Chapter 43
Will didn’t expect anyone to be working at Northern Eagles over the weekend, but it was worth a try. He needed to hear Polly’s
voice, even if it was just to say, “ Shove off, leave me alone, I’m happy. ” But when he rang the number he found on the net, the woman who picked up the call said, “Business Strength, how can I help
you?”
That threw him. “Is this not Northern Eagles?”
“It was, but the name changed recently. Number’s the same, though,” she explained.
“Ah, I see. I don’t suppose I can speak to Polly Potter, please?”
“I’m afraid Polly no longer works for the company.”
Will went cold. “Since when?”
“A few weeks, I think.”
“Are you sure?” said Will.
“Absolutely sure. I know Polly.”
“Do you happen to know where she moved to?” asked Will. This was really starting to get worrying now.
“I’m afraid I don’t know.”
“Did you say you were called Business Strength?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay, thank you.”
Will put down the phone. That was the name on the other letter Polly had received.
The one that said there had been some sort of misunderstanding at work and Polly was to be fully reinstated with immediate effect.
So she hadn’t changed jobs after all, then, not that that particular revelation helped in any way to solve what the hell was going on.
The Millspring Quillers weren’t easy to locate either.
He rang Millspring village hall as a first port of call, but they’d never heard of them and told him to try the Bees ’n’ Cheese Tea Room on the high street as they rented out their room above to some sort of literary club.
It turned out to be a dead end as they’d only ever let it out to “Crochet with Caroline,” but the woman there told him to try the vicar at St. John’s because all sorts of groups met in the church hall.
He wasn’t in, so Will left a message on the answering machine.
And another two hours later, when he’d heard nothing.
Not long after, the vicar’s wife rang back to tell him that the Quillers did indeed meet in the church hall and she gave him
the number of Jennifer, who ran the classes. She picked up straightaway when he called, which was lucky because he was really
starting to get twitchy.
“Hi,” said Will. “I’m ringing up about a letter you sent to my stepmum, Polly Potter.”
“Oh, Polly, yes. Is she all right?” Jennifer said. “I’ve been a bit worried about her. I wouldn’t usually chase because we
get a lot of people dropping in and out, but Polly never missed a class, and then she suddenly just stopped coming.”
“Well...” Will hadn’t a clue how to dress this up and so decided to just come straight out with it. “The thing is...
we don’t know where she is and we’re trying to trace her.” He cringed at how it came across.
“Oh, I see,” said Jennifer, sounding as if she didn’t see at all. “I’m so sorry to hear that. You don’t think... I mean...
Is she...? I’m sorry, I don’t really know what to say.”
They needed to start seriously looking for Polly, thought Will now. Too much evidence was banking up that something was wrong.
She was a bona fide missing person. He shuddered at the thought.
“Such a lovely woman. And quite a talent as well. She brought in a lovely poem about a cat...”
Jennifer was nervous-twittering now. Telling Will about a book Polly was writing and the short story about her uncle and aunt who’d died when she was young that had people crying in the class when she read it out; and the love letter; and the limerick about her boss at work that made them all laugh.
“Oh my goodness, will you let me know if you hear anything?” said Jennifer in a very wobbly voice.
“Of course—” Hang on. “Jennifer, what was that you said about a love letter?”
“I... er... set the class a fun challenge round about Valentine’s Day to pen a love letter to someone they were having
an affair with. I told them to put aside all their values and morals and let rip. You’d be surprised how liberating it can
be when you’re given permission to loosen your literary corset, as it were. We had some very steamy pieces; I was quite surprised
at a few of my writers—they could have given E.L. James a run for her money. Polly’s was more romantic than smutty, though.
I told Polly she could have been one of the Bronte sisters with her turn of phrase. It’s always amazed me how someone with
so little passion in their life could write such fervent prose.”
Will didn’t know if she meant the Brontes or Polly.
“How long was she coming to your classes?”
“About a year, I think. Yes, that’s right. She started last June.”
Will’s brain was spinning. “You don’t happen to have any copies of things she wrote, do you?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Could I see any of them?”
Jennifer wasn’t keen. “I’d be contravening group rules by doing that.”
“Please,” said Will, surprising himself by how desperate he sounded. “We’re going to have to involve the police, and the more
information I’ve got, the better. I’m clutching at straws, I know, but there just might be something she wrote down that might
help us find her.”
Jennifer sighed at the other end of the line, and Will could tell she didn’t know what to do for the best.
“Okay,” she relented eventually. “If you think it might help.” Will dictated his email address to her. Jennifer said she’d do it straightaway, and she was as good as her word.
Will opened up the first file: “Love Letter—Polly.”
My darling, I cannot live a lie any longer. I have to come to you before my soul fades away and I am nothing. I am yours and
yours only. You are the breath in my lungs, the blood in my veins...
