The Way to a Woman's Heart (9 page)

Ash looked serious. ‘Sounds like a good idea, Ella. I’ve heard there’re some great whist drives and barn dances in these villages.’

‘Oh, ha-ha.’ Ella poked out her tongue.

‘Children!’ Poll frowned. ‘Where was I? Ah, yes, Mitzi. Mitzi has a really successful herbal cookery outlet – Hubble Bubble – and several uninformed people have accused her of witchcraft over the years. You’ll see – it’ll be just the same with poor Trixie. Mocked for believing in things that other people don’t understand. Anyway, Trixie couldn’t possibly be mad. She wears twinsets.’

‘Oh, that’s OK then,’ Ella giggled. ‘An insane arsonist fairy-believer in a twinset. Super.’

‘Don’t prejudge either of them, Ella. You wait until you meet them. They’re both sweethearts. Like Ash.’

Ash blushed.

‘And I thought it might be nice if we cooked a special welcome dinner for them. Ash can do the soup, I’ll do the main and you can do the pud. Does that sound OK with you two?’

‘Great,’ Ash said, leaning back in his chair. ‘It’ll be fantastic to work in your kitchen.’

‘Lovely. Ella?’

‘Yes, of course. You’ll just have to remind me what kleptomaniacs and arsonists like to eat.’

‘Now I know you’re teasing,’ Poll laughed. ‘But, seriously, now you know what I want to do and why I need you here, it hasn’t put you off, has it?’

‘I’d agreed to a three month trial – so I’m not going to renege on that. But I’m still honestly really not sure about it… them.’

‘You will be.’ Poll leaned across the table dangling beads in the cheese and pickles again and hugged her. ‘Thank you so much. You’re a real star. And you’ll love them as much as I do – and once you’ve met them, you’ll never want to leave here, I promise you.’

‘Sleep well?’ Poll looked up from the cooker as Ella, in cutoff jeans and a pale-blue T-shirt, pattered into the sun-filled kitchen the following morning.

‘Zonked,’ Ella said happily. ‘I haven’t slept like that in years. The bed just sort of snuggled round me and just as I was thinking I’d never get used to the darkness or the silence or being away from home, it was morning again. I didn’t even hear my alarm clock. Sorry if I’ve overslept. I know I should be working and getting George up and seeing to his breakfast and everything.’

‘Not today.’ Poll handed her a glass of orange juice and a mug of coffee. ‘Today we can all take things easy and get settled in properly before Billy and Trixie arrive tomorrow.’

‘But George –?’

‘Has been up since five and helped me collect the eggs for breakfast and is out in the garden adding more embellishments to your motorway.’ Poll grinned. ‘Actually, I thought
maybe you and Ash could get to know a bit about the surrounding area – although Ash has lived fairly locally anyway – but even I still get lost on some of the back lanes. And I do need some shopping, so I thought maybe you could take George and drive into Hazy Hassocks.’

‘With Ash as a tour guide?’ Ella grinned. ‘Sounds good to me. When do we start?’

‘After breakfast,’ Poll said firmly, heaping scrambled eggs on to chunky slices of toast. ‘Grab that tray please. There’s a love. It’s so hot, I thought we’d have ours in the garden.’

‘Bliss.’ Ella scooped up mugs, glasses, the jug of juice, knives and forks and plates on to the tray. ‘Oh, I’m so pleased I took this job.’

‘Are you? Really? Even though you’re not sure about why I’m doing it?’

‘Really.’ Ella nodded, following Poll out into the sweetly fragranced, sun-drenched garden with animals sprawled somnolently beneath the low-hanging lilac branches. ‘And I think I know why you’re doing it, Poll. And I think you’re amazing – it’s just…’

‘You’re not sure about Billy and Trixie?’

‘Well, no.’ Ella pulled out a chair and waved at an already dusty George. Oh, what a sweetheart George was, Ella thought as he waved a grubby fist cheerfully back at her, and what a lovely childhood he had. So safe and innocent and old-fashioned. ‘Especially Trixie and the fairy stuff. But if you say they’re OK, then I’m going to trust you.’

