The Mysterious Miss Mayhew Read Online Free PDF

They could have an extra fifteen minutes’ sleep and still be out of the house in good time.
    He closed his eyes. The wood pigeons were chiming in now; restful, lulling …
    *
    ‘Dad, am I going to school? Only they said I could change the date on the calendar and if I miss my turn, I have to wait another twenty-two whole days to do it.’
    ‘I’m sure they’ll let you do it sooner than that,’ he told the pillow before his brain went ‘hang on a mo’. He jerked his head up to look at the clock.
    08.15.
    He stared at Hattie standing by the bed, still in her pyjamas.
    ‘Oh, fu … fu … fudge with another fudging lump of fudge on top,’ he shouted, translating it in his head to the full bellowing Anglo-Saxon version.
    ‘Eight-fifteen, it can’t be eight-fifteen.’ He picked up the clock and shook it as if that would help. Damn, he’d nudged the hour on as well when he’d altered the minutes.
    ‘Right, Hattie. Listen to me.’ He was trying to wrap the duvet around his bottom half and get out of bed at the same time, which was making him flail about like a demented, partially hatched butterfly.
    ‘We have fifteen minutes, Hattie, just fifteen minutes to dress, grab something to eat and get out of the house.’
    Hattie was looking at the clock. ‘It says 08.16 now.’
    ‘Yeah, time does that, keeps right on fudging moving. Come on, get dressed, the quickest you’ve ever got dressed.’ Hattie did not look galvanised. He thought about that and changed his tone. ‘OK, Midshipman Howard,’ he bellowed, ‘we’re holed below the waterline and we only have minutes to abandon ship.’
    Hattie was suddenly fuel-injected. ‘Yay,’ she shouted, hurtling from the room. ‘Can I wear my eye-patch?’
    ‘Long as you’ve got your school uniform and all your underpinnings on too, yup.’
    He plunged around the room, grabbing items of clothing and shoving himself into them. Damn Steph. Damn the clock.
    He hated arriving at school as if they were being chased by demons. It was what people expected of single fathers. ‘Poor Mr Howard. He tries, doesn’t he?’
    He worked hard to make sure it rarely happened and had the drive to Hattie’s school in Lowheatherington and then back along the valley to work precision-planned. But not today, today he’d be bringing up the rear with the woman who delivered her kids to school still in her dressing gown.
    Hattie was at the door – dressed and with eye-patch in place. ‘Ready, Captain.’
    ‘Brilliant! I mean, very good, Howard.’
    ‘Permission to take on supplies,’ she said and he mouthed ‘What?’ and she whispered ‘Breakfast’ and they were back on track.
    ‘Good idea,’ he boomed, hustling her down the stairs. ‘Suggest cereal bars and box of juice. Permission to dispense with teeth brushing. I have mints in the glove compartment.’
    He went to the loo, glugged down a large glass of water, gathered up his papers, his bag, the car keys. Hattie returned from the kitchen, her arms full.
    ‘I don’t recall mentioning Tunnock’s tea cakes,’ he said.
    Her expression was serious. ‘We could be drifting for days.’
    He laughed and combined a hug with getting her nearer the door and thought, what the hell, it’s free dental treatment till she’s eighteen.
    Her reading bag was scooped up, along with some suntan cream and her hat in a plastic bag.
    ‘Well done, Midshipman. Eight-thirty exactly,’ he said as he helped her into the car. She was pointing at the house and shouting, ‘Look, it’s sinking, it’s sinking,’ so convincingly that he was beginning to worry that a sudden attack of subsidence might mean it was really going down with all hands.
    ‘Pipe down or I’ll ping your eye-patch,’ he told her as they set off. At the gate he stopped. ‘Got Gummy?’
    He watched her root around in the book bag and holdup the blue gum shield. Rob had bought it for her for Christmas and she’d spent the entire holidays looking like an extra from