The Magnificent Mrs Mayhew

by Milly Johnson

  Len flicked from contemplative mood to action. ‘So, back to Sophie. Let’s start a little ripple in the water shall we?’

  ‘I’ll ring Angus and set that up,’ said John, reaching for his mobile.

  Chapter 39

  After a sprint on the beach, Sophie had a long soak in the bath, though she would have preferred a cold shower this morning after the dream she’d had about Elliott last night. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to look him in the face after what they’d been up to. It had felt very real, his hands on her body, his mouth . . . She’d needed a cigarette rather than a coffee when she sprang awake.

  John had been an attentive lover, at least in the early days, but she’d always had the feeling that once she was ‘in the bag’ he hadn’t needed to try as much. He didn’t like her initiating sex either, said it put him off. Sometimes there had been months between intimacies which frustrated her because it wasn’t just about the act, but the closeness, the words, the love, the exclusive connection. She hadn’t felt connected to John F. Mayhew in private for a long time though, despite their very public united front. And as for ‘exclusive’ . . . Why had he gone elsewhere when it was ‘on tap’ for him at home? But she couldn’t recall the last time she and John had made love; she didn’t count the night they’d had sex after the Rebecca Robinson story had broken because that wasn’t love, it was stamping her ownership on her husband on her part, and keeping his wife onside on his.

  The John F. Mayhew that Rebecca Robinson described in bed was a man she didn’t recognise. Insatiable lust? ‘At me like a hammer drill’? Was she lying or was that was it was like for them? Those details hurt, whether they were sensationalist lies or not, because the images of her husband with another woman were born from the words and real enough to torment her.

  She set off for the vicarage and spotted a pink VW Beetle with eyelashes on the headlights – Miriam Bird’s car – parked outside it, so she did an about-turn. She waited until she heard the car start up and drive off before vaulting over the back fence and knocking on the kitchen door. Elliott answered and she tried not to stare at the mouth that had done all manner of ungodly things to her last night in her dream.

  ‘Come on in,’ he said.

  ‘Is the coast clear? I noticed you had a visitor.’

  ‘Miriam volunteered to take Luke to nursery this morning. I have a funeral to conduct at the crematorium in Slattercove. The old lady from whom my sister bought the inn. I say “old” but seventy-seven isn’t really these days, is it?’

  ‘No, it isn’t. We should enjoy life whilst we have it, shouldn’t we?’ You’re a fine one to talk, said a voice inside her.

  ‘Can I make you a coffee before I go?’

  ‘No, I’m good thank you. I just want to get in there and sew.’

  Elliott had his clerical collar on, a black shirt that showed off his broad shoulders, smart black trousers, shiny black shoes. He looked like a cross between a man of God and a vigilante in a spaghetti western. A sexy hero in black who liberates a whole town from outlaws, and with whom the whorehouse madam in the saloon falls in love but has to wave him off because their worlds were too far apart.

  ‘Mi casa, su casa,’ said Elliott, reaching for a long black tailcoat. He put it on and something inside Sophie wolf-whistled. ‘You know where the kettle and biscuits are,’ he continued. ‘Help yourself to what you need. Tracey’s going to pick Luke up after nursery and take him to hers. I should be home about four. If you leave before I get back, take the key with you, then you can let yourself in tomorrow morning because I have a really early start. A breakfast meeting with the bishop in Whitby.’

  ‘Hope today goes well.’

  ‘Me too.’

  She ran a brief video clip in her head, as if she were Mrs Bellringer and he bent at this point to kiss her. She’d say, ‘I’ll have dinner waiting for you. We’ll open up a bottle of wine and watch a film.’ He’d say, ‘Sounds great, we’ll have an early night, shall we?’

  John didn’t want her to cook, he’d told her to leave that duty expressly to Margaret. ‘Why keep a dog and have to woof yourself ?’ was a stock phrase of his. Maybe she should have insisted, maybe she should have said, ‘I have sent Margaret off for the evening and I’ve made a lasagne. And you are not going in your office because we are going to curl up on the sofa and watch TV and share a bottle of red.’ Trouble is, he wouldn’t have done. He’d push the food around on his plate, then sit on the sofa for five minutes, tense, straight-backed, drumming his fingers impatiently at the side of him, then tell her he was just going to check something in his office and that would be the last she would see of him for the evening. He might as well have kept her on ice until he needed to roll her out for a glittery function, a constituency surgery or a PR call.

  She sewed for most of the morning and when she took a coffee break, she noticed yesterday’s Sunday newspaper in the recycling bag in Ells’ kitchen. A picture of John on the front, walking across Parliament square, mobile to his ear, grim expression on his face. She reached out and touched it and felt inexplicably confused. That man was her husband. She had been in love with him since she was eighteen years old and he was hers. They’d created a child together, so why did she feel as if she were looking at a stranger?

  She’d been interrupted before she could answer the question that Tracey had asked her the previous day: ‘Do you love John?’ The honest answer was that Sophie didn’t know. What she did know was that she wanted to. That love she had for him in the beginning was still inside her, wasn’t it? Lost in the brambles and weeds of their disparate lives and it was up to her to find it again and free it so it could grow and blossom. It had to be there. Somewhere.