‘You’ll love them,’ Poll assured her. ‘They’ve had such a rotten time of it and I know all about rotten times, believe
me. And I just thought if I had the chance to make a difference to other people’s lives then I simply had to do it.’

Ella nodded round her scrambled eggs. ‘Yes, I understand that part – but rotten times? You? With all this? Surely not?’

‘It wasn’t always like this.’ Poll poured more coffee and juice. ‘In fact, it was all far from like this. Until Dennis – my husband – went, my life was pretty grim.’

‘Really? And I know I said I was nosy, and I don’t really want to pry, and you can tell me to mind my own business, but didn’t Mr Andrews want to be involved in this… altruism? Is that why he, er, you… ?’

Looking amused, Poll sipped her coffee. ‘Mr Andrews wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with this, no, and anyway, he’s dead.’

‘Oh, God, is he?’ Ella put her fork down quickly. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought you said you were divorced?’

‘I am.’ Poll laughed cheerfully. ‘Dennis wasn’t Mr Andrews. Mr Andrews was my father. He’s dead. Dennis is alive and well and living blissfully in Berne or Bulgaria or Brussels or somewhere with a Much More Suitable Woman.’

‘Ah, right.’

‘I kept my maiden name.’ Poll beamed across the table. ‘Because Dennis’s surname was Perkins – and with me being Poll – well, I certainly wasn’t going to be known as “Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green”.’

Ella frowned. Who the hell was Polly Perkins? And did Poll come from Paddington? ‘But what’s wrong with being Polly Perkins?’ she queried. ‘I’m not with you. And Paddington Green? Is that where you’re from?’

‘No! I’m Reading born and bred.’ Poll laughed loudly. ‘Bless you. I’d forgotten you’re so young. “Polly Perkins” was clearly way before your time. It’s a childhood rhyme, nursery rhyme, sing-along song, you know? I had enough problems with low self-esteem without adding that one to my repertoire. Dennis and I should never have got married – and not just because of the Polly Perkins thing… Still, once we were divorced, everything improved hugely.’

Ella frowned. Did this mean it was only after the divorce settlement that Poll could afford to renovate, furnish and decorate Hideaway Farm on a scale to rival Chatsworth? Hah! Right! Ella had always been scathing about women who bled their ex-partners dry. Poll’s selfless benevolence suddenly took a massive dip in her estimations.

‘Look,’ Poll said, smiling, ‘I wasn’t going to go into any of this until much later, but since we’ve started…’

Ella listened in increasingly stunned silence to Poll’s story of a venture into innocent middle-aged speed-dating and a rapid brief-lived marriage and the delight of George’s arrival and the even more rapid divorce.

‘. . . so you see, I made a huge mistake in marrying Dennis, the first man I’d ever been out with – the only man I’ve ever slept with – but it was worth every mismatched minute because it resulted in George.’ Poll smiled happily. ‘Married at forty, a mum at forty-two, divorced by the time I was forty-five. Not a great track record, but still, nothing’s ever truly bad, is it?’

‘Er, no, probably not. But, hadn’t you had, um,
any
boyfriends before?’

Poll shook her head. ‘Dennis was my first – and last – attempt at a relationship. Oh dear, it’s probably better to start at the beginning. You see, my parents weren’t particularly young when they met and had been married for well over twenty years when I was born. Unlike my own venture into unplanned mature motherhood, my arrival was, well, a complete disaster for them. They didn’t want me.’

Ella winced.

Poll topped up their juice glasses. ‘Oh, don’t look so upset. It’s a long time ago. I assume my mother thought she was menopausal. I don’t know – we never talked about anything like that. They were old in mind and body when I was born. I grew up in a sort of strange, grim, restricted and unloving house. Then they both got ill. And I was their carer. From the age of sixteen when I left school, until they died twenty-three years later. I’ve never had a job – or a life.’

