Free The Mysterious Miss Mayhew by Hazel Osmond

about his truculence.
    ‘No, nothing wrong with Hattie. Just her mother.’ He paused. ‘Thank you for asking, though. And Liz? Look, you stop waylaying me before I’ve even got into my office and I’ll stop acting like a diva.’
    ‘Point taken.’
    ‘Excellent. And … could you arrange for some coffee when Mrs Mawson arrives? I don’t mean make it yourself,’ he added hastily. ‘Send out for some.’
    There was a laugh that was almost a cackle. ‘Oh no, the woman has never acknowledged I exist. I’ll make the coffee.’
    *
    Mrs Mawson did not look as if she owned approximately one-eighth of the county. She looked as if she owned all of it.
    It wasn’t to do with the way she dressed. That was in the understated, confident manner of old money, where nothing had to be proven or slavishly followed. Even though she was only in her early fifties, she favoured suitsteamed with a subtly coloured blouse. At social events she always wore black. When relaxing it was jeans and cashmere. If he bumped into her then, looking so casual, it felt wrong. Like spotting one of his teachers in town on a Saturday night when he was younger.
    Almost as wrong as addressing her as ‘Deborah’.
    No, it was something to do with how her head sat on her neck. Most people Tom knew maintained a rough ninety-degree head-to-neck relationship; Mrs Mawson took a right angle as merely her starting point. Which meant Tom was often looking up her nostrils.
    He watched her contemplating the colour of her coffee, her face too well bred to exhibit distaste. Her trusty handbag, what Liz called ‘a right Thatcher’, was near her feet. She had another accessory with her today too – Jamie, her younger boy.
    ‘Jamie graduated last summer,’ Mrs Mawson was saying, ‘he’s done some travelling, but now it’s time for him to show us what he’s made of.’
    Her smile inferred that Jamie was already a disappointment to her. It wasn’t a smile Tom ever wanted to see on his own mother’s face and, fair play to her, he hadn’t – even when he’d returned like a homing pigeon, one small daughter under his wing.
    Jamie was smiling too, but it was apologetic and aimedtowards Tom. The smile was on a very handsome face. Jamie had the compulsory upper-middle-class floppy hair and rugby physique – a touch of Ralph Lauren via Hollister – but something about him also suggested sensitivity. Not a trait that would get him very far in the Mawson world.
    Tom had last seen him at Charlie’s funeral, turning away as if hiding the fact he was crying. He had been the only Mawson displaying any emotion that day.
    And before that? At least ten years ago at Newcastle station, a glimpse of an awkward lad dressed in school uniform. Tom added that to the list of things making him feel ancient. Right up there alongside Geordie Shore .
    The more Tom studied Jamie, the more he suspected he was the softest of the Mawsons. Certainly his brown eyes did not have that unblinking way of looking at you that made you wonder if you’d been entered into some kind of staring contest that you couldn’t win. Jamie was a world away from his brother, Edward, a man born with a sneer who spent vast tracts of time offing wildlife.
    ‘We feel it’s beneficial,’ Mrs Mawson continued, ‘for Jamie to gain some practical experience in each of the family businesses, before he decides on which one he wishes to specialise.’
    Tom struggled to imagine a world where you didn’t need to go outside your family to find career opportunities.
    ‘So, work experience?’ Tom clarified.
    ‘Quite. And I’d like him to actually do something while he’s here. Not just spectate.’
    There was only one possible reply. ‘We’d be delighted to have you, Jamie. Have you got any newspaper or magazine experience?’
    ‘No. Although, I did, you know, go out with a girl at university who reviewed bands … but …’
    Mrs Mawson’s smile reappeared and Jamie trailed off, like a bouncy dog