4
October, Low Tide
If there was such a thing as a weather god and he or she was a fair and just creature, then today would be overcast with a clap of thunder thrown in for good measure. Instead, as she drove up and over the Cumberland Basin flyover, the day was all picture-postcard sharp colours: bright blue sky, fluffy white clouds, and houses the colour of Neapolitan ice cream clambering up the hills of Clifton to where the majestic sweep of the suspension bridge spanned a glorious early morning.
So, it had finally arrived. The day circled in red, on her calendar hidden inside her broom cupboard. Hidden, so that Spike wouldn’t guess that today was anything other than “no big deal”.
She parked up and walked the short distance to her shop at a slow pace, wishing she didn’t have to go into work today.
‘How’s Spike?’ hailed one of the stall holders from the indoor market.
‘Hmm? Oh, fine,’ she answered, hurrying by so she wouldn’t have to stop and chat. It was scary how in a short space of time, Spike had become woven into the fabric of her life.
The phone was ringing as she opened the door to her shop. Her shop. It had taken her ages but finally she was here – and without the financial help that her mother, Suze, kept trying to foist on her; insisting that her tax accountant had suggested it. She wasn’t fooling Polly; Suze’s daughter could recognise mother guilt when she heard and saw it.
Hurrying through to the rear, she picked up her phone.
‘Go on then, what are you cooking his lordship tonight?’ said Mel on the other end.
Shoving her bag underneath the counter, Polly perched on her high fake-leopard-skin barstool.
‘Steak and chips.’
‘I see… Bit seventies, isn’t it?’
‘It’s not Come Dine with Me .’ Polly glanced at her clock. 10.00 am. Ten hours to go. ‘Anyway,’ she added. ‘They’re his favourite.’ She emptied the float into her till. ‘Even I can’t go wrong with steaks.’
‘You reckon? I’ll bet you five squid you burn them.’
Polly slammed her till shut. ‘Cheapskate. How about a tenner?’
‘Tenner it is.’
Polly looked up as a customer entered the shop, struggling with a buggy. She smiled a welcome at her then turned back to whisper to Mel, ‘You’re on. Now push off, moron. Some of us have work to do.’
‘Charming,’ came the reply.
Dashing up the hill to Waitrose, she passed the tall gothic revivalist Wills Building – with its fripperies, gargoyles and fenestrations, all looking as if made out of butterscotch-coloured icing sugar – and dodged through and around the many students lounging about outside.
As she waited in line at the checkout, she remembered the last time she’d been in with Spike. When the girl at the till had turned to him and said, ‘Bag for life?’
Quick as a flash, he’d answered, ‘Thanks for the offer. But I’m not sure I’m ready to commit on so short an acquaintance,’ which had given Polly a fit of the giggles.
Bit prophetic, though, wasn’t it, she now thought, as she muttered her thanks and grabbed her shopping bags.
Outside, the sky was dark and angry-looking. She glanced up at the heavens. Oh great. Be careful what you wish for.
As Polly drove, her pathetic 2CV wipers did little more than smear rain across the windscreen, forcing her to lean forward and peer out; her heater doing its best to blast hot air onto her feet. The last of summer had duly arrived. Heralding autumn and the end of days packed full of evening drinks on the harbour, picnics on the Downs, boat trips around Bristol Docks. Oh, and wonderfully steamy sexy nights. Because… oh damn it… She shook her head. Come on, get a grip. Of course you’re going to miss him. Best to get it over with quickly – like ripping off a plaster. She set her jaw and drove on.
Back home in her kitchen, she glanced at her clock. It was a little after five, and Spike wasn’t due until eight.
Her mouth felt dry, and her stomach as jumpy as if a troupe of leprechauns were doing a performance of Riverdance in there. Better not start on the wine. Looking around for her small teapot, she recalled how it had been sent crashing to the ground that night when they couldn’t wait to get upstairs, could hardly wait to get inside the door, and instead had wonderful urgent sex right there on her kitchen table. She grasped the kettle. Was everything conspiring to remind her?
