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‘Don’t be a stranger to us,’ she said, releasing her and then pulling her back in for a second hug. She thought it was way too early for her to leave them, but she shouldn’t interfere.
Chris picked up the suitcase that Marielle had packed Sabrina’s stuff into and stepped towards the door.
Teddy kicked against his urge to crush Sabrina to his big Italian chest. It wouldn’t have been respectful but, more than that, he was worried he wouldn’t have been able to let her go. Instead his hands came up to cup her face and he held it as if it were a precious thing.
‘You know where we are if you ever need us,’ he said.
And she couldn’t answer because she had no breath in her body. Such a small gesture, yet it lit up every fibre and tissue, every nerve and neuron in her body.
Teddy and his mother watched the van drive off and waved and stood long after it was out of sight, and Teddy hoped she would fit into the Polly Potter-shaped hole she had left. It was going to take some doing, and he wished he could be the one to hold her when it got too much for her head, as it inevitably would, because it was already too much for his and he needed her to hold him too.
There was an unfortunate error in yesterday’sDaily Trumpetin which we referred to Mr Brian Cherry as acting chief defective in the Middlesbrough police force. This should have read that Mr Cheery is acting chief detective in the Middlesbrough police farce.
Chapter 51
The house, when they got to it, was as familiar to her as if she had merely been on holiday for a couple of weeks and had returned home. It was odd how much was flying back to her now, like old photographs being developed in chemicals; shapes were forming, blurs crispening. She looked around at the kitchen taking it all in, noticing the chipped tiles and thinking they needed replacing and the cupboard door which wasn’t square in its frame. This was Polly’s world. She was Polly Potter, not Sabrina Anderson, and she had to get used to being her again.
Will put the kettle on while his dad took her things upstairs.
‘It must be beyond strange to be back,’ he said, watching her eyes roam around the room and wondering if she was comparing it to the light and cheerful house they had collected her from. His mouth was crowded with questions but he didn’t want to deluge her with them. It would all come out in time. And so would the fact that for six and a half weeks no one had tried to find her because they thought she was living the life of Riley with a lover somewhere when in fact she’d been robbed and attacked, and god knows whereshe would have ended up if those nice people hadn’t been looking after her. Teddy Bonetti said that someone had found her passport and that’s how they’d finally managed to get in touch and Will then wondered why they hadn’t gone down the police route either. Surely they would have been able to get her back here sooner if they had.
‘We’ll have to get on to the insurance about the car,’ said Chris, appearing at the bottom of the stairs.
‘That can wait a bit, surely,’ said Will.
‘I’ll sort it, I don’t expect Polly to if she’s…’ Chris tapped his head. Will cast him a look.
‘The important thing is that we draw a line in the sand and start afresh from here,’ said Chris. ‘We’ll patch you up good as new.’
I really hope you keep to your word, Dad, thought Will.You nearly lost her twice, so look after her this time.
Polly slept in the small room at the back of the house where most of her things were in boxes and suitcases. Apparently losing her job had affected her greatly, Chris told her, that’s why she’d packed all her stuff up but then ran away without taking it, which certainly illustrated her state of mind at the time. He handed a letter to her which had the company name Business Strength in red lettering with a bull logo, which wasn’t at all familiar. Chris said he’d opened it hoping it might give them a clue where she’d gone. She didn’t recognise the name of the firm but she did know the name at the bottom of the letter: Jeremy Watson. She could bring him to mind, tall and angular and sarcastic, and he came with a rush of bad feeling. The letter said he would like to address a misunderstanding and reinstate her to her old position with immediate effect and could she please ring HR at herearliest convenience to confirm she would be returning. She remembered Sheridan whom she used to sit next to calling him Jeremy Twatson, Germany, Jiminy, Jeremeny, and she let loose a burst of laughter. She was mending; she was getting it back at a rate of knots now, Polly’s life, even if it did seem so much less bright than Sabrina’s.
Over the next couple of days, Polly emptied all the boxes in the spare room and put everything back where she presumed it once lived; she pressed the creased clothes and hung them up. Then she set to cleaning the house, which badly needed a spruce. Mopping the floor made her think of Teddy’s restaurant, the coffee-filled air, the music playing, the cheery banter, Flick quizzing her about things to do with how businesses operated as they set the tables together. She wondered if Cilla was working hard to repair their relationship, if Marielle was being looked after by her friends… and if Teddy was okay. She missed them all, but especially him. She closed her eyes and thought of walking alongside him that day on the beach, their toes pushed into the sand. And she thought of her face in his hands, looking into his kind, blue eyes, wishing he would lower his lips to hers. They’d forget her far more quickly than she would forget them; she was a mere short interlude in their lives. One day she would go and visit them, but it wouldn’t be the same as being part of them.
