by Lucy Diamond
Clare cringed and gestured up at the open window above their heads. The open window of Leila’s bedroom, where both children were probably still wide awake, having only just gone up there, complaining bitterly about it still being light, and why should they have to go to bed already?
‘Don’t say that,’ she hissed. ‘The last thing I need is one of them telling bloody Steve that I’m “on drugs”. Just think what a shit-storm he’d create about that.’ She grimaced, imagining the carnage that would ensue, the letter from Steve’s smarmy solicitor that would arrive next: Some concern for the mother’s fragile mental health … Children openly concerned about her drug-taking … My client feels he would be the more suitable parent to have residence …
‘Sorry,’ Polly replied in a stage whisper. ‘What did she say, though? Did she prescribe you a magic potion to cure all ills?’
Clare rolled her eyes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Angela – the doctor I’d booked to see – wasn’t there. I had to see Luke instead.’ She found herself blushing. ‘He just gave me the hot-baths-and-physical-exercise line. No magic potions. Told me to take up swimming – like that’s going to happen.’
The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and Polly leaned forward with interest. ‘Why not? I’ve been meaning to ask why you don’t swim with the kids. Don’t you enjoy it any more?’
‘Something like that,’ Clare mumbled, not wanting to elaborate.
Polly was watching her closely. ‘You like him, don’t you, this Luke,’ she said, not even bothering to make her words a question. ‘What’s he like?’
Clare blushed even deeper. ‘Oh, he’s lovely,’ she said – or rather, the wine must have said it for her. She’d never have admitted as much to her sister otherwise. ‘He’s just … a really good bloke. Nice, friendly, funny, kind …’
‘Good-looking? Sexy? Please don’t tell me he’s in his fifties with a comb-over.’
‘No, thank God.’ Clare laughed. ‘But …’
‘But?’ Polly prompted.
Clare shrugged. ‘Where do I start? BUT he’s got a girlfriend whom he lives with. BUT he’s way out of my league. BUT … oh, I don’t know, millions of reasons. It’s just a crush, that’s all. Nothing’s ever going to happen.’ The conversation was making her uncomfortable, so she turned it back on Polly. ‘What about you, anyway? When are you going to start telling me what’s going on with Jay, after you went out the other night? You’ve kept your cards very close to your chest so far.’
Now it was Polly’s turn to sigh and look awkward. ‘It’s because I don’t know what sodding cards I’ve got yet,’ she moaned. ‘And I don’t even know how to play the game, which is even more of a problem. The last time I had any kind of relationship that lasted longer than two weeks was …’ Her expression was shifty and she pulled her glasses back over her eyes to hide them.
‘Was … ?’
‘Well, it was with him, Jay, back when I was a teenager. How sad is that?’
Clare was taken aback. Whoa. Seriously? She licked her lips, not knowing how to react. ‘Well …’
‘It’s okay, you don’t have to pretend it isn’t weird,’ Polly said quickly. ‘I know it’s awful. I know it makes me some kind of … freak who can’t form attachments.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Classic psychopath material, apparently.’
‘You’re not a psychopath—’
‘I know I’m not a psychopath, but you must admit, it’s not exactly normal.’ She sighed, looking small and vulnerable as she sat folded in the depths of the deckchair.
‘Why do you think it’s been like that?’ Clare asked carefully, tiptoeing around the edges of the subject. ‘I mean, what do you think has stopped you from falling madly in love with someone?’
Polly shrugged again. ‘I guess I’m a bit … scared,’ she confessed, gazing into the distance. She sipped her wine, frowning. ‘I’m not usually scared of anything,’ she said with a self-conscious laugh, ‘but that opening-up to another person thing – I find it terrifying. What if you, you know, hand yourself over to them, say here I am, this is me, and … they reject you?’
Clare could hardly believe what she was hearing. She’d never seen Polly like this: so uncertain, so anxious. ‘Well, then they’re an arsehole and it’s their loss,’ she replied. ‘And you slag them off to your mates, and you pick yourself up and carry on, and you thank your lucky stars that not everyone in the human race is such a prat.’
