Read Marrying Up for Free Online Page B

studying?’
    ‘I’m, um . . .’ Alexa racked her brains. She had no intention of admitting to Polly Stevenson that she had failed her exams,
     was living with her parents and had no prospects of any sort. ‘Actually, I’m taking a break from studying at the moment.’
    ‘Really?’ Polly’s archaeological instincts sensed something being concealed. ‘What are you doing with your break?’
    Alexa’s eyes dilated in panic. She had imagined herself doing this evening’s cross-examining, not the other way round. Suddenly,
     out of the blue,
Socialite
magazine shot into her mind. ‘I’m going to London,’ she said, in a rush. ‘I’ve got a job on . . . on . . . a glossy magazine.’
    ‘Which one?’ Polly asked immediately.
    ‘
Socialite
,’ Alexa shot back boldly.
    Polly shook her head. ‘I don’t know it,’ she said, finishing her wine with a smile.

Chapter 5
    Polly had found it oddly hard to explain what had happened to Mrs Pankhurst. ‘You took a lift from a stranger?’ Dad had deduced,
     disapprovingly. ‘Then you forgot to take the bike out?’ he had probed, incredulously. ‘But where is it now? Where is he? Who
     was he?’ Questions that were hard to avoid as she now depended on Dad to take her to Oakeshott every morning.
    Mum, meanwhile, was teasing her about being distracted. She seemed convinced Polly had ‘met someone’ the night of the glorious
     reunion with Allison Donald. ‘Do you good to have a boyfriend’ she teased.
    ‘So long as he’s not like the last one,’ Dad had rejoined, with feeling.
    ‘Have you got a boyfriend, miss?’
    Kyle’s voice broke loudly into her thoughts. Polly looked up from where she was squatting in a corner of the trench, photographing
     the foundations from a previously uncaptured angle. ‘That’s a rather impertinent question, Kyle,’ she said, trying to smile.
    ‘Is it?’ The boy looked genuinely surprised. ‘But Mrs Butcher told us in assembly the other day that there was no such thing
     as impertinent questions, only impertinent answers. She said someone called Oscar Wilde had said that.’
    Polly raised her eyebrows. Mrs Butcher’s mission to raise herpupils’ sights was as unceasing as it was impressive. ‘And anyway, miss,’ the irrepressible Kyle continued, ‘we were wondering.
     About your boyfriend. I said I thought you must have one, being so pretty and everything.’
    The other children, who were listening avidly, began to giggle.
    Kyle pressed on. ‘Poppy thought you hadn’t, didn’t you, Poppy?’ He looked accusingly at his schoolmate. ‘She said she thought
     you needed a nice man, didn’t you, Pops?’
    ‘I did
not
,’ riposted Poppy, obviously untruthfully.
    The class looked nervously at Polly.
    ‘I’m grateful for your concern,’ she said, good-humouredly. ‘Now just get back to work, the lot of you.’
    The site settled down, interrupted only by the occasional interested passer-by. Polly had by now delegated the quips and question-fielding
     to Kyle, who revelled in the responsibility. ‘No, we’re not digging for gold, we’re digging for two-thousand-year-old toilets!’
     she heard him state now. ‘But if you want modern ones, there’s some by the entrance.’
    When Polly, frowning into her viewfinder, heard a flutter of talk from the children, she assumed it was yet another ambling
     elderly couple and did not look up.
    ‘She’s over there, mate,’ she heard Kyle say.
    Polly raised her head from her camera to find herself looking at a pair of legs in jeans; up, up, up and eventually meeting
     Max’s dark blue eyes. Time stood still. The noise of the children faded far into the distance.
    Napoleon, meanwhile, dived into the trench and began to lick her knuckles with a rough, warm tongue. Then he rolled over on
     to his back and lay pleadingly waving his great paws.
    The children roared. The Labrador wriggled in ecstasy, thumping his tail appreciatively on the ground.
    ‘I think he wants to be