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‘Bye, Orrible.’
As Orrible sauntered out into the bright and beautiful day, he thought how life-affirming it felt to do a good deed. Not as life-affirming as getting Billy the Donk off his back, but in a week when he’d done both and become an engaged man, he felt as if the sun had come out especially to shine on him.
Will never shouted at people over the telephone but today he made an exception. He’d given whoever had picked up the phone at theDaily Trumpetboth barrels. His father had been totally misguided suggesting theDaily Trumpetas a way of contacting Polly.Polly Pocket? Could they have got it any more wrong? And as for calling his father Christ… They’d put the wrong month in, too – she’d been missing since May not March. He just hoped that poor old Sinitta had more luck finding her family, but at least there was plenty of hope for the foul-mouthed parrot. She’d promised to refund him and put in a correction on Wednesday, if they had the room, she said. He said that they’d better have the room, then apologised for snapping at her when it wasn’t her fault. He reckoned that anyone who handled calls from the public for theTrumpetmust be hard as nails and he just hoped they were paid well for the flack they must take.
First thing in the morning, he and ‘Christ’ were going to the police station as his pal on the force had advised him to.
Chapter 48
The sunny weather had brought Teddy’s restaurant extra business, as people weren’t ready to say goodbye too early to the day and had started their week off with a teatime treat. They’d had to set up tables outside to accommodate everyone. There were a few repeat customers who had posted reviews and presented their vouchers for free desserts or coffees, which was good. The flow of troll reviews had slowed down but it hadn’t yet stopped; there were still some getting through. They were obvious fakes because when Flick answered them asking for details of their bookings, they didn’t respond.
Marielle had walked down to check on Flick and ended up being drafted in to help wait on tables. It did her good; it took her thoughts away from a past she couldn’t alter and into a present where everything was better than she’d imagined it might be when she was sitting at home and worrying. Flick was still sorting things out in her mind, but there seemed to be more advantages than disadvantages for her to the disclosure. If Teddy was her brother, then that made Marielle her sort of step-mum, and she was well happy with that.
They closed the doors just after ten-thirty. The waitersgot straight off because they were going to a nightclub in Whitby. Marielle envied them their energy. She started to strip the tables with Sabrina, who told her she could manage but George could do with some help in the kitchen.
As Sabrina was taking a bag of rubbish out to the bins outside she heard George say, ‘Marielle, I don’t know if this would be of interest to you but I have two tickets for the theatre to seeMy Big Fat Greek Wedding…’ And when she came back in, George’s face didn’t read that Marielle had turned him down. She grinned. Dear George and Marielle, they just needed a little push towards each other to start things off and then they’d be fine, she was sure of it.
Teddy’s eyes locked with hers as she was wiping down the hatch.
‘Are you okay?’ she quizzed him.
‘You’reaskingme?’
‘Yes, I am,’ she said. ‘I know that Flick and your mum have had a lot to take in this weekend, but it can’t have been easy for you either.’
He looked at her, really looked at her, into her beautiful, unusual gold-flecked eyes, at her hair caught up in a ring of elastic and her flour-splattered black top, and he could so easily have reached through the hatch, placed his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her soft, full lips towards his own. She had stirred up his life by doing nothing really but being in it; his feelings for her were strengthening day by day and he was about to lose her any time soon, he could feel it. He knew his mum was hurting, he knew that Flick was trying to get her head around it all, but Sabrina was the only one who had seen through his façade and realised that he too might be sorely affected by what had happened all those years ago between his father and Cilla.
‘I’m disappointed in him,’ said Teddy, careful not to let his mother and George behind him hear. ‘He thought he was a good father and he was, but when he hurt my mother, he hurt me too and I’m not sure he ever thought about that. He saw us as two separate pieces of his life. I wish I could have said this to him, got it all out in the open instead of keeping it inside me. You always think you’ll have more time though, don’t you? We should say the things that are important… before it’s too late.’
He was looking at her so intently, as if he had something important to say to her. Then Flick appeared at her side and the moment was lost.
‘I forgot to give you this, sorry, it was just so busy earlier on. Someone dropped it off for you on a motorbike. Said it was a present from a well-wisher. Sweet.’
She had a parcel in her hand and on the front was written in Sharpie,For the lady who has lost her memory.
Sabrina tore off the brown paper to find a leather handbag with white waves of salt stains covering it. Puzzled, she unzipped it and pulled out what was inside. Teddy watched her reach for the passport and open it slowly. He saw her breath catch in her throat as she turned to the back and he registered the moment when she saw her own face staring up at her from the page.
Chapter 49
Sabrina didn’t sleep well that night. The name ‘Polly Potter’ rolled around in her brain as if it were a sole piece of laundry caught up in a very fast spin cycle. She couldn’t be Polly Potter. Polly was someone different. She’d worked with her in the past, she was sure. She was a business analyst too and had a partner called Chris and he had a sister who was a bit of a nightmare and Chris had a son whom Polly really liked and a daughter she was wary of. She remembered more about Polly than she did herself. And Polly used to live next door to people who had a ginger cat and she’d feed it cheese and…
Sabrina groaned into her pillow. ShewasPolly; all the facts said so, but she didn’t feel like her. They were like different people but at the same time one had obviously become the other; they blurred and crossed, switched and swapped. So where did Polly end and Sabrina start? None of it made any sense and besides, Sabrina Anderson was her anchor in this madness; her identity was one of the only things she had been sure of and yet it had been a lie. Where did that leave her?
There was an emergency number in the passport for WillBarrett. Sabrina would ring him first thing the next morning; it had been too late by the time they got home after work. Teddy had driven her and Marielle home in a strangely sombre mood after such a jolly evening. She knew how he felt. Finally knowing who she was should have been a cause for celebration and yet all she felt was confusion and dread.
‘You don’t have to go back yet,’ Teddy had told her before he left. ‘I for one don’t feel comfortable placing you in the hands of people you might not even recognise. Stay and build the relationship from here, if that’s what you want to do.’
She didn’t want to go back but the time had come when she had to. Her head hurt thinking about it; being sure she was one person when in fact she was another, remembering things that hadn’t happened, forgetting things that had. She was sick of it all. She couldn’t live being more holes than whole; she needed to fill in the missing spaces, and it was taking too long to do that being so far away from wherever she – Polly – came from.
What really swung it for her was that these good people had their own lives to attend to, especially given the dynamite that Cilla had thrown into the middle of them. They needed to concentrate on recalibrating and repairing after that, not worry about her any more. They should prioritise themselves, not her. She had to help herself from now on.
So lying awake, staring at the ceiling, she formulated a plan she would stick to. Tomorrow, she would go back to the life of Polly Potter and take it from there. The doctors at the hospital had already warned her that the restoration of emotional connections might lag behind everything else, but with self-imposed psychological blockages, there was no definitive guidebook, no logical order of how things would play out, no promises or guarantees. Her best shot at fullrecovery was going home, even if by the definition of the word, home felt like where she was now and not where she was bound for.
Part Three
I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become
CARL JUNG
