The Magnificent Mrs Mayhew

by Milly Johnson

  ‘This a message from you, Kitty?’ Sophie called, as a draught breathed on her from behind and fluttered the page. A rogue wind channelling down the chimney and visiting the room, nothing more supernatural than that. No message from Kitty. Sadly, Kitty no longer existed.

  Afterwards, Sophie tidied around, leaving the bedsit as clean for someone as it had been left for her. She was taking the rubbish out to the bin when she heard her name being called.

  ‘Pom, Pom . . .’ Luke’s unmistakable excited voice. He was on his swing. She waved. He scrambled off it and ran down the garden towards her.

  ‘Pom, guess what?’ he said, his face almost split apart by the grin he was wearing. ‘My mummy’s come back.’

  Sophie had been expecting him to say that he’d had crunchy pie for tea or maybe some news about Plum. Maybe another story about a massive poo in the cat litter tray, but not that. Her head exploded with prickles as if someone had thrown a full bucket of cold water at her.

  ‘Your mummy?’ Why was that word having such an effect on her?

  ‘Daddy said I could play in the garden for five minutes until Auntie Tracey comes for me.’ He leaned forward as if about to tell her something very secret. ‘They’re talking.’

  Right on cue, Tracey came storming up the road on foot. Seeing Sophie and Luke outside, she halted, her expression speaking volumes. She plastered a smile on her face for her nephew’s benefit. ‘Lukey,’ she waved to him. ‘How do you fancy staying with me and Deaf Jeff tonight?’

  ‘Yaaayyy,’ he cheered.

  ‘Right, tell your dad to pack your bag.’

  Luke scurried up the garden towards the back door of the vicarage. Tracey turned to Pom, dispensed with the smile and threw her hands up in the air.

  ‘I was having the best day. Jade invited me to the big prom dropping-off ceremony and I’ve been smiling like a loony since . . . and then this bites me on the bum. I wondered who that idiot in the red car was and now we know: bloody Joy Cowface, that’s who. She’s probably been driving around all day trying to build up the courage to wreck his life again. Elliott just rang and asked if I’d look after Luke for an hour or so because she’s decided she wants to talk. Apparently she doesn’t want to get divorced now, wants to be a mother and a dutiful wife and settle down and . . .’ she growled. ‘I should have known she’d do something like this. I tell you, I will murder her given the opportunity.’ Tracey nodded towards the vicarage. ‘She’ll have been in trouble, I bet you anything. She uses him like a first-aid kit and then as soon as she’s mended, off she trots to another disaster. I’d better go and get Luke. I think it’s best if he stays with me tonight, so they can . . . do what they have to.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Sophie. She felt inexplicably numb.

  Tracey began to march towards the front of the vicarage.

  ‘Wish me luck keeping my hands off her,’ she shouted over her shoulder.

  ‘You’ll manage,’ replied Sophie.

  She walked back into the house then and resumed her packing. All of it now. The message from the cosmos was clear. It really was time to go home.

  Sophie

  Chapter 45

  Sophie managed to drop off to sleep at just after one a.m. and woke up at four-thirty a minute before the alarm on her phone went off. She stripped the bed, folded the sheets, placed them with the towels and a note apologising for not having had time to wash them. She also thanked Tracey for her friendship, hoped Jade would have a fabulous prom and sent everyone in the village her best regards. Then she wrote to Elliott and Luke, thanked them for their kindness, told Luke to take good care of Plum, wished Elliott luck – a word that had a container-load of connotations. In her heart the letter was much longer. In that version it said, I have fallen in love with you all and so it is time for me to leave because it feels too right to stay. She put the note on top of the presents in front of the fireplace, turned off the light and walked out of the bedsit for the last time.

  The hallway felt uncommonly eerie, chilled. She had the crazy notion that the house didn’t want her to go. That made two of them then.

  ‘Goodbye, Kitty. Thank you for your hospitality,’ Sophie said to the dark. Her voice crumbled on the last word. She heard the noise of a car getting closer – her taxi. ‘Goodbye,’ she said again, before locking up the front door, putting the key through the letter box, forcing her fingers to let it go.