Ella swallowed. Poor, poor Poll. What an appallingly sad story. What a hatefully miserable life. No wonder she wanted to change it completely.

‘Um,’ Ella said, lowering her voice as George abandoned his convoy of small lorries and scrambled up at the table with a
Thomas the Tank Engine
colouring book and a fistful of crayons, ‘that’s truly awful. And I’m so sorry, but then, why after all that misery, did you get married to someone you hardly knew?’

‘Because I wanted to be loved. I’d never been loved. I thought having a husband would guarantee it. It didn’t.’

Ella sighed. This really was turning into a two-hankie
saga. Poor Poll. ‘But surely, you could have just, well, started going out, and meeting people and having dates?’

‘I was thirty-nine. I’d had no teenage years to experience that sort of thing. No experimental time. I had no idea how to go about
dating
or talking to men or anything. My one and only friend, Marie, suggested the speed-dating as a joky way to ease me into meeting blokes.’ Poll laughed. ‘Poor Marie. She was horrified when I told her Dennis – my first speed-dating experience – and I were getting married.’

‘Blimey, yes, I can imagine. And I can understand why you – given the circumstances – might have dived in head first. But surely, Dennis –’

‘Oh, Dennis went to speed-dating and married me because he simply hadn’t had time to meet women socially. He was always too busy. Dennis had reached the stage in his life where he just wanted a nice compliant non-ambitious yes-woman to keep his out-of-work hours running smoothly.’

‘And you sort of clicked?’

‘Well, it certainly wasn’t love.’ Poll sighed. ‘But we at least both thought we’d found what we were looking for. We were, of course, both bitterly disappointed.’

Oh, God… Ella scraped up the last of her scrambled eggs. How truly dreadful. ‘Still, at least you got George and this lovely house from your marriage.’

‘George, yes.’ Poll nodded, pushing her wayward hair behind her ears and helping George with a tricky bit of colouring-in. ‘And from George, I got the unconditional loving and being loved that I’d always craved. But the house,
no. Hideaway Farm is all mine. I paid for it outright – Dennis had no claim on it at all. Dennis kept his corporate businessman’s flat in town. He came down here at weekends or whenever he was in England after we got married, but he loathed it. It was never his home; Hideaway has always been mine.’

Oh, blimey… Ella pushed toast round her plate, how wrong had she got this?

‘If you cry I’ll join you, so don’t.’ Poll laughed. ‘Please don’t look so sad. It’s all OK now. It’s worked out so well. My parents might have been hard and austere, but they were also very astute with their money. No, OK – let’s be honest here – they were as tight as a duck’s thingamabob. They never spent a penny they didn’t have to. I had no new clothes, very few toys, no treats, no holidays – and neither did they.’

‘That still sounds like a pretty gruesome life to me. Far from OK.’

‘Well, maybe, but it all worked out brilliantly. I was so lucky. You see, when they died, the mausoleum I grew up in sold for a small fortune, and as the only child of only children I inherited everything. I didn’t, don’t, and never will, need a penny from Dennis.’

‘Oh, right.’ Another assumption bit the dust.

‘Living on a farm was the dream that kept me going throughout my growing-up years and beyond,’ Poll said. ‘All through my isolated childhood unhappiness, I read all the time, and simply adored Enid Blyton. I wanted to escape to the sort of life her fictional children had. I wanted to live on
a farm. In the country. It was the most wonderful thing I could imagine – all that peace and quiet and happiness and lots of animals, and cosiness and blissful freedom, and being surrounded by kind people who actually liked me. All the things I’d never had.’

Ella, who had had all those things all her life without question, albeit without the idyllic rural setting, bit her lip. ‘Yes, I can imagine – and I’m so sorry – but so pleased that things have worked out for you now.’ She leaned across the table, picked up a random crayon and helped George colour the Fat Controller in lime green. ‘And that’s why you want to help others in a similar position?’

‘Exactly.’ Poll beamed. ‘I know what it’s like to be so far down that you can’t see any way up and would give your eye teeth for a –’