The Mysterious Miss Mayhew

by Hazel Osmond

  Tom did a great whooping laugh and felt as if he was a pantomime villain. ‘That’s a good one, Jamie. Think I’m a bloody truancy officer? Add that to the other titles, shall I? Idiot. Sucker.’

  ‘Tom,’ Fran said, gently. ‘What is wrong with you?’

  ‘Where would you like me to start?’ He tried to glower at her, but it was very hard when faced with those blue eyes, so he pushed past her into the kitchen. Jamie took a step back.

  Tom looked around; there was a cake on the side sandwiched together with jam and topped with white icing. ‘That yours?’ he asked.

  Fran nodded.

  ‘Well, it’s rubbish!’

  He saw the look that passed between Jamie and Fran.

  ‘So, Jamie,’ Tom said, rubbing his hands together and hating the gesture even as he was doing it. ‘Has Fran told you? Has your mother told you? Do you know and don’t care? Or are you blissfully ignorant and as big a sap as I am?’

  Jamie looked as if he were drowning on dry land.

  Tom felt Fran come up behind him and place her hand on his back.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ he said, turning on her. ‘You’re not doing that bloody Crouching Tiger, Flaccid Python thing on me. Well, does Jamie know?’

  She seemed as if she was about to say, ‘What?’ and he couldn’t bear it. So lovely, yet such an actress.

  ‘Don’t waste your breath with all that “Oh, look at me, I was home-schooled” stuff. I know that you’re Charlie’s daughter.’

  Fran changed the embryonic ‘What?’ into an ‘Ah’.

  ‘Yep. Ah, indeed. You’re Charlie’s daughter from an affair in Italy. Abandoned by him – which I guess is where all this comes in.’ Tom waved his hand about to encompass the kitchen, Jamie and Northumberland.

  ‘Who told you, Tom?’ Fran asked. ‘Was it Monty?’

  Tom pressed his lips together in a dramatic fashion.

  ‘So it was,’ she said. ‘Well, you got further with him than I did. I knew Monty must have been one of Charlie’s drinking pals, but he was very discreet. Oh dear. Don’t tell me this means that Monty has twigged about his lady friend in Bangkok and tumbled back into his old ways in spectacular fashion? Poor, poor Monty.’ Tom was aware he was being scrutinised. ‘And you took advantage of him being drunk?’

  How did she bloody do that, make him feel as if he was the guilty one?

  She looked pained. ‘Well, I’m sure that wasn’t your finest moment, Tom.’

  ‘Hang on, you’re telling me off? You’re the one at fault. You came to work on the very magazine Mrs Mawson owns and where Jamie just happens to be working—’

  ‘Can I just stop you there?’ she said in a reasonable tone. ‘I didn’t want to work on the magazine. I told you that most definitely.’

  ‘Yeah, played that well but then, lo and behold, you changed your mind. Why was that, Fran?’

  ‘I really don’t want to discuss this when you’re in such a funny mood.’

  Tom realised he had turned his back on Jamie and so spun round in time to see him trying to disappear along the hall.

  ‘And where do you think you’re going?’ He was so angry now that even he didn’t know what was going to come out of his mouth next. ‘Did you or did you not know that Fran is Charlie’s daughter? You never answered me.’ Tom was jabbing his finger in Jamie’s direction and Jamie was looking terrified.

  ‘Yes,’ he squeaked out.

  ‘Do you know what you’ve done, then?’

  Jamie said, ‘No … I … not really.’

  Was he the only one in the room who understood how serious this was?

  Tom spelled it out. ‘You’re sleeping with someone who’s your blood relative, Jamie.’

  Jamie looked down the hallway. ‘Now, Tom … that’s just not true. There’s no way she is.’

  ‘I saw you,’ Tom said, ‘in the kitchen.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Fran said. ‘First the stairwell, now the kitchen.’

  That was when he really lost it. ‘You heard of incest, Jamie?’ he shouted. ‘Because I think this probably qualifies. I mean Fran obviously doesn’t care who she’s shagging, but you, Jamie? For God’s sake! You’re sleeping with your mother’s half-sister. Your grandfather’s daughter. Your half-aunt. I could draw you a family tree if you like.’

