The Mysterious Miss Mayhew

by Hazel Osmond

  ‘Guilty as charged,’ Liz said smugly, ‘he knows we know.’

  ‘Thanks, Miss Marple. OK, we’ll see how he gets on with his next couple of articles. Right … shut the door after you.’

  He settled slowly back to his work, but he was disquieted by an image of Fran and Jamie’s heads in such close proximity, blonde against dark.

  When the phone rang, he thought at first it was Kelvin taking the piss with some heavy-duty heavy breathing. Then he realised it was someone panicking and trying to talk at the same time.

  ‘Tom,’ Fran said, ‘oh, thank goodness you’re there. I’m so, so sorry, I know how busy you are … but I didn’t know who else to trust. I’ve had an accident. A terrible, terrible accident.’

  CHAPTER 24

  ‘Yes, definitely dead.’ Tom stood up and brushed the soil from the knees of his trousers, noting again the way the radiator grille was buckled. ‘That doesn’t look so good either.’

  ‘I know both of those things, Tom.’ Fran glanced at the body under the wheel. She no longer sounded panicky and he supposed that she’d had time to calm herself as she’d waited for him to arrive.

  Through the window of the car he noticed the large sketch pad on the back seat.

  ‘When Liz told me you were finishing off a red squirrel, I had no idea she meant it literally,’ Tom said. ‘So, did you get him before you got him?’

  ‘Tom!’ she said, sharply. ‘How can you make a joke at a time like this?’

  Hard to believe someone could open their eyes so wide.

  ‘It’s a squirrel, Fran. You haven’t mown down a child or a pensioner.’

  ‘But it was so beautiful. Its bushy tail, its little tufted ears.’ She was bending down to peer at what was left of the squirrel – which didn’t include the tufty ears or very much of the tail.

  He gave her a couple of seconds before asking again, ‘Well, did you get it?’

  She was still looking down, so her ‘yes’ was only just audible.

  ‘One way to look at this,’ he said, trying to cheer her up, ‘is that he’ll get a permanent memorial. In paper. He’ll live on in—’

  ‘Don’t patronise me, Tom.’ She jerked back up straight. ‘If I’d swerved the other way when it ran across the road, I’d have missed it and the tree. I could blame the sun …’ She gave it an accusatory squint. ‘It blinded me at the crucial moment. But really this is no one’s fault but mine.’ Her shoulders rose and fell and he looked at the sun too, slanting through the trees like so many diagonals of light and making the forest seem more secluded and secret.

  No sound, not even a breeze in the leaves. Everything at peace.

  Especially the squirrel.

  He watched how the sunlight caught her hair and brought out the silver, and then he saw her hair move as she shook her head.

  ‘The poor reds have a hard enough time as it is against those lumpish grey things,’ she said. ‘Fighting over food, getting the pox from them.’

  To Tom it sounded like a typical Friday night round the kebab vans on Newcastle quayside, but he kept that joke to himself and offered her the platitude, ‘Accidents happen.’

  She looked unconvinced. ‘But the reds are getting rarer all the time, and I’ve made them even more so.’

  ‘Well, how about you run over a grey on your way home and even things up again?’

  Her admonishing look was back. ‘Have you no heart?’

  He was about to reply when she became businesslike. ‘No good moping. I’ll just have to report it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw on the Internet that they monitor them – numbers, geographical locations, that kind of thing.’

  He could feel his patience begin to stretch. His desk was full of work and standing on the edge of a forest discussing a dead red squirrel with a woman in a floral dress was not on his To Do list. ‘They aren’t pin-point accurate studies,’ he said. ‘They don’t give them names – it’s not a case of “Come in, Red October, your time is up”.’

  How could he possibly have entertained the idea that she was in any way normal?

  ‘But—’

  ‘For God’s sake, it’s a bloody squirrel – a really bloody squirrel. Just reverse off it and drive home.’

  She pulled back her shoulders and Kelvin’s comment about her being ‘pert’ drifted across his mind.

  ‘You know when you were home-schooled?’ he asked, to take his mind off the pertness.

  ‘Ye-es?’

