‘Waiting for me?’
‘Polly Bolton?’ Nick stubbed out his rollie and opened the cab’s back door. ‘Meeting your MP?’
‘Recognised her, did you?’ She sounded bitter about something.
‘Saw her in the paper a while back. She was dating some Tory.’
‘They were having a work meeting, she says.’
‘In that dress?’ Nick glanced in the mirror, checking out the woman’s breasts again.
‘If I went out in a dress like that, I’d be looking to pull.’
‘If I saw you out in a dress like that, I’d be first to make a move.’
The woman laughed. ‘You flatter all your punters, do you?’
‘No, love. Only the ones I fancy.’
In Sheffield, where Nick came from, love was the equivalent of duck in Nottingham, a friendly endearment. In Nottingham, his home since university, he used it more sparingly. He parked outside Tesco. Polly leant forward to pay and flashed him a smile that was more than friendly.
‘Can you pick me up just after ten? By that door?’
‘Sure.’
‘It’ll be you, will it?’
‘I was planning on finishing around then, so I’ll make it my last stop.’
He watched her hurry into the supermarket and wondered why he’d volunteered that last piece of conversation. No, he knew. She might be a little older than him and her hair colour came out of a bottle, but Polly Bolton was still handsome. Maybe Sarah, after all these years, had done him an unintended favour. She owed him one.
Six hours later, in New Basford, Polly’s babysitter left, taking a toddler and a sleeping baby with her. Polly and Nick went straight to the bedroom. They kissed and undressed in the dark, then had at each other. After five years without a woman, Nick was desperate for a coupling of any kind and Polly’s need seemed as urgent as his. Their bodies were raw meat. Their encounter felt more like wrestling than an act of love. For both of them it ended too quickly.
‘Will I see you again?’ Polly turned the light on. Her naked body was fuller than he’d expected, yet softer, more youthful. He’d forgotten how much better some women looked with their clothes off.
‘Try and keep me away.’
‘You can stay if you want.’ The words teasing rather than tender.
‘If I didn’t have to return the car, I would.’
‘Best excuse I’ve heard in ages.’
‘Hear a lot of excuses, do you?’ He pulled his trousers back on.
She wasn’t embarrassed. ‘How easy do you think I find it to meet a decent bloke when I have four kids to look after? You’re the first I’ve been with in a long while.’ The neighbour who had been looking after the kids was also a single parent, she said. They took it in turns to babysit so that they could each work the few hours they were allowed before it cut into their benefits. Some nights, therefore, she had six kids to see to.
‘How old are they?’ he asked.
‘Oldest is in her first year at secondary school. Youngest is seven. The oldest two aren’t mine. They’re my brother’s, who died.’
‘Oh.’ Nick thought it best not to ask what happened to their mother. ‘Have you been single long?’ he asked.
‘I split up with Phil nearly six years ago. We were married four years. I were twenty when we wed. Too young.’
Nick was surprised to find that Polly was five years younger than him. But looking after four kids would take it out of you.
‘How long have the older two been with you?’
‘About five years now. It was rough at first. Both their parents were killed on the same day. But they’re good kids. They cope.’
‘How did they die?’
‘Murder. It’s a nasty story. I’d rather not tell it.’
‘Sure.’
Nick didn’t need to ask why Polly’s husband left. Two extra kids, probably still traumatised, constantly reminding you of a tragedy. He kissed Polly lightly on the lips. ‘You were my first in a long time, too.’
‘Do you really finish at ten?’
‘No, I often work until three at weekends. That’s when you make the money.’
‘You can come late if you want.’
‘I really do have to return the car.’
‘I don’t mean tonight. You can come late at night, any time. I sleep badly. Just ring me first.’
He understood what she was offering. ‘We can go out. It doesn’t have to be just . . .’
‘I don’t do relationships, duck. I know you’re holding something back and I don’t care. If you’re married, living with someone, it’s no skin off my nose. I’m after the same as you’re after, something to look forward to at the end of a day. Now, go quietly. I don’t want you waking the kids.’
Polly was only half alive, he decided as he drove back into the city. Whoever took her brother and sister-in-law’s lives took a large part of hers too. Most of the time, he only felt half alive himself. But not tonight.
The arrangement was that he dropped the cab off at the owner’s house and one of the lads was there to pick him up, dropping him off at his brother’s on the way to their next job. Sometimes the driver charged him a little, sometimes he got a freebie. Nick did another hour’s driving before knocking it on the head. He parked the car outside Bob’s, slipping the keys through the door. His taxi showed up when he was coming back down the path. Nick got in the front seat, as was expected. The driver looked familiar, but not from the cab office.
‘Don’t I know you?’ he said, as they drove back into the city.
‘Don’t think so,’ the driver said, keeping his eyes on the road, driving at a steady thirty, his shaved head glinting when a police car swept by in the opposite direction. ‘I’m sharing a car, like you.’
‘Right.’ The guy might have convictions, too, so it didn’t do to ask many questions. Nick directed him to Joe and Caroline’s. When they stopped, he tried to pay.
‘Forget it. You’ll do the same for me one time.’
‘Appreciated. I’m Nick.’ Nick offered his hand. The guy turned to him for the first time. His grip was rock hard.
‘I’m Ed.’
9
At the Commons it was easy to avoid people you wanted to avoid, especially when they were in another party. A problem only arose when you sat on a committee with them. Jasper March was on the Justice Select Committee, so Sarah had to share the same semicircle of leather upholstered chairs as him once a month. When Sarah took the spare seat, to Jasper’s right, the MP forced a smile. He wrote ‘sorry’ on his top committee paper.
‘You should be,’ Sarah wrote back.
‘Lunch to apologise?’ March wrote beneath her reply. This schoolboyish note passing was open to all sorts of misinterpretation, but the damage was already done. The Commons, a hotbed of gossip, now had them conducting an affair since the previous summer, when they had sneaked a long weekend in San Tropez – at least that was what Steve Carter had heard from somebody at Transport.
When Sarah didn’t reply at once, Jasper added to the note: ‘Somewhere quiet but expensive?’
Sarah ticked the word ‘lunch’ but crossed out the other four words, replacing them with: ‘My office, tomorrow at one. Bring sandwiches.’
Jasper ticked the word ‘one’ and wrote underneath, ‘but come to mine. Much better view. And I have a fridge.’
Next day, at the appointed hour, Jasper poured Sarah a glass of Chablis. ‘You’ll like this. Recent vintage but from the old vines. Lots of character.’
He was right. Sarah sipped her wine and took a crayfish salad sandwich from a pile Jasper had acquired at Pret A Manger.