  Jamie looked towards Fran and the expression on his face screamed ‘Help!’

  ‘Take a deep breath, Tom,’ Fran said. ‘Sit down, put your head lower than your hips and take a deep breath.’

  ‘Why? So you can do something horrible to me? What are you trying to achieve here, Fran? Shag Jamie as some kind of revenge on the Mawsons because they tempted Charlie back from your mother? Or is it just a bit of blackmail and Jamie’s an unplanned extra—’

  Tom stopped talking because he heard a noise and suddenly there was Natalie standing next to Jamie.

  She was wearing a striped pyjama top.

  CHAPTER 41

  He climbed the ladder to the tree house and sat on the platform looking out at the view.

  Mortification. That was the word for what he’d been feeling ever since he put the striped pyjama top and the striped pyjama bottom together and made a couple out of Jamie and Natalie.

  Not Jamie and Fran.

  They’d all tried to get him to stay, but he’d backed out and almost sprinted for the car. His only stop on the drive home had been in the familiar lay-by where he’d rung Liz to tell her Monty was OK and a pal had turned up to babysit him. She was still cool with him, even more so when he said he was knackered and would work from home this afternoon. He had been going to say he wasn’t feeling himself but, thanks to Hattie, he was never going to use that phrase again.

  Oh. God. All those things he’d said in that kitchen – revenge, incest, shagging. As if they were in some Greek tragedy. What was worse, accusing Fran of sleeping with Jamie or suspecting her of sleeping with Charlie?

  Tom looked up into the canopy of the tree and watched the leaves shifting, repeatedly changing the pattern of sunlight being filtered and blocked. It created the illusion that the platform was moving – easy to imagine the tree house was at sea. That’s how he was feeling – and he was having to reassess things he thought he’d understood. Including Charlie.

  Now he saw the relevance of Fran’s question about whether Rob would bolt.

  The fact that Fran was so calm in the face of his aggression and stupidity made it all seem worse. He’d come across like a spoilt boy – it must have been so obvious it was all a paranoid fantasy inspired by jealousy.

  And poor Jamie. What psychological damage had he done by telling him he was sleeping with his grandfather’s daughter?

  ‘If you’re going to jump,’ Fran called up to him, ‘can I suggest something higher?’

  Too late to seek sanctuary in the tree house. He peered over the edge of the platform and got a full blast of Fran’s face looking up at him. Blue eyes, open expression. General gorgeousness. She was carrying the jumper that she had been wearing earlier.

  Should he take it as a good sign that she had come to find him? No, he was sick of signs, they were a big part of the reason he was skulking around in a tree.

  He couldn’t quite look Fran in the eye and sat back up straight again. He was experiencing what felt like an all-over body wince.

  Because he didn’t know how to talk about the big things, he simply said, to the leaves of the tree, ‘I didn’t hear your car?’

  ‘I parked further down the road and I was very careful with the side gate, I know if you pull it open too sharply it squeaks. I thought if you heard me coming, you might run away.’

  Why should he be surprised that she was making fun of him? He was a clown.

  He chanced peering down at her again. She was, with almost comical slowness, shaking out the jumper and laying it on the lawn. She sat down. The message was, unmistakably, I won’t come too close, don’t worry. But I’m not leaving either.

  ‘And now what shall we talk about?’ she said. �
��You up in your tree and me down here?’

  ‘Fran, I don’t know how to start to apologise.’

  ‘Then don’t, let’s talk about something easier to begin with. How about Natalie and Jamie? Must have been a bit of a surprise?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I didn’t twig for a while, what with the way Natalie teased him in public. Been carrying on for months, evidently, right under his family’s nose. In between Natalie cleaning and polishing.’

  ‘They look good as a couple,’ Tom said.

  A laugh drifted up to him. ‘Very tactful, Tom. Shorthand for, what does someone as sharp as she is, see in him? But you might think differently when you get to know Jamie properly. Let’s just say he’s like an iceberg – some bits for public viewing, but below the water, the real him. He’s kept it protected so his family can’t get to it.’