  ‘Was it in a cupboard? Totally away from how the world really works?’

  Fran was sucking in her cheeks as she had done when irritated by Vasey. When she did speak, it was in a clipped, formal fashion.

  ‘If you’ve quite finished, Tom, I agree that I believe things matter when they don’t. I can find myself weeping at the sight of a dead cat as I think of its owners, waiting vainly at home for—’

  ‘We’re not talking family cats here, we’re talking squirrels.’

  She studied him. ‘Yes,’ she said, finally. ‘You’re right. All we need to do is bury it.’

  ‘What! In a forest? Where, unburied, something bigger would simply eat it within minutes of you driving off?’

  ‘This is not about being practical, it’s about doing the decent thing,’ she said firmly. ‘Oh, and driving off? That was the other reason I called you. The car won’t move. I think I’ve done some serious damage to it.’

  ‘Not as much as to the fucking squirrel!’ he shouted, his patience finally going ‘ping’.

  During the ensuing silence, he realised he had plonked his hands on his hips and quickly moved them.

  ‘Very funny,’ she said, when he was just beginning to think she was not going to talk to him any more. ‘Very funny, but also quite cruel … and, Tom, I have no idea why a person who can be kind is choosing to be difficult. It doesn’t do you justice. And, if you turn your back on me now, well, I’m not sure how our working relationship will survive unscathed.’

  Was she blackmailing him – help me bury this squirrel or you won’t get the paper one? He didn’t feel blackmailed, he felt like a naughty boy hauled out in front of the class.

  The sun was still slanting down, the forest was still green and dark and quiet. All at once he was aware how big the trees were and how he felt dwarfed by them. Yet standing here, out of his office and out of his car, he was inextricably linked to them. Him, this woman, even that damn squirrel.

  He couldn’t look at Fran. Easier to focus on the trunk of the tree damaged by the car.

  ‘Have you called the car hire company?’ he asked, still looking at the tree.

  ‘Yes, they’re sending someone out with a breakdown lorry.’ Fran’s tone softened. ‘But I’d still like to bury the squirrel before they arrive. What do you think, Tom? Help or hinder?’

  *

  ‘I really, really do appreciate this,’ Fran said, looking down at the mound of leaves and twigs that marked the squirrel’s last resting place. ‘I know how hard it was to get anywhere in this soil.’ She looked up at him and there was one of her big smiles. ‘Inspired using the corner of that file as a scraper.’

  He was trying not to engage with that smile. ‘So. Do you want to say a few words over him?’

  ‘Good Lord,’ she said, her eyes widening, ‘even I’m not that strange.’

  He wasn’t inclined to correct her because he was feeling very strange himself. At first he thought it was the exertion of pushing the car off the squirrel. Later, that it was a reaction to having bits of squirrel on his hands. Now he didn’t know what it was, not with that smile blazing away at him. Or that look that suggested he’d done something monumentally wonderful for her.

  It was like sea-sickness without the nausea. Then again, his head felt as if it was packed with wadding, so perhaps he was getting an ear infection and it was affecting his balance.

  He walked towards his car, his thoughts sluggish but his senses in overdrive. The bright light was hurting his eyes and every rustle
of a leaf and snap of a twig sounded too loud.

  Perhaps he was dehydrated. He turned to Fran to ask her for a drink, and glugged down the water she got from her car, hoping it would cure everything. As he lowered the bottle, he heard the noise of something heavy approaching along the road.

  ‘That will be the truck,’ Fran said. ‘I’ll be fine from here on in, but before you go, Tom …’ She put her hand on his arm and he looked down at it, wondering why he wanted to simultaneously draw away from her and roll up the sleeve of his shirt to reveal his skin. He felt her press down on his arm and knew that she would also be pushing herself up on her tiptoes and leaning in to him. In places their bodies touched and he knew how this dance, which was hard-wired into everyone, would end. He would first feel the heat of her, then her breath and then her lips on his face, and he would need to turn his head right now if he was going to ensure he felt all that on his cheek and not, more intimately, on his mouth.

  He wasn’t turning his head. He still wasn’t. No, not even now. And then, at the last possible moment, he did and felt relief before disappointment came surging after it.