Rubbing her forehead, she fetched her favourite cup from her dresser. The one Spike had bought on a day trip to Clevedon. ( Stop it! ) Turning to survey her kitchen, she leant back against the wooden worktop and gave a heartfelt sigh. She loved her house. It was chock-full of things. Bright shiny things she couldn’t resist, and which she collected like a magpie. Her blue-painted dresser displaying an array of colourful plates and one-off pottery pieces from Mary Rose Young; its shelves decked in cheery patchwork bunting. Yes, she loved her house and her collection of stuff. Mel once asked if she was building some sort of nest. Maybe she had been. Okay, it might not be her dream house – but no one gets to live in their dream house, do they? Still, she loved her funny little home – with its leaks and creaks and draughts, like an old barely seaworthy vessel.
Opening her French doors onto her wooden verandah – painted pink and festooned with fairy lights – she stood on deck, forearms leaning on the balustrade, wild mermaid hair blowing all about her face, her eyes wet with salt tears. Oh bugger . With a sigh, she gazed out over a landscape thinned with rain.
*
And now her house phone was ringing. Dear God, can they not all leave me alone? Reluctantly, she headed back inside. ‘Hello?’
‘Polly.’ Great – the last person she wanted to hear from – her mother. Sticking her oar in as per.
‘What are you cooking? Sounds like you need a Hollandaise sauce,’ Suze was saying down the phone.
More like Hellman’s mayonnaise , Polly thought.
‘You’ll find the recipe in my book. You know, the one I gave you last Christmas?’
She glanced up at the top shelf of her dresser where her mother’s cook books were lined up. Not one of them opened.
‘Good idea, Mum,’ she said, as in her head she shrieked, Get off the phone, get off the phone.
‘I do hope you’re going to do my own special thrice-cooked chips?’
‘Yes. Of course.’ She wasn’t. She’d use oven chips.
‘Suze, I’m sorry, but I really do have to go and get ready.’
‘Well. Good luck, my darling. Make sure you make yourself gorgeous. Let him see what he’ll be missing!’
Honestly, at times her mother could be so insensitive.
Replacing the receiver, Polly remembered how the only time she’d come close to having a row with Spike was on the subject of how she didn’t like taking money from Suze, but how Suze found ways of giving it to her in any case.
‘Maybe it’s her clumsy way of showing you she loves you. Did you ever think of that, Poll? She seems like a grand woman. A right barrel of laughs.’
‘Oh yes, she’s a laugh, all right,’ she had said, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. ‘Especially with a few drinks inside her.’
‘Ah right.’
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
‘So tell me,’ he said.
And she did. She told him how her mother met her father. How she was an art student, and he, her lecturer. How they lived in a housing co-op in Brixton with a mixture of artists and layabout “trustafarians”, and how Suze relished their carefree life but Jeff wanted to settle down. How her mother declared she was a “free spirit”. How, when she got pregnant with Polly, she’d felt tied and housebound. How she would leave Polly the baby, Polly the toddler, and finally Polly the child, with Jeff as she went out and partied. How much Suze hated Bristol when Jeff took a job here and insisted they move. How she missed her London friends. How her parents would row and Suze would take off back up to London. And how one day she never came back.
Spike had listened and held her as she cried herself to sleep.
Sometimes she thought he knew her better than even Mel did. Sometimes she’d found it hard to tell where he ended and she began. Often he brought out the best in her, especially when Suze was around… banging on about Virginia Woolf – for the nth time – and how every woman ought to have a room of her own. Hardly difficult for Suze these days, she thought, given the size of her houses.
Was funny how things had worked out for Suze. From a chaotic start, she’d turned her life around, gone into rehab, joined NA, become the famous TV chef Suze Chambers, with a regular slot on Sunday morning television, and now lived with long-term boyfriend Brian – a movie actor who’d cornered the market in East End thugs or Russian mafia bosses. They owned a large house in Hampstead, a weekend cottage (huge) on the banks of the Tamar Estuary, restaurants in London and Devon. Lucrative cookery book deals… What hadn’t changed was Polly’s blaming Suze for leaving her at such a young age.
It was no good Mel suggesting she “do therapy” as Polly claimed to be allergic to all therapists. Down to many years of her mother spouting feminist and self-help claptrap with her London friends. Once, on a visit to Suze’s place in Brixton, she remembered how – during one of her mother’s women’s group meetings – Suze had encouraged a twelve-year-old Polly to “embrace her cunt”, and invited her to peer up it with the use of a speculum and mirror.
‘You can look at mine, if you want,’ she’d said. Unsurprisingly, Polly hadn’t, and instead ran upstairs to lock herself in the spare bedroom.
