The Mysterious Miss Mayhew

by Hazel Osmond

  First published in the UK in 2014 by

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London

  W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2014 Hazel Osmond

  The moral right of Hazel Osmond to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  PB ISBN 978 1 78087 371 8

  Ebook ISBN 978 1 78087 372 5

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Hazel Osmond has been an advertising copywriter for many years. In 2008 she won the Woman & Home short story competition sponsored by Costa. In 2012, Who’s Afraid of Mr Wolfe? was shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s (RNA) Romantic Comedy award. While she is a southerner by birth she now lives in Northumberland and, thirty years after first arriving, has finally taken off her vest. The county has been the inspiration for two of her books and she hopes, in turn, that they will inspire readers to come and discover Northumberland and its people for themselves.

  Find out more about Hazel at

  www.hazelosmond.co.uk

  Also by Hazel Osmond

  Who’s Afraid of Mr Wolfe?

  The First Time I Saw Your Face

  Playing Grace

  For anyone who has put two and two together and come up with five.

  CHAPTER 1

  Thursday 8 May

  It seems to me that a car which is more or less the colour of a ripe tomato is not the best vehicle to drive when you are trying to keep a very low profile indeed.

  The man in the hire place informed me that it is the only automatic they have.

  ‘No call for them, pet,’ he said. Or he might have been saying, ‘I need to call my pet.’ I haven’t quite got my ear attuned to the accent yet, which is weird after all those years in Scotland – you’d think I could pick my way through something this gutsy.

  I did understand him later, though, when he said I had the same colour hair as his ‘gran’.

  Nice to meet someone as tactless as I am.

  Apart from that, he is a sweetheart – very chatty and he’s made me a cup of coffee while he’s gone off to check over the car.

  I could sit and twiddle my thumbs, but I’ve ‘borrowed’ a piece of his paper because I always find paper comforting and writing on it stops me feeling quite so alone in this part of the world where I’ve never been and where I know absolutely no one.

  Although I suppose that’s not strictly true.

  Mr Friendly seemed very enthusiastic about Tynebrook. Said he and his girlfriend often had a run out there and although he wasn’t quite sure of the date, he thought the county show would be taking place quite soon. He looked almost misty-eyed.

  When I mentioned I was going to be staying in a cottage, he made a noise that suggested I had all the luck and he didn’t.

  I can’t disagree with that. So lovely to imagine getting there and sitting in a cosy, chintzy sitting room, looking out over a garden brimming with old-fashioned flowers and feeling a bit like I’m coming home. I wonder if it has inglenooks inside and roses around the door.

  So … I’m still thinking about that chattiness of his. I’ll have to watch it if that’s a widespread trait up here. Coming straight from London where they might as well put ‘Do not have eye contact with strangers’ notices on the walls, it wrong-footed me rather. Found myself offering information I hadn’t meant to.

  Had a moment’s unease when he asked me if I was up here on holiday. In the end I just said ‘Yes’ and made sure I had my fingers crossed behind my back.

  After all, it wasn’t a black lie, it was one of those social ones that keep everything moving along instead of the conversation grinding to a halt. I mean, even someone as chatty as he is might have found it hard to carry on if I’d said, ‘No, not a holiday. I’ve come to find something I didn’t even know I had until I lost someone I obviously didn’t ever really know.’

  Looks more like gobbledygook when it’s written down than when I say it.

  But then that’s the thing about the truth. It’s often stranger than fiction. Harder to believe.

  CHAPTER 2

  Tom Howard didn’t want to look down at the llama spit on his shirt; the smell of it was horrible enough – masticated cabbage with top notes of vomit.

  ‘Bad, Salome. Very bad,’ the woman holding the llama said as she tried to advance on Tom with an antiseptic wet wipe. Her progress was impeded by the way Salome, teeth bared, was rearing back as if there was more spit coming. The woman kept hanging on, but as Salome was about twice her size, Tom wouldn’t have been surprised to see her being whirled around and launched over the county showground like a human discus.

  He leaned forward to retrieve the wet wipe, freeing up the woman to administer a jerk to Salome’s halter that would have snapped a lesser neck. Salome simply continued to glare at him. Those hostile eyes and that long neck reminded Tom of his wife – although, to be fair, she had never spat at him.

  He dabbed at his shirt. Great, gobbed on by an overgrown draught-excluder on legs. Perhaps he could pass the sludgy stain off as something Paul Smith had intended – My signature look for summer: Irish linen with a hint of hockle.

  ‘She’s taken against the crowds today,’ the woman announced, whisking the soiled wet wipe from Tom’s hand. ‘Never seen it this busy.’

  Tom had to agree with her. He was forced to plant his feet to avoid getting jostled back into Salome�
��s spit line.

