The Mysterious Miss Mayhew

by Hazel Osmond

  He lay back down and heard the bathroom door open, the light go off and footsteps coming towards the room.

  ‘Budge over,’ Fran said and lay down beside him under the duvet. She reached for his hand and squeezed it and said, ‘Sweet dreams.’ She must have understood that the emotions of the day had flattened him and he felt unable to cope with anything other than tenderness and sleep.

  But it wouldn’t come.

  ‘You’re only twenty-four,’ he said, ‘you shouldn’t have to deal with all this. You should be out partying.’

  There was a snort. ‘Who are you to tell me what I want, Tom Howard? What I want is right here in this room – these one and a half people. A different family than I came to find, but my goodness, you’ve grown on me.’ Another squeeze of her hand. ‘When Hattie looked at me from under that table and said it was her “bolty hole”, I tell you, Tom, I had to go and have a discreet howl in the kitchen.’

  Now it was him doing the squeezing. ‘Only twenty-four,’ he mumbled, ‘and you put the stake through the vampire’s heart.’

  ‘It was a scalpel actually, Tom, and I do wish I hadn’t done it. I ruined a perfectly good piece out of petulance. Did it the moment Steph left my doorstep.’

  ‘What a bloody day, all round. But those people tonight – neighbours, drivers, the police, all of them just wanting to help …’

  ‘Uh-huh. But you have to ask for it first, the help. Confide in people.’

  ‘Point taken,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow I’ll tell you the whole Steph story. And something else, about my job.’

  ‘You got the sack?’

  That did make him open his eyes.

  ‘Liz phoned me,’ she said. ‘And Natalie had warned me that my lovely relations would do that to you, eventually.’ She laughed, a most un-Fran-like laugh. ‘But don’t worry, Tom. Close your eyes. Clever, tough Natalie has a plan.’

  CHAPTER 57

  ‘I could have beaten him,’ Hattie said.

  Tom eyed up the large teenager punching his fist into the palm of his other hand, and his opponent who was lying on his back and trying, unsuccessfully, to get up.

  ‘He’s got a weak leg,’ Hattie said with a dip of her chin. ‘I’d have gone for that.’

  Hattie had taken the news that there was a lower age limit for the Cumberland & Westmorland wrestling well. Eventually. She had told Tom that she would spend the years before she was allowed to enter studying the opposition. He did not point out that by the time she was twelve, the opposition would not be the opposition. Still, if it made her happy, he was OK discussing blind sides and weak legs.

  She was also, Tom suspected, not as bothered as she might have been, because her schedule for show day was already hectic. There was the karate display in the main ring in the afternoon and they’d been up early getting Alfie the rabbit ready for judging in the fur and feather category. Plus she had a major entry in the Home Crafts marquee. They were going there next to see how she’d done.

  They already knew how Alfie had done. He had not covered himself in glory, but he had covered his back legs in something else and Tom had returned him home already. He was thankful there had not been any competitions that Hattie’s rat or terrapins could be entered for.

  ‘Seen enough?’ he asked and she nodded and they were off. He remembered last year’s heat and preferred today’s weaker sunshine and lively breeze.

  It wasn’t only the weather that was more to his liking. Every other single thing was too. He was no longer like a sad hamster going round and round on his wheel. Everything felt familiar but fresh.

  He remembered too how last year he had to keep up with Hattie dashing ahead and taking an impromptu part in the wrestling. She still skipped along with enthusiasm, but there was no straying. He didn’t think that was due to the many lectures he’d delivered about the dangers of running away, more to do with how he had grabbed her on arrival at Fran’s and sobbed that he’d been so, so scared.

  She had diverted to a jewellery stall and was poking around among the earrings.

  ‘Could I buy Mummy these?’ she asked and he said, ‘Of course, got any money?’ She did, but not enough and so he handed her some of his and she went to pay. She came back with them in a little paper bag.

  ‘Shall I keep them safe?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll hold them for a bit.’

