Polly by Freya North Page A

theatrical pout. In a glance.
    â€˜Er,’ Max stumbled, ‘thanks, right, yes, thank you. Fine. They’re for my girlfriend. She’s in America.’
    â€˜My home, my country,’ sighed the woman, clasping hands (and the photos) to her breast and smiling.
    â€˜Yes,’ said Max, inadvertently clapping eyes on her breast, ‘Vermont.’
    The woman’s smile fixed itself and then dropped. She scoured Max’s face and he found himself rooted by a pair of very blue eyes.
    â€˜Vermont?’ she gasped, ‘you wouldn’t be—?’ She let the sentence hang. England sure was small – but not that small, surely.
    Max’s eyes alighted on cat biscuits, tinned salmon and condensed milk visible in the woman’s plastic bag.
    Buster.
    â€˜You’re not—’ he stopped. They stared at each other, searching for some further clue.
    â€˜I’m Jen Carter,’ she laughed, eyes dancing while her brow twitched becomingly.
    â€˜Good Lord!’ Max chuckled, shaking his head and grinning back, ‘I’m Polly’s Max.’
    â€˜You don’t say.’
    â€˜I do,’ he assured her, ‘I am.’
    They shook their heads and then shook hands.
    â€˜Well well,’ Max said, handing Jen the ice-cream while he restored order to his shopping bag.
    â€˜Can I tempt you,’ Jen asked, ‘with Polly’s spoons? You want to eat up your ice-cream back at the apartment? Check the place over? Say hi to Buster?’
    What an offer. Of course he did.
    Aha. Is autumn to be a season of trysts? A helluva fruity mess? A little bit of harmless swinging? Mixing if not matching? Musical affairs? Bed jumping and wife swapping? But no one’s married here. Yet. Does that make it any less significant? Easier? Does that make it right? Or just not as wrong?
    Hold on, I thought these four characters were besotted with their true partners? Fenton and Fyfield. Miss American Pie and her hunk of Chip. It might be an interesting notion in terms of our tale’s plot – but what of the potential chaos in our characters’ lives? We know these people. The thought wouldn’t enter their minds, would it? Or if it did, if it crept in, it would be banished at once, of course. Or, if not quite
at once,
it would be considered carefully – and then rejected defiantly. Surely.

NINE
    W hile Jen cursed autumn for dressing the pavements in a lethal cloak of sodden leaves and for giving her a stuffy cold, Polly praised the fall frequently each day for its stunning blaze of cool fire. She was rarely without a smile or a spring to her step and her delight and her energy were infectious. Trudging across Hampstead Heath in its October livery of russets and browns was one thing, but jogging or cycling or sitting – just living – in Vermont, in a landscape which boasted every possible hue of red, orange and yellow was something else entirely.
    â€˜Forget Keats!’ Polly told her senior class, ‘“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”? I hardly think so. Don’t take any notice of him – he never came to Vermont, you see. But if he had, class, how do you think he would have described it? Anyone? Don?’
    â€˜Er, “season of pumpkin and palette of fire”?’
    â€˜Good! Laura?’
    â€˜â€œTrees clad the colour of passion; sun slumbering till spring”?’
    â€˜Super! Kevin?’
    â€˜â€œFall: the sweep of flame that is the swansong of the maple.”’
    â€˜Terrific! Gosh, look at it out there – come on, let’s spend the remainder of the lesson outside composing odes.’
    The Bench, Hockey Pitch
    19th October
    Darling Max,
    My class are composing odes to the fall so I thought I’d do the same but in letter form to you. I’ve told the seniors to forget Keats – do you think that very wicked? But most of them are eighteen years old, so I’m sure they can handle