20
Tuesday morning, and a package arrived with a thud on her doormat. Inside was a nature storybook on eels, of all things. It had a beautiful green iridescent cover, and inside exquisite illustrations of eels in different stages: glass eels as thin and flat as leaves, buffeted by the ocean’s tides; ribbon elvers entering rivers, excited by the smell of fresh water as they wriggled up rapids and climbed around rocks; maturing eels with their large saucer-like eyes hiding in mudholes; eels thick as snakes dining on stickleback eggs; eels clambering overland crunching the shells of snails; eels with the biggest grins ever, as if laughing at the funniest joke in the world!
Fascinated, Polly turned page after page. In the back was a pocket for its accompanying CD, which promised an eel song. Mind boggles , she thought, deciding to play it that night with her daughter. Who was it from? She had a pretty good idea as she reached inside the brown padded envelope and pulled out a note, immediately recognising her mother’s scrawl:
Polly, I saw this in a shop in Totnes and thought Rowan would love it. Make sure when you read it to her that you tell our darling Ro Ro that it’s from her grandma, who loves her very, very much. Suze xxx
Strange , thought Polly, as she put the book to one side. Suze was more an email and iPad kind of person than an actually writing-a-note one. Oh well. Polly shrugged, collected her coat and dashed out the door.
Later that day, she tried her mother’s phone, but it went straight through to voicemail.
‘Umm, Suze, it’s Polly. Thanks for the gift. I’m sure Ro Ro will love it. Umm. Everything okay your end? I’ve gone ahead and organised a plumber for Donna’s flat. And, Mum, whatever were you doing at the Nuffield Hospital the other week? I saw you in Clifton but couldn’t stop. Anyway. Call me.’
*
The following Friday, Polly and Max went to the cinema. ‘Like a proper date,’ Polly whispered, and Max said, ‘Okay, if we must, we can go see this Colin Firth film.’
Afterwards, in the car, Max said, ‘I fancy some fish and chips. How about you?’
‘Lovely. I’m starving.’ She slid into the passenger seat of his car. ‘What did you think of the film?’
‘Not really my sort of thing. I prefer French films. They often show them at the Watershed. Fancy going next time?’
‘Oh. Yes,’ she said, and let it go at that, because she couldn’t abide films with subtitles. If she wanted to read a book then she’d have stayed at home. If that made her a philistine in his eyes, there was no need to tell him just yet. She sat back in the comfy leather seats. She could regard it as an opportunity for him to teach her all about foreign film. Like Richard Gere introducing Julia Roberts to opera in Pretty Woman . Max could point out the story, the details, while she let the beauty and emotion wash all over her.
‘What do you think of Richard Gere?’ she said.
‘Who?’ he answered, as he looked over his shoulder to back his car out of the space. ‘Must take this old girl to the garage tomorrow,’ he said, giving the car’s dashboard an affectionate tap.
Max’s old pale blue Mercedes was his pride and joy. A classic car – so he kept telling her – she didn’t have to take his word for it as whenever they passed another Merc, the owners would wave hello at Max. Same as with 2CV owners – and 2CVs were definitely classic. Even had their own rallies.
‘Yeah right,’ he’d said when she told him. ‘They’re hardly classic cars, though, are they? They’ve the engine of a sewing machine, are made from tin, and threaten to tip over each time you take a sharp bend.’
‘I’ll have you know they race them in the Sahara Desert,’ said Polly, distinctly miffed as she didn’t like her car being insulted. ‘For your information, you can’t roll a 2CV.’
‘Yeah, and you can’t get one to do sixty, either.’
Polly had humphed at this point, sailing pretty close to an argument. Yet he could be very sweet. Could spend hours just pleasuring her, she reminded herself, smiling. Yes, he’d been very giving in bed. Had a body to die for, and she loved his cock. She squirmed just thinking about it and slid her hand onto his thigh. ‘Steady on,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to crash the car.’
