Chapter 10
Polly couldn’t have driven in the jittery-nerve state she was in, so she headed into the city center to one of the coffee
shops down a narrow alley that she sometimes popped into, knowing it was the type of basic establishment that no one from
it was never empty. There was a glass cloche on the counter with the same type of buttercream sponge that had always lived
there and a portrait of Tina by J. H. Lynch on the wall, not quite hung straight; she couldn’t remember it ever not being
at an angle. She came here on her very first lunch break when she joined the firm because she was too shy to go to the canteen.
And here she was on her last day: If that wasn’t serendipitous, what was?
She ordered a pot of tea and sat in the corner.
There was no point in asking herself, What the hell have you done?
because she knew what she’d done, and the real wonder of it all was that she’d taken so long to do it.
When had she turned into this human archery target, happy to let people fire their arrows into her?
She’d been a feisty little thing at school, never letting anyone find the truth of a loveless, crappy home life behind her convincing facade.
She’d had to handle the loss of her aunt and uncle and the new life she’d been promised, because she had no other choice but to get on with things and then tend to a mother who became more difficult with every passing day.
She couldn’t have done all that if she’d been weak.
But losing her baby had wounded her deeply, maybe more than she’d realized.
It took working for Alan to start the slow reconstitution, but she had been changed irreversibly by those nine months of expectant joy and what came after, had become much more vulnerable.
She needed someone to be the shell to her fragile oyster, and she hadn’t found them.
She called in at a newsagent’s on the way home and picked up a copy of the Daily Trumpet . On Fridays they had a jobs section. Best read with caution, considering the number of things they got wrong. The errors
didn’t detract from its success story, though. Once its distribution was to South Yorkshire only, but now it served the whole
of the county. At the present rate, it would be sold in all four corners of the globe by 2056.
Polly sat at the kitchen table and opened the newspaper at the jobs spread. Now freed up from having to live within a commute
of Leeds, it made more sense to find a job first and then move to there. It was a plan, and proaction was always healthier
for the soul than reaction, she’d come to find. But her heart sank at the offerings. The jobs listed were either on the level
of company directors, top management, requiring a list of qualifications as long as Richard Osman’s leg, or part-time positions
in shops, zero-hour contracts, barmads (she presumed barmaids). There was a vacancy for a “Girl/Boy Friday” at Teddy’s, an
Italian restaurant in Shoresend. She found herself smiling at it because she knew that little town. It wasn’t far from Whitby
and that was the only time in her childhood that she’d ever been to the seaside. And she’d been there because her uncle Ed—her
mother’s half brother—had taken her.
He’d been brought up in Australia but decided to come back to the UK and make a life here.
He’d arrived with his Australian wife Rina, the loveliest, kindest person on the planet, and had been shocked to find the chaos in which his sister was living.
Until Uncle Ed came on the scene, young Polly Potter hadn’t seen anything amiss in being left at home with a comic, a bar of chocolate, and a can full of sugary pop while Sheila Potter teetered off to bingo in her pin heels.
In fact, Polly always enjoyed it. She would let in the neighbor’s ginger cat, Tom (who’d been named with the same lack of thought they gave to his care), whose old bones were desperate for some comfort rather than the hard, cold windowsill he was usually to be found on, and she’d feed him crumbs of cheese while he snuggled up to her on their battered sofa.
Her mother wouldn’t let her have any pets.
But then, she couldn’t look after her own child adequately, never mind an extra animal mouth.
She felt her heart fill up with honeyed warmth whenever Uncle Ed and Auntie Rina called over. Uncle Ed was big and square
like a wardrobe— strapping , her mum called him—and in contrast Auntie Rina was petite with shiny golden hair and big, beautiful, leaf-green eyes, small-boned
and doll-fragile. And they never arrived empty-handed; there was always a book or a bag of sweets or a toy for her. One day
they brought a jigsaw puzzle for her and started off her love of them. She found that putting the pieces together, concentrating
on building a picture, gave her head somewhere tranquil to go, and she’d carried that pleasure through to adulthood.
One day, after talking about the beach near where they had lived in Australia, Uncle Ed realized that his niece had never seen the sea in person.
He arranged for them to go out as a family to the coast the very next day.
But Sheila Potter couldn’t be roused that morning, however much Polly tried.
But when Uncle Ed rolled up, he said to his sobbing niece that he’d had a word with the sea and it was expecting them so they had to go.
They left her mother nursing her hangover, and the three of them drove to a place called Shoresend.
He and Rina stuffed the day with everything a child’s outing to the seaside should have.
They bought her a bucket and spade and they made sandcastles and paddled and they helped her collect handfuls of shells to take home, and Uncle Ed had swung her around over his head while she pretended to be a seagull.
They had flaky fish and chips soaked in vinegar sitting on the prom, followed by the tallest Mr. Whippy ice cream in the world, covered with strawberry sauce.
It was a wonder she wasn’t sick, whirling around on the big teacups in the funfair afterward, but she wasn’t; she had never felt so well, ever.
The sea air and jollity eventually wore her out and she slept all the way home, cuddled up to the enormous plush cat that
Uncle Ed had won for her by throwing darts at a board. He must have carried her in and put her to bed because that’s where
she was when she woke up hearing Uncle Ed and her mother exchanging heated words.
“I want to adopt her,” he was saying. “You aren’t fit to have a lovely child like that. I’ll take her before social services
does.”
“Take her then,” came her mother’s slurred voice by way of response. And the young Polly drifted back to sleep and thought
it was just part of a perfect dream.
Not long after, Uncle Ed and Auntie Rina told her they were going to move back to Australia because Auntie Rina couldn’t settle
here. Would she like to go and live with them there?
It hadn’t been a dream. Polly’s heart swelled with so much joy she thought it would burst. The wheels were put in motion:
Polly Potter was going to become Polly Anderson. But before any of that could happen, her wonderful uncle Ed was driven off
the road by a vehicle that was never traced, and just like that, he and lovely Auntie Rina were gone, leaving her only a legacy
of lovely memories crowned by that day at the seaside.
A couple of weeks in Shoresend might be just what the doctor ordered, she thought: a place full of happy times and positivity
for her, plus a snap of sea air. Yes, she’d head there on Sunday instead of Wakefield. There were loads of hotels and guesthouses
in the area; she’d find one when she got there, let fate have a hand in things and see if it did any better than her best-made
plans.