The Mysterious Miss Mayhew

by Hazel Osmond

  What was she doing up there? He expected her to be wherever Steph was.

  He stood, halfway up the stairs, and listened. No noise at all.

  ‘Hattie?’ He ran up to the landing and opened doors, checked the bathroom. He felt his stomach twist tighter.

  ‘OK, Hattie, come on, stop messing about,’ he said, and went back down the stairs.

  Steph was in the sitting room, moving the magazines around on the table. She was still making little crying noises.

  ‘Where did Hattie go?’ he asked her.

  She shrugged.

  ‘Well, where was she going when she left the kitchen? Did she say?’

  ‘Upstairs, I think.’

  ‘I’ve looked up there.’

  He left Steph staring down at the pile of magazines.

  He went through to the back garden. Perhaps she’d come out when his back was turned?

  ‘Hattie! Hattie!’ he called.

  The twisting in his stomach was constant now, and his throat felt tight.

  He climbed up the ladder of the tree house and looked in at the door. Empty, just some small plastic figures in one corner. They looked abandoned and that thought hiked up his anxiety.

  He walked quickly around the garden calling her name and went back in the house. He darted through the kitchen, past whatever had been spilled and the empty cup on the draining board. Back in the sitting room, Steph looked up as if she hadn’t heard him until the second he’d walked in and he got an unprepared face, an involuntary reaction. She looked scared. No, more than that. Guilty.

  The spillage on the floor clicked into place. Hattie’s empty cup in Steph’s hand.

  ‘What did you do?’ he said.

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘What did you do?’ he asked again, louder, closer to where she was sitting.

  ‘She wouldn’t drink her orange juice. She’s been difficult all evening.’

  ‘What did you fucking do?’ he roared. He forced himself to stay on this side of the table or he didn’t know what he would do to get that information.

  She wasn’t speaking, just sniffing.

  ‘You hit her, didn’t you?’

  ‘She wouldn’t drink her orange juice,’ Steph shouted back. She was starting to cry again, her breathing irregular. It was proper crying. The stuff in the kitchen had been proper too; he just hadn’t picked up on it. ‘She wouldn’t drink it. I asked her to and she wouldn’t drink it.’

  He had to get out of there or he would hit a woman who had just hit a child. He went along the hall to the front door. It wasn’t closed properly.

  He wrenched it open, starting to panic. Steph had hit Hattie and she’d run off. He’d been on the phone and he’d told her not to disturb him. Hadn’t he always said she came first? Before Fran or Rob or Kath? But when she really needed him …

  It would be all right. She’d just run out of the garden. He’d find her on the lane, maybe she’d even be coming back by now.

  By now? How long ago had she gone? When had he last seen her? Before he’d rung his mother? No, she was there when he’d been talking to Rob. He returned to the house. Steph was still in the sitting room, on the sofa, the knuckle of her thumb held to her lips.

  ‘Did you hear her go out of the front door?’

  She nodded her head and moved her thumb. ‘She wouldn’t drink her juice,’ she said again.

  ‘How long ago?’ he bellowed at her.

  ‘Five minutes. Ten. I don’t know.’

  In the kitchen he picked up his mobile and was out the back door, through the side gate.

  He was shouting, ‘Hattie! Hattie!’ He couldn’t see her on the lane.

  He rushed up next door’s drive, fumbling the bell. No answer. He went round the back, shouting. The garden was empty.

  He looked at his watch and felt the twin pulls of Rob and Hattie. On to the next house. They were in and he gave them an edited explanation. They would keep an eye out. He wrote down his mobile number. All along the houses he went. A couple of dads said they would walk up the hill and have a look around. They told him not to worry; they’d ring him when they found her.

  Kids, eh?

  Rob.

  He kept walking while he rang his mother. He was nearly at the end of the lane and it felt like the completion of the first phase of something. It would only have been a little thing for her to go out on to the lane, but beyond it? On the side road leading down to the busier one?

  ‘I’m not there yet,’ his mother said in the distracted tone she always had when the phone rang as she was driving.