  ‘OK,’ he said flipping his notebook shut and shoving it deep into his trouser pocket, ‘I think I’ve got all I need for now, but I’ll send Derek, our photographer, over to take some shots too.’

  Very slowly, so as not to spook Salome, Tom put his sunglasses back on. He caught the sharp way she swivelled her head, like some malignant periscope, but this time she was glaring at a guy waving his ice cream about as he talked. It looked like he was about to get an unusual topping on his Mr Whippy.

  Tom pushed out into the crowd and attempted to make some headway. Big contrast to last year when it rained from first light and it was just the locals and farmers who’d turned up to slip around in the mud. He’d watched the rain bead and run off the wax jackets before seeking warmth in one of the marquees. Bit like Glastonbury, but without the music or the drugs.

  Today, everyone else was following the British tradition of exposing as much skin as possible because it might never be sunny again – he could feel the back of his neck starting to burn, but his mind was taken off the discomfort of that by the public address system. Its broadcasts generally had all the clarity of Esperanto being spoken through a sock full of wet sand and, right now, whoever was holding the mic was experiencing particularly trying technical difficulties.

  ‘In the main arena at 2.30 …’ whistle, squeak, ‘the popular …’ dip to voice-from-beyond-the-grave volume, ‘trained ferrets …’ surge of power before an ear-splitting whine, followed by a voice saying, with perfect clarity, ‘Well I didn’t know I had to keep my finger on the fucking button all the time.’

  Tom joined in the spontaneous cheering at that before skirting around some hen houses and bee hives. He was avoiding a woman putting the dry into dry stone walling, when his phone rang.

  ‘Sorry, took longer than I thought,’ he said when he answered it. ‘Nearly there … Yeah, I see you.’ He raised a hand in greeting and by the time he’d put his phone away, he had reached his brother. Rob was cradling a tray of tomato plants on his stomach and carrying a blow-up hammer under one arm.

  ‘You planning some DIY?’

  ‘Yeah. Gonna buy some blow-up nails in a minute. Works though, look.’

  Tom took the thwack that Rob gave him in good part. ‘Nice touch, that squeak.’

  ‘Reminds me of that blow-up woman you brought to my stag party. Miss Flatulence. The one with the faulty vulva.’

  ‘Valve, you pillock.’

  ‘Oh, aye. Tricky sods, vowels.’

  Despite the different routes they’d taken since school, Tom and his brother had now reverted to the roles of childhood – Rob playing gormless and making the rude jokes, Tom reeling him back in. Tom suspected that Rob was aware of this too, judging by the way he was grinning at him.

  ‘Git,’ Tom said with affection, before asking, ‘OK, what have you done with Hattie?’

  ‘Toilets. Baby’s pressing on Kath’s bladder. Hattie went to keep her company in the queue.’ Rob’s expression suggested that they had been gone a long time. He nodded at the tomato plants. ‘They should have just peed on these to bring them back to life.’

  ‘Lovely. Remind me never to have salad at your house. So, has she behaved herself?’

  A laugh. ‘Usual wall-to-wall questions, especially when Kath and I took her in to see the bulls.’ Rob lowered his voice. ‘Well-endowed lads. And Hattie wanted to know what, well, what those big rugby ball type things hanging down were.’

  ‘Oh God, tell me, you didn’t run through every word you know?’ Tom moved so he could look at his brother without the sun shining in his eyes.

  ‘Nah. You’d have been proud of us. Well, of Kath. She just said, “They’re testicles. All male mammals have them.” Hattie seemed happy with that and we moved on.’

  ‘No doubt it’s gone into her memory bank to be hooked out at some inappropriate moment. But thanks.’

  ‘No bother.’

  They watched the crowd for a while.

  ‘Bloody busy,’ Rob said as if it was a novel observation. ‘You got to schmooze anybody later? Hand out the magazine?’

  ‘Hey, I’m the editor, not the delivery boy. And no, no schmoozing. Mrs Mawson’s hired some promotion people. “Let us, Tom,” she said, “keep the show for pleasure and the day for families”.’

  ‘Very good. Closed my eyes there for a minute and thought it was her.’

  ‘Yeah. I’m the spitting double. Speaking of which.’ He pointed at the stain on his shirt. ‘Llama didn’t like the way …’

  His attention was taken by a woman whose primary thought when she got dressed that morning had obviously been, ‘To hell with chafing, you can never have your shorts cut too high or too tight.’

  ‘The sights you see when you haven’t got your gun,’ Rob said and whistled softly.

  Tom waited.

  ‘Speaking of hot women.’ Rob’s tone was a study in innocence.

  ‘Here we go,’ Tom said, struggling to hide his irritation.

  ‘You remember Suzie, that woman who works with Kath?’

  Tom crossed his arms. ‘No.’

  ‘Yeah you do. Well she’s single again.’

