Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 37

The helicopter made a tremendous noise as it teetered to a stop in a big H Polly hadn’t even noticed in the driveway. Seriously, how did people get so much money? She knew Reuben did something with algorithms that drove big computer companies bananas, but she had no idea what an algorithm even was, though clearly it was something that allowed you to own a helicopter.
The blades finally came to a stop, and Reuben emerged, looking jolly as ever, taking off his headphones and jumping down. He waved heartily and Polly waved back obediently, still feeling like an indentured servant. Marta went forward and started collecting large amounts of heavy luggage, as Reuben helped down first his father, then his mother.
His father was so obviously future Reuben it was almost comical to see them together. He was bald, with only a hint of Reuben’s ginger hair around the tops of his ears, and bushy pale eyebrows. The top of his head was covered with freckles. If you were a worse person than Polly, you might be tempted to connect some of them up and make a second face. His body was almost perfectly spherical, and he was wearing an extremely expensive-looking cashmere coat over an exquisitely tailored tweed suit – rather flamboyantly British – with a spotted handkerchief in the top pocket. His beautiful clothes did absolutely nothing to disguise the fact that he essentially looked like a snowman with tiny fat arms and legs sticking out the sides, or a cheerful baby.
Rhonda, Reuben’s mother, was all hair. It was jet black, a colour unusual in nature for a woman of her age, which was, of course, completely indeterminate, and she was wearing – no she wasn’t. Yes she was. Fur. A full-length mink coat, completely without shame. She was short, too, and it actually looked a bit like a scene from The Revenant.
Well. Polly did not like fur and that was that, but also she could imagine how much Rhonda would care about whether she liked it or not: not a whit.
Rhonda had also managed to keep her false eyelashes on through an eight-hour flight and a helicopter transfer, which was pretty impressive when you thought about it. She had hugely made-up eyes that reminded Polly of Liza Minelli, and a large lipsticky smile. The lipstick was bleeding slightly.
‘Hey!’ She waved, and Polly stepped forward. Rhonda kissed her hard on both cheeks. ‘I remember you! You’re the one that snuck out of Reuben’s wedding to make out with that hunky groomsman!’
Polly smiled awkwardly.
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Yeah.’
‘Is he still on the scene? Doubt it. Ha, that’s never the way to do it. You young ladies, you’re always throwing yourselves about and —’
‘Actually, we’re engaged,’ Polly said quickly. Rhonda frowned, or would have done if her skin could actually have stretched in any direction at all.
‘Well there you are, it just goes to show.’ She said it as if that was exactly what she’d thought all along. ‘Now where’s that daughter-in-law of mine?’
If there was ever, Polly reflected, a woman who could deal with having Rhonda as a mother-in-law, it was probably Kerensa.
‘She’s… she’s out and about,’ said Polly, awkwardly.
Rhonda sniffed loudly.
‘Hear that, Merv? Out and about. Too busy to be here to greet her in-laws. And what’s she even doing gallivanting about the place when she’s carrying our only grandchild? Huh? Huh?’
‘Ma,’ said Reuben in a conciliatory tone. ‘She’s not gone far. And it’s not your only grandchild. Hayley has two kids.’
‘Well, yes, Hayley,’ said Rhonda, in a tone of voice that said absolutely everything about who was the more important of her two children. ‘I mean Finkel children. Children that will be carrying on the family name. My adorable little Ruby-Woobie’s children.’
She wobbled Reuben’s chubby cheeks, and to his credit, Reuben didn’t try in the least to shake her off; he seemed to totally accept that his mother would want to do this to him, in public.
Marta vanished with the bags and Rhonda swept into the house, trailing an extraordinarily powerful perfume behind her.
‘Oh Rubes,’ she said sadly. ‘I mean… You know.’ She was looking round at the stunning lobby, with its huge tree and massive modern balustrade. ‘I mean, it’s so… it’s just so sparse! Couldn’t you have gone for something a little bit more fancy? Now in our town house,’ she said to Polly, ‘we commissioned panelling top to bottom. Gives it a real classy look, you know what I mean? Properly done. They had to use some wood you can’t even get any more. Completely rare. I think we were the last people allowed to chop it down.’
‘Ha ha, yeah, she thinks that,’ said Merv. ‘She thinks we were allowed to knock it down. So adorably innocent.’
He chuckled benevolently and wandered into the kitchen.
‘Hey, what you got to eat in this hellhole?’
Reuben trailed after his parents with a look of pleased terror on his face.
‘I mean, would it hurt you to put a bit of gold here and there, huh? Show the world you’re on the way to making it.’
‘Round here most people think I have made it, Ma.’
‘Yeah, round here.’
Polly deftly removed the trays of hot pastries from the oven: the rugelach and the chocolate matzos just as they’d asked for, and her speciality – which she’d had to make about nine times before Reuben finally declared himself satisfied – knishes from the old country, i.e. Europe about three generations before.
Merv tried to grab a handful when they hadn’t yet cooled down. He stared at his fingers like a puzzled bear.
‘Da-ad,’ said Reuben, and Rhonda tutted and looked around.
‘Where’s the ice water?’
As it was December, Polly hadn’t really considered iced water a necessity, but she rushed to Reuben’s absurd industrial fridge and poured a glassful from the dispenser at the front.
‘These are great,’ said Merv, stuffing the pastries into his mouth as fast as he could. ‘Of course, obviously I’m going to sue you for the burnt fingers… I’m kidding, I’m kidding. What are they anyway?’
Polly turned to Reuben. These were the special knishes she’d laboured over, refining a strange recipe she didn’t know, sourcing ingredients that were incredibly hard to come by in rural Cornwall, and he didn’t even know what he was eating?
Reuben didn’t look remotedly shame-faced.