  He wondered if they’d survive, but let her carry on. Hattie’s emotional state regarding her mother was hard to read. Nearly a year after the incident, he had no idea if it was an injury healed in Hattie’s mind or the pain was just being worked around. In the days that followed that evening there had been a fair amount of ‘It won’t happen again, I’ll be a good girl’ alternating with: ‘I don’t like Mummy any more. No, I won’t come to the phone and talk to her.’

  Tom had been completely honest with her afterwards, but trying to explain a complex and volatile personality to a little girl was hard. Fran said to boil it down to two messages: ‘Steph is like this with everyone, it is not because you have done anything wrong’ and ‘Love is kind. If someone says they love you but in among the hugs and kisses they make you feel bad, or hurt you, that’s not right.’

  Fran said that was an especially important message for a girl to learn.

  Things had eventually stabilised; these days she rarely clutched Gummy to her as if it was a talisman.

  Steph had kept her word about the divorce and recently there had been some meet-ups – neutral territory, a day maximum, no pressure. It was not ideal – Steph still liked to feel hard done by, but it was a million times better than what had gone before. On the last occasion, Caroline and Geoffrey had come along too and so Tom had brought Fran as wing man. Fran told them about being taught arithmetic by a martial arts expert, which had distracted them beautifully.

  ‘This will all get so much easier as she gets older,’ Fran said and then paused. ‘When Hattie gets older, I mean. Not Steph. That’s actually going to make things worse – she’s not going to like ageing. She’ll be even more needy. Hey-ho.’

  Hattie stopped walking.

  ‘Something up?’

  ‘I’ve got no money left for Fran’s present.’

  ‘What’s it to be?’ He looked around at the nearby stalls. ‘A lawn-edger, something to get hair out of the shower plug or a picture of Elvis on a velvet background?’

  He realised he’d learned nothing about parenting when she looked excited by that last description.

  They bought the picture and Hattie insisted on carrying that too, but when she spotted Josh and his parents, he had the picture and the earrings shoved at him and knew he was going to spend the day carrying it around as people questioned his taste.

  ‘Nice picture of Saddam Hussein,’ Josh’s mother said.

  When Hattie and Josh could be peeled apart, the meandering route to the craft tent continued and included a detour for doughnuts.

  Tom was chewing his way through one, trying to win a game where you weren’t allowed to lick the sugar from your lips, when he saw Mrs Mawson with her granddaughter. There was the briefest of eye contact before Mrs Mawson steered the granddaughter away.

  He couldn’t blame her for not wanting to see him. He would always be linked to Natalie and how she had unpicked her elder son in front of her eyes.

  Natalie’s ‘plan’ was a massive unveiling of dirty laundry. Tom had been off the magazine for three weeks when she rang and said they were off to Mawson Towers. He would have rather gone to Hades, but she was insistent.

  During Tom’s three-week ‘rest’, he had realised how hard it was to get a job and how much he missed the magazine and the staff. Although he didn’t miss them as much as he could have done because a few of them were on the phone to him regularly. Liz told him everything was pants, Felix complained that he was working for an ‘artistic philistine’ and Derek said, ‘It’s not as enjoyable as when …’ and then fell silent.

  In addition, he’d bumped into Stan who said mysteriously, ‘It’s tu
rning into a soap opera,’ and had given Tom a manly slap on the back.

  Tom took the grumbling with a pinch of salt until the day that Liz rang and said Kelvin had actually had a fists-out roll-around-on-the-floor fight in the main office with a freelance writer who had been a bit too flirty with Victoria.

  When he told Fran, she said, ‘Consumed with jealousy, of course. Tragic how some men are taken in by highlights and veneers.’

  He had laughed in disbelief and got a pitying look. ‘Oh, Tom, did you notice nothing in your time there? Kelvin adores her.’

  ‘Adores? No, he was just being Kelvin.’

  ‘Absolutely smitten. Thinks she’s the love of his life. Of course, she’s playing him along. Eyes on a bigger prize.’

  ‘What, bigger than her hedge-fund-manager husband?’

  Fran gave him an enigmatic look. ‘My lips are sealed. Which is more than you can say for Victoria’s.’

  So off they went to Mawson Towers, he and Fran sitting in the back of the car, Natalie driving and a carrier bag full of paperwork on the front passenger seat.

  ‘No Jamie?’ Tom asked.

