by Jenna Grey
Finn saw her looking and gave her a puzzled frown.
“What’s up?” he asked.
Polly searched further, to the crowd milling about outside, squinting against the bright lights to try and pick out faces in the crowd.
“I’m not sure, but something isn’t right. I can’t explain what I mean exactly, but I’m feeling really jittery, as if something is going on that I ought to know about. I can’t quite work out what it is – it’s nothing to do with my SPD.”
Polly tried to shrug it off, but couldn’t.
Finn’s face scrunched into a frown, and he closed his eyes, obviously trying to sense what she was sensing. He opened them again and shrugged.
“Sorry, I can’t feel anything, but then I’m not as sensitive as you are. Do you think we’re in danger?
“It’s more a feeling that something bad is going to happen. You don’t think that my uncle could have sent someone to follow us, do you? He might know what we’re doing, might try to stop us.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Finn said. “In fact, it’s very likely. Sorry, I don’t want to scare you, but I’m pretty certain he will have got someone watching us and reporting our movements back to him. It’s what I’d do.”
“God, that freaks me out. Do you think he’ll try anything?”
“Not here, not now. Dad and I really can keep you safe. There’s nothing he can send at us that Dad and I can’t handle. Dad might not look it, but he’s one of the most powerful magicians in the country, if not the world. He’s far, far more powerful than your uncle.”
Polly looked across to the small newspaper kiosk and spotted Bert. He seemed as out of his element here as Polly was, a lost soul in the middle of all of this humanity. He was fumbling in his purse for some change and making a pig’s ear of it by the looks of it. The sales assistant and the queue behind didn’t look overly impressed with the powerful magician’s inability to locate a ten pence piece.
“Even though my uncle has the Hellstone?” Polly asked.
Finn didn’t hesitate in answering, his face serious.
“There are more powerful forces in the universe than that talisman – and they don’t take too kindly to people like your uncle trying to usurp their power. It will all work out; I promise.”
Polly wished she could believe him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Once on board the train, Polly felt much better. It was reasonably crowded, but not so much so that it troubled her. The feeling of disquiet hadn’t really left her, but it had simmered down to a dull roar, and she could ignore it if she kept her mind focused on other things. Finn hadn’t mentioned Polly’s ‘little episode’ to Bert, and she was relieved he hadn’t; she didn’t want Bert making a fuss about it. Bert had settled himself down to read the magazine’s he’d bought: The Farmer’s Guardian, and Scenic Yorkshire. He spent most of the journey tearing out photographs of sheep.
By the time they got off the train at York, Polly was very tired and still not quite recovered from her seizure; she felt vaguely disoriented, as if the world wasn’t quite real. The train had been on time, surprisingly enough, and Bram was there to meet them at the station, as promised.
Bramwell McAlistair was a giant of a man, one of the largest Polly had ever seen, if not the largest. He stood beside the mud splattered Land Rover with a big grin on his face, his arms outstretched in welcome.
Bert hadn’t been exaggerating when he said that Bramwell was odd; Polly couldn’t quite decide if he looked like Dumbledore, Gandalf or a very dishevelled Father Christmas. He’d pulled his snow-white hair back with a barrette, with fine braids and beads decorating both his hair and his voluminous beard that covered most of his chest. His impressive bulk was hidden under well-worn combat gear; Polly was pretty sure he still had some serious muscles, even though he must have been the wrong side of sixty. He was a good head and a half taller than Bert and two heads taller than Finn. Polly had to crane her neck to look up at him. He gave Bert a bear hug of an embrace, winding him and then did the same to Finn, almost certainly bruising a rib or two.
“Glad you made it in one piece,” he said, a little over-enthusiastically, in a strong Scottish brogue. Then he looked over Finn’s shoulder and saw Polly, his face breaking into a toothy grin. “Well, well, well, this must be the lovely Polly. You’ve done all right for yourself, Finn my boy. You’ve picked a bonnie lassie here.”
Finn, now looking like a radish with ears, said:
“No, we’re not... I mean Polly is just a friend.”
