The Mysterious Miss Mayhew (6 page)

‘I’ll see you in the boardroom in a minute,’ he said, finally steering her to the door. He wrenched it open. ‘So fly, little bird. Go dump your cheer on some other poor sod.’

He was aiming for a swift door-in-door-frame scenario to underline that he’d had the last word. And, by some fluke, he managed it. There was a satisfying clunk, followed some moments later by a thud as more plaster grapes fell from the wall.

Outside the door he heard the unmistakable sound of Liz laughing.

*

‘Liposuction, breast-enhancement, dead-heading and blossom end rot …’ Across the boardroom table, Victoria paused in her shuffle of press releases. ‘Oh, not a beauty treatment – this must be for the gardening section. But you need to watch out, Kelvin, blossom end rot sounds like something you might be prone to.’

The man opposite gave her the smile Tom supposed someone had once told him was devastating. The same person who probably said, ‘You, Kelv, my son, have a way with the layyyy-deees.’

Victoria was still reading the press release. ‘Ah, it’s actually a very nasty disease that afflicts tomatoes,’ she said, ‘so there you go, first it’ll affect your blossom end, then spread to your tomatoes.’

‘Look forward to that.’ Kelvin was going for a smoulder, but as Victoria was half-trophy wife, half-Teflon, she snuffed it out quickly. All that was left was the lingering smell of Kelvin’s aftershave, commonly known as ‘Eau d’Erection’.

‘OK,’ Tom said, tiring of the entertainment, ‘on we go. Anything else, Victoria?’

‘Thought we could follow up June’s article on safe tanning with one on after-sun products.’

‘Good. And …?’

‘And double-page spread on packing light for holidays? Three different kinds of trip – show what you should take. We can make a big thing of the right luggage, too?’

Kelvin was nodding, eyes closed, and then – ping – they were back open again and his expression suggested Victoria was a genius. ‘Yeah, might get a tie-in with a store – link with an ad. Half-page landscape, probably.’ Kelvin was in Ad Manager mode, but under all that business talk was the suggestion that Victoria might like to reward him for supporting her so enthusiastically.

Victoria’s smile was very expensive and she didn’t waste much of it on Kelvin. It was Tom who got the full veneer
treatment. He smiled back, partly at the deflated expression on Kelvin’s face and partly because he found it hard not to be amused by Victoria’s blend of balls, enthusiasm and blatant toadying.

She was someone he’d brought in to add some much-needed ‘bigger thinking’ to a Fashion and Beauty section that had previously been marooned in the 1990s. Her only fault was that she sometimes needed to be reined in. And not just from teasing Kelvin’s groin and then slapping it back down again.

She had a tendency to forget their readership was canny with its money and that their eyes would bleed if presented with a pair of shoes she called ‘reasonably priced’.

Tom glanced towards Liz to see if she wanted to add anything.

‘Seems OK,’ she said, not looking up from the notes she was making. ‘What happened about that spa article?’

‘Thought nearer Christmas. Kelvin’s in negotiations with them about a review and a reader’s offer.’

‘Yup, I am,’ Kelvin said. ‘I’m very optimistic.’

Sub-text: And hopeful that my fantasy involving me, Victoria and a jacuzzi will finally, finally come true
.

Tom wondered whether Kelvin had noticed that he was no longer an up-for-it lad, but a dad in his late forties. Or was it only Tom feeling his age today? Probably. Kelvin was
still as shiny as his suits – a guy who could talk someone up from a quarter to a full-page ad and make them think
they’d
got the best of the deal.

Tom thanked Victoria for her ideas, but because she looked a little too smug, added, ‘Just remember, no banker’s bonus stuff.’

Her hand went over her own, very flashy, watch.

‘And careful with the colours – none of the acid greens and yellows I’m seeing in the style mags.’

As he finished speaking, he checked on Stan, the Men’s Editor. He was looking as if he suspected that, under his suit, Tom was wearing a tutu and hold-ups. Stan was not someone at ease with his own or any other man’s feminine side. He was married to a doughty woman who had only fingertip contact with her own.