  ‘I can’t go to Rob,’ he told her. ‘Hattie’s missing. She’s run out of the garden.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ his mother said straight away, ‘it’s all right. Children wander in summer all the time. I’ll ring George and get him to go and find Rob. She’ll not be far, Tom.’

  He tried to look in the verges, see if she was lying down, hiding, but the bloody cow parsley was too high.

  When should you ring the police? How long had it been now? He was at the end of the lane. There were no more houses, just the road with a plantation of trees on one side, fields on the other. He stood on the stile and looked over the field. Only sheep.

  He went to the fence bordering the plantation and called her name and only the birds called back.

  If she was upset she would be hiding. If. Of course she was upset.

  But she’d still come to him if she heard him calling, wouldn’t she?

  If she was able to.

  He shoved away that thought and quickly stored it with the last tetchy thing he’d said to her. His breathing sounded deafening and he knew he was in the grip of panic; he felt light-headed, but his lungs were full of lead.

  He shouted into the evening, ‘Hattie! Hattie!’ Now he was down on the main road, crossing over and back, over and back, parting the cow parsley on both verges, trying to look over the fence into the fields that led down to the river.

  No, don’t think about the river, it was slow-moving and shallow this time of year.

  Unless they’ve let a load of water out from the reservoir.

  A car came past him, slowed and halted. ‘You all right?’ the guy in it said when he wound down the window. A guy in a suit – he used to be that normal just a few minutes ago.

  Tom explained, trying to make full sentences, but his fear was affecting his speech.

  ‘How old is she?’ the guy asked and when Tom told him, an expression skimmed over his face. Was it worry, or thankfulness that this was happening to Tom and not him?

  ‘I’ll keep an eye open,’ he said, ‘as I drive. You rung the police?’

  Tom did then. It had been half an hour. What was it they always said in the papers? The first hour was crucial. Another thought to shove away.

  He walked as he phoned, still hitting at the hedgerows, trying to make them give her up. ‘OK, sir, take it slowly,’ the person on the switchboard said. Tom answered questions and stumbled on the one about what she was wearing, not because he couldn’t recall, but because he was spooked remembering news reports where bodies were identified by their clothing. What if she’d got to the road and someone had dragged her into a car? Or knocked her over and driven off?

  ‘Where are you now, sir?’

  They would send a car straight away. The fact they took it so seriously made him realise how bad this was.

  Please God, I don’t believe in you, but please let her walk along this road now. Let me find her.

  He thought of Kath labouring away in Newcastle – please, not one in, one out.

  He remembered every time she’d asked him for a pet and he’d been mean and only offered her the one choice. If he got her back he would fill the house with whatever she wanted – rats, scorpions, anything.

  He stopped walking. He needed to use his brain. She could have just run anywhere, blindly, too upset to care. But what if she ran to somewhere. To someone.

  Fran. He rang her number and prayed for
her to be there. Voicemail. ‘Hattie’s run away. She might have come to you.’ He didn’t know what else to say and finished the call. He rang back. ‘She’s run away because Steph’s hit her. She can’t cope with things not going her way. No … she can’t cope with being a mother for any length of time … she loses interest or loses it completely.’

  He had to stop and get his breathing under control because he wanted to tell her everything. He gabbled it all out. ‘She’s always been volatile, but it got worse when Hattie came along. And then we were both working long days, travelling. I tried to cope with it, but I couldn’t be there all the time, the nanny couldn’t be there all the time … And although I could never be sure, I think she might have done it before. Lashed out. I didn’t know definitely, but things got worse and in the end I left with Hattie.’

  He had to stop to get things in the right order. ‘Steph will never accept that’s what she’s like and I … I’ve kept it to myself because I didn’t want Hattie ever to know. Tell one person, they tell another and then she’d find out and think it was her fault. That’s what happens – kids keep on loving the person who hurts them. And I was ashamed too … that I’d agreed to start a family, even though I knew Steph was …’

  He didn’t know if the voicemail was still running. Had it finished? He rang off and rang back again. ‘Oh, Fran, I thought I could keep all the plates spinning – let Hattie still have a relationship with Steph as long as I was always there to keep an eye on her. But Steph’s got more and more twisty. She contested the divorce because she won’t accept she’s ever been at fault. And … and she still wants that control over me. If I wanted to move it along, I’d have had to go to court and spill out everything.’

