The Mysterious Miss Mayhew (35 page)

This was a remarkable charm offensive and, worryingly, it not only seemed to be targeted on Hattie, but also him. Steph hadn’t even mentioned the way her presents were adorning the soft toys.

When breakfast was over, the logistics of the trip to school reminded him of that old riddle – how to get a fox, a chicken and bag of corn over a river safely. He didn’t know who was the chicken or the corn, but the cunning fox was definitely Steph.

His plan had been for Hattie to come in his car and Steph to follow on behind. But Hattie wanted to go with Steph. Tom reluctantly agreed, but Steph couldn’t find her car keys.

He didn’t want them all to go in his car like some happy family.
And
it would mean coming back to drop Steph off before he went on to work.

They all looked for the keys until they had to go or they would be late. He wanted to say, ‘You did this on purpose,’ but there was Hattie watching him. This was how it went – Steph using his fear of upsetting Hattie to trap him into doing what she wanted.

In Tom’s car, Steph played the role of perfect mother and as they passed the turning for Fran’s bungalow, Fran walked up the track and to the main road. She had her back to them and although his impulse was to beep the
horn and get her to turn round, he suddenly didn’t want her to see them all together like this. He said nothing and kept on driving hoping that Fran would only see the car after it had gone past.

Steph was opening the window. ‘Fran! Fran!’ she called. ‘Look Hattie, there’s Fran.’

Fran turned and Tom saw her take in everything that he hadn’t wanted her to. She raised her hand in a stiff wave.

*

In the playground, Steph sought out Josh’s mother and Hattie’s teacher and schmoozed her heart out.

‘I’m taking you back home,’ he told her after they left Hattie. ‘You can have another look for those car keys.’

‘But I want to come along to Tynebrook. Maybe we could have a spot of lunch together?’

Tom pulled over to the side of the road, not even bothering to wait for ‘his’ lay-by. He put on the hazard-warning lights. ‘Steph, I’m pleased you’ve come to see Hattie, but let’s get this straight – I don’t want to have lunch with you, tea with you or any other bloody meal. I don’t want you staying in my house and I’m not particularly happy being in the same car with you. For the last three and a half years, you’ve dragged your feet to wield some kind of power over me and take advantage of the fact that I don’t want anything to hurt Hattie. I can live with that, but I’ll
never forgive you for the way you’ve messed Hattie about too. And now you’re Mother of the Year suddenly?’

He didn’t need to look at her to know that she was crying.

‘I’m sorry, Tom,’ she said, between the tears, ‘I know how much of Hattie’s growing up I’ve missed. I’m just trying to make up for it.’

This was ‘sincere Steph’, the one he’d believed for years.

‘Really? And how long can we expect this masterclass in mothering to go on for?’

‘I’m staying till Tuesday, Tom, if that’s what you mean. Then I’m going to see Mummy and Daddy. I can go to a hotel if you want – although I think that will really upset Hattie—’

‘Have you told her when you’re leaving?’

There was no answer to that, just a prolonged period of crying.

Tom took that as a ‘no’. Fantastic, so if he turfed her out and made her stay somewhere else, Hattie was going to be upset now and again when she left on Tuesday.

He looked at the clock on the dashboard. Damn, this was eating into his Fran time. He took off the handbrake and pulled out into the road and there was the blare of a horn behind him and the sound of someone trying to stop and he managed to get part of the way back up on the verge before there was a thud, a jolt and the noise of a car hitting them.

CHAPTER 50

Tom stood by the dent at the back of his car and looked at the piece of paper in his hand. On it were the name and contact details of a very irate guy whose only other communication with him had been to shout, ‘You bloody idiot! Hazard-warning lights on, no use of indicator, sharp right turn into the road. What kind of fuckwit are you?’

He remembered Fran’s accident up in the forest and looked at Steph sitting in the passenger seat rubbing her neck. She said she had whiplash, which was possible. After all, there must be the odd thing that came out of her mouth that was true.

It was too late to go to Fran’s now, and if he took Steph home, it would make him late for his other meeting, the one at work.

He got back in the car. ‘How’s your neck?’

Steph winced. ‘Quite painful. Is there a doctor in Tynebrook?’

‘Yes,’ he said, dully, aware his own shoulder was aching,
and this time he checked the mirror before he pulled out into the road.

*

Once Steph was out of the car, he rang Fran. Damn voicemail again. He told her what had happened and apologised for not coming round. Next he called his mother and filled her in on Steph’s arrival.

