Page 44 of The Cake Fairies
“You what?”
“I need you to count… in se… seconds… up to minutes. It’s the only way I can focus.” She trembled beneath her jacket and took to rocking from side to side once more, but at least she was in a sitting position now – albeit on the floor, head raised gingerly, shoulders only slightly slumped. “You count, I’ll deep br… breathe under here.”
“No. We’re not going to count. We’re going to tap this out,” he sounded worryingly decisive.
“Alex! This is no time for acting the goat. I’m petrified.” The tears came unbidden and she blinked them back as fast as she could. “I can sense us getting higher even if I can’t see a flipping thing.”
“Hey, nobody said anything about marijuana.”
“Will you just stop it?” Polly screamed. “I feel like I’m going to die here!”
“I’m sorry. Okay. Let me explain. I don’t mean that you’re going to dance like Sammy Davis, and you are categoricallynotgoing to perish – not on my watch, anyway. I like you too much… I… I mean we’re going to use a bit of EFT.” He quickly threw in that last bit as if his words had escaped without his permission. “You must’ve heard of it, coming from a village near Glastonbury.”
“Oh right, that, yes.”
“Ever done a course?”
“Can’t say I have.” She was firing her own words out now, heart tapping a routine to rival any of the Rat Pack’s. “But ifyouhave; could you hurry up and bloody well share the details with me… er, please.”
“You’re going to be fine. You just need to trust me.” Did Polly detect a panicky edge there? Evidently, he’d never found himself marooned with a woman in quite this gargantuan a pickle: none of which helped her tattered nerves as she pictured the pod inching closer and closer to the summit. “Emotional Freedom Technique is a godsend when it comes to situations like this. You might feel out of control now, but in a short while, you’ll feel much more centred again.”
“Can you please cut to the chase?”
He’d better be right because that level of hope felt very dangerous. It also sounded more than a tad like a one-liner straight out of a tent in a fair field.
“We’ll do it together. But you will need to raise your head a bit higher so you can tap the various points on your face to diffuse the charge of the emotion.”
“This sounds nuts.”
“All the best things are,” he warbled. “It takes what it takes to bypass your conscious mind and communicate with your all-knowing subconscious. Go with it. You’ve nothing to lose.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll do it.”
It sounded weirder than weird, but Polly was desperate. Tentatively, she loosened her grip on her limbs and followed Alex’s instructions, as he ran through eight different pressure points beneath the eyes, the arch of the brow, the head, and the collarbone – after that she lost count. As they repeated the sequence together, the man who’d seemingly dropped into her lap after she’d quite literally fallen into his café, had her verbalising all kinds of calming statements; her zen beefing up his own. So focused was Polly on the moment, that frankly, she could’ve been anywhere; in a library curled up in an armchair, a beach watching pebbles skip out to sea, even back in her bakery taking in the gentle rise and perfume of a new batch of malt loaves. After a while she lost track of how many times they’d repeated their collective mantra, and for the first time since they’d set foot on the giant Ferris wheel, she felt her peace restored. Slowly, at first, she even dared to peek out of her cocoon!
“Thank you,” she proffered, only able to squint at the floor, but feeling proud of herself all the same for her progress.
“I’m a bit rusty. I haven’t done it in years, but it’s like riding a bike really, you never forget.” She was glad he was only telling her that now. “You should go on a course when you go home. It’s an invaluable life skill. You can use it in all sorts of situations.”
“I will,” Polly lied, because she doubted any of this was available in Middle Ham just yet – well, not in 1969 anyway.
“How did you stumble across it?”
But Alex briskly changed the subject. “You’re a mystery. Why weren’t you honest with me from the start? Trying to impress me, huh?”
Her heartbeat galloped unhelpfully. There he went again. Back into character. Presumptuous git.
“I can assure you; that was the last thing I was trying to do, actually.”
“Why put yourself through this, then? You have to admit it’s slightly extreme when you know you’re in danger of having a panic attack.”
Polly semi-shrugged the coat off. She knew her auburn thatch would be an unruly tidal wave around her head by now, but under the circumstances she was just relieved not to have fainted or stopped breathing. ‘Panic attack’ was hardly a household phrase in the place she’d come from. She didn’t feel like she was about to keel over and grab at her chest, no. But the world had contorted into a giddy fug; it did make her ears whirr while the sounds around her slowed down to a weird and warped two miles per hour. Curling up in a snail’s shell until it was safe to come out again was her only option. That’s how terrifying the last twenty minutes had been.
“I did it for me, if you must know. I’m… I’m just not a fan of heights. There’s a valid reason for that, a past and pretty terrifying event.” And there was no way Polly was unearthing any of that if he wouldn’t share his own experience. “Anyway, you’re hardly an open book. What have you told me since we’ve continuously bumped into you? I know nothing more than you’re on some kind of year out from Danish catering college, and you’re spending that as a waiter in an Oxford Street café – something you’re clearly over-qualified for. That’s when you’re not hanging around us like a bad…”
“Smell?”
“I only wish I could say that,” Polly gasped, realising she’d shared aloud the treacherous thoughts that were circling her head. “I meant… your aftershave is quite nice.”
