The Mysterious Miss Mayhew

by Hazel Osmond

  As he drove away from Tynebrook, he felt a slew of emotions. Anger at his treatment, sadness that he wouldn’t be working with people like Felix and Liz again, regret that someone else would be stamping their personality on a magazine he’d grown to love.

  In the end he went into Newcastle and sat in a coffee shop with his computer and registered with some recruitment sites. It took him two hours and a couple of cappuccinos. That would have to stop – they were too expensive. Depressed by that thought, he went for a pint, which seemed much better value. And then, when he really didn’t expect it, a moment of sheer happiness hit him as he realised that he and Fran didn’t have to skulk around any more. They could go for a drink just as he was doing now. He could tell people what she meant to him. Here he was, newly sacked, with a daughter who was going to be miserable again very soon, a brother who needed serious support to get through fatherhood and an estranged wife dedicated to causing him grief, but he loved Fran Mayhew and she loved him back.

  He took out his phone to ring her, but figured a text would be safer. Fran was too perceptive and would hear something was up in his voice. He sent the text and finished his pint and had a walk around the city. In another spike of happiness he went into one of the department stores and bought some books for Fran and a pair of dungarees with a tool loop for Hattie. Better make the most of it while he still had some money.

  When he got home, Steph’s car wasn’t there.

  No, you cannot leave without saying goodbye to Hattie.

  He rushed upstairs and found her suitcase still open on the floor.

  Enjoying how the house felt without Steph in it, he made a cup of tea and lay down on the sofa and then woke with a start when the back door opened. As he scrambled up, he nearly kicked over his cup of tea, now quite cold.

  ‘You’re home early,’ his mother said, bustling in, the bag with Hattie’s karate kit under her arm.

  ‘Yeah, thought I’d make the most of the weather.’

  His mother looked out at the grey clouds, but didn’t comment.

  Hattie came in behind her. ‘Mummy’s car isn’t there—’

  ‘She’s still here. She’s just gone out somewhere.’

  Hattie nodded, but after he’d given her a hug, she went upstairs and he heard her go into Steph’s bedroom.

  ‘Poor little thing,’ his mother said. ‘She still off tomorrow, then?’

  When he nodded, she said she wouldn’t stay around to say goodbye and was out of the house with the speed of someone much younger.

  When the back door opened again, it was Steph. She’d obviously been to the supermarket.

  She looked at him coldly. ‘You’re home early.’

  ‘I thought as it was your last evening.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure. Might have been nice if you’d arranged something special, I’ve had to go out and buy food.’

  He ground several layers of enamel off his teeth, not responding to that. His role tonight was to maintain the peace and try to keep Hattie from getting too upset. He felt the chances of that were nil.

  ‘Have you told her yet?’ Steph snapped, unpacking some cartons of Chinese food from the bags. ‘About me not moving up here?’

  ‘No. I couldn’t tell her on the way to school—’

  ‘Wouldn’t, you mean. Such a coward, Tom. Always have been. Howard the Coward.’

  He walked out of the kitchen and nearly collided with Hattie running in. ‘Mummy,’ she shouted. She had on a T-shirt and skirt and Tom wanted to march her upstairs and give her the dungarees.

  He listened from the other room. ‘There she is, Mummy’s little helper. Shall we get all this yummy food cooked? Have a little party? Oh that’s a lovely hug. OK, enough now. Don’t spoil things by being all droopy. That’s it. Take the lids off those.’

  Hattie in clingy mode and Steph as vindictive wife – it was a toxic combination.

  He went back into the kitchen and helped Hattie with the lids.

  ‘Oh, someone rang this morning,’ Steph said with a little slide of her gaze. ‘I told her you were at Fran’s. Hope I didn’t get you into trouble.’

  ‘Not at all.’ He purposely kept concentrating on the cartons of food.

  When he heard a noise, he did look round and she was opening the back door. There was a bottle of wine on the side with the top off. He was going to pour himself a glass when he thought about needing to stay on top of however the evening unfolded.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked Hattie and got her some lemonade in her plastic cup and knew as he handed it to her, she’d head for the garden too.