  ‘He’s not going back till they invite him, or they’ll think he’s angling to be “forgiven”. Besides, the flat’s full of tin soldiers and he needs to get them packaged up and sent off before we can get to the bed.’

  Fran’s grip on Tom’s hand became tighter the closer they got to the house and when they parked, she seemed loath to leave the car.

  ‘They know we’re coming, do they?’ Tom had asked and Natalie said, ‘Yeah. Proper letter saying we’d rather discuss these matters with them than go through other channels.’

  Tom feared that they would be greeted by a pack of baying hounds, but it was a housekeeper who answered the door and had a chat with Natalie as she showed them in.

  This time it was a high-ceilinged, wood-panelled room Tom was in and it seemed to serve as an office. A partner desk dominated one end of the room, a wide, polished table the other. Natalie made them sit one side of it and plonked the carrier bag of papers on the spare seat next to her.

  ‘Glad I don’t have to polish this bugger any more,’ she said.

  They had a long wait.

  ‘Amateurs’ trick,’ Natalie said, sitting back and folding her arms.

  Fran looked completely ill at ease.

  ‘It will be all right, sweetheart,’ he told her. ‘Nobody’s going to hurt you while I’m here.’ It seemed a dumb thing to say and Natalie uncrossed her arms and took all the papers out of her carrier bag and passed it to Tom.

  ‘For Fran. She might be sick.’

  ‘I meant it, Natalie, don’t take the piss.’

  Natalie blinked at him. ‘Yeah, I know you did, it was lovely. The bag’s ’cos she looks like she might heave. Nerve-racking for her coming here – she’s gonna get a lot of chat about how she’s grubbing for money. Get a grip, will you, Tom?’

  When the door opened, Mrs Mawson walked in followed by Edward and another man wearing a suit that was not made of tweed or corduroy. Tom guessed he was some kind of legal bod, which was confirmed when he introduced himself.

  The atmosphere was glacial and there was no eye contact from the Mawsons, who sat either side of the lawyer. Tom almost felt sorry for him being the filling in that cold sandwich.

  ‘Your letter, Miss …’ The lawyer looked down at the piece of paper in front of him on the table. ‘Woodward. Perhaps only just the legal side of threatening.’

  Natalie looked delighted. ‘Good. That’s the tone I was aiming for.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Edward said, shifting in his chair, ‘am I really meant to sit and listen to these people? Someone who used to be our cleaner, someone who used to run our magazine and someone who says she’s a relation.’

  Edward brought his hand down on the table and gave the impression of a man who had been told to sit and be quiet, but was damned if he’d take orders from anyone. ‘Didn’t take you long to try a little blackmail, did it?’ he said directly to Fran and Fran looked down at the carrier bag.

  Tom was going to say something, but he felt Natalie’s foot press on his very firmly.

  The resolute way that Mrs Mawson was staring out of the window suggested that she too had been ‘persuaded’ into this meeting.

  ‘So,’ the lawyer said, putting his hands together and then splaying them apart again. ‘What can we do for you?’

  Tom had no idea if Natalie’s performance was based on her observations in court or of TV legal dramas, but she was concise and forceful and the presentation of her ‘evidence’, as she called it, had something of a machine gun about it.

  She went over the reasons for Tom’s dismissal and said that this was hypocritical in the light of information that had come to her regarding Edward Mawson and Victoria Ellington, the woman who had been selected to replace Tom. She pushed a piece of typed A4 paper towards the lawyer.

  ‘Dates and times and durations of, well, let’s call them meetings between Mr Mawson and Mrs Ellington on Thursday evenings over the last year at a flat north of Alnwick. Rented in the name of E. Morton – very imaginative. Thursdays are the evenings, I believe, that Mr Mawson attends a meeting of the Landowners’ Association in that town.’

  Edward Mawson’s jaw seemed as if it was falling away. Mrs Mawson was no longer looking out of the window.

  Natalie had another piece of paper in her hand and Tom thought of Liz’s paper hand grenades.

