Obeying Polly’s instructions, Isaac avoids going anywhere near her for the rest of the evening. He goes for a long walk and when he gets back it’s dark and her door is still closed. The dishwasher is on and the kettle is still warm so he assumes she’s had an early supper and gone to bed at the same time as Reggie. The house is very quiet.
The next morning, the reason for the lack of noise is clear. When Polly still hasn’t appeared and it’s a while after Reggie’s usual breakfast time, Isaac plucks up his courage and calls up the stairs to see if she’d like a cup of tea. When no reply comes, he goes up, knocks twice and then tentatively opens her door. His stomach flips when he sees to his horror that her bed is neatly made, Reggie’s cot is devoid of toys and her enormous suitcase is missing from the top of the wardrobe.
Panicking, he calls her mobile time after time but only gets voicemail. Her calm words asking him to leave a message makes him want to cry. Why didn’t he insist they talked things through right away and more to the point, where has she gone?
If Isaac felt strange without Lucia, he revises his feelings when Polly and Reggie go. Now it’s much worse, in fact it’s heartbreakingly lonely. When he hears the jangle of the doorbell, he leaps to his feet, convinced Polly’s back even though she still has her own key, but the woman on the doorstep is taller and more elegant than the familiar elfin figure of their lodger.
‘Rowan,’ he says. ‘What are you doing here?’
She laughs. ‘Thanks for the warm welcome, Isaac, I’ve called round on my way to work to make sure you and Polly are managing without Lu.’
‘Well, you can come in if you like,’ he says rather ungraciously, ‘but it’s just me – Polly isn’t here. I’m guessing she must have packed and called a taxi to the train station while I was out last night but I think she only took the basics, so she must be coming back … mustn’t she?’
Isaac opens the door wider and Rowan follows him into the kitchen, sniffing appreciatively when she smells toast. He gestures to the bread on the board and she nods.
‘You’re changing, Isaac,’ Rowan says, sitting at the table. ‘At one time you’d never have noticed I wanted some toast unless I grabbed yours off your plate and started eating it. Where’s my friend gone at this time in the evening? I hope nothing’s wrong with Reg?’
Isaac cuts two slices of bread and puts them in the toaster while he tries to decide what to say. ‘She’s fine, just not at home at the moment. Rowan … erm … how much do you know about Polly’s background before she came here?’ he says in the end.
She looks at him with her head on one side. ‘Pretty much everything, I think,’ she says. ‘We had quite a lot of wine the last time we went out and she needed a shoulder to cry on. I know about her sister and Reg and so on. Why?’
Isaac is starting to feel better. The comforting smell of toast cooking and the presence of kind, practical Rowan are going a long way to bring him back from the edge of despair, but the thought of Polly out in the world away from her new almost-family is still making his stomach hurt. He waits for the toast to pop up and hands it to Rowan, passing butter and marmalade out of the fridge before answering.
‘Yes, but how much about all that did she tell you?’ Isaac says, sitting down opposite his guest.
She shrugs. They look at each other as they eat, and Isaac can see that she’s unsure about breaking confidences, just as he is. They’ve reached an impasse.
‘Look, let’s have a cup of tea and compare notes,’ Rowan says, when they can’t spin out their breakfast any longer. ‘I know we’ve both got Polly’s welfare at heart so it can’t hurt to talk about her in private if we promise it won’t go any further.’
Isaac nods thankfully, and they’ve soon got their hands around big mugs of tea, waiting to see who’s going to begin. Rowan clears her throat.
‘Here goes. As far as I know, Polly has no children of her own. Reg is her sister’s boy. His mum was only twenty-one when she died last summer, and he was around a month old then. Polly’s mother has had a bit of a breakdown from all the grief and stress and has gone away for a while, so Polly’s been left holding the baby, literally. It’s all very sad.’
Isaac can see how affected by the story Rowan is, but he has to find out if she’s been told the rest. ‘Do you know anything else about Polly’s sister?’ he asks. He can feel the tension in his shoulders and a headache starting to pulse over one eye.