  She glanced up the road whilst the taxi driver was loading her case into his boot and saw Joy’s red car parked outside the vicarage and she wondered where she was sleeping now. They passed the Little Loste Inn and she blew a kiss towards it, felt a pain prickle behind her eyes, blinked it away. Time to be Sophie again.

  In Slattercove railway station, Sophie glanced at the headlines on newspapers outside a kiosk: an actor accused of a racist slur at an awards ceremony, a warning about an invasion of ladybirds, some massive company accused of not paying enough taxes. No John F. Mayhew gossip, not on the front covers at least.

  In York she called John’s mobile. Her mouth was dry with anxiety as it began to ring. He picked up a split second before it switched to voicemail.

  ‘Hello.’ His voice, its tone wary. She was strangely unmoved to hear it; shock, she presumed.

  ‘It’s me. I’m on my way home.’

  ‘Sophie? Oh, thank God, where the fuck are you?’ He sounded relieved more than cross, despite the invective.

  ‘I’ll be home by two o’clock at the latest.’

  ‘Right, okay.’ She imagined him pacing up and down as he spoke. ‘Let me know when you’re at the station, I’ll come and pick you up.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get a taxi.’

  Then she put down the phone.

  The gates to Park Court opened on her taxi’s approach, which told her that someone in the house was watching out for her in order to operate them. She saw her father’s and Clive’s cars parked in front of the house and she tried to swallow the ball of dread lodged in her throat, but it was too compacted to shift.

  ‘Nice house,’ said the taxi driver. He had no idea who she was. ‘Friends or family?’

  ‘Just people I know.’ The door to Park Court opened and John rushed out. Her John. His arms closed around her.

  ‘I didn’t recognise you,’ he said, pushing her out to arms’ length then, looking into her face as if her eyes would give up her secrets. ‘Oh, Sophie. Where have you been?’

  He paid the taxi driver, picked up her suitcase with one hand, put the other around her shoulder, walked her into the house. There was a family welcoming committee. But no one had told their faces of their purpose.

  ‘We’ve all been so concerned,’ said John. Four stiff trees confronted her: a furious-looking Clive and Celeste, her father – fit and well – and her mother, whose displeasure was evident in her avoiding eye contact with her errant daughter.

  ‘Sophie, feelings are running high. It might not look like it but we all have been so worr— ’

  ‘Haven’t you got anything to say for yourself?’ barked Clive Mayhew, his tone brittle, demanding.

  ‘Let’s go home, Angus,’ said Alice. ‘I’ve seen enough.’

  John began to plead with Sophie’s parents as they stepped towards the door. ‘Alice, Angus, please, remember what we said, this isn’t the time—’

  Her mother again, throwing the words over her shoulder. ‘Utterly selfish. No consideration for anyone else. She never had.’

  ‘Go upstairs, Sophie. You look shattered. Let me talk to them,’ said John.

  Sophie headed towards the stairs, heard John’s low remonstrations with his parents and in-laws, heard the words: Preposterous. Outrageous. Unforgivable.

  Home sweet home.

  The bedroom looked the same but also not the same and she couldn’t explain why. Everything was in the place it should have been but it felt oddly unfamiliar. Had she really only been away for three weeks? It felt like much longer.

  Sophie sat on the edge of the bed and caught
sight of herself in the dressing-room mirror. That woman with her choppy black hair, in cheap jeans and needing-to-be-washed T-shirt, did not belong in this bedroom. She was a trespasser. Sophie stared at her, trying to read what was going on in her hazel eyes. Nothing. There was nothing going on in them. She felt numb, dazed by lack of sleep, adrift.

  The door opened by slow degrees minutes later. John came in carefully, soft cautious smile playing on his lips.

  ‘It’s good to have you home,’ he said. ‘Don’t take too much notice of the old ones. Whatever you might think, take it from me they’ve been extremely upset. We all have. I didn’t have any idea where to start looking for you. Where were you?’

  ‘I wasn’t with anyone you know,’ she replied. ‘I wasn’t with anyone I know for that matter.’

  He sat down tentatively on the bed next to her, reached for her hand. His fingers were long and cool. ‘We need to talk, obviously, but not today. I’m just so glad you are here, back where you belong. I’ve been thinking, maybe after what happened with Henry, we never really addressed it properly. I’ve been thinking a lot actually . . . about so many things. But’ – he waved that away – ‘later. You need rest.’