She swore so badly that he wondered what the rev. thought of that.

Like Tom, she wanted to know what Steph was after. The two women had never bonded, and after Steph had more or less absented herself from Hattie’s life, Joan had little time for her.

‘It’s jealousy about Fran,’ Tom said. ‘But there must be something else going on because she’s being nice to me too. So, just warning you, Hattie will be fairly hyper when you pick her up from school later.’

‘Poor, poor Hattie,’ was his mother’s closing remark. ‘She’ll be over the moon.’

Tom decided not to tell Rob and Kath that Steph was around; Kath’s blood pressure was high enough as it was. He didn’t tell anyone at work about his visitor either, although he half expected her to put in an appearance.

As he worked, another potential worry surfaced. Up until Steph’s arrival, there had been six people who knew
about him and Fran. Now there were seven. How could he ask Steph to keep quiet when that would alert her to what a very juicy piece of information she had hold of?

There were few points of light in his bleak day. One was that Felix and Derek had scouted out some good images from the end-of-year show. Another, that Kelvin had sweet-talked some new advertisers on board. After he’d told Tom that news, he continued to sit looking out into the main office at Victoria.

‘I’ve still got quite a bit to do,’ Tom hinted and Kelvin nodded.

‘Yeah, me too.’ And then, ‘What do you think of Vicky?’

Vicky?

‘Well … she’s talented and determined and she’s got a good eye for what does and doesn’t work in a magazine—’

‘Yeah, but her and me? Think we could make a go of it?’

Kelvin did something enthusiastic with his eyebrows.

‘I have no answer to that,’ Tom replied and Kelvin agreed that it was ‘a bloody curly one’. When he left, he made his usual detour via Victoria’s desk. Tom was still no wiser about what ‘make a go of it’ meant. And now his shoulder was really aching.

*

Just after school had finished, his mother rang back.

‘We’re home,’ she said, ‘and so is
she
. And I’ve got a bone
to pick with you: why didn’t you mention you were in an accident? Madam is lying on the sofa, says she’s got slapdash.’

‘Mum, it’s … yeah, whatever.’

‘She’s not injured so badly that it’s stopped her shopping though. Looks like Hattie’s getting a whole new wardrobe.’ There was a sniff that said it all. ‘Don’t be too late, will you, Tom? You can imagine the lovely chats we’re having.’

Tom checked his mobile again. The Steph effect was already kicking in – Fran hadn’t contacted him when she knew he’d been in an accident, so she must be really hacked off. He stared at his phone as if he could hypnotise it into ringing.

Once home, he found that his mother had summoned reinforcements. Rob and a very uncomfortable-looking Kath were sitting, arms folded, watching Steph like sheepdogs.

Steph was lying on the sofa, Hattie with her, and they were going through a fashion magazine. His mother, mouth drawn into a cough-drop suck, was in a straight-backed chair brought in from the kitchen.

‘Does your neck hurt too, Dad?’ Hattie asked and he said ‘No, my shoulder is just a bit sore.’ She didn’t reply and went back to pointing out what she liked in the magazine.
It was obvious that Hattie’s sudden interest in fashion was to keep her mother’s attention. She was modelling another T-shirt and skirt, and although these fitted her better, the outfit was still some way off the coast of her personality.

‘We’ve all been having a nice chat, haven’t we?’ Steph said looking around Tom’s family. ‘Catching up.’

‘A nice chat’ didn’t seem to sum up the mood of the party. Kath’s expression was stone-like.

Now it seemed incredible to Tom that there had been a time when he had absorbed Steph’s views of his family – provincial, limited and limiting – and his trips north had grown infrequent.

‘Make you a cup of tea, mate?’ Rob asked and jerked his head towards the kitchen.

‘What the hell is she doing here?’ he said as soon as Tom joined him. ‘It’s not right her turning up like this. And then what? Bugger off again and leave you to pick up the pieces?’

‘She has a right to see Hattie, Rob.’

‘Yeah. Doesn’t use it much though, does she? When I think how casual she is about having a child, when some of us …’ Rob took his feelings out on a teabag.

‘Take Kath home,’ Tom said gently. ‘This isn’t helping her. I appreciate the support, but please, take her home.’

Rob and Kath
did
go not long after that, Kath telling him
she was just on the other end of the phone if he needed her. Steph had given them a gracious goodbye from the sofa – ‘My neck, you see. I won’t get up.’

