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‘I certainly won’t be cooking you gourmet meals.’ He smiled now, as he nodded to her plate. ‘So, eat up. You’ve another mouth to feed, remember?’
As Polly obediently picked up her knife and fork, he added, ‘I’m assuming it’s still okay for you to travel?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t see why not. I have a month till I’m due and no one’s ever told me that I need to stay put.’
‘Good. And if you’re worried about sharing accommodation with me, it won’t be necessary.’
‘Where would you go? To your girlfriend’s place?’
Seth ignored the girlfriend probe. ‘To my own place. The place I’m building.’
Polly’s blue eyes widened. ‘You’re building a house?’
‘Yep.’ He hadn’t planned to tell her this—not when her own living situation was so dire, but her desire to avoid too much contact with him had pretty much forced his hand. ‘It’s on the outskirts of town. Nice bush views. It’s not finished, but there’s a bed and a kitchen and bathroom. Walls and a roof. It’s at lock-up stage. I often camp there.’
‘Wow. And you’ve built it yourself?’
‘With help from tradie mates.’
‘That’s awesome, Seth.’
Polly did actually look a little awestruck, and Seth wasn’t quite able to ignore the warm satisfaction this gave him. ‘I guess you could stay there, actually,’ he said. ‘If you wanted to, that is. You could choose the house or the flat in town. Either way, you’d be totally private, if that’s what you want.’
Polly smiled. ‘First you fill me with food, now this wonderful invitation. You sure know how to tempt a girl.’
‘Glad to hear it. So you’ll come?’
‘Just for the weekend?’
‘If that’s what you want.’ Seth had never considered himself particularly spontaneous and he’d had no idea, when he set out this evening, that he’d be offering this invitation. But the new sparkle in Polly’s eyes assured him he’d made the right call.
‘But when the weekend’s up, I wouldn’t expect you to drop me back to Melbourne,’ she said. ‘I’d get a bus or something.’
‘Relax, Polly. We can sort out the “or something” later.’
Chapter Four
It took awhile for the reality of Seth’s invitation to sink in. Despite her initial hesitation, Polly was incredibly pleased she’d had the good sense to accept. After all, given last year’s debacle, it was pretty amazing that Seth had even bothered to make contact with her again. And he must have wondered what the hell was wrong with her when she’d refused to let him into her flat.
If she’d given him another blunt rejection, it would almost certainly have meant the death of their friendship. Luckily, just in the nick of time, Polly had realised that she’d be devastated if she thought she might never see Seth again.
And now that she’d agreed to this weekend in Wirralong, she was actually rather excited. A weekend away could be just what she needed. A break from the limited horizons of her poky flat. She would come back refreshed and ready for the final weeks of her pregnancy. And she might even find the energy to push harder on the job-hunting front.
Luckily, in IT she could work from home. Once she’d secured a steady income, her life would be fine. And new babies slept a lot, didn’t they?
Her packing didn’t take very long—just a couple of changes of clothes, a nightgown and toiletries. Oh, and her laptop—Polly was never comfortable going far without that—and the only housework involved was stowing the soup in the freezer, ready for her return.
The hard part for Polly was going to be the slightly more than two-hour drive into rural Victoria. Not just the discomfort of sitting for so long, but being with Seth for all that time and wondering what the heck they could talk about.
It was a problem they’d never had back in their schooldays, of course. At school, she and Seth had shared the same world. They’d been in the same classes, had mostly the same teachers, the same friends. Over countless afternoons, she and Seth had chattered nonstop—about their friends and teachers, TV shows, algebra problems, the latest pesky English assignment. Their unknown futures…
Now, for Polly, the past fourteen years seemed to stretch like a huge, unbridgeable gulf between them. She was conscious of the very different lives she and Seth had faced, the specific experiences and different skills they’d acquired, the swings and roundabouts of their totally separate relationships. She wasn’t keen to admit to Seth that she’d been a failure on the relationship front.
Chances were, it would be easier to ignore all the ‘in-between’ years and start again, like strangers.
But perhaps Polly should have known that, while she saw any potential conversation as a mountainous obstacle, Seth, as always, would make the whole thing easy. As they set off for Wirralong, he chatted quite comfortably about all their old classmates, telling Polly about those who had married, or had kids, and who were already divorced.
Seth knew who had moved out of the district and he even seemed to know where most of them were living these days, including a girl who was studying art in Paris and a guy who was based with an engineering firm in Singapore.
