The Mysterious Miss Mayhew (21 page)

‘Goodness, haven’t had those for a while,’ Fran said. ‘They call them
pediculosi del capo
in Italy. Sounds much more exotic. Right. I’ll check on Hattie.’ She was nearly at the door when she stopped, looking self-conscious. ‘Sorry about throwing the scones earlier. You just got me so exasperated.’

‘Don’t apologise. I was being an arse.’

‘Yes you were.’ She smiled. ‘But I wasn’t trying to hit you, just bring you to your senses.’

‘Too late for that,’ he said when she’d gone.

CHAPTER 29

Friday 30 May

1) The middle classes can be quite draconian when it comes to herbs. Not enough and you’re a philistine. Too many and your parents have to be summoned. In Italy they’d give you a medal for eating that much basil in one sitting.

2) There is obviously a force field around this ‘cottage’ that means Tom and Hattie never arrive on my doorstep looking normal. This time Tom was a thundercloud and Hattie a sad ape.

3) Tom is something of an expert on baked goods, yet he could not tell the difference between a scone and a biscuit. This suggests that with my cooking, there is actually no difference.

4) It is not easy to know the right thing to say to a child. For future reference, suggesting that they may have poisoned their best friend is not it.

5) Hattie reminds me of someone. It came to me today when she asked all those questions and was so determined to have a go at cutting a piece of paper. That someone is me.

6) All you need to know about how protective parents feel towards their children can be learned by watching a man’s face as he rushes to remove a scalpel he believes is in his daughter’s hand.

7) Point six has made me revisit all those times I felt my own mother was being smothering. Too late to tell her I understand her now, of course.

8) For an ex-rugby player, Tom is surprisingly modest. I thought rugby players were always leaping naked into the bath with each other? I think he may be self-conscious about his legs. He has no need to be.

9) Tom obviously does not have the same problem with his underpants as with his socks. They were not on inside out. I checked.

10) Smells can be very evocative. A whiff of TCP will always make me think of Tom in my bathroom, leg up on the sink while I dabbed at his thigh and he studied me as if he feared I would inflict further pain on him.

CHAPTER 30

Fran’s work had obviously inspired everyone. The three-page spread Tom was looking at would not have been out of place in a colour supplement for a national newspaper.

‘Makes the rest of the mag look a bit provincial,’ Felix said, following up with a sharp laugh. ‘You’re showing us all up, Fran.’

‘No, no.’ She looked pained. ‘Please don’t say that. It’s Derek’s wonderful photography and your imaginative design that make it so impressive.’

Tom felt a swirl of pride in her skills and her modesty. Ridiculous – there was no connection between them other than the one in his head.

‘Do you think it needs …?’ Derek started and Fran said, ‘No, I really don’t think people want to see a photo of my weird face as part of the feature, it’ll detract from the wildlife.’

‘How did you know he was going to say that?’ Felix
asked, looking from Fran to Derek. ‘Are you telepathically linked?’

Derek seemed as if he might be giving that question serious consideration, but Fran merely smiled politely before saying to Tom, ‘Are you happy with it? You haven’t said much.’

Such a lovely face. And so much younger than yours
.

‘Haven’t I?’ He bent forward to study some of the finer details of the squirrel and immediately pictured Fran’s hands smoothing out the paper and that squinty frown she had when concentrating, which shouldn’t have been attractive but …

‘You’ve done very well,’ he said, gruffly, straightening back up again. ‘Especially considering the time constraints. How’s the copy going?’

‘Getting there,’ she said, not looking at him any more, ‘I’d better crack on.’

He walked back down the stairs with her and as he did so, found himself operating on so many different levels under the conversation they were having, that it absolutely refuted the claim that men couldn’t multi-task. Some of the things he was doing he wasn’t proud of, and he blamed them on his sex drive, but that made it sound as if he was an automatic car and wasn’t responsible for his own gear
changes. Right now he was registering that the dress she had on did great things for her breasts.

And her collarbones. Collarbones! Yeah, he had it bad.

