Polly. Freya North

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      Polly rolled down her leggings, suddenly horribly aware of her bikini-line fuzz, pale thighs and rather bristly lower legs. Chip placed cool hands around her calf and lifted her leg on to his lap, admiring her smooth milky skin to himself.

      ‘Play much?’ he asked, pressing gently. ‘This hurt?’

      ‘No and yes!’ Polly all but yelled. Chip winced for her, holding her leg steady. And tenderly. And for longer than was probably necessary, not that Polly would have known. He hovered his hand above it; kept it there, suspended. Polly could feel a cushion of heat. Odd. It was soothing. It gave her a strange feeling.

      ‘That’s one helluva whack you’ve gotten yourself, lady!’

      ‘Dialect words,’ she quoted, in a bid to belittle the blush she knew she wore. ‘Those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.’

      ‘Hey?’ asked Chip.

      ‘Hardy,’ Polly nodded, adding ‘Thomas’ quickly before Chip could quote Nelson again.

      ‘You calling me an animal?’ he laughed, hovering a fist above her throbbing shin.

      ‘No, no, no. I’m far too genteel,’ Polly heard herself say.

      Chip sent her on her way with some arnica, a cool pack, and his assurance that there was no damage done.

      A very private, quiet side of Polly wasn’t so sure.

      Nor, Chip realized, removing the photograph of Jen from his desk and relegating it to the bottom drawer, was he.

      Max was shopping at Budgens in Belsize Park because he couldn’t face the one-way system encircling Sainsbury’s in Camden Town; he didn’t like Safeway because the television adverts irritated him supremely, and Waitrose in Swiss Cottage was far too extravagant midweek (which made the Rosslyn Delicatessen in Hampstead a luxury completely out of the question). Yet he loathed Budgens intensely. He only needed a few basics, few of which the store had anyway, but there he was, he realized, mainly because it was Polly’s stamping ground and therefore offered some connection, some comfort in lieu of the real thing. In lieu of an overdue letter.

      He bought half a basketful of provisions and was about to make a swift exit when the Lottery machine and the passport-photo machine suggested he do otherwise.

       I’ll buy a ticket for Polly!

       I’ll pose for some daft passport photos to send with it!

      He procrastinated for some time over which numbers to pick before marking off six boxes.

       27 for her age, 30 for mine, 5 for the years we’ve been together (and the weeks we’ve now been apart), 19 for the date in December when she’ll be home for Christmas. Damn, two more. 13 because I’m not suspicious, I mean superstitious, and because it equals ‘M’ in the alphabet. 16, likewise, for ‘P’.

      ‘How will I know if she’s won?’ he asked the sales assistant who regarded him most warily, not imagining that there was anyone in the UK who had never before bought a Lottery ticket.

      ‘It flashes up half-way through Blind Date,’ she informed him as if he was a halfwit.

      ‘On the television?’ Max asked, to her stupefied look. ‘When’s it on? Blind Date?’ he pressed, thinking the girl’s grimace of exasperation was merely some unfortunate facial mishap.

      ‘Sa-Urday nigh-,’ she said, dropping her ‘t’s in mystification, ‘’bou- eigh-.’

      Max thanked her and asked her what coins he needed for the passport-photo machine.

      While waiting for the snaps to develop, a sickening lurch hit his stomach.

       Oh bloody hell, the ice-cream!

      He’d treated himself to a comfort-size tub of Häagen-Dazs ‘Cookie Dough Dynamo’ which he had no intention of sharing with Dominic, no matter how starving his brother might be, how hard he might plead, how temptingly he might bribe. Currently, the tub was at the bottom of the plastic bag; Max could feel it because he was holding the bag next to him as he waited by the whirring passport machine. He looked at his watch and then at the store’s clock and estimated he had been faffing around, gambling and posing, for at least fifteen minutes since paying for his goods. He added on another ten minutes since he had plucked the ice-cream from the freezer cabinet and placed it with relish in the then empty basket.

      Still the machine rumbled and clicked and though he looked up the chute he could see nothing. He sat down, alongside a cackle of old ladies, on the orange chairs provided by the store.

       Nothing for it, I’ll have to salvage what I can.

      He took the ice-cream tub from the bag and gave it a gentle squeeze. It yielded ominously quickly to his touch. He eased the lid off easily and pulled back the film cover, licking it meticulously. Slowly, he licked at the goopy surface of the ice-cream. Actually, it hadn’t melted much at all. But enough, all the same, to warrant him lapping at the softer parts.

      ‘Like the cutest puppy,’ Jen Carter, bearing witness to the whole episode while she waited in the queue, said to herself.

      As Max was waiting for the machine to blow-dry the photos which had finally appeared, a blonde woman, lean and too tanned for this time of year, approached him.

      ‘Looks like you could use one of these,’ she said in an American accent, offering him a Maryland cookie. He looked at her bewildered.

       How can biscuits help with drying photos?

      ‘Sorry?’ he said, a quick glance at the machine to see that the blow-drying was still in operation.

       Come on, machine.

      ‘For your ice-cream?’ said the woman, tapping the tub with the biscuit packet. ‘Like, in place of a spoon.’

      ‘Right, right!’ Max responded, a little embarrassed, glaring at the machine to hurry up. He’d recently read an article about supermarkets being hotbeds for ‘singles in search of sex’ and was increasingly worried that there were ulterior motives for this woman and her cookies. The machine was silent. Thank God.

       My hands are full; bugger and damn!

      ‘Here, let me,’ the woman offered.

      ‘No, no,’ rushed Max, ‘honestly.’

      Too late.

      She had the photos. Though she pretended not to look, she’d have seen the one of him pulling his monkey face. And the one below of his wide-eyed theatrical pout. In a glance.

      ‘Er,’ Max stumbled, ‘thanks, right, yes, thank you. Fine. They’re for my girlfriend. She’s in America.’

      ‘My home, my country,’ sighed the woman, clasping hands (and the photos) to her breast and smiling.

      ‘Yes,’ said Max, inadvertently clapping eyes on her breast, ‘Vermont.’

      The СКАЧАТЬ