Polly

‘I was thinking, you must have been here a month and I had no idea,’ he shrugged.

‘’Bout what?’ Polly asked.

‘’Bout who’s standing in for Jen Carter,’ Chip explained. ‘I guess I just don’t have much cause to go to the main buildings, being the Athletic Trainer. Hell, Stuyvesant House could burn down and I’d probably not know. I’m kinda out of the way here.’

‘What does an athletic trainer do exactly?’ Polly asked, perusing the walls of Chip’s office. ‘We don’t have such things in our school, in England full stop, I don’t think,’ she continued, admiring the array of photos depicting him excelling in a variety of sports. A cabinet full of medals and trophies too. What a hero!

‘Well,’ said Chip, ‘I’m on call if there’s a sports-related injury. Or if a kid’s training, I’ll devise a programme. If they have a bad back, or whatever, I see to it. I administer physio, rehab, hydrotherapy – you know?’

‘Really!’ Polly gasped in awe, pitying poor Miss Henry who looked like a man but preferred women and was head of P.E. at BGS. ‘Hydrotherapy?’

‘Sure,’ shrugged Chip. ‘We have a couple of whirlpools,’ he explained, as if they should be no more eye-opening than a couple of table-tennis tables. ‘So what can I do for you? Or did you just come by to say hi?’

‘Hi, hullo. Actually, it’s my leg,’ Polly stressed. ‘Young AJ and I collided.’

‘Not on some fine detail of Shakespeare, surely – I know the kid’s opinionated but hey!’

‘No no!’ Polly laughed, warming to Chip’s wit and smile. ‘Basketball. And anyway, it’s Hardy at the mo’.’

‘Kiss me?’ asked Chip, turning his head and looking at Polly through slanted eyes.

‘Pardonwhat?’ Polly reacted whilst struggling against being swallowed whole by his gaze.

‘Kiss me Hardy?’ Chip illumined, the picture of innocence.

Look at that picture of him finishing the Boston Marathon. How can anyone look that composed and, um, pleasing, after twenty-six miles?

‘And 385 yards,’ said Chip, reading her mind.

‘Thomas,’ she stressed, leaping back on to safer ground, ‘Hardy. Thomas Hardy.’

‘I gathered,’ Chip said, motioning Polly to a chair while he drew another up close.

‘Far from the Madding Crowd,’ Polly continued vaguely, wondering if Chip’s tan was genuine.

‘Yup,’ said Chip, ‘as I said, I’m pretty cut off out here. Now, let’s take a look at this leg. You want to take your pants down?’

What!

No!

Yes?

‘Your trousers?’ he spelt out with a ‘w’ and a ‘z’.

Yes!

No?

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!