Polly. Freya North

in twelve hours’ time. Currently, Mikey McCabe is laying her down under the trees. Max isn’t to know, though. How can he know what Polly is dreaming?

      Polly beat Max to it. She skipped dinner easily because she hadn’t been able to eat all day anyway. She felt wretched, believing herself to have been unfaithful. She also felt sick with worry that she was far from Max’s mind anyway, that she was perhaps slipping from his heart. Why else would he have forgotten to call her? Why else would he be so preoccupied with some stupid party of Dominic’s? Adrenalin surged as she dialled.

      ‘Hullo?’

       Bloody Dominic.

      ‘Dominic, it’s Polly. Max, please.’

       I don’t like you any more.

      ‘Hey Polly!’

       Party animal, bad influence.

      ‘Max, please.’

      ‘Sure,’ said Dominic, unaware of his crime and presuming Polly merely being frugal with the transatlantic call. ‘Take care, girl, speak to you soon.’

       Hopefully not.

      ‘Polly?’

       He sounds tired.

      ‘Hullo.’

       She sounds low.

      ‘I,’ stumbled Max, ‘I wrote to you today. Posted it Swiftair.’

      ‘Thank you,’ Polly responded, having still not received his first letter.

      Well, have you written to him?

       I’ve almost finished a very long letter, actually, that I started before I even left England and continued on the flight.

      ‘Saturday?’ she started, feeling low and little and at last forgetting all about Mikey.

      ‘God, I’m so sorry about all of that,’ Max said, ‘I felt terrible.’

      ‘So did I,’ Polly said carefully. She could envisage Max so clearly, most probably sat on the kitchen table, socked feet on a chair. Maybe in his Norwegian fisherman jumper. No, it’s still mild; probably a polo shirt on top of a T-shirt.

      ‘Polly?’ said Max, leaving the kitchen table and pressing his forehead against the fridge, ‘still there?’

      ‘Yes,’ she affirmed quietly.

      ‘I don’t like this,’ Max said sadly.

      ‘What?’ responded the tiny voice over an ocean and a continent away, ‘what’s “this”?’

      ‘Speaking to you,’ he explained, ‘on the phone. It seems only to magnify the physical distance between us.’

      Polly was quiet. Max continued, ‘I find it painful. I can’t say enough. I can’t say it right. As you said, the telephone is cruel, Button, it gives you false hope of intimacy. You sound so clear. You sound just like you. You sound so bloody near. But you’re not. I could turn around, positive that you’re just beside me. See, but you’re not. Do you see?’

      ‘I do,’ answered Polly, searching for Max in Kate’s kitchen and not finding him. He had shed light on a situation she previously could not fathom and she felt relieved and settled for it. ‘Do you know, you’re quite right, Max. I think if I hadn’t actually phoned on Saturday – just heard about the evening in a sentence in a letter some time later instead – I wouldn’t have felt so —’ Words eluded her.

       Max, Max, I do love you. I know that I do.

      ‘Polly? You wouldn’t have felt so – what?’

      ‘Um,’ she pondered, ‘isolated?’

      ‘Ah.’

      ‘So open to wild suggestion.’

       On my part as much as yours. Bloody Mikey McCabe – as if!

      They fell silent and listened to each other breathe. If Max closed his eyes, he could almost feel the top of her head by his lips. Polly shut her eyes and conjured Max standing right beside her.

      ‘Max,’ she said, without opening her eyes so that he’d remain there for a few moments longer, ‘what are you wearing?’

      ‘My navy polo shirt and a red T-shirt, why?’

      ‘Just wondered,’ Polly replied with a smile. ‘I thought you were, you see. In your socks?’

      ‘Indeed. Bet you’re wearing your floaty brown skirt and your cream Aran knit?’

      ‘Spot on, boyo!’ said Polly in her black jeans and her new, grey, Hubbardtons Academy sweatshirt.

       But I love him. White lies are a lover’s duty. His happiness is my charge.

      ‘See,’ Max announced, ‘we don’t need the phone at all, do we? I think I feel closer to you without it – do you agree?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Polly, crying silently, wishing she was in her brown skirt and Aran knit, ‘it’s true. The distance is spelt out so heartlessly by the phone.’

      ‘So, shall we telepathize instead of telephone? See how it goes?’

      ‘Let’s,’ Polly agreed, ‘and write. Often.’

      ‘Weekly,’ Max assured her.

      ‘At the very least.’

      ‘Swiftair,’ Max stressed.

      ‘’Kay,’ said Polly.

      Polly slept superbly that night. She dreamt Max had appeared at Hubbardtons in his Beetle. When she had asked him what on earth he was doing there (her feet off the floor, her arms clamped about his neck and his answer initially swamped by her kisses) he said his studio was around the corner, like it always was, silly old thing.

      Max slept fitfully. He knew he’d made a sensible suggestion, done the right thing (as was his wont), but it currently served only to acknowledge unequivocally that Polly was far away and for a long time too. It made him sad. Confused a little. How could he not want to speak to her directly? In his dream, he went to Polly’s flat expecting her to be there. Why wouldn’t she be? America? Where’s that then? Only Polly wasn’t there at all. The woman who answered the door had never heard of her. Come on in, please, she invited Max. They sat on the sofa that the woman assured him belonged to no Polly Fenton. She made him tea. She looked like a supermodel and she gave him a terrific blow job.

      Max wrenched himself awake in a sweat.

      ‘No!’

      He’d messed the sheets.

      ‘God, no.’

      He went to the kitchen, drank water and made himself cocoa. It was half four in the morning. It was still yesterday in Vermont.

       Shall I call her? Just quickly?

      He resisted.

      He felt awful.

       I don’t care if it was a dream. I can’t believe I did that to Polly.

      He slept the rest of the night on the sofa.

      EIGHT

      The first month crawled along for Max but for Polly, it passed at more of a scamper. She had little time to herself but as that was something she had never craved, she did not really notice. She was happy to be so occupied; if there wasn’t an evening meeting, a study hour to supervise, lessons to prepare or essays to mark, Polly was easily persuaded to join a group of teachers for a drink at the picturesque village of Grafton, or a movie in the nondescript town of Normansbury in lieu of a sensible early night. Her advisees also took much of her spare time but