Pre-Tom, the Men’s section was stuffed with all things sporty and anything that had an engine. Fashion, if it was tackled at all, was the odd V-neck jumper or some slacks from the local men’s outfitters who Kelvin had persuaded to buy a quarter-page ad. Once, shock horror, they had featured a blue mackintosh. With. A. Red. Scarf.

Since Tom’s arrival, Stan had been forced to raise his game and he grumbled regularly about having to arse around with ‘dressing-up clothes’. Yet when Victoria had suggested he hand men’s fashion to her, the answer had
been a loud ‘No’. Since then, Stan had gone on the offensive and started writing all his own fashion copy. It had to have extensive snark surgery from Liz, who kept his worst efforts in ‘The File of Shame’. Recently slotted in had been his review of men’s satchel bags:

If you like to carry around something that most of us grew out of when we were nine
 …

Tom decided to make Stan wait till later and went to the portly man sitting next to him.

‘So, Flat Plan Meeting, Monty.’ (To remind Monty
where
he was.) ‘Give us your ideas for July’s issue.’ (To prompt him into remembering
why
he was there.)

Monty usually needed a lot of spoon feeding (which was apt as he was the Food and Wine Editor). And the amount he needed depended on how good a time he was having outside work. As he freely admitted, he had slid a long way down the food chain from a glossy supermarket supplement to
The Place, The People
. That slide had included a couple of divorces, a stint in rehab and a failed attempt to run his own restaurant.

‘Monty?’ Tom said again, knowing that if it was down to Monty his pages would be plastered with photos of him in vineyards knocking back wine or eating in Michelin-starred restaurants. On Tom’s budget, he was more likely to get a voucher for Wetherspoon’s.

Monty was opening his mouth. ‘I was thinking a couple of pages on Prosecco. Great alternative to Champagne. Could tie it in with a plug for local wine merchants. Right, Kelvin?’ He didn’t wait for Kelvin’s reply. ‘Got some nice bits of puffery about a pink bubbly being produced this year – should be able to cobble together an article from that.’

Monty smiled, which made his eyes close to slits and his already wide face appear wider. ‘I’d like to spotlight some local food producers and I’ve sounded out someone for asparagus.’ He was flicking through his notes. Notes! Monty had notes. Astonished expressions around the table.

‘And, last page, soft drinks. Cordials. Home-made lemonade. There.’

‘Very good, Monty,’ Tom said, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice.

‘Well, I’ve been laid up all weekend, nothing else to do. Waterworks,’ he added, doing a very unpleasant mime with his hand.

‘Thank you, the patron saint of bladders,’ Liz said, drily.

Tom speeded up the meeting with a quick trip around Stan’s ideas, although he did pause for a discussion about whether sarongs for men were making a comeback, just to hear Stan say the word as if he had faecal matter under his tongue.

‘Right,’ Tom said, finally. ‘Let’s hear what the rest of you have to suggest for your sections, fifteen minutes each and try and remember what your budget is and who your readers are. No titting about …’

As they got stuck in, Liz passed him a note.
Ooh, you’re so masterful, Meryl
.

CHAPTER 8

Monday 12 May (Part 2)

My mother would not approve of a second page for the 12th. She’d call it cheating.

Which is ironic really.

Anyway, more things I’ve learned today:

1) A person, namely the estate agent, can be as charming as anything until you bring up the fact that the reality of the ‘cottage’ differs greatly from the description in the paperwork and that you’d like a reduction in the rent.

Then that person gives you what I believe is called ‘grief’. I think what I’ve just witnessed is some kind of highly ritualised display of aggression.

2) The local library keeps records of all its old newspapers on microfiche.

3) Microfiche and the machines used to read them are the work of the devil (as my mother would say).

4) The only good thing about reading a newspaper on microfiche is that you can eat biscuits without getting the pages greasy.

5) I have started at 1940 (of course) and reached 1960. By 2013, I will need spectacles. And a tumbrel to transport me around as I will have eaten over seventy years’-worth of biscuits.

6) I was right about the colour of the car. The only way it could be more conspicuous is if I painted ‘Fran Mayhew, digging for information’ along the side.

7) I may be using this research as a means of putting off the day when I have to actually
do
what I came here to do.

