The Magnificent Mrs Mayhew

by Milly Johnson

  ‘Where can she have gone to?’ John directed this at Sophie’s parents. ‘Isn’t there some place in her childhood that was special to her?’

  ‘Not that I can think of,’ said Alice. ‘We holidayed in the Far East mainly and you said she hadn’t taken her passport.’

  ‘And you’re sure she hasn’t contacted her sisters?’ asked Celeste Mayhew. Edward made a loud ‘huh’ sound and all heads turned to him so he tried to pass it off as a cough.

  ‘Friends?’ asked John’s father. ‘She must have told someone.’

  ‘There’s only Elise Penn-Davies and she hadn’t a clue,’ replied John. ‘Elise couldn’t keep a secret if her life depended on it, she’d have blabbed in an instant.’

  ‘What about that girl at school?’ asked Angus Calladine, as something flagged up in his hippocampus. ‘The one she saved from drowning.’

  ‘Oh, her.’ Alice’s disapproval was obvious. ‘That Birch girl? Elm? Oak? Beech? Some tree name. It’s so long ago now.’

  ‘She saved someone from drowning? I didn’t know that,’ said John.

  ‘She was lower working class,’ said Alice, ‘and I wouldn’t be too impressed because Sophie almost murdered another girl in the process. A Russian oligarch’s daughter, no less. She was severely punished for that episode and quite rightly so. Any friendship was nipped firmly in the bud.’

  Again Edward muttered something and John, who was operating on the cliff-edge of his nerves anyway, had had about enough of his brother’s asides.

  ‘If you have a contribution to make, Edward, please make it an audible one so that we can all share in your razor-sharp powers of observation.’

  ‘I don’t. I was simply wondering how she was punished.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ asked Davina.

  ‘I’m just curious.’

  ‘She stayed at school through the summer,’ said Alice. ‘She was denied a marvellous trip with us visiting Cambodia and Thailand, Japan, China, et cetera at the pleasure of various members of the diplomatic corps.’

  ‘I would have thought a much more horrible punishment would have been to come home for an extra term,’ said Edward. Davina elbowed him sharply.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Angus Calladine, not quite getting what Edward was intimating. ‘Sophie hated St Bathsheba’s so it was a very fitting castigation. She didn’t go around saving anyone else’s life after that, let me tell you.’ And he guffawed in a ‘so there – point proved’ manner.

  Edward sighed. ‘No wonder she buggered off.’

  ‘That really helps, Edward. Thank you,’ said John, turning to his brother and giving him his best withering glare.

  ‘So she wouldn’t have gone up to Yorkshire, then?’ asked Davina.

  ‘Quite categorically the last place on earth she would venture,’ said Alice.

  ‘Or maybe’ – John clicked his fingers – ‘the first place she’d go, presuming that we would think it would be the last.’

  ‘Trust me on this,’ said Alice, with a strange level of pride. ‘I think St Bathsheba’s scarred her enough to stay away from the North of England for ever.’

  Edward removed himself from the table. ‘Going for a smoke,’ he said, using his habit as an excuse to head outside, although really he wanted fresh air in his lungs and distance from all the people in the room without exception. If that was sanity, he would prefer to be as mad as they all thought Sophie was. He hadn’t fully realised until she had left just how little she was valued. Seeing the footage of her hoisting her case over the wall whilst her own family and her husband conspired against her had given him a pain in his heart and he wanted no part of any discussion about having his sister-in-law committed to a hospital in order to get John F. Golden Bollocks out of a scrape of his own making.

  He hoped dear Sophie was holed up in a very luxurious hotel with a copious amount of champagne and access to the best solicitor John’s money could buy her.

  Chapter 24

  Sophie had only been asleep for a short time that night when she was awakened by a noise deep in the bowels of the house. She sat up abruptly, listened hard, dragged on her tracksuit bottoms, slipped her phone into the back pocket and reached for the giant torch which she had borrowed from Elliott Bellringer that same day. She heard the squeak of a door opening slowly somewhere and the tinkling of a bell.