  She made sure she left the vicarage before Elliott returned. She slipped out of the back door and locked it even though her instinct was to stay, have a coffee, ask Elliott about his day. But it would have been wrong to do that, too cosy, it wasn’t her place, it was pretending and stupid. It was like taking a glass of water after a harsh thirst from the first person who offered it to her. She was mixing up affection with gratitude, and who could blame her for those wires being crossed?

  She had an early night, closed the curtains, turned off the lights so that if Tracey – or Elliott – thought about calling in, they’d get a clear signal she did not want to be disturbed. At about eleven o’clock she was woken by that peculiar sensation of being watched once more, and again it disappeared as soon as she snapped to full consciousness.

  Chapter 40

  Sophie took only a short run the next morning, because the clouds were low, lumpy and dark – warning of a storm. She found three missed calls from Elise on her phone when she got back to Seaspray, just before raindrops started falling heavy and fast, turning the view from the bedsit window into a Monet painting. She rang her straight away.

  ‘Hello, my dear friend,’ said Elise, the concern in her voice putting Sophie on alert. ‘I don’t mean to worry you, but I have heard a trickle of a rumour on the grapevine that your father is a soupçon out of sorts.’

  ‘Dad?’ Sophie stiffened. Then suspicion raised a wary finger. This had Len Spinks written all over it. She could imagine him steepling his fingers, sitting back on a chair in John’s office and suggesting they throw out some bait. Which member of Sophie’s family would she be more likely to walk towards the trap for?

  ‘How did you find that out, Elise?’

  ‘Gerald had a conversation with John last night, in the Strangers’ bar. He asked him how you were doing, obviously, and he said you were bearing up, but that your father wasn’t doing too good and he was worried about him. He told Gerald to keep that to himself, not even to tell me. Gerald, however, does not keep anything from me these days. Not if he wants to remain attached to his testicles.’

  Sophie wasn’t convinced. ‘But John knows that Gerald would tell you, even if he said not to.’

  ‘I have thought of that, but Gerald said that he sounded genuinely concerned.’

 
; John could have out-acted Leonardo DiCaprio. Then again, this might have Len Spinks tattooed all over it, but also there was a very small chance it wasn’t a bluff.

  ‘If there is any way you could do some more discreet digging, I would be very grateful,’ asked Sophie.

  ‘Leave it with me, mum’s the word. Or rather dad,’ Elise promised. ‘It’s the Old Lions monthly dinner tonight so Gerald will be able to find out the lie of the land. I’ll be back to you tomorrow with more detail.’

  Sophie let herself into the vicarage through the back door. By tonight, the dress would be ready for Jade’s first fitting. It was beautiful and she was delighted with it and she knew that Jade would be too and she’d credit Tracey for making her the belle of the prom. But Sophie’s father was on her mind as she sewed today. He was the same age as the woman whose funeral Elliott had conducted yesterday. Apart from some arthritis in his knees and shoulder, he was fit and well and she wished she knew for sure if that was still the case. John had always got on with his father-in-law, enough to be genuinely worried about him if he was ill.

  She could no longer keep the tide of her other life back; it was starting to seep into this one. It was always going to. Her father couldn’t be seriously unwell, she argued with herself, because then John would have risked saying more to Gerald in the hope the news would reach her. Or would he? Her father would have forbidden it, not wanting to add to any scandal. That John had been careful in what he said to Gerald, scant with detail, was the biggest indicator that he was telling the truth . . . wasn’t it? Sophie tapped her forehead with the heels of both hands, hoping to summon an answer. Life in Little Loste was so much less complicated, and she loved that it was so.

  She took a coffee break when she heard Plum crying outside the door because he was aware that she was around and craved some company. Maybe she should try that when she was back in Park Court: cry outside John’s office and hope that he’d rush out, gather her up and soothe her, just as she was doing now to Luke’s little kitten. Plum really was sweet. He climbed up Sophie’s T-shirt and snuggled under her neck, purring like an engine.

  ‘You can’t stay there,’ she said to him. ‘I have work to do.’ But she sat for longer than she had planned, the scrap of black fur pressed against her skin, trusting her, snug and safe. How could he not feel protected here though, she thought. This house was the brick form of Elliott Bellringer, big and warm and calm. In the same way that Park Court was a representation of John: bright, showy, cold. However high the central heating was fired up, it never warmed up properly. That was why Edward was so interested in houses, he had once told her. He could walk into a building and instantly feel the personality of the owner reflected in it. Out of all the Mayhews, she liked him the best. He had a genial vulnerability that the others didn’t have. She hoped that he wouldn’t marry the dreadful Davina, but she suspected that he’d never have the guts to finish with her and would carry on being railroaded along a track he didn’t want to follow.

  Eventually, she put Plum in his bed and returned to the machine, buried her attention in the dress. She hadn’t a clue what time it was when she heard the front door open, Luke’s and Tracey’s voices calling, ‘Hello, anyone in?’ Luke’s small footsteps padded across the kitchen floor and then the study door was thrown open.

  ‘Hello, Pom,’ he said, proudly holding up a picture. ‘I’ve drawed this for you.’