  ‘I’ll cook the Chinese meal then, shall I?’ he said to the cooker and started to work out the timings. He set the table while keeping an eye on Steph and Hattie in the garden.

  In a lull, he remembered the text to Fran and wondered if she’d replied. Quick check. No. He felt a bit disappointed at that. He could have done with some kind of contact, but then the timer went and he was back to dealing with spare ribs and beef in black bean sauce. Outside, Hattie was showing Steph how fast she could climb up to the tree house and back and Steph watched her for a while before she turned towards the window. She drank her wine and smiled. She must have known he was watching and that smile made him uneasy. There was something triumphant about it.

  ‘OK,’ he shouted, ‘it’s ready.’

  Hattie came in holding Steph’s hand and Steph said, ‘Just let me go a minute, will you?’ and topped up her wine glass.

  ‘I want to sit next to Mummy.’

  ‘No problem,’ Tom said, ‘sit where you like, love. Right, mind this dish, it’s hot.’

  ‘Thank you for this, Mummy,’ Hattie said when everything was laid out on the table. It was followed by the sweetest smile to which Steph replied, ‘My pleasure, darling. Enjoy it.’

  ‘Where will you live when you come back?’ Hattie asked, as she spooned sauce over the beef on her plate.

  Steph did a pincer movement on a prawn with her chopsticks. ‘Oh, Daddy wants to talk to you about that, don’t you, Daddy?’ There was a dramatic bite through the prawn.

  When Hattie looked to him, he said, ‘Later on. Gosh, I’m hungry! I could eat all this food and then the plates. So … come on, Hats, tell us who you overpowered at karate today.’

  Hattie was distracted enough to enable him to give Steph a warning look which she responded to with an exaggerated tilt of her head. Her ‘like I give a damn’ look.

  Tom could feel the tension around the table and Hattie must have too because she became extra clingy, thanking Steph again for the meal, asking her if she could have more of this, the last of that. He could see Steph becoming increasingly irritated. When Hattie dripped some black bean sauce down her T-shirt, Steph lashed out with, ‘Look what you’ve done. That was very expensive.’

  Hattie tried to rub at it with her finger and he got in before Steph could say anything else. ‘It’s OK, just nip upstairs and take it off. Bring it back down and I’ll soak it. No harm done.’

  He waited until she was out of earshot and turned on Steph. ‘Just stop it. She’s trying her best to please you and she’s sad because you’re going. Can’t you just put her first for one fucking evening?’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t lecture—’

  ‘If you go on like this, I’ll take her to Mum’s and we won’t come back till you’ve gone.’

  ‘No you won’t, it would upset Hattie too much.’ Steph looked so sure she’d got him where she wanted him.

  ‘Use your brain, Steph. She’s going to be upset anyway very soon and at least at Mum’s she’d be free of you and your drip, drip of torture. So, ball’s in your court. Hey, hey, here she comes. Good girl, hand me that T-shirt.’

  For the rest of the meal, Steph behaved – even trying half-heartedly to teach Hattie how to use chopsticks.

  ‘Everyone finished?’ Tom asked and set about clearing the table, wondering when he should ruin Hattie’s good mood. Was it best to do it tonight? Before Step
h went? Or tomorrow, early? He wouldn’t be going anywhere after all. He could take his time and if she was upset she didn’t need to go to school. He could have a whole day of delivering bad news to people.

  ‘Would you like a drink, darling?’ Steph asked, picking up Hattie’s empty cup.

  ‘Yes please, Mummy.’

  Steph opened the fridge and reached for the orange-juice carton.

  ‘She’s not over-keen on—’

  ‘You can’t let me do one thing, can you?’ Steph snapped and seeing Hattie’s worried face at her mother’s tone, Tom just said, ‘Sorry. Good point. You go ahead.’

  He pulled down the front of the dishwasher and started to load it. Then he heard a text come through on his phone. It was Fran.

  Call me.

  He closed the dishwasher again. ‘I’ll finish that in a minute.’

  In the garden, he rang her while looking back into the kitchen. Hattie was putting the serving dishes on the draining board. Steph was drinking some more wine. Great. That was going to help.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ he said when he heard Fran’s voice. ‘Get my text?’

