The Last Bid

Text 1: Number Seventeen, by Miriam Vale

An original short story extract.

Laila kept paddle seventeen pressed flat against her knee, as if it were a secret she might accidentally reveal. At the front of the room, the auctioneer lifted Grandad’s atlas from its velvet cradle. Its leather cover was cracked; one brass corner hung loose. To everyone else, it was Lot Forty-Two. To Laila, it was rainy afternoons at the kitchen table, tracing blue rivers with Grandad’s blunt forefinger.

‘Two thousand,’ called a woman near the window. The auctioneer’s voice skimmed over the sums without seeming to touch them. Two-two. Two-four. Two-six. Each bid was answered before its echo had faded. Laila did nothing. She had promised herself she would wait. The room contracted until there was only the atlas, the silver-haired man across the aisle and the number four thousand eight hundred written on the back of her hand.

At four thousand four hundred, the woman by the window stopped. Laila raised her paddle.

‘Four thousand six hundred.’

The silver-haired man turned. ‘Four thousand seven hundred.’

Laila’s limit stood before her like a locked door. ‘Four thousand eight hundred.’

Silence.

The man’s card lifted halfway, stopped between decision and surrender, then settled on his lap. The auctioneer’s hammer rose, paused and fell with a crack that split the room open. Applause rushed in. Laila discovered that she was standing, the number seventeen held above her head and Grandad’s atlas finally, impossibly, hers.