  There was a ghost at St Bathsheba’s that was rumoured to manifest itself as a cold shock of air outside the first-years’ dormitory. She didn’t believe in ghosts (though she might have had she ever seen one) but something had definitely set the hairs on the back of her neck standing to attention on many an occasion there. A ghost would not have been her first conclusion on hearing a noise in this house though.

  Sophie stole outside into the hallway then stood still and silently there until she was rewarded by more sounds. Someone or thing – but more likely someone – was in the cellar. She padded across to the door under the stairs that led down to it, placed her hand over the round brass knob and as she was about to turn it, it turned from the other side. Here goes, she thought, taking in a fortifying breath. She switched on the torch, ripped open the door.

  ‘Hello Kitty, nice to meet you,’ she bellowed and caught sight of someone in black thundering back down the stairs, until the sound changed to someone falling down them to the musical accompaniment of a bell and ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ A female voice, she reckoned. Her first thought was Miriam Bird.

  Sophie walked down the steps towards the crumpled figure rolling around in pain at the bottom.

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded, shining the torch at the intruder. Whoever it was was wearing a dark woolly hat and was a totally different shape to Miriam Bird, but definitely a woman, a tall, slim one who was now trying unsuccessfully to struggle to her feet.

  ‘Okay, if you won’t tell me you can tell the police,’ said Sophie, reaching for her phone.

  ‘Don’t, I’m really sorry. Shit, my leg.’

  Sophie saw dark red hair underneath the hat. ‘I recognise you,’ she said then. The girl in the church, the one whom Tracey had told her about who had lit a candle for her mother. ‘Jade, isn’t it?’

  ‘Who?’ said the girl.

  Nice try. Sophie picked up the bell from the bottom stair and tinkled it. ‘Pretending to be a ghost by any chance?’ she asked, remembering to add in a touch of French accent.

  ‘I can’t get up.’ Jade gave a pitiful cry of pain.

  Sophie bent to the girl. ‘Put your arm around my shoulder.’

  ‘Ow, ow, ow,’ Jade said as she attempted to stand.

  The stairs were wide enough for them both to go up side by side, Jade forced to rely on the support of a woman who was obviously stronger than she looked. Sophie led her into the bedsit, switched on the light, plonked the girl on a chair, then with one fluid movement, pulled off the hat so she could fully see her face.

  ‘Right, now, mam’selle, if you could tell me what the hell you are doing here I’d be much obliged.’ Sophie stared hard at her: the girl shrugged and avoided eye contact but, as she had no chance of running off, the impasse became increasingly uncomfortable.

  ‘Well? Your father is the builder, isn’t he? Shall I give him a call to come and fetch you?’

  Now the girl did answer. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Look, I’m sorry, okay. I used to like to come here sometimes. It’s usually empty. I didn’t realise someone was staying here when I came in yesterday.’

  ‘Ah, it was you who moved my things around?’

  ‘I didn’t take anything. I just looked. I wasn’t going to come back when I knew someone was here.’

  ‘But you did – at midnight, tinkling a – how do you say – une cloche? A bell? How did you get in?’

  ‘There’s an unlocked window in the cellar.’

  ‘Why? Were you trying to scare me?’

  That shrug again.

  ‘Okay, I am ringing Tracey and asking for the number of your father.’

  ‘No, please
. It’s . . . because. Look, it’s best if you went.’

  ‘Went? Why? What ’arm am I doing to you?’

  Shrug.

  A flashbulb lit up in Sophie’s head. It couldn’t be that obvious, could it? It would be ludicrous if it were.

  ‘Please do not tell me that you fancy the vicar and are trying to—’

  ‘Ugh – gross,’ protested Jade. ‘Not me. I mean, really . . . that’s not what . . . Oh, shit.’

  ‘Well what, then?’ Sophie raked her hand through her hair in frustration. She liked it this length, but it did need a proper cut. ‘Oh my!’ Then the penny dropped. ‘Someone asked you to scare me away pretending to be une fantôme.’