  He heard her whispered ‘I’m really touched that you put yourself out so much for me.’

  He was in the car after that. Had he said goodbye? All he knew was that he was driving and then stopping again in a lay-by.

  It wasn’t an ear infection or the sight of squashed squirrel or even dehydration that was making him feel strange. It was the fact that he’d started the day knowing irrefutably that someone was not and never could be his type, never mind how hot they looked in a black dress. And then, somewhere between her irritating the hell out of him and burying a dead squirrel, he had discovered that her face, the way she looked into the sun, her determination to do the ‘decent’ thing, had all become lovely and sexy and the kind of fascinating that you just wanted to spend more time with because without it you felt you were simply sitting in a dusty room waiting for life to begin.

  ‘Oh God. Oh God,’ he said to the windscreen. ‘Oh God. I have lost my bloody mind. I am a sad, middle-aged git who has lost his mind.’

  But what if it’s not your mind you’ve lost? What if it’s your heart?

  ‘Shut up,’ he said, also to the windscreen. ‘Shut the hell up.’

  CHAPTER 25

  Friday 23 May

  1) It is possible to start the day in an office and end it in a breakdown truck.

  2) The only sound more distressing than that of red squirrel meeting tyre, is red car meeting tree.

  3) Tom’s irritation comes with personal comments and cruel humour. His anger comes with shouting and a way of putting his hands on his hips that looks very camp.

  4) A lot of men would have given up trying to dig a shallow grave in a forest. It takes a certain kind of man who would elicit the help of a stationery product to complete the task.

  5) I have just reread point number 4 and feel I should make it clear that the grave was for a squirrel. I would hate anyone to arrest Tom on suspicion of burying his wife.

  6) I have just reread point number 5 and feel Freud would have a fine old time with it. ‘Vy, Miss Mayhew, did your mind immediately go to Tom’s wife and the getting rid of the same?’ Hmmm.

  7) Tom is squeamish. He looked particularly queasy after burying the squirrel and me kissing him did not help. The only way he could have looked more uncomfortable was if I’d been wearing a barbed-wire hat. Perhaps it is not the custom to kiss people as a sign of friendship and gratitude in Northumberland? The poor man was completely rigid (not in that way, you dirty devil, Freud). He could barely move his neck to offer me his cheek.

  8) It is possible to be both disappointed by a man’s reaction to a kiss and relieved. Disappointed? It’s always gutting to know that a man thinks you have all the allure of a used pan scourer. Relieved? Because the only man I should be concentrating on having a relationship with is Jamie. (Trying to have a relationship with his brother may be tricky bearing in mind our differing views on dead wildlife.)

  9) It is impossible to look at Jamie without thinking:

  A. You are very, very attractive.

  B. You are very sweet.

  C. You should have paid more attention in English lessons.

  10) Crying over a squirrel is all very well, but soggy paper is impossible to cut.

  CHAPTER 26

  ‘It’s a bottle. But it’s made of chocolate. It’s made of chocolate, but it’s a bottle.’ The clear window of the large cardboard box Hattie was holding was steaming up under her enthusiasm.

  ‘Think we got the idea, Hats,’ he said, ‘but haven’t you forgotten something?’

  He gave her his special stare, accompanied by a subtle jerk of the head towards Natalie.

  Hattie finally twigged. ‘Thank you, thank YOU, THANK YOU, NAT-LEE.’ Two seconds later, she was pressing her nose to the see-through window again.

  ‘Well that looks like a hit,’ Natalie said, shrugging off her jacket and throwing it on to the kitchen table next to the folder and text books. ‘I thought, seeing as that tree house will spend so much time being a ship, it needs to get launched. You got time to hang around, see us do it?’

  ‘Yes, if we’re quick. And you, Natalie, are a genius.’

  Natalie gave him a look which suggested that was self-evident, before sniffing the air. ‘What was it for tea then, Hattie, curry? Save any for me?’ The questions were accompanied by a lunge and some enthusiastic tickling during which Hattie tried to defend herself while still clinging on to the box.