There were some good, if not brilliant, times too. Even though Polly had been very young, one particular memory stood out of that time in 198 when a friend of a friend of Suze’s – who’d been dating one of the Spandau Ballet boys – had invited them down to the recording studios where the Band Aid single was being recorded. Paula Yates had passed them by – like a little punk fairy – her tutu just brushing Polly’s arm, and she’d spotted Polly, bent down, picked her up and spun her round and around. She often thought of that day, and of how Paula must have sprinkled her with some kind of fairy dust, as she’d stayed under her spell ever since. Often, when selecting dresses to buy for her shop, she would ask herself what Paula would think of this or that dress, and whether she would wear it.
Funny how moments stay with you, like the montage of a film: Polly, as a tot, dancing with fairy Paula; Polly crying as Suze left the house one foggy morning, clanging the gate behind her; Polly, aged ten, running through the fields at the back of their house in Bristol, hand in hand with her new best friend, Mel; Polly standing back to admire the signage of her shop, Cutie Pie; or that blustery day in April when Spike had barged into her shop. And now here she was. Cooking what was in effect going to be their very last meal before the credits rolled. Oh, shut up , she told herself. You really are an idiot.
She reached for her tin of emergency biscuits, the Jammie Dodgers kept for times of stress. Biting into the shortbread outer to its jam heart, she savoured the biscuit’s sweet claggy feel in her mouth, before dunking it in her tea. Her mind went back to last week when Spike had bought her a packet of Love Hearts – ‘Because we won’t get to do Valentine’s Day,’ he’d said, causing her heart to contract. They took it in turns to select a round sherbet-flavoured sweet, read out loud the message written inside the outline of the heart, and pop them one at a time, into the other’s mouth: Sweet Heart – pop – Be Mine – mmm chomp – Love You – suck – Kiss Me – now… ‘If only we had one that said Shag Me,’ he’d joked. And they had anyway. Tenderly.
She shook her head to clear her mind. This won’t do . For some reason which escaped her, and which would prove to mean nothing at all, she set about filling with water the ice cube tray from the freezer box in her fridge.
These last few days, Spike had been in London, to sort stuff for his trip, and to spend quality time with his godmother Elspeth, who was putting on a brave face at his imminent departure. She’d been his guardian since his own mother died of a stroke (freakily rare for a woman so young) when he himself was a small child, and then later his father (who’d never remarried) died of a heart attack when Spike was just sixteen. The teenage Spike had been despatched from Dublin to England to stay with Elspeth in Notting Hill, and had not surprisingly gone off the rails. Messing about doing this and that instead of staying on at school. But he’d always been good with his hands and had begun making his own chairs from upcycled pieces of wood and broken furniture, which sold well at Notting Hill markets, and his lively and witty way with words – which he successfully married with his love of live music – meant he was soon writing reviews for the local rag, and on occasion London’s Time Out magazine.
Ring ring, ring ring. It was her mobile. Mel again.
‘How’s it going?’
Sigh. ‘Fine.’
‘Liar! I can come over and give you a hug, if you like?’
‘I’m just about to make myself beautiful.’
‘You sure you got enough time for that?’
‘Oh ha ha.’
‘Seriously. Call me. Whenever. I’ll be thinking of you.’
On the dot of eight, Spike arrived at Polly’s house with a bunch of hand-tied peonies and freesias plus a packet of Jammie Dodgers. ‘Budgen’s finest,’ he said. ‘Just in case you run out.’
‘As if.’ She reached forward to gently unpeel a piece of tissue paper stuck to his face, where he’d clearly nicked himself shaving.
She busied herself arranging the flowers in a vase as he proceeded to stride about her kitchen, the pair of them acting like almost-strangers.
‘Good time in London?’ she asked.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Umm, Elspeth sends her love.’
‘Hungry?’
‘Bit peckish.’
Placing a tray of chips in the oven, she wished he’d sit down. He was making her dizzy; she already felt as if she might throw up.
‘You okay there, Poll?’ he said. ‘Only you’re lookin’ a bit green about the gills.’
Gills? What an odd fishy expression , she thought, wiping her hands on the flowery vintage apron tied tightly about her neat hourglass waist. God, she felt weird.
