The Mysterious Miss Mayhew Read Online Free PDF Page A

merrier?’
    A pause as if she was biting her tongue. ‘Come on, Tom, it would be lovely for her. We could take her skiing.’
    ‘Good idea. I’ll look into flights.’
    ‘You will?’ she said unsteadily, as if not sure she’d heard him correctly.
    ‘Yup. We could come out, say, Christmas Eve, stay in a hotel.’
    He could hear her thinking how to say, that’s not what I mean. Not you with her. Her on her own.
    ‘Wouldn’t it be easier if you just put her on a plane, Tom?’
    ‘Like a parcel?’ He waited for the explosion. The fact that none came told him she really wanted this.
    ‘No, not like a parcel. They have people who look after children on flights. And she’s not tha t young, only a couple of years younger than I was when I went away to school.’
    He could have said many things in response to that, but they’d all been said so many times before.
    05.15.
    Time for a change of tack. ‘I sent your parents a letter to forward to you. Yet again. I need you to look at it, Steph, and get this all sorted legally. Stringing this out makes no sense; neither of us wants to get back together so—’
    ‘I haven’t seen the letter. But … but I could ring Daddy. Ask him to forward it … If you let Hattie come out for Christmas.’
    He shouldn’t be surprised at the way that screamed naked manipulation with overtones of blackmail. Steph was a mistress of naked manipulation. Literally; it was one of her skill sets.
    ‘Not going to happen, Steph. And you know why it’s not going to happen.’
    Silence.
    ‘And, quite apart from that, I’ve no bloody idea what Alessandro or his family are like. They could be the Corleones, for all I know.’
    Nothing.
    Perhaps he’d gone too far with that Corleone comment. ‘Listen,’ he said, in a more conciliatory tone, ‘you can see Hattie any time, we’ve been through this. I’m not stopping you. I just want to be nearby.’
    A sudden, ‘You know what? You’re a fucking control freak, Tom. And I really, really hate you.’
    ‘Then divorce me.’
    And she’d gone. He gripped the phone. The same arguments over and over again like some German existentialist remake of Groundhog Day .
    05.30.
    He’d never get back to sleep now. He thought of ringing Steph’s parents to see if they had actually forwarded the letter, but imagined them lying stiffly in their single beds, like a medieval knight and his wife cast in stone. No. Too early, too old, too much afraid of antagonising Steph.
    He went to look in on Hattie. She was on her back, a dead-to-the-world starfish with her mouth open. He thought of her out in Milan at Christmas. Was he jealous of the idea of her having fun without him? Please God he wasn’t turning into one of those creepy fathers – ‘Oh, don’tmind me sitting in the seat behind you and your boyfriend. Go right ahead and enjoy the film.’
    No, it was lovely to think of Hattie in a glow of candlelight and Italian hospitality, a mug of hot chocolate in her hands. But he knew with certainty that Steph would, somewhere along the line, get bored with playing mamma and irritated that Hattie wasn’t keeping to the script of darling, delicate daughter. Then she’d lose her temper or sub-contract responsibility for her to some relation of Alessandro’s. Hey, Hattie, you hold the horsa steady while I cut off hees head .
    He saw Hattie feeling rejected, Hattie trying to make it work. He saw, oh God, Hattie left behind on a ski run because nobody thought to check.
    He straightened out Hattie’s duvet and tucked it around her. No one was going to leave her anywhere.
    He returned to his room and decided he might have a go at getting back to sleep. There was no way Steph would ring again this morning. She’d punish him by punishing Hattie and he felt guilty about that – more guilty than Steph did, no doubt.
    He picked up the clock and reset the alarm – Mondays were good – school uniform and sports kit all clean, any letters from school answered.