Rowan gives him a long, hard look and clearly decides there’s no point in avoiding the next part. ‘Polly told me that her sister Alice was at uni in Leeds when she got pregnant with Reggie. At first, she kept it secret but when Polly and her mum made a surprise visit up there to see why they hadn’t heard from her, Alice blurted it all out. She hadn’t told anyone else, so they persuaded her to come home with them, because she obviously wasn’t going to any lectures. She was living in a total mess of unwashed clothes and wasn’t eating properly. And after that Alice came back with them too and stayed at home, so she could have the baby there.’
Rowan gets up to pour more tea for them both from Lucia’s substantial red teapot. She puts a hand briefly on Isaac’s shoulder before she sits down again and he finds himself, unusually, longing for her to hug him. Perhaps he really is changing?
‘Polly and her mum thought Alice was coping. She was very quiet most of the time, but she adored Reggie and she cared for him well. The day she … she …’ Rowan’s eyes are brimming with tears now and Isaac passes her a piece of kitchen roll and waits.
‘Anyway, that day, Alice seemed her normal self – well, normal for Alice – so the other two thought they were safe to leave her for a while. You know what happened next, don’t you?’
They are both silent for a few moments, as if paying some sort of tribute to the sad, dead girl. Then Rowan stirs herself.
‘And the burning question is, who was Reggie’s father? Polly thinks it’s you, Isaac. You were up at Leeds at the same time before you dropped out. You and Alice were friends, weren’t you? You were seeing each other. Polly came here to find you when her other investigations came to nothing. You’re her last hope and I think she’s been pinning everything on you being the dad.’
Isaac can’t speak for a while. He swallows hard and remembers the night before when Polly threw these same accusations at him. He’s still reeling.
Rowan covers his hand with hers and the warmth is deeply comforting. ‘Is it true?’ she asks gently.
He shakes his head, still speechless.
‘You’re definitely not Reggie’s dad? How can you be sure?’
Isaac’s face is burning now, and the headache has grown to epic proportions. He wonders if he’s going to throw up. Hopefully not, he hates sick. Rowan presses his hand and waits.
‘I know he isn’t mine because I never slept with Alice. I’ve never slept with anyone,’ he croaks.
There, it’s out. The shame, the embarrassment, the echoes of Alice’s sobs of rejection after he tried and failed. He’s twenty-one years old and he’s never done more than kiss a girl. He can’t look at Rowan. She must be laughing at him too.
‘But you and Alice were friends?’ Rowan persists. She seems to be skipping over his shameful confession for some reason.
Isaac nods. ‘I thought we were more than friends. I wanted us to be a proper couple. She let me kiss her and then … anyway, nothing happened.’ He risks a glance at Rowan. She carries on, frowning.
‘What I can’t understand is why you didn’t put two and two together when you realised Polly was from up north and had a sister called Alice. Didn’t it ring a bell? I know it could have been a coincidence but surely …’
‘Polly doesn’t like to mention her sister by name, so I didn’t pick up on who she was. I assumed it was because the whole thing was so painful, but maybe she was keeping the details secret until she’d sussed me out?’ Isaac says, relieved to have a different angle to explore.
‘And you never heard rumours about a student having committed suicide after you left Leeds?’
Isaac shakes his head. ‘I made sure nobody could get in touch with me after I got home. I was … pretty messed up.’
He gazes into the distance, lost in thought. After a moment he says ‘Alice always referred to her big sister as ‘Lark’. The had pet names for each other. They wrote each other long letters and she’d show me them sometimes, but Polly only signed with a picture of a little bird. Her pet name for Alice was ‘Owl’. I forget why.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ says Rowan, waving a hand dismissively. ‘but the thing is, if you’re not Reggie’s father, who is? Polly says she’s discounted everyone else in the gang of students Alice hung around with.’
Rowan waits for Isaac to answer her question for what seems like a long time, sipping her third mug of tea and leafing through a magazine she’s found on the table.
‘You might as well tell me the whole thing, Isaac,’ she says eventually, when the silence is getting oppressive. ‘You’ll feel better if you do.’