  Tom imagined that faced with someone like Edward, he too might have hidden a huge part of himself.

  ‘That shyness of his,’ Fran said, ‘it hides how funny he can be and here’s the thing, Tom, he can’t string a couple of sentences together on paper, but he has a very fine business brain. He can spot where there’s money to be made. Would it surprise you to learn that he’s already got a good little business going?’

  He was surprised, so surprised that he looked down at her and got another fix of those blue eyes.

  ‘Goes to auctions,’ she said. ‘Looks out for all kinds of things – mechanical toys from the 1950s, unusual books – hoovers them up for a song, finds a buyer on the Internet and sends them out into the world. I think that’s one of the things Natalie likes – he’s making his own way, as she is.’ There was a noise that sounded like a whistle. ‘She really does love him, Tom. Fiercely, and may I say … noisily. So … she’ll go into battle for him when Deborah finds out what’s been going on.’

  Deborah. It still didn’t sound right, even from her half-sister.

  Were there any similarities between the two women? Perhaps the straight back, the brisk way of talking, but one of the sisters was closed in, judgemental, whereas the other …

  ‘Fran,’ he said quickly, ‘I’m so, so sorry. All those things I said to you. I could put it down to misreading signs – it’s a family trait – but that’s a cop-out. I was …’ He was trying not to say that word and looked up into the leaves of the tree for inspiration. All he could see was green. ‘Jealous,’ he admitted. ‘I was jealous.’

  The word seemed to plummet out of his mouth straight down to the grass. He’d finally revealed how much he was attracted to her. But then rampaging around her kitchen like a bull elephant had probably confirmed that anyway.

  He waited for her to reply and when she didn’t he looked over the edge of the platform once again. She waved up at him. ‘Still here,’ she said. He saw the way her eyes were scrunched up as if she was thinking hard about what he’d said.

  He waited, his heart feeling as if it had slipped out of its regular rhythm.

  ‘Not a great fan of jealousy, Tom,’ she said at last, as if giving her verdict on gherkins or aniseed balls, ‘but I feel that’s only part of the reason why you went completely insane in my kitchen. You also have a natural tendency to think the worst of me and I’d suggest that’s a learned response to repeatedly negative female behaviour.’

  ‘Have you got a textbook down there?’ he joked to cover up how spot-on an assessment of his marriage that had been.

  ‘No. But if I did, I might throw it at you, and this time I wouldn’t try to miss. And really, Tom, don’t push it. I’m trying to excuse your terrible behaviour. And, for once, I’m being tactful instead of just blurting out that I think you’ve been treated shabbily and, possibly, stabbed in the back in the past.’

  He sat back. ‘Yeah, OK, I get the message.’

  ‘Good. And see, I didn’t even mention your wife.’ There was a pause and a soft, ‘Oh! Damn.’

  He couldn’t help smiling at that, but smiling didn’t help him work out what to say. There was silence until Fran’s, ‘So … not a great fan of jealousy, but the thing I really hate is manipulation. Particularly that brand some women practice – it’s as though they’re saying “I’ve run out of logical arguments to get what I want so I’m just going to go for the emotional jugular.”’

  He may have said, ‘Um.’

  More silence before Fran’s voice, with a sadder tone to it, found its way up to him again. ‘But really, all of this is actually my fault, Tom, for being so mysterious. The way I probably seemed to be giving green lights and then holding up stop signs. Crawling around in a cemetery, for goodness sake …’

  Suddenly her voice broke and there was a strange throaty noise and he saw she had turned her back to him. She was now sitting cross-legged, resting her elbows on her knees and cradling her head in her hands.

  He stood up. It looked as if she could only just support her head, her misery weighed so heavily on her and as he watched, she started to cry. Now her shoulders were heaving and the sound was horrible, worse than that morning after she had been rejected by the Mawsons.

  ‘Fran, don’t, please,’ he said. ‘None of this is your fault.’

  He didn’t even know if she could hear him above the sound of the crying.

  He started to climb down the ladder, checking how she was doing as he went. Not good, judging by the pitiful sounds she was making. He should have just gone to her when she first arrived and apologised like a man.

