Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 36
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‘But…’
Polly shook her head.
‘I can’t… I just… Not now. Family stuff. I don’t… I’m so busy. You know. I’m not… I’m so not ready…’
She meant to say, of course, I’m not ready for marriage, not I’m not ready for you.
But Huckle only heard one thing: that she didn’t want to marry him.
‘Okay,’ he said. It was hard to hurt Huckle’s feelings; he was genuinely good-natured and rarely got upset over anything. But it was certainly possible.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Polly. ‘But you know how it is… and I’m so busy…’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know.’
Polly thought about Carmel, spending years wondering if her husband was going to misbehave again. She thought of her mother, sitting alone in her kitchen eating soup night after night for the whole of the only life she was ever going to get.
She thought – briefly, glancingly – about the impossibly huge notion that she had half-brothers and sisters out there in the world. Of course it had always been a possibility, but one she hadn’t had to dwell on particularly. But now she knew for a fact that it was definitely, absolutely true, and more than that, that one of them must be round about her own age.
Well. She was in no position to think about families just now. Even building one with Huckle. Surely he could understand that? She just couldn’t, and that was an end to it.
The wind whistled around the lighthouse, although inside, lit gently with fairy lights, it was cosy and warm, the remnants of the evening’s fire dampened down but still gently heating the way up the house for once. The fire had been wonderful that night, and the entire building felt warm.
Yes, thought Polly, trying to stop making lists in her head, and snuggling down. He would understand. He totally would. Huckle understood everything.
But if life teaches us anything, it’s that what we assume someone should know about us – even someone we really, really love; especially someone we really, really love – can be completely misunderstood or overlooked, or that the silence we think contains so much is simply unobserved. We believe – or we would like to believe – that the people we’re closest to can tell what our intentions are, the same way your mother knows when you are small whether you’ve been stealing biscuits out of the biscuit jar by the fact you have chocolate smeared around your mouth.
But nobody is psychic. And for once, it was Polly who drifted off to sleep to the sound of the crashing waves, whilst Huckle lay staring into the darkness, feeling unusually thoughtful; unusually sleepless; very unusually alone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
He might have understood more if he’d been at Reuben’s the next day, when Reuben’s parents showed up, but he wasn’t.
The mansion had been decorated from top to bottom. Polly couldn’t help sighing, just a little. It was a bit silly, having money, given that there were only so many buns one could eat in a day; only so far she could pretend she could tell the difference between a cheap and an expensive bottle of wine; and how much she couldn’t see the point of a highly expensive handbag (Polly’s bags invariably became full of bits of tissue, odd pencils, half-used lipsticks and a light scattering of powdered yeast; she couldn’t imagine the horror of doing that to something worth more than a small car).
But the difference between her little fairy lights and Reuben’s professional decorating job was obviously substantial. The tree in the driveway, at the circular turn in front of the door, was three storeys high. The theme was kind of diamonds and ice sculptures, which ought to be tacky but annoyingly looked utterly perfect against the metal frame and bright glass of the lovely modern house. Frost crackled on the ground outside, and on the beautiful spotlit path that led down to Reuben’s private beach. Polly took her tasting trays into the massive professional kitchen. Reuben was a good cook, but obviously he kept someone on hand to do all this kind of stuff. Kerensa was nowhere to be seen. She’d told everyone she was doing lots of pampering and baby massage stuff, but Polly knew for a fact that she didn’t give a toss for anything like that, which meant she must instead simply be lying low.
Polly sighed. Did nobody get a happy ending? Did it simply not work? This should be the happiest time of her best friend’s life – married to a bloke who, whilst nobody would describe him as ‘lovely’, was fun and adored her and whom she adored back, and who suited her very well, expecting the birth of their first baby in their gorgeous mansion by the sea. It was like that girl who’d married the Prince of Monaco and had twins and always looked entirely furious about everything. Really, if Kerensa couldn’t be happy, nobody could. And yet there she was, off with a Brazilian stripper. Well, briefly, but even so.
Polly sighed and dumped her two large trays of food, turning on the oven to heat everything up. She was officially catering just the Christmas party, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, but she’d agreed to put on a little taster session when Reuben’s parents arrived, cold and presumably ravenous. She glanced around.
Marta, the maid, smiled at her politely, but they didn’t speak. Polly made herself some coffee in Reuben’s absurdly noisy and overcomplicated machine, which appeared to have enough technology to launch a Mars mission, then padded around the enormous room. It was far bigger than what she had at the bakery to feed the entire town. As well as the industrial-sized ovens, there was a huge grill wok, and a pizza oven… you could run a fairly nice hotel from here. Which was, she supposed, what was happening.
The sun beamed in through the windows, adding to the warmth of the underfloor heating. As an American, Reuben liked his house boiling in the winter and freezing in the summer, and with the sun streaming in it was almost too warm. Polly wished she could stretch out on the floor like a cat and take a nap.
Suddenly she heard a noise, a loud flapping. It sounded ominous and weird. Marta didn’t flinch, but Polly rushed out into the hall. As well as the vast tree filling the turret, she could see another, this one with carved wooden Nutcracker soldiers positioned all round it – in the sitting room, where a huge fire was crackling away despite the fact that the room was completely empty.
She opened the front door on to the sparkling driveway ahead and to her amazement saw a big black helicopter descending right in front of her. Of course she’d recognised the noise, but she hadn’t seen a helicopter up close since… since they’d had that great storm a year or so ago. She put that out of her mind and smiled anxiously, realising as she did so how much it made her feel even more like staff.