  ‘Yes.’

  One word and he knew immediately that something was wrong. ‘Have you got a minute?’ she asked in the way people do when it’s an order and not a question.

  He instinctively turned his back on the house to get some privacy. ‘Fran … are you all right?’

  ‘Well, it depends what you mean by all right,’ she said. ‘If all right means, “Are you happy?”, then no. If it means, “Do you feel as if someone has treated you like an idiot?” then the answer is yes.’

  Tom was trying to get a foothold on the conversation and so her harsh, ‘Aren’t you going to ask what’s wrong, Tom?’ came back before he could speak. ‘Or perhaps,’ she said, ‘you’ve already guessed what I’m talking about?’

  ‘No, no, I haven’t,’ he stuttered out.

  ‘Well, I’ve had another uninvited visitor, Tom. A woman who told me that the man I love and trust had sex with her the night before. And that she is moving back up here to be with him. Can you guess who that was?’

  Steph’s smile made sense now. She’d drawn blood. He spun round and looked back into the kitchen. Steph was standing at the sink actually doing some washing up and talking to Hattie who was going for the tea towel. He turned away again.

  ‘Listen, Fran,’ he said, his heart racing, ‘you cannot believe anything that comes out of Steph’s—’

  ‘I don’t believe it, Tom. Not a word of it.’

  ‘You don’t! Oh!’ He took a deep breath. ‘Thank God for that.’ He turned and gave Steph the finger, even though she wasn’t looking in his direction. ‘Fran, she’s just a piece of—’

  ‘I don’t want to discuss her. I want to ask you some questions.’ Tom’s heart didn’t start racing again, but he sensed it might have cause to in a moment.

  ‘When Steph said you had sex with each other, is this just something she plucked out of the air?’

  ‘Uh, well … Look, Fran—’

  ‘Tom, if you don’t answer the question, I’ll ring off.’

  There was a noise behind him and a poke to his thigh.

  ‘Mummy says, do you want the leftovers thrown away?’

  ‘You tell bloody Mummy she can take them and—’ He stopped, but only because he saw the shock on Hattie’s face. ‘Sorry, look. I don’t mind what she does with them, Hats. This is an important phone call. Can you just leave me for a couple of minutes?’

  She looked towards the kitchen and then back at him, anxiously. ‘But she wants to know.’

  ‘Hattie, please. I don’t want to get cross. I will be back in soon. Now, don’t disturb me again. I mean it.’

  He watched her walk off, shoulders hunched. Oh damn. He felt he was being pulled in so many directions he was going to snap.

  He put the phone back to his ear. ‘Fran? Look, I went to bed last night and I was asleep … Fast asleep. Steph got in beside me. And she tried to kiss me and I got out of there pretty quick.’

  There was silence, before Fran asked, ‘And she was naked?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  An unmistakable sigh. ‘Second question. Her plans to move up here. Again, is this something she just fabricated?’

  ‘Well, she came up with that news, out of the blue, last night. And she told Hattie. But it was never going to happen, Fran, and I reminded her why … And so, by this morning, she’d changed her mind.’

  ‘So let me get this straight, Tom. When you came to see me and I asked you if there were any developments, all these things had happened the night before. And you didn’t think to mention them?’

  ‘I didn’t want to worry you.’

  ‘Even though I’ve told you how much I hate secrets. Even though I have tried and tried to get you to see that you have to trust some people and open up? I had to stand there completely clueless while she hit me with one piece of news after the other. But if you’d confided in me, I could have said, smugly, “Tom’s told me everything – he says you tried to seduce him and also, that thing about moving up here? You’ve already changed your mind.” Why did you put me in that position, Tom?’

  ‘Fran, I’m really sorry.’ Should he say that again because she wasn’t speaking? His heart was racing now. ‘Fran, look—’

  ‘No. I’ve always said I’m not a person who flounces and sulks and stomps off.’ She sounded as if she was fighting to keep her voice under control. ‘Well, I’ve changed my mind. You’ve made it clear that you won’t trust me as I’ve trusted you. So I suppose we’d better call it a day. Goodbye, Tom.’