Sitting in the dark of the cinema and hugging her coat about her knees, she smiled thinking of what was to come. Later they drove along the familiar Bedminster streets in companionable silence as she peered out into the night, her mind wandering until it alighted on her mother, and how she’d left Polly and her dad when the going got tough. I’m not going to be like Suze. Ever .
Her mother was just seventeen when she fell pregnant with Polly. Okay, now she was a mother herself, she had an inkling of how tough that must have been. She couldn’t imagine being anywhere near ready if she’d been expecting at that age. She hadn’t felt ready at thirty! Suze’s own parents had wanted Suze to have an abortion or the baby adopted, but Suze, determined to keep her baby, felt her only option was to stick with Jeff. He’d been more than happy to take her and the baby on, as he was besotted with the strikingly pretty and feisty Suze. When Polly – in her teens – had finally got up the courage to ask Suze why she’d left them, her answer was plain – she’d thought it for the best. ‘I had a nervous breakdown, hun. Took to the streets. Did drugs. You can guess the sort of thing – blah di blah. You were better away from all that.’
‘You’re quiet there,’ Max said, glancing briefly in Polly’s direction. ‘You okay?’
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Just tired.’
‘Not too tired, I hope.’
*
Weeks passed in relative harmony and soon acquired a rhythm – much like the tides that washed to and fro at the front of her house.
Polly saw Max a couple of times a week, and Spike would take Rowan out for the day, either on Saturday or Sunday – sometimes fitting in an extra visit during the week. Spike didn’t mention “the kiss”, and as he was clearly determined to ignore it, she decided to do the same. Max was fine when Polly asked if he minded not staying over when Rowan was at home, as she didn’t want Rowan to get confused. Could they leave it until it felt right? ‘Sure thing,’ he’d said, which gave Polly extra confidence that he was a solid bet. The two of them settled on either staying in, watching a DVD and then having sex on the sofa, or sneaking up to her bed for a while, or going out and having sex in his car (and once even on waste ground that was soon to be turned into flats and bars – which had been terribly exciting and made her feel like a teenager). Whatever they did, their dates would end with Max wandering home alone.
‘I quite like it,’ he said, snuggling down under her covers for a cuddle before getting dressed. ‘Feels kind of illicit. Like we’re having an affair.’
‘Oh,’ said Polly, not sure if this was a good thing or not.
‘Really, Poll,’ he’d reassured her, ‘I like going home on Shanks’s pony. The streets are quiet and it clears my head. Know what I mean?’
Polly gave herself a mental pat on the back at how civilised they were all being – she and Max, Spike and Bam. She was totally cool, she assured herself, with the whole Spike and Wham Bam thing by now – although not as comfortable as Mel, who’d taken to collectively naming the couple Spam – causing Polly to guffaw out loud each time she uttered, ‘Here comes Spam.’
Yes, they were all being grown up about it. Rowan was loving spending time with her father, and Max was polite if wary around Spike – but that was to be expected with two macho males – the wariness, that is. Spike and Bam fitted in sightseeing around visits to Rowan and visits to London to do with the sorting of Elspeth’s effects. Polly’s heart contracted when he told her that he’d sold his boat to Leo. ( Talk about burning boats , thought Polly – oh no, that’s burning bridges, isn’t it? Same difference .) She’d flinched a little whenever Spike mentioned his return to Australia. In October. Each time finding it hurtful that he seemed unmoved by the fact that he was more or less re-enacting his last departure from Polly’s life. Still, she couldn’t expect everyone to be as daft and sentimental as her, now, could she? All in all, things were going well.
There had been that moment when they’d both reached – at the same time – for Rowan’s little backpack, and their hands had accidentally touched, and she’d felt electricity zing up her fingers; her heart galumphing like a big posh girl galloping along a boarding school corridor. She tried not to imagine that Spike felt something too, even though she hadn’t imagined him staring at her hand, or that he had left his there a moment longer than was absolutely necessary… Or perhaps she was being fanciful and daft? She gave herself a mental shake. Whatever. Made no difference either way. She was totes cool – as Donna would have said – hashtag totes.