  ‘Leave it, Rob.’

  ‘Hate to see you in limbo, mate.’ Rob’s tone was sincere, and that made it worse.

  ‘I’m not in limbo—’

  ‘Had any contact from her, recently? I mean since that parcel?’

  His brother rarely uttered the name ‘Steph’, as though if he didn’t name her, Tom’s wife would fade away.

  ‘It’ll get sorted,’ Tom said, firmly. ‘And stop trying to fix me up with someone. I’ve only just recovered from the shit storm that was the last blind date you lured me into.’

  Rob looked so sheepish Tom could have entered him in the show.

  ‘That wasn’t me,’ he said. ‘I never liked that woman.’

  ‘Yeah, but it was me who had to put up with her necking best part of two bottles of wine and then, when I had to drive her all the way back to Carlisle, her trying to grab my penis.’

  ‘Some men would pay for that.’

  ‘I’m not interested, Rob. Work, Hattie and not beating my brother to death with his own blow-up hammer keep me really, really busy.’

  Rob put the hammer behind his back, but carried on, all at a gallop, ‘Look, I know you’re not after anything permanent … but sex … we all need it. You’ll wear out your wrist.’

  Tom hoped his expression conveyed that, this time, a line had definitely been crossed. Being endlessly grateful that his family helped him juggle work and Hattie didn’t mean he had to let them into every part of his life.

  ‘If you don’t stop talking …’ Tom began, but there was Hattie running towards them and he had seconds to take off his sunglasses and brace himself before she connected with him. He saw how her fishtail plait was fraying, how the shirt was out of her shorts and her socks sagging. She had a bag of cinder toffee clutched to her chest and she was chewing and trying to talk at the same time.

  ‘They …’ chew, chew, ‘they tickle them …’ More chewing.

  ‘Hats, finish what’s in your mouth,’ he said, getting down to her level and trying not to kneel in anything nasty. ‘I’ll have a go at putting you back together.’

  Kath was making her slower way towards him and he saw her raise the back of her wrist to one of her cheeks and then the other, as if she could blot away the heat.

  ‘Sorry took so long. A right queue.’

  Rob was by her side. ‘Not feeling dizzy or anything?’

  ‘No, love. Could do with a sit-down, though.’

  Hattie, toffee-free, powered up again. ‘They had tickling sticks,’ she was saying, tugging at him so hard that he had to put a hand on the grass to stop from toppling over.

  He looked to Kath for an explanation.

  ‘The guys leading the cattle have these metal sticks and tickling them on the belly makes the animals stand still. Means they can show them off better.’

  ‘Ah. Right. We shou
ld get one for you, Hats.’ He tickled her with his fingers instead, till she danced away from him. ‘And, Kath, thanks for the …’ he mouthed the last bit, ‘biology lesson.’

  Hattie came within range again. ‘Want a piece of cinder?’

  He barely got out, ‘Only if you haven’t sucked it first,’ before the hard edges of a piece of toffee made contact with his lips.

  ‘So, early lunch?’ Rob asked. ‘Something roasted that failed to get a rosette? Hey, wonder what llama tastes like?’

  Kath patted his stomach affectionately. ‘Even you couldn’t eat a whole one.’

  Rob gave her bump some gentle attention in return and Tom got to his feet. He disentangled the last bits of toffee from his back teeth.

  ‘Come on, Hats, we’ll go bail Granny out of Home Baking Hell. Meet you two in the beer tent, fifteen, twenty minutes’ time?’

  Hattie was off and running and Tom just had a moment to fling a wave behind him and hear his brother’s, ‘See if you can get the Rev. George to break cover and join us.’

  Tom called to Hattie not to get too far ahead and tried to ignore how scratchy he felt. Most of the time he was able to gloss over the way his life had gone in a loop and not a straight line upwards. But Rob’s assumption that he understood Tom’s needs completely made him feel as if he wasn’t just going over the same old ground again, but that he’d never been away. He was growing into the landscape.

  ‘Slow coach,’ he shouted, running past Hattie and giving her plait a swipe. Her skipping and bouncing speeded up before she back-tracked to look at a stall selling garden tools. She studied a hat someone had dropped. She talked to a dog.

  He watched her sparking out energy, socks falling down once more, and wondered what sex Kath’s baby would be. He was betting on a boy, which would please Hattie who didn’t have much truck with girls. She particularly didn’t like ones who looked as if they’d been ironed along with their clothes, or who already owned their own handbags. Give her a boy who could fart though and she was in heaven.

  He hoped she’d grow out of that.

  They made good progress until they reached the Cumberland & Westmorland Wrestling ring. Tom thought it looked like crabs trying to fight; the low-holds, the shuffling round and round. In the centre of the ring were two teenage lads, dressed in vests and shorts.