  She had gone, but he kept jabbing at the buttons trying to get her back.

  He looked towards the kitchen and saw the quick turn of Steph’s head back to the washing up. Even if she couldn’t hear what he was saying, his body language must have told her that he was reaping the results of her mischief.

  He tried to ring Fran back, but it went through to voicemail. He had to get round to the bungalow and hope she was ringing from there. He walked quickly towards the house, stress twisting his stomach, and the phone rang again. Thank God.

  It was Rob’s number. ‘It’s happening,’ he said, ‘she’s gone into labour. She’s at the hospital.’

  It was the only news that would have halted his progress to the house, and in that instant he wasn’t thinking of Fran or himself, he was thinking of Kath. Natalie was right, she was early.

  ‘That’s great,’ he said, ‘really, really great news.’

  He looked towards the kitchen – he could shout to Hattie and tell her, but Rob was speaking again. ‘Sorry,’ Tom said, putting the phone to his other ear, ‘didn’t catch that. Is everything, you know, going all right?’

  ‘That’s what I was saying, everything’s fine. She’s not far on, but it’s definitely underway.’ Rob sounded breathless. Well that wasn’t a surprise. ‘They’re monitoring her … all that.’

  ‘You’re doing great,’ Tom said. ‘You’re so nearly there, Rob. Proud of you. In a few hours you’ll—Rob, where are you? That music is really loud.’

  Tom was sure women didn’t give birth to techno-rock.

  ‘It’s coming from one of the shops.’

  ‘What, in the hospital?’

  ‘No.’

  That stress was suddenly twisting in him again. ‘So … you just nipped out for some fresh air?’

  All Tom could hear for a few seconds was the music and Rob’s rapid breathing and then he said, ‘I went to have a pee and, standing there in the Gents, I knew I couldn’t hack this, Tom. I’m going to the railway station. I’m getting on a train and I’m sorry, but Kath’s better off without me in the way.’

  Tom had turned his back to the house again. ‘Rob, stop walking right now. You get back there, you can’t leave Kath on her own … Ask for a slug of gas and air or whatever it takes and hold her hand and get through it with her. Rob! Rob!’

  Everyone was hanging up on him today. He tried to r
ing back. Voicemail. What if Rob didn’t get on a train, but chucked himself under one? He knew he was pacing back and forth across the lawn. He turned and looked towards the kitchen. Hattie was sitting at the table, her cup in one hand. She was talking to Steph.

  He rang his mother. Got the rev.

  ‘It’s Tom. Joan’s son.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Is it your mother you want? Well, I’m sorry, she’s not free at the moment.’

  ‘I’ll try her mobile—’

  ‘Is it urgent, then?’ That was a definite change of tone. ‘Hang on.’

  Oh God, what had he interrupted?

  When his mother said, ‘Hello,’ he was straight in with, ‘Listen, Mum. Has Rob rung you? Kath’s gone into labour, yes, it’s brilliant, but we’ve got a problem.’ He told her the story.

  ‘I’ll find Rob,’ he said. ‘Will you go and keep Kath company? I have no idea if she knows Rob’s missing yet. Keep in touch, yes?’

  He walked quickly up the garden and saw Hattie was no longer in the kitchen. He so needed to talk to Fran.

  Steph was mopping up something from the floor, Hattie’s plastic cup in one hand. She looked at him and quickly glanced back down at the spillage. He wasn’t going to give her the bloody satisfaction of saying anything about what she’d wrecked with Fran. She’d be expecting a big fight, well let her bloody stew.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘Kath’s in labour.’

  He expected a sarcastic comment, but she just said, ‘Right. OK.’

  ‘I’m taking Hattie with me.’

  A quick nod.

  He saw her hand go to her face, the unmistakable brushing away of tears. That figured, bringing out the tears because she’d thought he was going to shout at her about Fran. He left her and went through to the sitting room.

  He called up the stairs. ‘Hats, Auntie Kath is at the hospital – the baby’s coming and we need to go and get Rob from the station and take him there. The railway station in town. Quickly.’

  He’d shouted that last word even louder, but no response.

  ‘Hattie, love, come on, quick as you can.’ He tried not to be tetchy with her again.