‘I doubt it. Okay then, if you must know, Polly probably went away because I hurt her feelings. I’m good at that,’ Isaac adds, ‘I don’t have a stop button when I’m saying what I think.’
‘I’ve noticed,’ Rowan says drily, ‘but that can sometimes be a good thing. It cuts out misunderstandings at least.’
Isaac considers this angle. ‘Not this time. I told her too much about Alice.’
‘Go on, don’t leave me in suspense.’
‘It’s hard to explain. Alice was unpredictable. It wasn’t just the mood swings; she got these weird obsessions about people. Her friendships never lasted long. She put people off by being so … so hard to get close to.’
‘She was unfriendly?’
‘No, it was the opposite. She was too intense. She’d fall for people in a big way, both men and women, and try really hard to make them love her. Then, if they did, she’d somehow manage to push them away.’
Isaac cringes as he remembers that last evening at the gig on campus, when he’d made one final attempt to get close to Alice, to put right the damage he’d done to her fragile ego. He’d waited until there was enough noise going on to mask what he wanted to say, and then told her he loved her, but as a friend. She’d not been able to hear him properly, so he’d bellowed out the words again, just at the moment when the band fell silent. In the split second before applause began, Isaac’s voice rang out clearly across the packed room.
‘It doesn’t matter if we never get naked together,’ he’d shouted, ‘I bloody love you.’
Stunned by the roar of incredulous laughter from the crowd that followed this revelation, Isaac ran full pelt down the corridor and out into the open area near his halls. He packed his few belongings in minutes and was on his way to the train station before anyone had noticed the trail of odd socks and papers he left behind along the corridor.
‘That sounds like a nightmare,’ says Rowan grimly. ‘What did you do next?’
‘Came home. Dad wasn’t impressed but Mum understood, I think. I only went to uni in the first place because Mum and Dad were so desperate to see me do well. I’m much happier now, especially with the new project taking off.’
Rowan gets up and takes the empty mugs to the sink. ‘I’ve got to go in a minute,’ she says, ‘and we haven’t even nearly finished. Who do you think the father is?’
This is a difficult one. Isaac still doesn’t want to badmouth Alice but it’s time for honesty at last. ‘If it wasn’t a student, I reckon it could be any one of three men. Alice was very good at covering her tracks, so her … well, her lovers, I guess, didn’t find out about each other.’
‘Really? I didn’t get the impression she was that sort of girl from Polly.’
‘She wasn’t, but Alice was clever at being what other people wanted her to be, chameleon-like. I don’t think she had any idea of the trouble she could cause. She just needed to be liked.’
‘Right. Well, go on.’
He shudders. It still seems unbelievable that Alice has gone for good, but the bare facts need airing now. ‘One of her men was a senior lecturer who was married with four children, another was the university bursar. He was a nasty piece of work and I think he might even have been blackmailing her in a half-hearted sort of way. She used to get weed for him. And the last possibility was the son of another tutor and he was only fifteen.’
‘Wow. Alice certainly knew how to cast her net wide. No wonder Polly couldn’t find the right one. Please tell me you didn’t tell her all this?’
Isaac can feel himself blushing.
‘You did, didn’t you? Oh, man – why?’
‘She asked me. And I didn’t want her to carry on thinking I’d let her sister down by leaving her pregnant. I’d never do that. Actually … I’d love to be Reggie’s dad. I think Polly might have gone back to her mum’s house. I know it’s in a village not far from Sheffield but I haven’t got her address.’
‘Have you phoned her?’
‘Yes. No answer.’
Rowan looks as if she doesn’t know whether to shake or hug him. Luckily, she goes for the hug, and Isaac relaxes into it, wondering why he’s resisted this basic human comfort for so long.
‘Right, I must go. Phone her again now. I’ll call back later to see if you’ve heard anything and I’ll ring her myself too. Look, I’ll get out of your way. I need to get to work.’
Isaac nods. He wishes she didn’t have to leave. The thought of another day without Polly is hideous. Isaac knows without the shadow of a doubt that he won’t be able to even begin to relax until Polly’s safely home with him for good.