  He paused and then sprinted to the end. ‘But you’re right, I should have told my family, friends, let them help me through this. It’s come back to bite me because I’ve kept quiet and given Steph the upper hand. And now I’ve failed at keeping Hattie safe. I was wrong, Fran, and I love you and I’m so bloody scared.’

  He couldn’t remember ending the call that time, only that he was looking at his watch and thinking where else Hattie could be. Natalie? No, she had no idea where Natalie lived now.

  Josh, but they were miles away. He still rang. Josh’s mum didn’t waste any time. ‘I’ll get the car out and we’ll look. It’ll be all right, Tom. I’ll ring you.’

  It would not have taken much to make him sob. More cars passed, some slowing. ‘A little girl,’ he said if they asked who he was looking for. ‘Blue top, pink skirt, red sandals. Five years old.’ He didn’t look to see what their faces did when he told them.

  He just kept walking and looking and telling himself this was his fault, for being on the phone, for not telling Steph to go, for not telling everyone what she was like, for not telling Hattie.

  He saw the police car coming. Two young constables got out, one a woman with her blonde hair back in a neat bun; the man carrying too much weight. ‘All right, sir, let’s go over some things,’ the woman said. ‘You’ve searched your house thoroughly? The garden? Anywhere you can think she might have gone? Has she done it before? Was she upset?’

  Tom said she’d had a disagreement with her mother – he didn’t mention anything about hitting, not because he gave a damn about defending Steph, he just didn’t want them sidetracked.

  Shouldn’t they stop talking and start looking?

  His mobile rang and he grabbed at it. ‘Any luck?’ his mother said and he told her there hadn’t been and rang off.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be looking?’ he said and the woman constable asked a few more questions and then her colleague got back in the car. ‘Spreading the word,’ she said. ‘Come on, we’ll go this way. When Darren’s finished, he’ll go the other. Lucky it’s summer, plenty of daylight left.’

  They walked. How long? Calling. Looking.

  She was out there somewhere on her own and everything that had looked so familiar now seemed sinister. The woods and fields, outhouses. Lanes that were overgrown.

  He was living his worst nightmare.

  How long now? Nearly an hour.

  He wanted to grab back that time. It was getting too long since she’d disappeared. Missing for hours was so different from barely been gone fifteen minutes.

  His mobile rang again. Please God, please God.

  It was Fran and the whole evening stopped – the birds, the cars, the policewoman next to him.

  ‘She’s here, Tom,’ Fran said. ‘I’d just set off for Newcastle when I got your message, so I came straight back and there she was, sitting under the garden table. She’s fine, Tom, very, very distressed, but fine. Take a breath, Tom. She’s safe.’

  CHAPTER 56

  The world turns, Tom thought as he lay on the floor in Hattie’s room. It turns and you can go from happiness to despair and back to happiness again in the space of twenty-four hours. You can have a job and lose it. Lose a daughter and find her. Have a lover, lose her and get her back again. Welcome a nephew (Hello, Patrick Tom George Howard) and wave off a wife (Goodbye, Stephanie Bartlett).

  You can also gain a vicar. Retired.

  If Tom turned his head and put his ear to the floor, he might be able to hear George downstairs talking to Joan and Rob. Whisky made people very talkative even at – Tom slowly lifted his arm and looked at his watch – 3 a.m. Well, George could talk till the cows came home, whenever that might be, because he had played a blinder.

  Like some ecclesiastical Superman, he’d hared to Newcastle Station where he had stopped Rob before he could board the train to Penzance. There were many other trains Rob could have caught before that particular one, but he had decided he needed to go somewhere a very long way away.