  ‘I didn’t say that . . .’

  But Sophie was laughing now. How was it that with the world’s worst haircut and a single visit to church dressed in her running gear, she was still engendering hostility? Was that what her purpose in life was? Was that what her strength in life was: being a complete annoyance to everyone? Her laughter turned hard and then in a trice to a hiccup, a sniff, a dangerous skirmish with sadness which she reined in very quickly.

  ‘I feel crap now if that helps,’ said Jade.

  ‘It doesn’t,’ said Sophie.

  ‘I’ll give the money back.’

  ‘Money? What money? Mon dieu, someone paid you to do this?’

  Jade clammed up.

  ‘You’d better go home,’ said Sophie wearily. ‘It’s the middle of the night and you really shouldn’t be out trying to scare people climbing through cellar windows. What if you had fallen down the stairs and broken your neck?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have. I know this house like the back of my hand,’ said Jade. ‘My mum always said that if she won the lottery she’d buy it and do it all up. Have you had a good look around it? I know they lock up the downstairs rooms now but the bedrooms are fantastic. I like to sit up there and stare out at the sea.’

  Sophie was horrified. ‘You shouldn’t be going there, the stairs aren’t safe.’

  ‘Oh, they are. Tracey tells everyone they’re not so no one’s tempted to snoop.’

  ‘Where is your house?’

  ‘Down the lane a bit.’

  ‘Come on, I’ll help you.’

  Jade leaned on Sophie and together they hobbled out of the house. About halfway down the hill, she could put some of her weight on her foot, indicating that if it was a sprain, it wasn’t such a bad one.

  ‘This is where I live,’ said Jade, pointing towards a white-painted house. ‘My bedroom is at the back. I climbed through the window. If I go in that way, Dad won’t know I snuck out.’

  ‘You are joking.’

  ‘I have to. It’s okay, it’s on the ground floor.’

  They moved as quietly as possible through the side gate.

  ‘You won’t say anything to anyone, will you?’ Jade whispered, after Sophie had helped to hoist her inside. ‘Not even to Tracey?’

  ‘I promise. But I shall be locking the cellar window in the house. If you want to come and visit, please knock on the front door in future.’

  Jade smiled at her, which pulled a smile unwittingly from Sophie.

  ‘I’m sorry again. And thank you.’

  ‘’Ow much did Miss Bird pay you?’ asked Sophie, craftily.

  ‘Twenty qui— Oh shit.’

  ‘Keep the money and tell her that I was terrified. Goodnight, Jade,’ said Sophie with a twinkle in her eye.

  Chapter 25

  Sophie was awake early the next morning and the first job of the day was to venture into the cellar and close off any point of entry that she might find. The basement was cavernous: surprisingly dry, too. There was a door to the outside which had been nailed up and a window beside it which was wedged open. Sophie closed it and shut the bolt and hoped that would hold off any more would-be fantômes. Shame her late-night prowler turned out to be human, as she’d rather liked the idea of encountering Kitty Henshaw. She would gladly have been proved wrong on the ghost front and seen one in the flesh, or lack of. She didn’t think she would be afraid of Kitty, if she manifested herself. They both had similar tales to tell, both experienced the worst kind of loss, except that Kitty had found a happy ending of sorts. That’s where their stories differed. Besides, old houses like this one should have a resident ghost, she thought. Park Court didn’t have one. Park Court was too boring and characterless to be interesting to a spectre. Plus it would have been more spooked by the Mayhews than the other way round.

  She gave in to the temptation then to visit the upper floor, and just as Jade had reported, the bedrooms were unlocked. There were six of them and a huge bathroom, all in a very tatty state, but the original features were still present and waiting patiently for a day when they could be restored: picture and dado rails, ceiling roses, elaborate cornices. And the view of the sea from up there was stunning, Jade was right about that too. The window framed the vista like a picture that she would never get tired of looking at: pale blue morning sky, a rising sun, a grey sea awakening, stretching towards the beach – nothing and yet everything.

