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Polly
Freya North
NEW on ebook for the first time with NEW author afterword.He’s out of sight, she’s out of her mind.Polly Fenton is about to embark on a year-long teachers’ exchange to America. Swapping cottage pie for corn dogs is one thing, but trading lives with her American counterpart, Jen, is quite another.The minute Polly’s feet touch down Stateside, she’s swept off them altogether. When she meets Chip Jonson, the school athletic trainer, all thoughts of home suddenly disappear.Spanning three terms and two countries, this is a sparky and sassy story of New England and Old England, fidelity and flirtation, receiving one’s comeuppance – and making amends.
FREYA NORTH
Polly
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblace to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely conincidental.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by
William Heinemann 1998
Copyright © Freya North 1998
Afterword © Freya North 2012
Freya North asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Extracts here (#ulink_07ce051e-c201-5870-8380-e36205344ed0), here (#litres_trial_promo) and here (#litres_trial_promo) from ‘Moonlight in Vermont’ by Karl Suessdorf and John Blackburn; Extracts here (#litres_trial_promo) from ‘Tam O’Shanter’ by Robert Burns;
‘Pied Beauty’ by Gerald Manley Hopkins; ‘Somet, Bright Start’ by John Keats; ‘Proverbial Philosophy’, 1st series. ‘Of Discretion’ by Martin Farquhar Tupper;
‘Lead Kindly Night’ by Henry Newman
The author and publisher have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright holders for permission, and any omissions or errors in the form of credit given will be corrected in future editions
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Source ISBN: 9780007462193
Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN:9780007462209
Version: 2017-11-28
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
For Osi
Welcome to the family, sis!
Table of Contents
Title Page (#u6527d602-3792-512c-aa66-6df4f59e9971)
Copyright (#u2681a7e1-7ad1-5fcb-bc4e-8f0f7ee4008b)
Dedication (#u1e69788b-163d-5bf7-978c-65e7be06624f)
Michaelmas (#u37045546-5d61-5a67-adca-caeb7a16228d)
Chapter One (#ue0f63a0c-1162-546b-8f78-b6e30e4517a8)
Chapter Two (#u094b8e1f-b99c-5816-a42b-c3bebb971496)
Chapter Three (#u45b2cb46-eac9-57ca-8b9e-769293b0fd18)
Chapter Four (#u208ed268-2231-50a0-b7d1-4b22a6a55886)
Chapter Five (#ud5bcd226-0667-59fd-9fac-8f4db5b1de02)
Chapter Six (#ub562e027-b18f-5409-a157-32456a5e196c)
Chapter Seven (#u6f4e9185-2d6d-53f8-af04-c4cd82af2a0d)
Chapter Eight (#ud3890360-11a3-57f1-89b5-68bdf0227ebf)
Chapter Nine (#u60869e81-1a6c-5971-88db-2dd7c1fec421)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Lent (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-one (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Summer (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-one (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-one (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-two (#litres_trial_promo)
Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Acclaim for Freya (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Freya North (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
MICHAELMAS
Pennies in a stream
Falling leaves of sycamore
Moonlight in Vermont
Karl Suessdorf & John Blackburn, Moonlight in Vermont
ONE
If Polly Fenton had thought for one moment that a year in America was going to have serious ramifications for her accent and her relationship with Max Fyfield, she very probably would not be going. But the concept hasn’t crossed her mind and so she is trading Belsize Park, London, for Hubbardtons Spring, Vermont, on a teachers’ exchange programme.
Tomorrow.
Today, she must pack and prepare.
Currently, she is wrapping articles of clothing around bumper-sized jars of Marmite.
‘Look, Buster, I’ve never been to America,’ she explains to her oversized ginger tom-cat who regards her reproachfully. ‘This is an amazing opportunity,’ she clarifies, as much to herself as to Buster’s withering yawn. ‘Max said so,’ she furthers, looking at a photograph of him, clasping it to her heart before swaddling it in pairs of knickers and placing it in the suitcase.
Apart from Buster, Polly actually has everyone’s blessing. The offer of the exchange wasn’t even put out to tender amongst the school staff and when Polly asked Max what he thought, he declared, ‘Go West, young woman. Wow!’
Her friends have taken to talking to her in American accents, scattering twangy sentences with liberal dashings of ‘sonava’, ‘goddam’ and ‘gee’. Such supportive reactions have enabled Polly to feel just on the verge of rather excited about her year away. And why shouldn’t she be? Her life in London is safe and lovely and she knows it will greet her as such on her return. And yet, over the last week and particularly today, on packing, those quivers of excitement are masking tremors of fear.
She is twenty-seven years old, petite in stature but large in character. Her dead straight, rich brown hair hangs in a neat, fringed bob, the gloss and hue of dark, clear honey (though she wishes it were a more Marmitey shade and sheen, of course). Eyes that are mostly rich hazel turn khaki in times of extreme emotion. They invariably change colour on a daily basis when some fact or fantasy subsumes her.
Presently, with some trepidation, she is rifling through her bathroom cabinet deciding what to take.
‘Do you know, I’ve never been away from home for more than a fortnight,’ she says to herself, very quietly. ‘I haven’t been apart from Max for more than four days – and then only twice in our five years.’
She sits on the edge of the bath and her eyes well army-issue green. Her throat is tight. Here it comes. She cries sharply for a few seconds until her throat loosens.
‘Oh dear,’ she says, catching her breath and sniffing loudly, while a sorry smile etches its way across her lips. ‘That’s better. Much better,’ she laughs, as the ablutionary effect of the sob settles in and her eyes shine hazel. ‘Absolutely fine. Where was I?’
Though she taps her temples and scrunches her brow, she can’t remember what she was to do in the bathroom so she returns to her bedroom and regards the open suitcase on the bed, gaping like a cavernous, ravenous mouth. She fears that once the lid is closed, the contents might be consumed. She giggles at her ludicrously active imagination developed, as a necessity, in childhood.
If you’d been brought up by an aunt who made Trappist monks seem fervent conversationalists, you too would turn to the most unlikely of objects for a chat.
Polly regards the suitcase, half tempted to take everything out and place it all back in her cupboard and drawers.