Polly shook her head.
‘I can’t… I just… Not now. Family stuff. I don’t… I’m so busy. You know. I’m not… I’m so not ready…’
She meant to say, of course, I’m not ready for marriage, not I’m not ready for you.
But Huckle only heard one thing: that she didn’t want to marry him.
‘Okay,’ he said. It was hard to hurt Huckle’s feelings; he was genuinely good-natured and rarely got upset over anything. But it was certainly possible.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Polly. ‘But you know how it is… and I’m so busy…’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know.’
Polly thought about Carmel, spending years wondering if her husband was going to misbehave again. She thought of her mother, sitting alone in her kitchen eating soup night after night for the whole of the only life she was ever going to get.
She thought – briefly, glancingly – about the impossibly huge notion that she had half-brothers and sisters out there in the world. Of course it had always been a possibility, but one she hadn’t had to dwell on particularly. But now she knew for a fact that it was definitely, absolutely true, and more than that, that one of them must be round about her own age.
Well. She was in no position to think about families just now. Even building one with Huckle. Surely he could understand that? She just couldn’t, and that was an end to it.
The wind whistled around the lighthouse, although inside, lit gently with fairy lights, it was cosy and warm, the remnants of the evening’s fire dampened down but still gently heating the way up the house for once. The fire had been wonderful that night, and the entire building felt warm.
Yes, thought Polly, trying to stop making lists in her head, and snuggling down. He would understand. He totally would. Huckle understood everything.
But if life teaches us anything, it’s that what we assume someone should know about us – even someone we really, really love; especially someone we really, really love – can be completely misunderstood or overlooked, or that the silence we think contains so much is simply unobserved. We believe – or we would like to believe – that the people we’re closest to can tell what our intentions are, the same way your mother knows when you are small whether you’ve been stealing biscuits out of the biscuit jar by the fact you have chocolate smeared around your mouth.
But nobody is psychic. And for once, it was Polly who drifted off to sleep to the sound of the crashing waves, whilst Huckle lay staring into the darkness, feeling unusually thoughtful; unusually sleepless; very unusually alone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
He might have understood more if he’d been at Reuben’s the next day, when Reuben’s parents showed up, but he wasn’t.
The mansion had been decorated from top to bottom. Polly couldn’t help sighing, just a little. It was a bit silly, having money, given that there were only so many buns one could eat in a day; only so far she could pretend she could tell the difference between a cheap and an expensive bottle of wine; and how much she couldn’t see the point of a highly expensive handbag (Polly’s bags invariably became full of bits of tissue, odd pencils, half-used lipsticks and a light scattering of powdered yeast; she couldn’t imagine the horror of doing that to something worth more than a small car).
But the difference between her little fairy lights and Reuben’s professional decorating job was obviously substantial. The tree in the driveway, at the circular turn in front of the door, was three storeys high. The theme was kind of diamonds and ice sculptures, which ought to be tacky but annoyingly looked utterly perfect against the metal frame and bright glass of the lovely modern house. Frost crackled on the ground outside, and on the beautiful spotlit path that led down to Reuben’s private beach. Polly took her tasting trays into the massive professional kitchen. Reuben was a good cook, but obviously he kept someone on hand to do all this kind of stuff. Kerensa was nowhere to be seen. She’d told everyone she was doing lots of pampering and baby massage stuff, but Polly knew for a fact that she didn’t give a toss for anything like that, which meant she must instead simply be lying low.
Polly sighed. Did nobody get a happy ending? Did it simply not work? This should be the happiest time of her best friend’s life – married to a bloke who, whilst nobody would describe him as ‘lovely’, was fun and adored her and whom she adored back, and who suited her very well, expecting the birth of their first baby in their gorgeous mansion by the sea. It was like that girl who’d married the Prince of Monaco and had twins and always looked entirely furious about everything. Really, if Kerensa couldn’t be happy, nobody could. And yet there she was, off with a Brazilian stripper. Well, briefly, but even so.
Polly sighed and dumped her two large trays of food, turning on the oven to heat everything up. She was officially catering just the Christmas party, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, but she’d agreed to put on a little taster session when Reuben’s parents arrived, cold and presumably ravenous. She glanced around.
Marta, the maid, smiled at her politely, but they didn’t speak. Polly made herself some coffee in Reuben’s absurdly noisy and overcomplicated machine, which appeared to have enough technology to launch a Mars mission, then padded around the enormous room. It was far bigger than what she had at the bakery to feed the entire town. As well as the industrial-sized ovens, there was a huge grill wok, and a pizza oven… you could run a fairly nice hotel from here. Which was, she supposed, what was happening.
The sun beamed in through the windows, adding to the warmth of the underfloor heating. As an American, Reuben liked his house boiling in the winter and freezing in the summer, and with the sun streaming in it was almost too warm. Polly wished she could stretch out on the floor like a cat and take a nap.
Suddenly she heard a noise, a loud flapping. It sounded ominous and weird. Marta didn’t flinch, but Polly rushed out into the hall. As well as the vast tree filling the turret, she could see another, this one with carved wooden Nutcracker soldiers positioned all round it – in the sitting room, where a huge fire was crackling away despite the fact that the room was completely empty.
She opened the front door on to the sparkling driveway ahead and to her amazement saw a big black helicopter descending right in front of her. Of course she’d recognised the noise, but she hadn’t seen a helicopter up close since… since they’d had that great storm a year or so ago. She put that out of her mind and smiled anxiously, realising as she did so how much it made her feel even more like staff.
