Polinka Goes on Holiday
Copyright© 2026 by Clee Hill
Chapter 17
Their last morning in Nicky, Polinka sighed to herself as she opened her eyes and saw they had hardly moved if at all during the night, the only change being her father’s hand now lying over her tummy, not cradling her tiddie. She didn’t mind but she also missed that desperately intimate and queerly unsexual touch. Could they have done this before, when she was younger? Would that have stopped to ache she had, to be held in his arms as they slept? No, she decided. Joking aside, she had stopped ‘growing’ a few months ago, being as tall and as ‘chesty’ as she was ever going to be, her grandmother assuring her she was a Gadarn, not only to help her feel less anxious about the lack of a mother in her life, but to assure her, too, how she would take after her father’s side of the family, never ‘hers’. Which also meant she was never going to be tall, not even as tall as her father, but that also meant she had a lifetime of going up on her tip-toes to kiss him ahead of her and that made her happy. If they were the same height, they could just kiss whenever, but that she had to make an effort and he had to even support her meant in was intentional, deliberate, and wanted. That was worth a few centimetres or a couple of inches.
Oh! Did that mean she had to find a girlfriend her height? No. She’d already kissed Ginnie, she was taller than Polinka, and she hadn’t hesitated over that, even before she had kissed her rather than, haha, friend-kissing her. So many different kinds of kisses.
Guessing it must be time to get up, or close enough to it, Polinka rolled onto her side, watching as her father’s sleeping mind realised something had changed, slowly drawing him out of his dreams with open eyes and a smile on his face. “Good morning, sweetheart.”
“Hey, Dad,” she smiled, snuggling up for their first cuddle and kiss of the day. “Sleep well?”
“Always.”
“Yep. Me too. You’d make a heck of a body pillow,” she grinned.
“I think I shall take that as a compliment—”
“—It is—”
“—And an option for a Christmas present, though maybe with someone else’s face on it.”
“Yeah, probably best. I mean, I wouldn’t want to confuse the two of you,” she smiled, kissing him again, satisfied she was betraying nothing of her dream in her words or actions.
“So? Ready to go home?”
Polinka nodded. “I am, and don’t worry, I won’t be sneaking into your bed tonight. It’s a school night, remember,” she teased as they got themselves ready, Polinka noticing how Stephen looked a little wistful at there being ‘no bed buddy’. She felt that too. Maybe for just a few minutes...?
“Here we are,” Stephen said as they pulled up outside their home in Ashford Carbonell, a semi-detached redbrick house on the main ‘road’ through which was so important that somehow it had never had a name, just ‘the road through Ashford’. It was just after lunchtime and they had had their breakfast on the way, a little café where they had had what Stephen promised to be their last Full English, Full Welsh, or Full Irish for a long time to come. It wasn’t that it was bad - it wasn’t, it was good, the sausages were from a local butcher, they claimed, and the mushrooms were gloriously ‘juicy’ - but after so many such breakfasts over the previous two weeks, they both agreed, enough was enough, at least for now. Probably next summer, Polinka had promised herself.
“A real bed,” Polinka grinned. “Sorry Nicky,” she whispered, Stephen smiling as they got out and stretched. “Cup of tea?”
“What an excellent idea,” Stephen smiled as he opened the door. “And I’ll open the windows.”
“Did we leave something in the bins?” Polinka asked as she followed up the path.
“No, just a house that has been cooked for two weeks, it smells a little stale,” he said as he headed inside.
“Eww. Want me to get the air fresheners out?” she asked as she headed for the kitchen and the kettle.
“No, I think half an hour of open windows and back door should do it,” he said as they got to work, Polinka making the tea, Stephen bringing in their cases as they paused for a cup of Yorkshire’s finest before finishing emptying the campervan of their things, the washing machine chugging away as it made old things fresh again.
“Dad? Do you need to take Nicky to the car wash before you return her?”
“No. Just clean out inside and give it a once over with the vacuum and a duster. They don’t expect her to come back showroom pristine, but they do expect her to have been well looked after. They give her a nice clean between rentals.”
“Oh. I never thought about that,” she said, her eyes a little wide in surprise. “We’ve been using... other people’s bedding—”