Silence thickened between them, and Clare felt her face prickle with heat. She was making herself sound far more confident and carefree than she really was, when it came to the thorny subject of relationships.
‘I know I was just a teenager, but when me and Jay split up, it was so monumental I felt completely … well, annihilated by it,’ Polly said. ‘Like nothing would ever be the same. And it hasn’t been.’
‘Oh, Polly,’ Clare said helplessly.
‘And after that, I sort of closed myself off,’ Polly said, barely seeming to hear. ‘I was like: right! Never again! Independence all the way – nobody else will ever make me feel so unhappy.’ She sniffed. ‘And of course it was all mixed in with Michael dying too. I was massively beating myself up for that, totally blaming myself, and …’
Clare stared at her in surprise. Had she just heard that right? Polly’s face had turned ashen and she looked stricken at what she’d just said. ‘Blaming yourself?’ she echoed. ‘Why?’
Polly finished her wine with a single gulp. There was a long, highly charged silence. ‘I think I need another drink if we’re going to talk about this,’ she said shakily.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Polly retreated to the kitchen and filled their wine glasses, feeling the rush of adrenalin as it pounded around her body. Oh God. Why had she blurted that out? Now she would have to fess up to Clare about the terrible thing she’d done, and Clare would hate her for it. She’d tell their parents, and turn them against her. Polly would be evicted from the village – from the family, more like – within hours.
No. She couldn’t do it. Why had she even started down that road in the first place? All that honest, emotional stuff that had gushed out of her about men and her crap track-record of non-existent relationships. How embarrassing could you get! Clare was probably chortling to herself about it right now, texting her mates or posting it on Facebook. You’ll never guess what a saddo my big sister is. Only ever had one proper boyfriend. At the age of thirty-seven!
No, she wouldn’t. Clare wasn’t like that. Clare was sympathy and kindness, not taunts and sniggering. But finding out that your own sister was responsible for your brother’s untimely death was enough to test anyone’s sympathy and kindness to their outer limits.
What a mess. What a complete and utter mess. She’d really gone and dumped herself in it this time, letting slip her deepest darkest secret like that. It would poison the new confidence that had bloomed between them recently, smother the tender shoots of friendship in an instant.
‘Are you trampling the grapes yourself in there, or what?’ came a shout from the garden. ‘Hurry up!’
‘Just coming,’ Polly called back and picked up the full glasses unsteadily. Well, this was it, then.
Nice knowing you, kitchen, she thought, gazing around at its familiar friendly clutter. Chances are I’ll be kicked out of here before the night’s over and I’ll never see you again. But thanks for everything. You’ve been a great place to sit and not get a job all these weeks.
She pulled a face. Talking to the kitchen now? God, Polly, have a word with yourself.
Every step she took back to her sister was heavy with trepidation. ‘Here you are,’ she said, passing Clare her glass and sitting down again. So, where were we? Oh yes. I was just about to wreck everything between us, wasn’t I?
‘What did you mean when you said you blamed yourself for Michael’s death?’ Clare asked in the next second.
Polly felt herself sag. Shit. There was no getting away from it. No convenient memory lapse on
her sister’s part in the last two minutes.
‘Only, the thing is … Well, I’ve always blamed myself too,’ Clare went on.
Polly stared. ‘What do you mean? You weren’t even there!’
‘No,’ Clare said. Her mouth had puckered as if she was trying not to cry. ‘But I had a horrible teenage whinge that night – don’t you remember? – about wanting Mum and Dad at the swimming championships. I was competing,’ she added needlessly. She pressed her lips together tightly, her fingers knotted around the stem of her wine glass. ‘I knew Michael wasn’t well,’ she went on, ‘but I was such a selfish, attention-seeking cow, I basically forced Mum into coming along. Just so that they could both watch me. And if I hadn’t—’
Polly leaned heavily against the canvas of her deckchair. ‘No, you’ve got it wrong,’ she said. She swallowed and looked at her lap. Here goes. ‘I behaved even worse, Clare. I stayed at home and was meant to be keeping an eye on him, but ended up shagging Jay on the sofa. I even heard Michael cry out, and I didn’t go up to him. I ignored him. And he … he died. Because I was having sex with Jay.’