Tom knew where this neck injury was now leading. There would definitely be no move to a hotel – that would be a nice image for Hattie to savour: her father ejecting her injured mother on to the doorstep.

When his own mother left, she said, ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do to shift her, won’t you?’

‘The rev. doesn’t do contract killings, does he?’ Tom replied.

As the sound of his mother’s car faded away, he felt alone and trapped. Steph was already wrong-footing him and fate and road accidents seemed to be helping her.

He was in the kitchen thinking what to have for tea, when he heard the side gate squeak and shot out into the garden again.

Please let it be Fran
.

He barely had any time to smile before she had her arms around him.

‘Oh, thank God you’re all right. I saw the dent in the car.’ She had pulled back and was looking at him and he reversed the action and kissed her.

‘Your lips didn’t get damaged, I see,’ she said when he’d finished.

He just held her close and felt the warmth and energy that was Fran. ‘Oh God. I am sooo glad you’re here,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘I thought you were hacked off with me – seeing us all in the car, me not turning up when I said I would. When you didn’t answer my calls …’

‘Oh, Tom,’ she said, sadly, ‘when are you going to learn that I’m not like … well, other people?’ She disentangled herself from him. ‘It’s wearing the way you always think I’m going to strop off at the slightest thing.’ She shook her head at him, but it was in a ‘What am I going to do with you?’ way and not an ‘I’m so angry I’m going to throw you on the floor’ one.

‘I’ve been out shopping for bits and pieces with Jamie and Natalie for the flat,’ she explained. ‘Goodness me, so much time taken to decide on an ironing board. Anyway, I had my mobile, but it was right at the bottom of my bag and the shops are so noisy. Otherwise, my little wounded soldier, I would have been here like a shot.’

She administered some more mouth-to-mouth resuscitation which was disturbed abruptly by Hattie saying, ‘Why are you kissing Fran?’

They leaped apart to find Steph standing behind Hattie.

‘Perhaps she has something stuck in one of her back teeth,’ Steph said and there, just for an instant in the look she gave Fran, was undiluted vindictiveness. Tom would
have been quite happy not to have seen that look ever again.

‘I’m very sorry to hear about the accident,’ Fran said. ‘Were you hurt, Steph, or just shaken up?’

‘Both.’

‘Mummy’s hurt her neck,’ Hattie explained, looking sad.

Tom nodded. ‘Earlier she could barely get up off the sofa.’

‘Well you
should
take it easy,’ Fran said. ‘Get plenty of rest.’

‘I intend to. My bedroom here is very comfortable. The bed especially.’

Fran kept smiling and did not respond to whatever point Steph was trying to make about sleeping arrangements.

‘We were just about to play a board game, weren’t we, Hattie?’ Steph announced. ‘Does Daddy want to play? I thought Monopoly.’

‘Please, Daddy, please!’ Hattie was jumping about.

He saw Steph’s smug smile.

‘Monopoly’s too old for her,’ he said.

‘Well, you’d like to try it, wouldn’t you, Hattie?’

Hattie would, although Tom guessed that ten minutes in, she’d rather be playing Snakes and Ladders.

‘Perhaps Fran could play too,’ Hattie suddenly suggested and Steph’s smile faltered.

‘Oh that’s kind.’ Fran bent down to Hattie. ‘But I have to go back. I’m working on a new animal. Just to see if I can.’

‘What is it?’ Hattie asked.

‘It’s a hedgehog. I’ve found one living in my garden. He has a little bolt-hole there.’

‘Bolty what?’

‘Oh, sorry, Hattie. It means somewhere you can go where you know you’ll be safe. Him and his fleas are curled up in a burrow under an old tree stump.’

‘Are we going to play this game?’ Steph held her hand out to Hattie and clicked her fingers. Hattie went like a shot.

‘I’d better go,’ Tom said, morosely, when Steph had taken Hattie in. ‘This is bloody purgatory, Fran. And I can’t turf her out now, not when she’s meant to have whiplash. I’ve got a whole weekend of this to look forward to.’

‘Hmm. That whiplash, comes and goes, doesn’t it?’ Fran leaned over and kissed him. ‘Perhaps you could try and sneak over and see me sometime this weekend, when Hattie goes to bed. Leave Steph to babysit.’ She was very close to his face and he felt her scrutinising him, but before he could give an answer, she provided one herself. ‘No, that’s not going to happen, is it? Now, why is that?’