Bram laughed.
“You keep telling yourself that my boy. Now get your bags in the car, and I’ll take you to the guest house. Nice little place, although I’m afraid the landlady is heavily enamoured of Liberace, so you might need to get out the old earplugs.”
“Perhaps we should stop off at Ratner’s on the way,” Polly said, with a wicked grin, “So I can pick out a wedding ring.” She started laughing and Finn, seeing the joke, started laughing as well.
The guest house was – well, it was something – a relic from the 1960s that had to be seen to be believed. Polly stared at the gold quilted cocktail bar in the corner of the lounge, complete with a life-sized plastic parrot, pineapple ice bucket and flashing coloured fairy lights and winced. The landlady, Mrs Hogg matched her surroundings perfectly – a seaside landlady in her natural habitat. Her neatly coiffured hair and shell suit were a perfect match, both a lurid bubble gum pink; the gold jewellery she wore would have made Mr T envious. She welcomed them in, giving Bert a thorough once over and obviously liking what she saw. She fussed around him, fluttering her over-mascaraed eyelashes at him; her candy pink lips, far too wrinkled to pull off a pout successfully worked overtime. Poor Bert backed off, trying to hide behind Bram.
“You must call me Maisie,” she insisted. “Now I’ve got the rooms ready for you – two singles for the gentleman and a double for the youngsters,” she said. “There’s a shower and basin in the two singles, and the double has an en suite. That’s the honeymoon suite,” she said, winking at Finn, who had already plummeted into a state of paralysed shock by their alarmingly effervescent host and the surreal décor.
“Oh, no, we’re not together,” Finn put in quickly, before Polly could say anything, flushing scarlet for the tenth time that day. “Polly and I will take the singles. You don’t mind sharing with Dad, do you, Bram?”
Bram gave Finn a rather strange look as if questioning his sanity, but agreed quite happily.
“Oh well, that’s fine. You sort it out amongst yourselves,” Maisie said, looking slightly disappointed and Bert looking very relieved. Polly suppressed a smile. She had the feeling that Bert had just been spared a fate worse than death. She had visions of Maisie Hogg turning up in the wee small hours at Bert’s door, dressed in a see-through baby doll nightie, with a copy of the Kama Sutra in her hand. Maisie seemed to recover from the disappointment remarkably quickly, and she showed them up to their rooms, which were all in touching distance of each other, and seemed comfortable enough. She bid them a cheery farewell, reminding them that dinner was six ‘til seven and not to be late.
“Why don’t you two youngsters get settled in and freshen up a bit? You must be feeling pretty grim after that journey,” Bert said, taking his bags inside and dumping them on the large double bed. Polly blinked at the purple velvet headboard and the gold cherubs that festooned it, grateful that they had swapped rooms. At least poor Bert and Bram had been spared a mirrored ceiling and satin sheets.
“You can definitely see the Liberace influence here,” Finn said, looking up at the glittering crystal chandelier that covered half of the ceiling.
“Yes, I’m just grateful I’m colour blind,” Bert said, with a chuckle. “Now, Bram and I have got a lot to discuss, and we don’t want to bore you two with it. We’re going to stay here and enjoy Mrs Ho... Maisie’s bounteous hospitality. Why don’t you and Polly find a nice little restaurant somewhere and have a quiet dinner? You don’t want to be st
uck here with us old farts.” From somewhere downstairs came the sound of florid piano music, Liberace at his tinkling best.
Polly cast a glance in Finn’s direction to see what his reaction was to his dad’s suggestion; he aimed a slightly pleading smile back at her and said:
“Sounds like a plan, are you up for that, Polly?”
Polly nodded, trying not to look too eager.
She was far too tired to want to do anything but flop on any available horizontal surface and rest, but the prospect of going out to dinner with Finn was just a little too good to pass up. Apart from which, she wasn’t sure she could stand too much of ‘I’m always chasing Rainbows’and the ‘Warsaw Concerto’.
“I fancy Italian, if there are any restaurants within walking distance,” Finn said. He gave Polly a knowing little look. “We’ll find a nice quiet one. My treat.”
