Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 3

He’d already left. Although there was a long black hair in the shower.
I know. I did say it was a Bad Thing.
And oh, it gets worse. Think of something slightly regrettable you’ve done on a night out, then multiply it by a factor of about a million.
Kerensa got home – with a sniggering, only mildly hung-over Selina, who thought the entire thing was unutterably hilarious and had been careful to drink lots of water at the same time, as she is also that kind of a friend – to discover that Polly had felt so guilty about not seeing her that Huckle had phoned Reuben and basically ordered him to go home and be nice to his wife.
So Reuben had postponed his business in SF and flown all the way back, laden with every perfume in the duty-free shop because he couldn’t remember what she liked. He’d marched back in the door – where a miserable Kerensa had been throwing up all morning and crawling along the tiles writhing with hung-over guilt and misery – grabbed her in his arms and declared his undying love for her, then attempted to dramatically carry her upstairs, which he couldn’t manage as he’d been on a plane all night and Kerensa was two inches taller than him and also wanted to die; but they did their best together regardless, the early April light glowing through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows in their enormous circular bedroom, with its ridiculous/ spectacular (delete according to taste) circular bed, and after that, he promptly whisked Kerensa away everywhere he went for the next six months.
So that is the terrible thing that happened in the spring.
And if this was a film, right, we would have reached the point where the ominous music crashes in and the credits start…
Chapter Three
Five weeks before Christmas
‘This year,’ Polly was saying boldly, sitting up under the duvet, ‘I am making a LIST. A PLAN. This year everything will not be a disaster.’
‘When has Christmas ever been a disaster?’ said Huckle, turning over, still sleepy and utterly unwilling to relinquish the duvet. Polly was getting up in the pitch dark, as she did for months on end in the winter, and their last heating bill had scared them both rigid, even though the house was almost never warm.
Polly had thought – and hoped – that heating the lighthouse would be like heating a gigantic chimney; that she could light the Aga at the bottom and the heat would permeate up the entire place. This was not the case at all. This was very far from the case. The kitchen was warm, but unless – and even after – they turned on the ancient clanky and very reluctant heating system for about five hours and tried to ignore the fact that they were living in a Grade I listed, non-insulated, not-meant-for-human-habitation building, running up and down the stairs was torture, a sport that took dares and bribery for anyone to accomplish.
Huckle did occasionally think longingly of the little beekeeper’s cottage he’d once rented on the mainland, just across the causeway, which was a lot warmer simply by virtue of not being perched more or less in the middle of the sea. The beekeeper’s cottage had had low ceilings and tiny windows and soft throws and cushions and curtains and two small bedrooms and had been cosy all winter long with one log burner and about four radiators.
And even further back, he thought of his childhood home in Virginia in the US, which was warm most of the year anyway – sometimes uncomfortably so – but when the cold weather did come in, his father would simply fire up the vast furnace in the basement and the whole house would heat up straight away. The first thing his father had said to him when he found out he was moving to England full time was, ‘You know they don’t heat their houses?’
At the time, Huckle had thought this was a quaint and outdated expression, like the British not knowing how to drink cold beer or go to a dentist. But now he was beginning to have a great deal of sympathy with his pa and wondering what other advice he should take from him whilst he still had the chance, before hypothermia set in and robbed him of brain stem function.
Polly was pulling a third sweater over her head.
‘That’s my favourite sweater,’ said Huckle. ‘It’s kind of even more shapeless than the rest and gives you a sexy Marshmallow Man silhouette.’
She hurled a sock at him.
‘Still more attractive than the goose bumps,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I don’t think you’re listening to my excellent plans for a list.’
‘It’s five a.m.,’ said Huckle. ‘You shouldn’t even have woken me. It was vicious and cruel and I shall get my deadly revenge.’
And he grabbed her ankle and pulled her closer, trying to get her under the warm covers, where he liked, in fact, having to burrow beneath the layers of heavy clothing, knowing that somewhere in there, deep underneath, were Polly’s soft creamy curves, waiting to be discovered like buried treasure; visible, in general, to nobody else but him. He could already anticipate the shiver of his cold hand on her warm skin.
Polly giggled and shrieked.
‘No! NO way! I have a million things to do and all anyone wants to order is gingerbread.’
‘You smell of gingerbread,’ said Huckle, sticking his head up her sweater. ‘It’s awesome. It makes me horny and hungry all at the same time. They’re going to ban me from supermarkets. I’m going to turn into Fru T. Bunn, the pervy baker.’
Polly scrunched up her face.
‘Oh God, Huck, I can’t. I can’t. Now that I’m up and have momentum… if I don’t get going now, I’ll get back into bed and never leave.’
‘Get back into my bed and never leave. That’s an order.’
‘And we’ll starve to death.’
‘Neh, we’ll live on nothing but gingerbread.’
‘And die early.’
‘So worth it. Where’s Neil?’
Neil was the puffin Polly had inadvertently adopted when she’d nursed him back to health after he had broken his wing as a puffling. By all accounts he would soon fly off home to join his flock. It hadn’t happened yet.
‘Outside.’
They looked at one another. As ever, Huckle had that slow-burning, amused look in his eyes, as if the world was a funny game; that eternal sunny side of him that made him always think that everything would turn out for the best. His dark blonde hair was scruffy. He slept in his old college T-shirt and smelt like warm hay and honey mixed together.
Polly glanced at the alarm clock, which Huckle covered up with his hand. She had deliveries, invoicing, paperwork, baking, serving…