She found the file with all her creative writing in it and she half-laughed reading about evil Jasper, the shadowy figure she’d thought she was running from, who was just a character from her imagination. But if she’d known that, she would probably have sought a quicker route back home and not grown as close to the Bonetti family. Would that have been better than becoming attached and then havingto wrench herself away from them? There was her poem about Tom, the lovely old cat next door. She could see him now clear as day, stretched out blissfully on her young-girl knees. Such moments of brightness only shone like diamonds because they were surrounded by such a sea of sadness. No wonder she had built her own world in her imagination where Ed and Rina and Linnet had breathed and loved and laughed for longer.
As for Sabrina, no wonder she had imagined she was her. Sabrina was herself augmented, braver and ballsier, the woman Polly wished she was, enough to have become her. Even if it had just been for a few glorious weeks.
She rang Business Strength and spoke to the HR department and made an appointment to go in and see Marjorie Wright herself the next afternoon, the head honcho. She could remember her clearly, her suits with theDynastyshoulder pads and no-nonsense manner tempered with innate fairness. Someone she associated with a better past of the company, when it had been Northern Eagles.
That evening she made a meal for two for herself and Chris. She needed to get to know this man again, the man she had been with for eight years but she didn’t have eight years of memories with. He came home from work with a bunch of flowers for her and apologised that they looked half-dead but it was the last lot in the shop. She tipped some dried pasta into the pan and her mind teleported over to the restaurant where the pasta was fresh, where the air was scented with garlic and the ragu sauces bubbled. Polly Potter felt like a coat she had taken off, left aside and then put back on to find it no longer fitted. But it was her coat all the same, it was her life, and she’d have to adjust it to make it fit. It was Sabrina Anderson who was made up, imagined, so why didshe feel so much more solid than the ‘real Polly’?
‘This is nice, like old times,’ Chris said. ‘I’ve missed us eating together. We did it nearly every night.’ Sabrina noticed how fast he wolfed it down, barely tasting it. She’d only eaten half hers when he got up, shoved his plate in the sink and said that there was a football match on he really needed to see, was that all right? There would be plenty of other nights when they could draw it out a bit. And she answered that it was fine because she didn’t have that much to say to him anyway.
She caught the train into Leeds the next afternoon wearing a newly washed and pressed black suit. She teamed it up with a pale blue shirt, one with thin stripes, vertical, not horizontal, not like the Breton top she’d worn for her spy mission with Teddy.Teddy, Teddy, Teddy.All roads seemed to lead back to him, and to the people by the seaside who had embraced her.
There was an incongruence between her memory and reality as she approached the place where she had worked for so many years. The massive, kickass blue signage with the flying eagle had been replaced with a black bull’s head, which looked more demonic than animal, and red lettering:Business Strength, and she thought how bland it seemed, how weak compared to the old name which she knew rang with a long history of excellence.
She walked into the building, through reception and up the stairs, turning left through the double doors. Her legs remembered where to go as if she’d been there only yesterday. A mini-bomb of thoughts exploded by the coffee machine there as she imagined the mighty figure of Alan Eagleton hitting it with his fist when it didn’t deliver.It’s got a grudge against me, this bugger.He used to say it was hauntedby the spirit of his ex-wife, even though she was still very much alive, and Polly thought that it was good to have such memories of him returning to her again.
Marjorie’s PA walked Polly into her office where Marjorie herself greeted her warmly, produced her hand and held Polly’s, rather than shaking it. They sat down then. Marjorie’s office felt like part of a comfortable past where she was as happy as she was with the Bonettis, because it was the people who made the magic.
‘I haven’t seen you to talk to properly for so long,’ said Marjorie, her voice brimming with genuine concern. She thought Polly looked different somehow. She’d taken to wearing a red lipstick that suited her, even changed her. Or maybe it was just being away from this hellhole for a while that had done that.
‘I’m so sorry to hear you’ve… had a few problems that you really shouldn’t have had.’
Polly hadn’t mentioned anything about her loss of memory, not yet, so she let Marjorie enlighten her on what those few problems were.