“Oh, you keep your money, my boy. All expenses are on me,” Bert said, flapping a hand at him. “You two go and enjoy yourselves.”
“I could do with a quick freshen up first,” Polly said. She was unpleasantly hot and sticky, her clothes plastered to every bit of flesh it touched.
Finn lifted his arm and sniffed.
“Me too, I think,” he said. “I’ll meet you downstairs in half an hour.”
Polly’s room wasn’t too unpleasant, a typical bed and breakfast décor: mismatched carpet and curtains, that weren’t too awful; the bed was quite comfortable, the sheets clean. The paintings had obviously been printed by the yard: ladies carrying baskets, kids with too-big eyes and a rather dog-eared copy of Constable’s Haywain. At least she’d been spared some of Maisie’s most excessive eccentricities.
The feeling of unsettlement Polly had had since the train station still hadn’t really left her. It was an intangible kind of disquiet, a knowing that something wasn’t quite right, but not knowing what it was. She remembered reading stories about people who were due to travel on the Titanic cancelling at the last minute because they just knew that something was going to happen, and others that did board, but sat in their cabins dressed in outdoor wear, waiting for the disaster to happen. Finn had scared her when he told her that her uncle had almost certainly had them followed. She suddenly didn’t want to do any of this; she wanted her Nana to be alive, wanted everything to go back the way it was before the world had turned upside down.
Polly had a quick wash and changed into the only dress she’d brought with her, which was a little crumpled, pulling on a cardigan over the top in case it got chilly later.
Finn was already waiting for her in the lobby; he’d changed into a black tee shirt with a Yin-Yang logo on the front and very tight jeans. Polly just hoped that he wasn’t planning on having a family any time soon, if the old wive’s tale was true.
“I asked Maisie, and she said that there’s a nice little Italian restaurant around the corner, apparently, just a few minutes’ walk away and close to the river. She recommended we take a nice walk after dinner.” He gave her a rather bemused smile. “It seems that everyone has got plans for us, except us.”
Polly had no idea what to say to that, but he slipped his hand into hers as they walked to the door, and she thought that said everything she needed to hear.
The restaurant was just a couple of minutes away, and very cosy. It was just what Polly needed right now. Polly couldn’t say she wasn’t pleased that the restaurant was close by, she didn’t feel like walking halfway around York for a plate of soggy spaghetti. And still, she had that strange feeling of disquiet which wouldn’t leave her no matter how hard she tried to ignore it. She pushed it to the back of her mind, tucked into that little place where she kept her worries and troubles; they usually only surfaced in the wee small hours of the morning, just before waking. As hard as she tried to put them away, they wouldn’t disappear completely.
They were shown to a table in the corner, an intimate spot, with a table barely large enough to hold two plates of food and a condiment set. Finn raised an eyebrow.
“It seems as if even the restaurant staff are in on it,” he said with a chuckle. He pulled the chair out for Polly and squashed into the tiny gap opposite.
“I like it,” Polly said, “it’s...”
“Cosy,” Finn finished, trying to manoeuvre his legs under the table to fit them in around Polly’s. It was rapidly turning into a game of under the table Twister. “But better than an evening with Liberace.”
There were only a few couples other than themselves; every one of them was holding hands and whispering sweet nothings across the table to one another. The waiter lit the candle on the table, and Polly looked up at Finn over the single red rose in the elegant vase.
“Do you get the impression that people get proposed to a lot here?” Finn asked. Some syrupy violin music began to play, and Finn huffed a laugh. “If a gipsy violinist comes around the table to serenade us, I’m leaving.”
“I’ll race you to the door,” Polly said, but she could see the funny side of it. “Don’t lean too close, you’re eyebrows are likely to be singed off,” she said, feeling the heat of the candle on her face. Cosy it certainly was.
They ordered, Polly chose tagliatelle, which was a bit easier to wind around the fork than spaghetti. Finn chickened out, ordering ravioli.
“Wuss,” she said, laughing.