There. She’d done it. She’d actually said it.
‘Oh God,’ Clare said, her voice becoming a sob.
‘I know,’ Polly said, shame burning its way through every cell. ‘I’ve never been able to forgive myself. I feel so bloody awful about it. If I could turn the clock back and make things right, I would. I so would.’ She hung her head. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
There was a moment of deafening silence. Polly’s blood drummed through her veins as she waited for Clare’s face to screw up in hatred, for the accusations to come flying. It was only what she deserved.
Instead, Clare reached across the divide between their deckchairs and took Polly’s hand. ‘You don’t have to apologize,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
For a second Polly wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. But Clare’s fingers were around hers, and her eyes were full of compassion. Polly squeezed her sister’s hand and swallowed hard, not trusting herself to speak at first. ‘It wasn’t your fault, either,’ she said eventually.
They sat like that for a few minutes and it was as if a spell had been broken at last by their mutual confession and mutual forgiveness. Polly could practically feel the weight of her guilty secret sliding off her shoulders. The black bile that she’d feared would reside in the depths of her soul forever seemed to drain away and vanish, as if Clare had finally given it permission to go. To think that all this time they’d both tormented themselves with similar loadings of guilt and self-hatred; to think it had taken them so many years to finally have this conversation, this really important, game-changing conversation. What a waste of time.
‘Shit,’ she said after a while, trying to lighten the intensity. ‘What are we like?’
‘I know,’ Clare said. ‘So I never let myself go swimming again, and you never let yourself love anyone again. The psychiatrists would have a field day with us two.’ She pretended to dial on an imaginary phone. ‘Get me Dr Freud on line one, please …’
‘You never let yourself … Oh, that’s why you don’t go swimming.’
‘Yeah. I know it sounds mad, said out loud like that.’ Clare wrinkled her nose. ‘It is mad. A stupid mental block that has stopped me for so long.’ She sipped her wine. ‘I should let it go now really, shouldn’t I?’
‘You should,’ Polly told her. ‘You really should.’ She gave a small smile. ‘God. This is some conversation we’re having tonight, eh? No chit-chat for us two. Straight in there with the love and death.’
‘It’s good to talk,’ Clare said in a rubbish Bob Hoskins imitation, and they both laughed, louder and longer than her words really necessitated. ‘Seriously, though,’ she went on, ‘I get why this thing with Jay is messing with your head. But do you know what? Sometimes you’ve just got to take a chance. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. The worst that can happen already did happen. So why not treat this as a holiday romance, a fling to enjoy while you’re here for the summer?’
‘You don’t think I’d be … betraying Michael somehow?’
Clare shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Definitely not. Michael wouldn’t want you to sabotage the chance of something that might make you happy. He wasn’t the kind to bear a grudge, was he?’
Polly shook her head. It was true. Michael had been one of those people who could shake off a bad mood in an instant, rather than wrap it around themselves in a sulk for days on end. And, in all honesty, she would love to remember how to go about having a relationship with an attractive, funny, interesting man without running for cover. That was, if she hadn’t already put Jay off, of course. She hadn’t heard from him since the Whistledown evening. ‘Okay,’ she said slowly. ‘I will, if you will.’
‘What? Go out with Jay? Thanks for the offer, but …’
‘No, I mean, take a risk yourself. With Luke.’
‘Ahh.’ Clare’s smile fell from her face. ‘Well, that’s different. He’s already with someone. And I am taking a risk anyway, with the business. One risk at a time is enough for me.’
‘Hmmm,’ Polly said. She wasn’t about to let her sister off the hook that lightly. ‘We’ll just see about that.’
The following Monday Polly had arranged to have the morning off her pub job. She got up at the same godawful early hour, but instead of chucking on her tatty denim shorts and a bleach-marked T-shirt as she usually did, she slipped into a crisply ironed short-sleeved white blouse and some smart grey pin-striped trousers. She scraped her hair back into a chignon and carefully applied a full face of make-up. Then she picked up her jacket and her favourite ruby-coloured Mulberry handbag and rifled through it to check her essentials. Lipstick, mini A–Z, phone, wallet, pocket mirror and tissues.