  Perhaps it was a day for good things: this impromptu launch, Grietje later; she would sort out whatever kinks in his libido had made him go weird up in that forest, kinks he’d been trying to ignore despite Fran appearing regularly in the office and insisting on looking gorgeous. And, just before he’d got the curry out of the oven, there had been a phone call from Caroline and Geoffrey. They’d been out for lunch, a long and fairly liquid one he guessed. They’d said all the right things to him and Hattie about the photographs and, unprompted, had also told him they’d forwarded the envelope for Steph.

  ‘Can I take the chocolate bottle out of the box?’ Hattie asked when the game had run out of steam.

  ‘Not yet,’ Natalie said. ‘Take it out too soon and the heat of those hot little paws of yours will start to melt it. We’ll get the box unsealed and ready though. Fran’s getting your other present out of the boot.’

  Tom hadn’t really tuned into the conversation until he heard ‘Fran’ and suddenly went from happy anticipation of the evening ahead to a state of pins-and-needles anxiety.

  ‘Fran?’ he asked, just before the door opened.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Natalie was helping Hattie get the Sellotape off the end of the box. ‘She wanted a break from making that ginger rat with a tail. Going to keep me company and test me on some employment law. You know Fran, don’t you, Hattie?’

  ‘Yes. She let me wee in her garden.’

  ‘Ri-ight.’ Fran’s entrance stopped Natalie from asking any more.

  Tom knew he had to do the best impression of normal that he could. ‘Hello there,’ he said cheerfully, and set about putting his shoes on and tying the laces while surreptitiously checking out what Fran was wearing.

  For once it wasn’t a dress, but a blue-and-white striped T-shirt and those trousers that stopped at the calf. Capri pants. Bloody figure-skimming Capri pants.

  ‘Hello there,’ she said, enthusiastically, ‘I’ve come dressed as a pirate. You don’t mind me crashing your launch party, do you, Hattie?’

  Tom saw Hattie glance towards the large carrier bag Fran was holding. ‘You can stay,’ she said, seriously, ‘but I don’t know about the crashing. I know you crashed into that other tree … but mine’s got a house in it.’

  Fran looked at Tom as if to say, ‘Oh no, you didn’t tell her?’ and he found that he hadn’t quite managed to tie one of his shoes properly and had to start again.

  ‘Crashing in this case means coming along to som
ething without being invited,’ Natalie explained.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ Hattie said. ‘And you let me wee in your garden, so it’s only fair.’

  When Tom heard Fran and Natalie laugh, he understood that he should too, but he had gone into a time loop where he was forever untying and re-tying his shoes.

  ‘I’d better head off,’ he blurted.

  ‘But you said you’d hang around.’ Natalie’s expression was going to have grown men wetting themselves in court.

  ‘Are you giving me that present, then?’ Hattie asked and Tom’s scold got lost in Fran’s response. ‘Of course. Here you are …’ She had put her hand in the bag but took it out again, empty. ‘I mean, I know you probably have plenty. And I wasn’t sure about the size, because, well, children’s heads are—’

  ‘Fran, just get it out,’ Natalie said, ‘before Hattie bursts with anticipation and I have to clean it up.’

  Fran pulled a paper hat out of the bag, but it was unlike any paper hat Tom had ever got from a cracker. Navy blue and tri-cornered, it might have belonged to Nelson. It had an ornate silver-coloured star that looked spiky and solid and a great deal of gold piping.

  ‘Is it all made of paper?’ Hattie asked, poking it tentatively.

  ‘Yes, I’m not sure it’s historically or militarily accurate, but it is indeed made of paper. And glue.’

  ‘It’s FANTASTIC!’ Hattie exclaimed, suddenly coming to life. She lifted the hat from Fran’s hand. ‘Look, Dad. A pirate’s hat. All made of paper. And glue. Look!’

  He watched as Hattie placed the hat on her head.

  ‘Ah, Cinderella, you shall go to the ball,’ Fran said. When it was obvious no one knew what she meant, she busied herself folding up the carrier bag. ‘I mean … it fits … like the glass slipper.’

  She trailed off and Tom wanted to put his arm around her, but instead reminded Hattie of her manners.