‘I’m fine. Just fine,’ she lied. She was wearing that floaty tea dress he liked, plus stockings, suspenders, high heels, and her hair loosely teased into tumbling ringlets.
‘You look gorgeous,’ he said. ‘Here.’ He advanced on her with kitchen towel in hand. ‘You’ve smudged your eye makeup.’
‘Silly me.’ She sidestepped him to move in front of the mirror, and to dab at her eyes. ‘Must’ve been a blast of hot air from the oven, or something.’
He was half smiling in that amused way of his as she took in the way his hair – longer now than when they first met – flopped forward in soft waves. That strong lithe frame of his: those big hands, that tight body in jeans and checked shirt. God, he looked good.
‘What?’ Then, as if sensing her sadness, he added, ‘Seriously, darlin’. Come here,’ and he folded her in an embrace while she leant into him, breathing him in; he smelled like cinnamon and toast.
‘Shall we crack open this bottle of wine?’ He set about the task of opening and pouring while at the same time filling her in on his visit to his stepmother Elspeth’s house, retelling some funny anecdote about an encounter on the tube train, and saying how much he hated London, with its grime and people with grumpy faces. On and on he prattled as she nodded and added ‘Hmm,’ in what she hoped were the appropriate places, all the while watching his strong hands turn the corkscrew round and round until it was home. His chest lifting as he pulled the cork out of the bottle.
Her mind could not quite fathom how this would be the last time they’d ever be in her kitchen together, with him pouring her a glass of wine like this, as if it was something they’d do together forever and ever.
Then the thought she’d been trying so hard to banish crept in – What if you were to ask him to stay?
But how could she? She knew how much he wanted to go to bloody Australia. It was his dream, and no way could she ask him to give up all that.
She went to stand by the window, staring out at the lights going on in rooms up and down the harbourside apartments. People coming home, getting ready to go out, having meals together. Normal everyday stuff.
‘You all right there, Poll?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’ And what if he were to stay? What if he decided to stay just for her? Well, then he’d end up resenting you, wouldn’t he?
She drank a good glug of the red wine he’d held out for her. It tasted sour in her mouth, even though it was a good Shiraz. She gave him as much of a smile as she could muster.
‘You’re starting to worry me. Grinning away like that.’
‘Oh. Sorry. Don’t mind me.’ She set her shoulders. ‘Right,’ she managed in a determinedly breezy voice, ‘can you fetch me down that big bowl?’
She didn’t say the one that they’d bought together during one of their many mooches around Bath’s flea markets, but the knowledge hung between them.
‘Here you go.’
‘Thanks.’ She tipped in the contents of a bought salad pack, and drizzled honey long eyelashes dusting his cheek. She couldn’t stop herself. She began to think of his visits to her shop, when he’d pretended to be a shoplifter and would stuff a shirt or tie into his pocket with part of it hanging out, just to see if one of Polly’s customers would notice and “shop” him to her. Or that time when she’d gone upstairs to change for a night out, only to come down and discover him – feet up on her sofa – eating her chocolates, his face plastered in her drying strawberry face pack, going, ‘What?’ His hands spread out as she threw a cushion at him. ‘What?’
In her kitchen, he was now licking the gummed cigarette paper, and asking her if she wanted one.
‘Sure, why not? Thanks.’
It would never have worked , she reminded herself. Him and me . He’d once told her how he couldn’t bear to feel like he might be missing out on anything. ‘It’s a big world out there,’ he’d said.
‘Shall we take our drinks outside?’ She felt the need for fresh air. ‘It’s stopped raining.’
He looked at her uncertainly. ‘If you’re sure? It might start up again.’
‘Who cares?’ She flung open her French doors in a more dramatic way than she’d intended – ‘Here’ – and handed him a soft red blanket while she wrapped another about her shoulders.
He shook his head. ‘Not for me. I’m fine. Got me own internal central heating.’ This snagged on Polly, as yes, she knew that. She loved to cuddle up to him, warming her cold feet on his legs.
Spike joined her on the balcony as a cold wind blew across, causing her to pull her blanket tighter around her. ‘Careful you don’t catch your death now,’ he said, placing his arm about her shoulder and handing her the cigarette he’d rolled for her, then reaching up for his own, tucked behind his ear.
The two lovers leant on the rail, smoking their cigarettes as they gazed into an uncertain night, while at the bottom of the yard a seagull – otherworldly in its black and grey – flew across their line of vision like some ghost bird.