  Tom had asked George how he had managed to get through the ticket barriers without a ticket and he had just winked and said being a vicar gave you special privileges. Tom didn’t know if he believed that, but he did know that somewhere between Newcastle Station and the maternity unit, George had put steel in Rob’s backbone.

  ‘You were right, Tom. He’s done a lot of counselling over the years,’ Joan said. ‘Bereavement, post-traumatic stress, divorce. I should have taken your suggestion and got him to talk to Rob weeks ago.’

  The result was that Rob made it into the operating theatre in time to see his son born by Caesarean section. He did faint later and spent some time in A&E, but by then he’d held his son and counted all his fingers and toes and everything in between and pronounced him perfect. And Kath, wise Kath, had not mentioned the two hours it had taken him to go to the toilet, but had included ‘George’ among her son’s names.

  Tom liked the idea of George as Superman and hoped that image would supplant the one that had lodged in his brain since Joan’s fuck bunny revelation – that of him pleasuring Joan doggy-collar style.

  Suddenly George seemed part of the family – Joan was calling him ‘dear’ and doing hand-holding in public. Or had Tom imagined that? He’d had a couple of drams himself to wet the baby’s head.

  And was the Steph problem finally solved? He dared to hope it was.

  He and Hattie had been brought back to the house in a police car, along with Fran, and although Hattie had not told the police her mother had hit her, they had come in to satisfy themselves that they weren’t delivering her back to a place that she’d want to run away from again. They hadn’t stayed long, but Steph had gone to pieces afterwards. That was partly due to the fact she’d been genuinely scared that Hattie had gone missing, and partly because of Hattie’s reaction when she’d tried to say sorry.

  Tom had expected his daughter to take all the blame on herself for the incident, or make excuses for her mother, but while she had mumbled, ‘It’s all right,’ she had kept on clinging to Tom and would not let Steph touch her.

  Fran had already told him that Hattie’s first words to her had been a wailed, ‘But I only said I didn’t like orange juice,’ and he guessed that alongside being upset, she was also outraged.

  When
Fran finally managed to persuade Hattie to go upstairs and sit in a hot bath, Tom had watched Steph cry herself out. As she cried, he suddenly thought of all her phone checking and how she had not answered his question about whether Alessandro would move with her.

  ‘He’s dumped you, hasn’t he?’ Tom said and Steph nodded and many things about her visit became clear.

  ‘I didn’t mean to hit her, Tom. Honestly I didn’t,’ she said, over and over again.

  He believed her and told her that, but it was the only comfort he was prepared to give her. And then he rang Geoffrey and Caroline to come and collect her – he gave them directions to the Tap & Badger. She could stay there until they arrived, he wanted her out of his house.

  On the journey to the hotel, he spelled out to her that now Hattie knew the worst, there was nothing preventing him from going to court to get a divorce. She said, straight out, that it wouldn’t be necessary.

  ‘And I’m not taking any crap with Hattie any more either,’ he said. ‘The first time you break a promise …’ He didn’t go on. Steph had a keen understanding of manipulation and knew that Tom no longer had any reason to keep her sweet.

  ‘I did try, you know, Tom,’ she said, before he left her in the pub lounge. ‘I tried hard to be a perfect mother.’

  ‘I don’t know any perfect mothers, who wants that?’ he told her. ‘If you just keep your promises, that would be a start.’ He had no idea whether that went in or whether, when her parents arrived, she would bemoan how unfair he had been. It was only while driving back home, that he realised he hadn’t had it out with her about her visit to Fran.

  *

  Tom sat up slowly, shuffled over to the bed and watched Hattie. Exhaustion had carried her off eventually, rather than a wish to sleep. Tomorrow she might wake up and want Steph back. Who knew? But at least tomorrow she had a baby cousin, a pair of dungarees and a day off school to sweeten the pill a little. He bent and kissed her on the cheek, taking in the smell of the bubble bath and toothpaste and Hattie.

  He couldn’t bear to run her route back in his head and think how easily she could have dashed out into the path of a car.