  Sophie could have stood there for much longer, taking in a landscape that soothed her soul, but time was ticking and soon she would be visiting a place that would do anything but that. As she was locking up the front door, she noticed the original name of the property, chiselled into the lintel. Seaspray. There was something about the house that gave her shivers, but in a thrilling way. The house had a character all of its own, that wasn’t in dispute: it was fitting it should have a beautiful name.

  She walked round to the vicarage wondering if any curtains were twitching, especially the curtains of Miriam Bird, who had paid Jade to scare her away with Scooby-Doo-style tactics. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

  The door opened before she had even rung the bell. Luke was doing an excited dance on the doormat.

  ‘Well, someone’s pleased to see me,’ chuckled Sophie. Which was a change, she thought.

  ‘Luke has been standing by the window waiting for you,’ said Elliott.

  Boy, you look good in a dog collar, Sophie just stopped herself from saying.

  ‘Pom, will you take me into the nursery?’ asked Luke.

  Sophie looked at Elliott for direction.

  ‘No, I’ll do it. It would take a lot of explaining why someone whom the teachers don’t know is dropping you off.’

  ‘Aww . . .’

  ‘Another time,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Yesss,’ said Luke, which seemed to appease him.

  Luke turned four times to wave to Sophie on the short journey from the car to the nursery door.

  ‘Seems as if my son has taken a shine to you,’ said Elliott when he returned.

  ‘That’s nice. I’m so used to the opposite reaction,’ she said.

  ‘The spotlight can be a very cold place, for all its brightness, I imagine.’

  ‘I hate it,’ said Sophie. ‘Being away from it, if only for a couple of days, has been liberating.’ The thought of going back to it, as she would most likely have to in order to undo all the damage, made her feel more than slightly sick. She had made herself into a very tasty morsel for the cameras to devour.

  ‘I wonder if you’d drop me off in Slattercove afterwards,’ said Sophie. ‘There’s a few things I need to buy. I can get a taxi back.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Elliott.

  St Bathsheba’s, despite being redundant, still managed to conjure up the feeling of dread in her that the start of every new term had induced. The building itself was beautiful, quite Hogwarty with its castle-like structure, but she had been part of it, and would never be able to appreciate its splendour objectively. There were too many sour and miserable memories attached to it for her.

  ‘It’s quite something, isn’t it?’ Elliott commented, after they had got out of the car. ‘No one really knows what to do with it, though.’

  She’d expected it to appear smaller than she remembered but the opposite was true. For a second, she was
a girl again, being dropped off for the New Year term in the cold, depressing dark. She shuddered the memory away but St Bathsheba’s had become part of her, she would never be able to escape it fully.

  Sophie counted along the broken rectangles of glass.

  ‘See that window, fourth from the end, three up. That was mine. The first years share a dormitory but after that you are given your own cell.’

  ‘Interesting choice of word,’ said Elliott.

  ‘It was quite nice actually, once you got used to the cold, but the bedrooms were referred to as “cells”. In a monastic way rather than a criminal one, that is. Although the whole place sometimes felt like it was a prison.’

  A picture flitted into her mind of Magda sitting on her bed with a pen and a notebook entitled ‘grooming’. They were both wearing Dead Sea salt facemasks, Magda to clear up her spots and Sophie just to keep her company. Magda was madly scribbling down all the fashion tips that Sophie was dictating to her: everything from how to stop getting lipstick on your teeth to how to stand in order to look extra slim on photographs. She’d forgotten about that until now. She’d really liked Magda. Despite the two-year age gap and coming from worlds apart, they were fundamentally similar. She’d been totally gutted when Magda hadn’t come back after the summer holidays.

  ‘They had some very strange doctrines there. You could be a good Samaritan but only in exceptional circumstances. For example you could help out a Russian oligarch’s daughter, but not one of the girls who came from a much poorer background on a scholarship as they were merely to be tolerated. Kindness was viewed as weakness; emotion was banned.’