8) No matter how long you look at a photograph in a newspaper, the person in it won’t talk to you.

9) There is no 10.

CHAPTER 9

As Tom left the office, he recalled the high spots of this Monday. Tasty pesto and Parma ham roll for lunch. Good cup of coffee, not made by Liz. Yup, that was it.

The crinkled gusset in this underpants of a day had been his trip to the Finance department, during which he’d had to listen to the Finance Director tell him once again that the magazine industry had never had it so bad. On balance, Tom preferred the Finance Director’s second-in-command, Linda – he had never heard her say anything.

He unlocked his car and had one final think about whether there was anything he had forgotten to do and then pushed his job to the back of his brain.

Unless he had something to write, or some proofs to check, he left work at work. He wasn’t that guy any more; on his mobile in the car, or sitting with one eye on the TV, the other on his laptop. If he thought about his life in London it was like looking back at some over-eager high-achiever who he vaguely recognised.

Even his social life had seemed like a competition to get the best table and the premium tickets.

Yet it all went, more or less overnight.

Whether he missed that stuff was immaterial. Whether his life was richer or poorer now was off the point. He’d just been irrevocably changed. When a small child looked at you with absolute trust as you were about to get a splinter out of her finger, the idea of getting worked up about a table by the toilets seemed more than a bit fuckwitty.

He drove across the stone bridge over the river, past the showground where the marquees were nearly all down and the rugby posts back up, then climbed the hill. Right again and he was on a lane of a few houses with his at the end.

Hell of a commute
.

He stopped to look down at the view and could see the roof of the magazine building. At least it was still standing.

There were a couple of new estates changing the shape of the village, but really it hadn’t altered much since he was a child. The Roman site was still trying to attract visitors by dressing some poor tit up in a centurion’s uniform. The river still got uppity in winter and ran amok in the low-lying car park. There was still a butcher’s and a baker’s and a fruit and veg shop. The thought of all that unchanging life wasn’t driving him mad this evening as it had at the
show. Stupid to feel grouchy when the swallows were diving and everyone was out in their garden with their shoes off.

Correction, when everyone was in
his
garden with their shoes off. He came down the drive to see Rob’s car tucked behind his mother’s and as he pushed open the side gate, Hattie was shouting, ‘Look, Dad, Uncle Rob’s ready to put up a wall!’ She was jiggling about on a wooden platform built into the horse chestnut tree. It was the floor of her tree house and Rob pulled her leg that Tom and he had made it out of the sawdust Rob smuggled out of work down his trousers. As his company took huge swathes of conifer forest and converted it into chipboard, Hattie had believed him for a while.

Rob wanted to crack on while the weather held and it looked as if he’d come straight from work. He had his back to Tom, but from the way he was kneeling and his shoulders moving, he was obviously fixing some brackets into the floor.

Kath was sitting in one of the canvas chairs, a pair of barbecue tongs hanging from her hand. ‘Won’t be long,’ she said. ‘Your mum’s already given Hattie a snack, but we thought there aren’t many days you can do this.’ She pointed towards the barbecue with the tongs. ‘Had to fight someone for these sausages.’

Tom used his laugh as cover for a surreptitious glance at Kath’s ankles to see how swollen they were. He wondered if he could subtly bring something out from the house for her to rest her feet on.

‘Hey, stop with the jumping,’ he heard Rob say, ‘it’s like working on a trampoline.’

‘Come here, you,’ he called to Hattie, knowing that ‘stop jumping’ was as effective a command as ‘stop breathing’.

When she was down the ladder, he got a partial hug, her head turned back towards the tree house, amid a long stream of chatter about Rob letting her screw in some of the bolts.

She looked like an unmade bed as usual, but he was pleased to see she was in her oldest clothes. He guessed her school dress would be festering away on her bedroom floor, complete with lunch/paint/soil decoration.

‘Behave at school?’ he asked the back of her head.

‘A bit,’ she said, skipping away, and he didn’t know if she meant a bit of her had behaved, or she’d been on her best behaviour for nanoseconds.

‘Just fix this last one in place, then you can give me a hand getting the wall panels out of the garage,’ Rob called back over his shoulder.