  It was a crayon portrait of four people, all with a hundred fingers each. The figure on the left had a giant head, large circles on its chest and mad brown curls. Next: someone tall wearing a cross, then a small stick figure and a black blob with a tail – presumably Plum – then, on the end, someone with very dark hair and pink lips and a red thing hovering near her head that looked like a floating kidney.

  ‘That’s Auntie Tracey, that’s Daddy, that’s me, that’s Plum and that’s you.’ Luke was grinning, his smile as large as a croissant.

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘It’s a love heart between you and Daddy.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’ Behind Luke, Tracey pulled a face. ‘That’s fabulous, Luke,’ said Sophie. ‘Can I keep it?’

  He nodded excitedly.

  ‘Okay now, Luke, I think we need to think about a bath and then bed, don’t you?’ said Tracey. She turned to Sophie and said, ‘I took him to a play centre, he’s whacked. I’ll be back with you in about half an hour. How’s the dress going?’

  ‘Nearly done.’

  ‘No way – really?’

  Tracey was back in twenty minutes.

  ‘I read Scary Edwin in “Flight of the Bumble Bee” mode,’ she said. ‘Can I see it?’

  Sophie held the dress up against herself. ‘I’ll need Jade to try this on as soon as possible so I can do the hem. Then, I just have the sparkles to sew on the collar and the waistband and I think you can deliver this to her by end of play tomorrow.’

  ‘Shall I ask her to come over now?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Trouble is I need to go and take over from Dave in the pub. As soon as Elliott gets here, I’ll have to shoot straight off.’

  ‘Which is the excuse I shall give to explain why I’m fitting her dress and not you?’ It was a statement asked as a question.

  Tracey gave her a hopeful look.

  ‘Go and ring her, then.’

  Sophie studied the crayon drawing whilst Tracey was on the phone. That heart bothered her. The little boy was falling in love with her, and it was reciprocated because her smile was like a croissant when she saw him too.

  ‘She’s on her way,’ said Tracey, glancing at her watch. ‘I can stay for five minutes, just so I can see her face.’

  Sophie got up from her chair at the machine. ‘Get into position, then.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can. Go on.’

  Elliott arrived at the same time as Jade Darlow did, apologising profusely to his sister for being late. As he strolled into his study, his scent came to Sophie like a gentle whisper: fougère, and foresty. He smiled at Tracey positioned behind the sewing machine, pretending to be putting the finishing touches to the beautiful green gown.

  ‘Ah, been working on Jade’s dress, I see, Tracey,’ he said, giving both her and Sophie a secret wink and a grin that would have dwarfed the world’s biggest croissant.

  ‘Yep, nearly there now,’ trilled Tracey. She held it up. ‘What do you think, Jade?’

  Jade’s eyes said it all. And the way that her mouth moved silently forming the word ‘Wow’.

  ‘Tracey ’as to open up the pub, so she’s asked me to mark up the hem, is that okay?’ asked Sophie, adopting the accent once more now that Jade was here. ‘Did you remember to bring your shoes?’

  ‘Er, yeah.’

  Tracey gave a pained smile. ‘I’m going to have to go, sorry,’ she said. ‘So I’ll leave you in Pom’s capable hands.’

  ‘And I’d better leave too, hadn’t I?’ said Elliott as Jade stood there, arms folded, waiting for the room to empty so she could undress.

  ‘Thanks, Tracey, it looks great,’ said Jade, her words pulling Tracey back from the door.

  Tracey hesitated, torn between telling a lie and accepting the compliment. ‘Oh, it’s . . . so long as you like it,’ she said and hurried off before an all-seeing entity in the sky boomed over an invisible tannoy that she hadn’t put a single stitch into it.

  Sophie helped Jade put on the dress. There was just the smallest tweak that needed to be made at the neck; the bodice fitted perfectly, the skirt flowed over her slim hips. Then, using Sophie’s arm for support, Jade got up on a stool wearing her new heels.

  ‘I’m actually gobsmacked,’ announced Jade. ‘I didn’t think she’d pull it out of the bag. I’ve been panicking like mad.’

  Sophie marked the hem with a pin, measured the distance from the waistband.

  ‘She wouldn’t have let you down,’ said Sophie with all certainty. Tracey would have totally broken her bank buying a dress for Jade if this project
hadn’t happened. ‘She thinks a lot about you and your dad. She lost her mum at the same age as you were, so she knows ’ow ’ard it is.’

  ‘I do want my dad to be happy. It’s not that I don’t. I’m not a bitch.’ Jade’s tone was defensive.

  ‘I’m sure that Tracey—’

  ‘She’s a nice woman. It’s just that . . . I’m scared I’ll be letting Mum down. Being disloyal. I feel . . . I feel . . .’ She stopped and Sophie prompted her gently.

  ‘What do you feel?’

  Jade blew out her cheeks. ‘I see her and my dad laughing together sometimes and it makes me mad. I mean that’s really bad of me, isn’t it? That my dad’s happy and I don’t want him to be.’

  Sophie gave her a soft smile. ‘Your feelings are all mixed up and that is natural. You want your dad to be happy . . . with your mum.’