He lied to himself that he wasn’t doing full-on leering, but processing snippets of information about how the dress fitted her and the way that the downy hairs on her arm were very sun-bleached. And how her lips sometimes hiked into a little smile at the end of what she was saying.

Would he have noticed the bump on her middle finger if she hadn’t pointed it out to Hattie? Yep, he thought he would today – he was like a lovesick scanning machine.

‘So where are you off to, now?’ he asked, still imagining running his hand down that straight back.

‘To buy a sandwich.’

Her back was naked now against his chest. Also naked.

Thinking like that made him feel ashamed and just a little turned on – which made him feel more ashamed.

‘Well,’ he did an awkward flourish with his hand, ‘have a great sandwich then.’

‘Yes, yes I will … And Hattie? No ill effects from the herbs?’

‘No. Har-har-har. She’s absolutely fine.’

‘Good. Well, I’ll see you later.’

He watched her down the remaining stairs until she went into the main office.

Have a good sandwich? Har-har-har. Good God
.

He tried not to be too hard on himself – it was tricky talking in a relaxed way when you were pulling in your stomach.

Completely baffling, this ‘first you don’t see it, now you do’ kind of sexual attraction. At least with love at first sight you were reacting to someone fresh and unknown.

Was it a chemical reaction that just needed time to brew like a proper pot of tea?

He thought of Steph. How he’d felt the hook go in the first time he’d seen her chatting at a party. How the loveliness of her face and that air of glamour that hung about her had made him blind to reality and he had, as lovers did, filled in the blanks of what he knew about her with some idyllic creation. He’d given her a beautiful personality to match her face. Who wouldn’t?

From the start, it felt like falling from a height into something exciting and more exotic than he was.

But this thing with Fran? It felt like a stumble against his better judgement via a series of misunderstandings and fights. He counted out all the reasons, once again, why he couldn’t fall for someone like her – too young, too strange, too tactless, too earnest, not even his type.

So why was he remembering her crawling around in the cemetery, the black of her dress against her skin, and wishing he had placed his lips over the marks her tears had left on her face and kissed them away?

Tom stopped thinking of salt on his lips as he pushed open the door into the main office, because he could almost feel the panic level rising. The usual glitches and log-jams were surfacing. Heads were bent towards screens.

He aimed for a nonchalant walk past Fran’s desk, but it came out like a saunter. Good God, he’d be wearing a panama hat next and a cravat.

He went to his office and barely raised his own head for the rest of the day, but when he did, he saw that Jamie had pulled up the empty chair that was next to Fran’s desk and was chatting to her.

Was Tom imagining that the besotted look Fran reserved for Jamie had intensified?

‘She ought to move that chair,’ Liz said, as she came in. ‘It’s a magnet for time-wasters. Particularly the spawn of Mawson. By God, he loves that chair. Right … another load of proofs for you to cast your eagle eye over. Lot more in hand, usual culprits dragging their feet.’

Putting the proofs down, she flipped open her notebook and started to update him, with relish, on the list of potential disasters. ‘Also …’ There was one of her rare, wide
smiles. ‘Stan has got himself another entry into the “File of Shame” with a totally made-up word.
Manslack
.’

Liz took a moment to snigger. ‘He says it’s the perfect description for summer trousers. I say it sounds like something that stops you getting an erection.’ She raised her hand and moved it from left to right as through indicating a headline: ‘Manslack – the trousers that don’t come in any colours.’

‘You’re wasted here,’ Tom told her, trying not to think about erections or the trousers that might stop them.

Liz had started looking out through the door again.

‘See what I mean about that chair?’ she said.

It was Monty now ensconced next to Fran. He had his wallet open.

‘What’s he up to?’ Tom asked.

‘Offering her money?’ Liz craned her neck. ‘No, can’t see. Right, if I could have your attention again?’

Liz selected a sheet of paper from between the proofs she’d put on his desk. It was handed to him.

‘Jamie’s final efforts. And she did it again. Turned Mr Stay Behind to Discuss Your Abuse of English into Ernest Hemingway.’