‘I love it here,’ Polly said, as she crushed her cigarette stub into the ashtray and half turned towards him. He continued to stare into the dark.
‘I know you love it.’
‘It’s book club next week,’ she began to prattle. ‘Of course, Mel’s read the book, but I don’t know… I just couldn’t get into it. It was The Time Traveler’s Wife . I should have watched the DVD instead.’
‘What’s it about?’ He stood up straight.
‘Oh, nothing much,’ she said, not wanting to tell that it was about a couple whose love transcended time… ‘We’re pretty busy at the shop right now. You know, what with the run-up to Halloween. I got in tons of those little devil’s horns and pitchforks, that kind of thing.’
‘Yeah. Halloween parties,’ he said distractedly.
Down below on the deck of a moored boat, all a-sparkle with its own multi-coloured fairy lights, a couple came together for a kiss. Polly wondered how they were doing. And now Spike was staring down at her, his eyes as round and dark as a moon in negative. Without a word, she rose to go inside, leaving him to follow behind.
‘What’s wrong, Polly? Will you not tell me what it is?’
She had no idea she was going to be angry until she faced him, eyes flashing so that he stepped back as if she were giving off sparks. ‘Don’t be so bloody dense. What’s wrong is this! All this! Our last night together and all we can do is exchange small talk!’
‘What would you have us talk about, Polly?’
She just stared, thinking how bloody unfair. She didn’t trust herself to say anything. She’d already ruined their last evening with her outburst.
‘I thought,’ he was saying slowly and deliberately, ‘that we could have a pleasant meal. Share some time together, and instead you’re angry.’
Of course she was angry. But instead of letting rip again, she felt herself deflate like a punctured balloon. Eventually, her voice barely above a whisper, she said, ‘I don’t know how to deal with this. I hate goodbyes at the best of times.’
‘Me too. I feel the same.’
Then before she could stop herself, she added, ‘We don’t have to say goodbye, not if we don’t want to. Look. Hear me out. If I don’t say this, I might regret it for the rest of my life.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You could stay. Seriously. You could not go to Australia.’ She gabbled on before her thinking brain had time to catch up. ‘I know I’m rubbish at relationships, but… if you stay… well… Spike, please don’t go.’
She didn’t know who was more surprised at her outburst, her or Spike. Talk about begging. Pathetic idiot. For one horrible moment, she thought she might throw herself on him; she had a full vision of herself holding onto his legs as he endeavoured to leave.
Instead, he had an amused look on his face. ‘Truth is, Poll,’ he was saying, ‘I’ve been thinking about this myself. All day. No, longer than today, in fact. And I think I’ve come up with the perfect solution.’ He took both her hands in his. ‘Why don’t you come away to Australia with me?’
‘What?’ She moved away from him, at a loss as to what to say, so she placed their steaks under the hot grill. It was all she could think of to do.
‘Don’t bother with that,’ he said, coming up behind her. ‘You’ve been fidgeting about all evening.’
‘I must start cooking the steaks.’ Suddenly that had become vitally important. ‘The oven chips are nearly done.’
‘Polly. Did you not hear what I just said to you?’ He turned her to face him. ‘I asked you to come away with me. To Australia?’
‘What?’
‘Will you stop saying What?’ He was full-on grinning at her. ‘Darling Polly,’ he said, grabbing hold of her hands as if scared they might fly away, ‘come away with me. Be spontaneous. You could pack a few bags, buy an airline ticket, and we could meet up in London. I’ll be there a few days with Elspeth, that’s all. And then we could fly off to Australia, together. What do you say?’
She stared as if he’d asked her to chop her leg off. ‘You have got to be kidding, Spike,’ she finally said, removing her hands from his.
‘But why? Life’s for grabbing, Polly. Come with me? We could see how things go…’
‘See how things go?’ She moved to stand by the sink. ‘Are you mad?’
He made no move towards her. ‘No, I’m not mad. If anything, I just came to my senses. We get on grand now, don’t we? I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather go with, we could—’
‘You want a travelling companion, is that it? And you couldn’t find anyone else you get on better with? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Don’t be so daft. Of course that’s not what I’m saying. You’re getting this all wrong.’