He recognized it immediately. He remembered his sister reading it out with relish to a horrified but enthralled crowd on the
day of the wedding.
It was nothing more than a bloody writing exercise.
Will rang his father to ask if he was in. He wasn’t, but he would be in about an hour. Will said he’d meet him at the house
and he’d explain why he needed to speak to him urgently when he got there. In the meantime, he read the other files that Jennifer
had sent through, Polly’s stories and poems. He remembered her telling him about the neighbor’s ginger cat whom she used to
let into the house when her mum was at bingo and she’d feed him cheese and cuddle up to him on the sofa. And her aunt and
uncle who were going to adopt her and take her to Australia, but they died. Polly had a rotten early life. The synopsis of
her novel told Will a lot. He was very moved to read that she’d reimagined that the child she’d had when she was only seventeen
was alive and traveling. Polly would have made a smashing mum, and reading this, it sounded as if there was an emptiness inside
her that still wanted to be filled with a baby of her own. The Sabrina character was obviously based on herself, and it wasn’t
hard to see where dubious Jasper had his origins. No wonder Sabrina was leaving him.
Chris had the good grace to look uncomfortable as he listened to his son’s findings. Will had also been upstairs to where Polly’s things were stored and found a folder with the physical copies of the writings which Jennifer had sent him by email.
“Shauna didn’t say that she’d found that love letter in with all this other stuff from Polly’s classes,” said Will, who was
furious at his sister, and he’d tell her so. “It would have cast a totally different light on everything if she had and put
it in context. She deliberately kept that quiet to shit-stir.”
“But even if that letter isn’t real, we still don’t know that Polly’s not with a fancy man, do we? Why was all her stuff packed
up if she wasn’t going to someone else? She wouldn’t have just left me for... no one. That doesn’t make any sense.”
Will rubbed his forehead in frustration because they were going around in circles.
“You do know people can leave their partners without going to someone else, especially if they’re really unhappy, Dad.”
“Rarely, though,” said Chris, who couldn’t think why anyone would leap to another lily pad unless there was another frog waiting
on it. He was sitting at the table flicking through Polly’s papers.
“Who’s this Jasper bloke?” Chris asked suspiciously.
“He’s a made-up character. Sort of,” said Will, wanting to bang his head against the wall. His dad was reading more or less
about himself and still couldn’t see it.
“I don’t understand why she’d want to keep a writing course secret from me,” said Chris. “Why on earth would she do that?”
“Maybe she didn’t think you’d be interested.”
“Well, I probably wouldn’t be, but that’s no reason not to say anything.”
“I think we should go to the police.”
Chris rounded on him. “Don’t be so bloody silly, Will.”
“Dad, this is serious.” Chris had watched enough detective programs to know that the police always looked first of all to “home” for the perpetrator.
Even though he was totally innocent, they’d investigate him as a person of interest. They’d take his computer away and see he’d made quite a few visits to “naughtysluttyladies.com.” He went cold at the thought of a roomful of coppers laughing at that before they started digging up his garden.
“They might frame me for murder.”
“Have you murdered her?”
“Don’t be so bloody silly, Will,” Chris said again, with even more emphasis this time.
“Then you’ve nothing to worry about.”
“Anyway, the police these days are too busy fannying about dancing at festivals wearing rainbows.”
“I wouldn’t go into a police station saying that, Dad,” replied Will.
“If we go to the police, they’ll do one of those TV appeals and all hell will break loose. They’ll film me and if I don’t
cry everyone will think I know more than I let on, or if my eyebrow moves in the wrong way, or... or I put my arms in the
wrong place or I say the wrong word. There’s a load of armchair detective nutters out there who will presume I’ve done her
in and come for me. They’ll spread a load of lies and wreck my business. They’ll paint ‘Murderer’ on the front door in red
paint. I’ll be made into one of those memes.” Chris was getting himself into a proper state now.
“I don’t think—”
But Chris was still in a loop. “And it won’t just be me who suffers, because the national papers will get hold of it and rake
up the whole of Polly’s life and splash it on the front page of the Daily Mail . If all she’s doing is lying low—and I’ll put money on it that she is—then something like that could push her right over
the edge.”
Will threw up his hands. “Okay then, what’s your alternative?”
“I’ll email the Daily Trumpet and put an advert on their lost and found page for the next issue.”
Will blinked. “Are you joking? That’s for things like wallets and Labradors. And, Dad, come on, really—the Trumpet ?”
“They’ve got a massive circulation and everyone reads it. It’s worth a shot.”
Will thought about it and then nodded. “Okay, like you say, worth a shot.”
It was too, but one of Will’s old college pals was in the police and he’d ring her for some advice at the same time. Best-case
scenario was that Polly saw the Trumpet entry and rang to tell them she was absolutely fine and not to worry. Worst case... he really didn’t want to think about
that.