“You won’t say that when you’ve got tagliatelle wrapped around your neck and sauce all over your face.” He slipped his hand across the table, taking her hand in his. “I’m glad we did this; I really want to get to know you better.”
“I’d like that too,” Polly replied.
The hairs on the back of her neck suddenly prickled. She looked around to see the door open, and two men walk in. They looked incongruous, heavy-set men with hard faces. They seated themselves at a table by the window, not speaking, just looking around at everyone in the restaurant, and settling in.
“What’s up?” Finn asked.
“Probably nothing, but do the two men that just walked in look a bit suspicious to you?”
Finn looked across at them, trying not to make it too apparent that he was looking.
“Maybe, but they wouldn’t try anything here; it’s too public.”
Then Polly saw one of the men slip their hand across the table to the other man’s hand and squeeze his fingers. There was a glitter of gold as the candlelight caught their wedding rings; they smiled at one another with a look that could never be mistaken for anything other than love. She had a little laugh at herself for being a paranoid idiot.
“Sorry. I really am jumping at shadows,” she said.
“Keep jumping,” Finn said. “The last thing we want to do is let our guard down. I wouldn’t put anything past your uncle and Winchard.”
Polly just wished she could get rid of this awful feeling of impending disaster; it grated on her nerves, prickling over her skin and making her want to scratch.
The waiter eventually came with the food, and Polly began to wish that she’d ordered the ravioli as well. Her struggles to get the slippery ribbons into her mouth were enough to break the tension at least, and they were soon both laughing.
“I really do like you,” Finn suddenly said, the obligatory blush creeping up his neck to his cheeks. “A lot.”
“Me too. I mean, I like you a lot too.” She hesitated, spooning around the last of the melted ice-cream into a molten pool. “Liam told me that you’d never had a girlfriend.”
Finn wrinkled up his nose and looked abashed.
“I haven’t – I just never seemed to get into a situation where I could meet girls.”
Polly sighed, and nodded.
“Same. You’re the first boy I’ve been out with as well – I mean, I know this isn’t a date, but...”
“I’ve never really been that interested in girls – or boys,” Finn said. “I’m not gay – not that there’s anything wrong with being gay; I’m just not.” He screwed up his face in a moue of misery. “Liam has always made it a bit difficult for me.
”
“I can imagine. I can tell that he tries your patience sometimes, but you love your brother a lot, don’t you?”
He gave a thoughtful smile.
“Of course, he’s my brother. Liam and I need one another. We rely on one another so much, and I’ve always thought that it was impossible for me to have a proper relationship with a woman, but now, maybe it’s time to try and make it work. Oh, I don’t know; it’s just complicated.”
“Relationships always are,” Polly replied.
He looked up then, and for a moment she saw the same haunted look in his eyes that she’d seen in Liam’s earlier. “This one is a bit more so than usual. Being a twin, there’s a special bond between us – I don’t want to do anything to hurt him.”
“I know, it’s complicated. It’s all right; I do understand.” She suddenly hated Liam. Finn gave an exasperated moan.
“No, you don’t understand,” he said. He broke off, drew in a breath and said, “I’m falling in love with you.”
Polly just blinked at him.
“Oh, that’s unexpected,” she said, giving a shell-shocked laugh. Finn put his hands over his face and mewled his misery.
“Oh God, now I’ve made a fool of myself. Forget it; I’m such a prat,” he said. Polly grabbed his hands and pulled them away.
“No, you’re not. I feel the same way. Look, we can’t talk here, let’s pay the bill and walk down by the river. It’s quiet there, and we can talk properly.”
“You really do feel the same way?” he asked, his expression so hopeful.
She just nodded, and taking his hand, pulled him towards the door.
It was quite beautiful down by the river; there were lights along this stretch, and they shimmered on the water, creating wonderful patterns – it couldn’t have been more perfect a setting for romance. It was growing dark now – the evenings were drawing in, and autumn was on its way. Truth be told Polly was a little chilly. She pulled her cardigan around her more tightly, but it didn’t do much to stave off the cool breeze blowing across the river.