Tom had been reading as Liz talked. It was Fran’s voice running through the piece, her self-deprecating sense of humour.

‘Bloody sleight of hand while I was off making her a cup
of coffee. Sneaky woman.’ It sounded as if Liz meant it as a compliment.

‘Well, at least it’s all done,’ Tom said, glancing out towards Fran again, but she was no longer there and neither was Monty.

‘Yeah, one less problem.’ Liz paused. ‘They make a good couple, mind, Jamie and Fran. Seem suited, somehow. Hey, where are you off to?’

Tom was out through the door. Jamie was nipping bits off a rubber with his fingernails and forming a pattern on the desk with them.

‘A word,’ Tom said to him, the logical part of his brain warning him to hold back; the overwrought bit ready to take a pair of scissors to Jamie’s floppy fringe.

Jamie came into the office and looked uneasily from Tom to Liz. He was studiously
not
looking at the piece of paper in Tom’s hand.

Tom was ready to tear into him about the unethical nature of getting Fran to do his work for him, but there was an almost dog-like cower to the way Jamie was standing. He kept looking at Tom as if waiting for the lash to fall. It made Tom wonder what kind of life Jamie had at home, always on the receiving end of his mother’s disapproval. Tom didn’t envisage that brother of his was particularly nurturing, either.

When Tom didn’t speak, Jamie cut in with, ‘Look, Tom. I’ve never been any good at writing … it’s never, you know, been my best … thingy.’

‘Thingy?’ Liz said, but not unkindly, and Tom sensed that her parenting genes had also picked up on Jamie’s vulnerability.

Tom looked at him again, trying to work out if this beaten-dog stance was an act to save himself from a showdown.

He put the piece of paper on his desk. ‘Forget it,’ he said, ‘time to move you on to something else.’

It was almost possible to see Jamie unwind. He even managed to look Tom in the eye. ‘Appreciate it,’ he said, colouring high up on his cheeks. ‘Really do.’

Such a winning smile. Such a young face.

‘I thought you were going to tear his head off,’ Liz said when Jamie had lolloped out again. ‘You going soft in your old age?’

‘Less of the old,’ he said, and then had to apologise to Liz as her expression told him that he’d spoken with too much force and way too much feeling.

CHAPTER 31

Tuesday 3 June

In my time in the office, I have learned that:

1) Victoria is a blonde shark who says all the right things and smiles a lot. If I were Tom, I would make sure she was never behind me holding anything sharp. (He does not have a good track record with knives.)

2) If I were Kelvin, I would watch her too – although I should rephrase that, as Kelvin – or ‘King Leer’ as I call him – is always watching her.

3) Monty is a sinner trying hard to be a saint. I fear it could go either way.

4) Stan thinks the word ‘fashion’ is synonymous with ‘effeminate’. Being macho is important to him. Yet he becomes extremely agitated when things do not look ‘just so’. I wonder if Stan is wearing an alpha male disguise most of the time and his real clothes are back in the closet.
Closet
is the important word here.

5) Derek rarely finishes a sentence, Linda from the Finance department barely speaks. Yet I keep getting this idea that both of them would like to chat the other one up. I fear I may be turning into one of those women who likes to pair people off.

6) Tom is largely viewed as a ‘good boss’. Nobody seems to notice that some of the time he is either hysterical (‘Har-har-har’?) or dismissively gruff.

7) Jamie is a round peg being bashed into a square hole. Or vice versa. But I could stare at his mouth all day, especially when he smiles.

8) The fact that Jamie wants to sit by me and talk, makes me inordinately happy. Perhaps the happiest I’ve been since coming here. It’s hard hiding that happiness.

9) My mother always said I should pay attention to signs (particularly ‘No Entry’ ones). So, there is an art gallery on the ground floor of the office building. It is badly stocked and poorly run. And the room at the back, currently full of things in bubble wrap, has plenty of natural light.

10) Enthusiasm for my work from two people does not make up for a lukewarm reaction from the third. I think Tom is still angry with me about the scalpel. And the rosemary/yew story. And possibly every incident since we first met. Perhaps our chemistry is just wrong.