  The lawyer was still reading the first typed sheet when Natalie said, ‘I’d also like to point out that the attitude to Fran Mayhew is a little hypocritical too. I know no one can force people to accept what used to be called “illegitimate” children into the family – although some don’t seem to care.’ Natalie grimaced and Tom guessed she was thinking about her own home life. ‘But it might be useful to set Miss Mayhew in context, should anyone at this table wish to reconsider their attitude in years to come.’

  Natalie left the perfect amount of dead space before saying, ‘I have details here of a child born in Newcastle General on June 16th 2012 to one Lesley Ryhope.’ Mrs Mawson’s chin shot up even further than usual which made Natalie say, ‘Yes. She is that Miss Lesley Ryhope, the one who used to do the catering for your parties. So … the birth certificate says the father is Michael Ashford, who by the way now lives in Dumfries with another partner, but I have evidence that suggests the baby is actually Edward Mawson’s and bank statements to prove that he makes regular payments to Miss Ryhope.’ That piece of paper was pushed towards the lawyer too.

  ‘Fuller details are here,’ Natalie said, patting what had been in the carrier bag. ‘Happy to leave them with you.’

  Edward had the look of a man whose ribs have dissolved.

  Mrs Mawson said, icily, ‘And how much money do you want in return for all these grubby bits of information?’

  ‘They’re only grubby,’ Natalie shot back, ‘because they’re about your son, so don’t try and make me out to be the guilty party here. And, actually, it’s not money we’re after. It’s a form of justice. We’d like Tom’s job back, otherwise we’ll have no choice but to include this information about Victoria’s horizontal job interviews in his defence case at the tribunal. And we’d like Fran Mayhew to be given first refusal on the lease of the shop – currently an art gallery – in your building in Tynebrook, if it ever becomes available.’ Tom turned to Fran and raised his eyebrows and she gave him a weak smile.

  ‘I’m not going to say anything will happen if you don’t agree to that latter request,’ Natalie said, reasonably. ‘We’re not the kind of people who’d talk to the papers or leak anything on to the Internet when it involves a child. But it would be an act of goodwill, wouldn’t it? And it would stop me looking at a payment Edward Mawson made for a car in November of 2013 that is now registered in the name of one Penny Michaels, who I believe is the wife of a livestock feed merchant not far from Morpeth.’

  Edward’s neck muscles wilted.

  �
�I think it would be beneficial,’ the lawyer said, very precisely, ‘if we leave this here so that I can consult further with my clients. I’ll be in touch – the address on this letter?’

  Natalie nodded and as none of the Mawsons were moving, she and Tom stood up.

  Fran rose unsteadily and had a voice to match. ‘I wanted to say something about how sorry I am that this has happened and that perhaps one day we can come to terms with each other. But all I can think of is a terrible pun about how a man who likes to chase and kill small furry animals has been trapped by a load of beaver.’

  The Mawsons seemed to sink further into themselves, while the lawyer tried to control his face.

  After that, Tom remembered getting out of the front door and Natalie and him hanging on to one of the huge stone urns, bent over with laughter, while Fran said, ‘Oh Lord. What possessed me?’

  In the car on the way back, they were high on adrenaline. When Tom asked Natalie how she had found out all that stuff, she said it helped to have a dad in prison and left it at that.

  Tom thought back to Edward Mawson telling Jamie that he was as bad as his grandfather where women were concerned. A hypocrite indeed. No doubt Mrs Mawson had picked up on the similarities between her elder son and Charlie too – while underrated Jamie seemed to be doing very nicely under his own steam and with one woman.

  *

  As Tom absent-mindedly licked the doughnut sugar from his lips, and Hattie shouted that she’d won the game, he had another go at wondering what the conversation had been like between the lawyer and the Mawsons when they’d known they were beaten. One week after they’d been Natalied, the Mawsons notified him that he was reinstated at the magazine and Victoria left to spend more time with her veneers. A couple of months after that, they sold the magazine to a guy who’d made a lot of money out of software and had a stable of other publications. So far he was proving to be a better employer than they had been.

  The Mawsons sold the building to him too and Tom feared that would be that as far as the art gallery was concerned. But when it became vacant, the new owner offered the lease to Fran first. He said that had been one of the stipulations when he’d purchased the place.