  ‘Fran, please,’ he repeated as he stepped down on to the lawn. ‘I understand the reasons you kept it quiet. I had no automatic right to know.’

  She still sounded as if she was crying her heart out and he couldn’t bear it. Lovely, honest Fran, sobbing because he’d been an idiot. He covered the distance to her quickly and then he was down on his knees, by her side. He remembered how he’d dithered before about how to give her comfort, but this time it seemed natural to wrap his arms around her and pull her into his chest. ‘Fran, sweetheart, don’t cry.’ He wasn’t sure whether among those words he’d voiced the deep ‘Ahhhhhhh’ that he felt as her body nestled into him and he put his cheek to the top of her head.

  Fran in his arms. The warmth and the vitality of her.

  ‘Shush, sweetheart, it’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right.’

  She stopped crying and turned her head to look up at him and, instead of blotchiness and tears, there was a wide smile and a deeply mischievous look.

  ‘There,’ she said, ‘that’s how a manipulative woman would have got you down from the tree.’ She laughed and he found his initial surprise turning into something else – something where his head wasn’t completely in control of the situation.

  ‘Fran,’ he said, suddenly desperate to know, ‘those things you said yesterday? The shadow … timing …?’

  She was looking at his lips, even when he’d stopped talking. He was looking at the skin on her cheek and the curve of her brow – breathing her all in.

  ‘I couldn’t bear to mislead you, Tom,’ she said, softly, ‘I wanted to come to you as me. And now it’s all out in the open between us …’

  Come to you.

  The words ignited inside him – in his head, his chest, his groin – and he had his mouth on hers without registering that he had moved. He was kissing Fran Mayhew, only thinking about how her lips felt and how she was kissing him back, eyes closed. He could smell the grass and feel the breeze, but it was her taste on his tongue.

  Deep kisses. Insistent kisses. The kind of kisses where snogging didn’t even cover it.

  He was laying her down on the jumper, every part of him wanting to please her. And, if he was honest, see her naked.

  He could feel her under him, the familiar outline now taking on a new geography of flesh and muscle and breasts. Her hands were in his hair, one of his had found its way to her thigh.

  He had no idea how he was breathing any more, there was just her body and her mouth and his own need to take this further.

  More k
issing until, as if one of them had spoken some kind of instruction, they pulled away from each other.

  ‘Come upstairs with me, Fran,’ he said and she was staring at his mouth again.

  ‘No, I couldn’t. That’s Hattie’s place. I’m sorry, it just wouldn’t seem right.’ She was kissing him again and it was a while before he felt inclined to pull away and say, ‘Not the tree house, the other one. Come on.’ He peeled himself off her and stood up.

  A hand extended and taken, and she was laughing at her mistake as they were moving towards the back door, but making terrible progress because he wanted to know what it felt like kissing her standing up and because they had to go back for his house keys which were in his bag on the lawn.

  Inside, they were Tom and Fran, a gang of two giggling their way conspiratorially past all the normal flotsam and jetsam of his life which suddenly looked magical.

  He was hanging back so Fran would go first up the stairs and he could cup her bottom and she was turning and saying in mock outrage, ‘Tom Howard. Really!’, her face flushed and her hair awry.

  Into his bedroom, with the bed that had never been used for this. But he couldn’t get her on to it. She danced away, held out an arm to make him stop. ‘Wait.’ A giggle and a swoop to lift her dress and pull it up, up and over her head and his emotions rising with it. No agenda, just taking her clothes off for him. Then her bra. Then her knickers, slipped down her thighs, a shimmy of her hips.

  And suddenly he was on his knees worshipping her, fingers parting and tasting her until she wouldn’t have it any more until he took off his own clothes.

  He had only got his shirt off a little way when she was behind him, kissing his shoulders, running her hands over them, turning him round.

  ‘Always had a thing about shoulders, Tom. Powerful shoulders.’ Everything came off after that, with only the briefest nag of self-consciousness about what she would think of him, because she was making it very clear what she thought with her hands and her smile and a smoulder that didn’t have anything of brisk Fran in it.