‘London, here I come,’ she said to her reflection, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. It was like looking back in time, seeing herself scrubbed up and ready for action again. Looking back in time … with a difference, though. She was tanned and freckly from all the hours she’d spent outdoors in Clare’s garden, and her eyes seemed brighter than they had for years. The bags and worry lines had gone from her face too, and her cheeks had filled out a little from home-cooked meals every night.
Maybe the old saying was right: a change was as good as a holiday. She certainly looked more relaxed these days, and since she and Clare had had their almighty, no-holds-barred conversation, she was sleeping better than she’d done for years. Clare knew her secret and yet was still on her side. That felt like the most amazing gift she’d ever received.
She was absurdly excited about going back to the capital; had dreamed of nothing else all weekend. After weeks of exile she was well up for kicking some recruitment-agency butt. She would not return to Elderchurch until she had made some kind of progress, she vowed, whether it was an interview, an introduction or even just a tip-off about something coming up.
Over the last few weeks she’d let her job-hunting drift; she’d become caught up with village goings-on, and helping Clare get her business up and running. Now it was time to focus back on herself, be proactive again. She’d bloody well elbow the recruitment agents aside and go through their databases herself, if that was what it took to bag a new opportunity. After all, time was ticking by. There were only a few weeks before summer would start its gradual turn to autumn. If she was to keep up the story she’d spun to her parents about her sabbatical, she needed to get something lined up, and fast.
Clare and the children were still asleep when she crept out of the house. She caught the bus from Elderchurch to Amberley, then walked the short distance to the old-fashioned red-brick station. It didn’t seem to have been modernized since it had been built in the Victorian era, with its aged iron-fretwork decorating the platform shelters and the dusty-windowed shop selling cups of tea and newspapers. Children had been evacuated to Amberley and its surrounds during the Second World War, and Polly could imagine the old trains puffing into the station am
idst clouds of steam; hordes of soot-smudged London urchins spilling out onto the platforms with their little suitcases, blinking in the sunshine.
Thank goodness she was going the other way today, returning to the heaving metropolis she loved, with its streets paved with gold. Bring it on!
When the train pulled into Waterloo ninety minutes later, Polly wanted to run at the city with her arms open wide. Hello, people with laptops and suits and takeaway frappuccinos, talking urgently into their mobiles as they strode to and fro. Hello, overpriced shops and snack bars. Hello, wide-boys and hustlers; hello, streetwise teenagers with jeans around their arses; hello, harassed tourists trying to make sense of their pocket maps. God, she’d missed them all.
She bought a copy of the Financial Times to brush up on the day’s news and pored over the main stories as she took the Tube to Piccadilly Circus. The pound was up against the dollar and the markets seemed to be shaking themselves out of their recent torpor, which was good news. There was just time to check her own investments – mostly still flat-lining unfortunately, although Morton’s, the UK software company in the North-East, did seem to be rallying slightly at long last – before she reached her stop.
Emerging into the blare and blast of Shaftesbury Avenue, she smiled as she took in the good old bendy buses, the black cabs, the reckless motorbike couriers all streaming past. Soho lay ahead with its saucy shops and Italian coffee bars; behind her stood Fortnum & Mason and Mayfair and the Royal Academy … Oh, London, I have ached for you, she thought joyfully, heading for the first recruitment agency with a spring in her step.
Okay. Here she was at her first port of call, Finance Professionals UK, and she was going to dazzle them if it killed her. ‘Cover me, I’m going in,’ she muttered under her breath and pushed open the door.
It was a gruelling marathon of a day. She’d arranged five appointments – two in the West End, one in Chancery Lane and another two near Liverpool Street – so there was hardly time to draw breath, let alone meander around the shops or grab a decent coffee. Still, it had definitely been worth her while. And what a treat it had been too, just sitting in an office environment again, talking banking jargon and financial opportunities, slipping back into her native tongue as if she’d never left that world.
