Chapter 41
Chris was having a birthday tea out at the pub with his sister, brother-in-law, son, and daughter. He really thought Polly
would have sent him a card; he would have put money on her using the occasion to ask if she could come over and either get
her stuff or worm her way back into his life. He’d been gobsmacked to get only a letter addressed to her in the post, a bank
statement, and some junk mail asking him if he’d thought about a cheap cremation, which made him feel great. He opened up
Polly’s letter, read it, and stuck it behind the clock on the mantelpiece with the other one that had come for her a couple
of days ago.
Chris hated living by himself. He hated coming home from work and there being no presence in the house, warming it up in a
way that central heating alone couldn’t—and no smell of his tea brewing. The bed was too big, and it had taken him the best
part of half an hour to put on the duvet cover last week. Nor did it smell of fabric conditioner, but of damp because he’d
taken it out of the washer and dumped it on a work surface for days to dry. He was ready for letting Polly back in. He’d had
a fling, well, one that she knew about, and she’d had one that he knew about, so that made it even steven. No one had the
moral high ground anymore, so that would make it easier to shove under the carpet.
As if his daughter had picked up his thoughts, she asked him, “Have you heard from you-know-who?”
“Oh for goodness’ sake, do we have to talk about her?” asked Camay. “You do know how to bring the mood down, Shauna.”
It was hardly high to begin with, thought Will. His father was miserable; his auntie Camay was sniffy about the food because
on the rare occasions that his father offered to pay, they wouldn’t be going to a James Martin restaurant. Uncle Ward wasn’t
interested in contributing to any conversation either; he was just there to bulldoze his way through three courses and a bottle
of house wine like a bloated locust.
Chris answered the question anyway in his best “don’t care” tone. “No, I haven’t.”
“What have you done with all her things?” asked Ward, spitting gravy as he spoke.
“Nothing. They’re all still in the room upstairs,” Chris replied.
“I’d have made a big bonfire. Very cathartic,” said Camay with a huff.
“She’ll come back with her tail between her legs eventually,” said Chris.
“Or someone else’s,” snorted Ward, causing Camay to jab him hard with her elbow.
“Surely you won’t take her back?” Shauna was horrified at the thought.
“She’d have to have a brass neck to even try,” said Camay, spearing a chip with a viciousness that suggested she was stabbing
at something living.
She’d have to have a screw loose to even consider it , thought Will, although he didn’t want to think that he wouldn’t ever see Polly again. She’d always been so kind to him.
He referred to her as his stepmum, though Shauna never did.
“Have you tried ringing her, Dad?”
“What do you take me for?” said Chris indignantly.
“I think it’s up to her to make the first move.
She’s hedging her bets because her post is still coming to the house; she hasn’t redirected it.
Today she got a letter from her ‘creative writing’ class”—he drew the quotation marks in the air—“asking if she was all right as she hadn’t been recently. ”
“Crafty bitch,” said Shauna with relish.
“Precisely,” said her father.
“Crafty how?” asked Will, confused by that comment.
“Well, she never told me she was going to creative writing classes,” Chris answered in a way that suggested Will must be a
bit dense for not seeing it. “So what else was she lying about? I think we know the answer to that one. Ha.” He nodded the
full stop at the end of his sentence.
“Maybe,” said Shauna, wagging her fork, “just maybe she got someone to write that letter to make Dad worry.”
“Or she might have been attending creative writing classes and hadn’t been for a while and so people genuinely are worried. How about that as an option, Columbo?” said Will crossly.
“Whose side are you on?” Shauna threw at him.
“Stop this now,” commanded Camay, banging a teaspoon on the table. “This is exactly what she’d love—to be playing the starring
role in our evening and ruining it. We might as well have set a ruddy place for her at the table. I for one hope she never
comes back. She’s playing games. She’s screwing with our minds.”
“By doing absolutely nothing?” said Will.
“Precisely,” said his aunt Camay. “Now let’s all have a toast. To Chris, who is today a forty-six-year-old eligible bachelor.
Happy birthday, baby brother.”
Will raised his glass but not with the same gusto as everyone else. For his own peace of mind, he needed to find out that
Polly was all right. If she was and she wanted nothing to do with any of them, including himself, that would be her prerogative,
but a cloud of worry was just now starting to drift into his peripheral vision.
When Will dropped his dad off after the miserable birthday party, he asked for Polly’s mobile number. He rang it, but there
was nothing, no dialing tone, no forwarding to voicemail, zilch.
“Well, she must have changed her number,” was Chris’s explanation.
“It’s not proof she has, though,” said Will, who felt now that he did need proof.
He asked to see the letters Polly had been sent and he took photos of them so he could do some detective work at home this
weekend. He didn’t say to his dad that he hoped he’d discover Polly was living her best life with a lover. There were a few
alternative scenarios running through his head now, after reading those two letters, that he really didn’t want to contemplate,
and doing the dirty on his dad by running off with another man at least meant she was still alive.
A late-night search on the internet to find the creative writing group that Polly supposedly belonged to yielded nothing.
There was no address, email, or telephone number on the letter, just a linocut-type stamp at the top of the A4 sheet of a
quill and underneath it the words “Millspring Quillers.” So he parked it until the morning.
The second letter Polly had received was from a company called Business Strength, telling her she was reinstated, which didn’t
make sense because Polly didn’t work for them. She’d worked for the same company since she left college. Or had she? Polly
just didn’t seem the sort of person to have so much intrigue surrounding her. Will was half expecting to discover she was
really an MI6 agent.
He shouldn’t have waited this long to make sure she was okay. He was annoyed with himself that he’d accepted the “Occam’s
razor” easiest answer to where she was. But now, for a reason he couldn’t explain other than it being intuition, he no longer
believed it.