Free The Mysterious Miss Mayhew by Hazel Osmond Page B

you’ve been trying to contact me, but he’s been a right little bugger this morning.’ She rooted around in the pocket of her littleleather jacket and pulled out her phone. ‘Thursday as usual? Yeah, no problem. Course.’
    He felt the baby become more of a dead weight against his chest.
    ‘He’s going off,’ Natalie said, as if he were a bottle of milk.
    Tom got out of the way of a man with a dog who seemed disinclined to vacate the pavement for a pram or someone holding a baby.
    The tourist season was already gearing up and the square was busy. A group of walkers, taking a break from tackling Hadrian’s Wall, were sitting on the steps of the market cross licking ice creams.
    ‘Ignorant git,’ Natalie said to the man’s back. He turned and, in doing so, stumbled off the edge of the pavement. Natalie laughed and, just for an instant, she was a cheeky little girl before she returned to being a twenty-year-old. In many ways, she made Tom think of a glammed-up pixie with her short hair and delicate features. But it was doubtful whether many pixies were as determined as Natalie. Or as tough. And inside that neat little head of hers was a brain the size of a planet. Bucking the family tradition of attending school only sporadically, she’d turned out to be a star pupil. Now she was studying Law and making ends meet with a varietyof part-time jobs. It annoyed him when people assumed her chosen profession might be something that involved gyrating round a pole.
    ‘How come you’ve got Karl?’ he asked, giving the baby a gentle hike up in his arms. ‘Your mum not well?’
    ‘You could say that,’ Natalie replied in a way that did not encourage him to ask anything further. She was looking towards the bookshop. ‘Don’t suppose you could hang on to him while I go in there, could you? I’ll be dead quick.’
    All went well until the church clock clicked round to 1 p.m. and there was a loud BONG. Karl’s eyes shot open and he reared back and hiccupped some partially digested milk on to Tom’s shirt before his eyes closed again.
    Tom squinted down at the lumpy stain. It smelled worse than the llama spit. When he looked up, coming towards him was the odd woman. Of course she was. Perfect.
    She was in another of her shabby-chic dresses, this time with a thick blue fisherman’s jumper on top and espadrilles on her feet. Her hair, in two plaits, made him imagine her striding across a high meadow like some demented Heidi. Yodelling.
    She slowed when she noticed him and then, like two heat-seeking missiles, her eyes locked on to his shirt. He saw her press her lips together.
    ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘get it over with.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’ She stopped a few feet from him. ‘I was going to make the obvious comment that I see it’s not only llamas that you antagonise. But it seems a cheap shot.’ A pause and a frown. ‘Although, of course, I have said it, cheap or not.’
    ‘Well done.’
    She was peering at the baby. ‘It seems calm enough now.’
    He didn’t like the inference that she was amazed he wasn’t juggling the baby with some live tigers.
    ‘It’s a he,’ Tom snapped, ‘not an it.’
    ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ More frowning. ‘It’s just I’ve had some terrible incidents where I’ve called a he she and vice versa.’
    ‘Well that’s fascinating. And it’s not actually my baby.’
    He had no idea why he’d said that, it only made her look at the pram in a worried way.
    ‘You mean you just decided to pick him up?’ She sounded appalled. ‘Well, you must put him back, immediately.’
    ‘What? No. I’m looking after him for a friend while she’s in the shop. Why would you think I’d steal a baby?’
    ‘I didn’t say you’d stolen it … him. I just thought you might be one of those people who couldn’t pass a baby without picking it up.’
    He was saved from having to ask her what bloody planetshe lived on where people would chance doing that these days, when Natalie came out of the