But her colour was up – face red, hair dishevelled, like some warrior queen about to lead her troops into battle. ‘Getting this wrong, am I? I’m sorry I made a fool of myself asking you to stay. After all, we only agreed on a bit of fun, didn’t we? That was the deal. I see – of course I do – that you have to go. It was silly of me to think you might stay. But there’s no reason on earth for you to feel obliged to ask me to come with you. As some sort of consolation prize!’
His voice was steady. ‘I don’t feel obliged, Polly. I want you to come.’
She felt queasy again, like her stomach had gone moonlighting on a big dipper. Damn this bug . She took a deep breath. ‘Whether you do or not makes no odds to me. I can’t possibly drop everything. Leave my friends, my house, my shop, and travel to the other side of the world… because… because of some pie-in-the-sky plan of yours! Much as I love you…’
‘So you love me now, do ya?’ Doing that half-grin of his – which was starting to wear rather thin now. The way he wheeled out his Irish charm, as if a touch of blarney could solve everything. ‘Then why not come away with me? Don’t you know, Poll,’ his voice low and intense, ‘you’re imprinted on me like… like that little monkey fella with his furry mother substitute.’
‘You’re saying you want a mother, now? Is that it?’
‘Don’t be such an eejit.’ He moved towards her. ‘You’re dead sexy when you’re cross.’
But she was having none of it. Good God , she thought. This can’t be straightened out with a kiss and a cuddle . She sidestepped him, determined not to be swayed.
‘We’re good together, Polly. You know that.’
‘Spike… look… come on. We don’t even know each other. Not really…’
‘We could rectify that. Wouldn’t it be great if you came along? Give ourselves more time to get to know each other. If you wanted to.’ He paused. ‘I know I do.’
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘That’s not enough for me. It’s not what I want. To go off gallivanting around the world!’
‘What do you want, then? Marriage? Is that what this is all about?’
‘Marriage? I wouldn’t marry you. I don’t want to marry anyone. That’s just plain nuts!’ She stopped, her heart pounding away.
When he next spoke, it was so quiet she was forced to lean in to hear him. ‘You know I can’t stay, Polly. It’s too good a chance to miss.’
He was standing so close she was sure he must be able to hear her heart hammering away at her chest.
‘I know.’ There was nothing left to say.
‘Ah,’ he said, a half-smile dimpling his cheek, his gesture open-handed. ‘But aren’t we a right pair of eejits?’ He let his hands drop by his side. ‘Our timing is all wrong, that’s the top and bottom of it.’
‘If I were to go with you, or you were to stay with me, then there’d be no hope for us…’
His eyes contained much sorrow, but she didn’t notice and carried on regardless.
‘…whichever way, one of us would end up resenting the other. Wouldn’t we?’
‘Yes,’ he said, his voice devoid of its dancing laugh. ‘We would at that. Aren’t you the wise one.’
He collected his jacket from the back of the chair.
‘You’re not leaving now, are you?’ She couldn’t bear that he was going to leave. She grabbed hold of his arm. ‘Tell me we can keep in touch, yeah? Skype, email, Facebook, carrier pigeon?’ She attempted a smile, but his face was grim.
‘I doubt that would be a good idea,’ he said, shrugging on his jacket. ‘I think it’s probably best we make a clean break of things.’
‘Can’t we at least stay friends?’ She thought she might vomit. Right there on the floor.
‘Friends? I don’t think so,’ he said, with a finality that echoed around her kitchen and hallway. He was heading for the door when – to her later shame – she grabbed his arm once more.
‘Please, Spike. It doesn’t have to end like this.’
‘I think I’d better leave right now,’ was his answer.
She stared, appalled that he was leaving to the title of a Will Young song!
She rushed after him to the front door, where he planted a kiss on the top of her head. ‘Bye, Polly.’
Helpless, she watched him go. Spike! she wanted to call out, but it got strangled in her throat. EEK EEK EEK EEK. Behind her the smoke alarm – from their now burning forgotten steaks – was screaming at them both.
*
T hat night, when she finally drifted off to sleep, she dreamt of a small Polly looking out of her bedroom window. There was a path leading away from her house to a green gate, which creaked back and forth on its hinges. Thick mist swirled in an early-morning light, before the sun had climbed high enough to burn it off. And there, just beyond the gate, someone turned to look up at Polly in her window. Someone turned and looked up. But Polly couldn’t see their face.