  Rest. The word came with an unpleasant tingle.

  ‘If you think I need rest in a hospital, John, let me warn you that I have put measures in place to stop that happening,’ she said, summoning up the energy to be firm from a reserve stored deep within her. She saw the small swallow in his throat before he spoke again, his features uniting in an expression of confusion.

  ‘There’s no question of you going into hospital, I meant here at home.’

  He leaned over, kissed her head, his hand cupping her face. At the door he turned, smiled again. ‘Can I get you anything? Tea, a sandwich, hot milky drink?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said.

  He closed the door behind him. He still hadn’t said sorry.

  Chapter 46

  ‘You look different,’ adjudged Elise the following Monday. ‘It’s not only the hair, which gives you more gravitas, I think. What else has changed? I can’t work it out.’

  Sophie’s hair had been stripped of the black two days previously. She’d kept the bob and had a very expensive trim but in her opinion Betty of Slattercove had cut it as adeptly for a fraction of the price.

  Elise looked around them to see who was gawping in their direction and eyes everywhere pretended they hadn’t been, quickly switching their focus.

  ‘So, first public trip out, then?’

  ‘Apart from to the hair salon, yes.’

  Elise clicked her fingers at the wine waiter, who had had the audacity to pass by the table when her glass was standing empty. He apologised and poured for her from the bottle.

  ‘And how are things at home?’

  ‘Don’t even ask.’

  ‘I have every intention of asking.’

  ‘I feel terrible.’ She was back to not sleeping well. ‘Everyone is so cross with me. My parents aren’t speaking to me.’

  ‘And John?’

  ‘Too nice.’

  ‘I see.’ Elise wasn’t taken in either. ‘I presume you’re going to do a press release.’

  ‘When I’m ready. I don’t think they can afford to push me, considering what happened before. Len and John are in consultation as we speak, preparing.’

  Elise was incredulous.

  ‘He’s gone to London and left you?’

  ‘I told him to.’

  He’d offered to not go but she could tell that it was a very half-hearted bid. She knew that he would want to consult with Len now that his ‘asset’ was back home.

  Elise’s ‘Huh’ said much more than the sum of its three letters.

  ‘Yes, no doubt I will be rolled out in front of a sympathetic glossy in full Vivienne Westwood. Len will secure editorial control. It will be perfectly stage-managed.’ Sophie knew she would be expected to deliver the speech she’d been instructed to when, instead, she had called John a shit, and to admit that the stress Rebecca Robinson had put her under had led to a momentary madness that she bitterly regretted. And when the magazine came out, people would bitch ad infinitum about her new hairstyle.

  Elise made a grumbling sound. ‘Has anyone acknowledged why you were driven to do what you did? Has John apologised?’ When Sophie didn’t answer immediately, she pressed her, ‘Well, have they?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bastards.’

  ‘I’m going to London later to join him for a few days. Maybe we’ll talk properly then. I don’t think either of us knows where to start.’

  Elise sat back in her chair, studied the younger woman.

  ‘You know, Sophie, when we first began having our lunches and brunches, my primary concern was networking, even spying for Gerald. They were pleasant enough occasions but you were never very forthcoming where gossip was concerned, never seemed to enjoy the intrigue – it was all frightfully disappointing. I was starting to think about extricating myself from your company. I judged you shallow, of little substance, all beauty and no brains.’ She broke off to drink, leaving Sophie stunned into silence by her honesty. Then Elise continued. ‘I realised eventually that you weren’t shallow at all, quite the opposite in fact; you were intelligent, loyal, principled, a true friend. I must admit, I have fed you the odd line over the past couple of years, like a diagnostic dye, hoping to trace where it turned up, but it never did. And I have come to prize that more than I actually realised until you ran away. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a friend before whom I could truly trust, Sophie, or valued enough to care if they trusted me. I was quite surprised that keeping your secret was more important than the prospect of spreading insider news.’

  Elise smiled and it was totally different to her usual smile, as if Elise had let her into an inner sanctum of herself. Sophie was touched.

