients, answering and directing calls, and signing for parcels but the moment things quiet down, my thoughts turn to my conversation with Luce last night, and the things she’d said about Guy.

Guy and I met three years ago at a mutual friend’s birthday get-together at a pub in Balham. Strictly speaking he wasn’t my type and I’m sure I wasn’t his. He was far too conventionally handsome, too tall, and too confident for my liking and I doubted we’d have much in common, and we don’t really. He likes sport, I can’t stand it. He comes from a traditional nuclear family while I’m an only child of a single parent. His dad had a high-powered career in finance, and his mum, a former solicitor who had given up her career to raise her family, now devotes her time to various charitable causes and maintaining their beautiful home. Meanwhile, my mum left school at sixteen and had worked in the local supermarket ever since.

We came from different worlds and on paper shouldn’t have really worked but somehow we did. Guy had a certain steadiness about him that made me feel secure in a way I never had before. In return I think I made him feel like he was being seen for the person he was rather than, as previous girlfriends had, for his status and the lifestyle he could offer them. I really liked him, he really liked me, and for the first year and a half we were happy. But then, about six months before Mum died we started arguing a lot. I couldn’t understand it. We’d enjoyed a lovely summer that started with a weekend in Rome, finished with a week in Ibiza, and was punctuated by several friends’ weddings. But once the summer was over and we were back to our routines, things began to become strained between us. It was stupid things at first, like arguing about my untidiness or his habit of working late, but gradually the rows became more and more frequent. It was as if he was permanently in a bad mood and so was I in return. Racking my brains to figure out why things were going wrong, I’d even asked Luce for advice and to my surprise she’d speculated that perhaps it was the summer of weddings that was to blame. “Maybe he thinks it’s time you two got hitched but doesn’t think you’ll be up for it.” Before I could put this to G