  ‘That’s lovely of you to say so, Elise. I was exceedingly grateful for what you did for me.’

  ‘Oh, that was nothing,’ A flick of Elise’s hand dismissed the suggestion that her actions were special. ‘Whilst you were away, I met Gerald’s Welsh daughter Fennie, the secret one that I thought was his mistress. He had a short fling with her mother before I came on the scene. He never knew she existed until recently, and she didn’t know about him either until a deathbed confession enlightened her. Delightful girl, I took to her straightaway. She has her own business. It’s only a tiny one, she makes soap and those bath bomb things and sells them at fairs. She lives in a house the size of a shoe-box, but she cherishes everything she has, appreciates life in a way I can’t quite manage, enjoys ridiculously simple pleasures. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to swap places but I envied her all the same. I couldn’t stop thinking about her in the car on the way home and how she reminded me of you. A free spirit.’

  Sophie dropped a wry laugh at that.

  ‘But I’m not, Elise.’

  ‘Oh, Sophie, I think you are. We’ve all wondered what lay behind that beautiful mask you wear and when you stood on that doorstep and declared John a shit, I saw the real you for a trice, a trapped bird with a throatful of song and no space to sing it, suddenly finding the door to its cage open. Where did you fly to, Sophie Mayhew, because you look like her but you aren’t. Not the same Sophie who took wing.’

  ‘I went to Yorkshire. Near St Bathsheba’s school.’

  ‘Yorkshire? Yorkshire! Of all the places on the planet, you went back to Yorkshire? After everything you told me about it?’

  Her disgust was so evident that Sophie had to laugh.

  ‘What I never told you was one summer I was forced to spend my holidays there doing extra study with a teacher, but she entered a secret pact with the school cook to look after me because she needed to chase a man halfway around Europe.’ She acknowledged Elise’s look of disbelief. ‘I know what it sounds like, but it happened exactly like that. I had the most brilliant few weeks. Probably the happiest of my life. That’s why I went back.’

  ‘And what did
you do in the three weeks you were there this time?’

  ‘I stayed in a bedsit in a dilapidated house, I ran on the beach, I served beer in a pub, I pretended to be French, I went to church, I made a prom dress for a teenager . . .’ I fell in love with a little boy and his auntie . . . and his father.

  ‘Sounds horrific,’ decided Elise, then she sighed, ‘but I suspect it wasn’t, was it?’

  ‘No. It was wonderful.’

  Sophie felt Elise’s hand on hers.

  ‘I hoped you’d come home for purely selfish reasons, because I really didn’t want to be starved of your company for too much longer, but . . . but . . . dear Sophie, don’t let them force you back into the cage again. In the nicest possible way . . . I don’t think you belong here.’

  *

  In the London office, Len was taking John step by step through his grand strategical plan. Now that Sophie was back on board, things should be pretty straightforward. But this time they must all be aware that Sophie Mayhew was the queen on the board, not a pawn. They’d underestimated her when the Rebecca Robinson story had broken, trusted her to stick to the script and play the loyal wife, never even contemplated that she might rebel. John had not been best pleased to discover that his popularity had depended so much on her standing by his side. He’d counted on Len successfully spinning the public’s sympathy towards him: deep-rooted problems in his marriage caused by tragedy, wife unreachable and icy, husband had no choice but to seek warm harbour – no wonder he had strayed from the path of righteousness; and was genuinely surprised – and annoyed – to find that it hadn’t gone that way at all. He’d been branded with the insalubrious title of ‘Love Rat’, pigeon-holed with adulterous brattish footballers and F-list celebrities. Rebecca was mesmerising at first but her spicy revelations had cast her as a far more cold-blooded creature than Len was trying to paint Sophie as: in fact, there had been a tsunami of public sympathy for the wronged wife. Columnists who had criticised her viciously in the past came out fully on her side. Her outburst on the doorstep of the morning of 1 June had shown everyone she was anything but frigid, especially coming only three days after she had broken down in a neonatal unit. This woman was suffering terribly and it was her husband’s job to mend her, not crush her further into the ground using his mistress’s heel. The British public, feeling a teensy bit rotten about their previous lack of understanding, wanted to throw its arms around Mrs Sophie Mayhew and make it all up to her.