Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 58

Polly looked at him.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Yes. I want to appreciate every moment.’
Just at that moment the car swung off the deserted road and through the massive gates of an enormous stately home.
‘Where are we?’ said Polly suspiciously.
Huckle smiled.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Hang it. Sometimes you have to do these things. It’s too dangerous to go home. This is the nearest hotel to the hospital.’
‘Yes, but it’s…’
The gravel drive seemed a mile long. The trees were bent over with the weight of snow. A white winter moon shone through the clouds.
‘It totally is.’
‘We can’t afford this!’
‘Sssh,’ said Huckle.
‘And I’m wearing a pinafore!’
‘Yeah, yeah, you are.’
Polly sat up in alarm. ‘What’s up?’
‘I called them and explained the situation,’ said Huckle. ‘It’s either this or a night sheltering in Accident and Emergency pretending we’ve got broken wrists.’
A liveried man rushed out to open the taxi door, and they were ushered through a grand entrance into the most ridiculous stately home. There were precious antiques and oil paintings everywhere, and the wallpaper was made out of some sort of material. It was stunning. Polly looked round and fiddled nervously with her pinafore buttons.
‘Now, Mr Freeman.’ The receptionist came forward smiling. ‘We heard all about you being caught in the storm. We know about your clothes situation, so if you need anything, just let us know and we’ll see what we can do. Also, we’ve taken the liberty of upgrading you to a suite.’
Polly turned on Huckle.
‘What is this?’
‘Nothing!’ said Huckle. ‘I just said we’d had some fabulous news and could they look after us.’
‘Pets are welcome here aren’t they?’
Neil pretended to be lifting his foot to examine his claws and not eating the tinsel. ‘Um,’ said the receptionist who was very nice and absolutely desperate to get home. ‘Sure! Also,’ she confided, ‘we had a massive group coming tonight and they’ve all had to call off because of the weather. So you are definitely in luck. Enjoy.’
She glanced back at Huckle.
‘I like your boyfriend’s accent,’ she said.
‘So do I,’ said Polly.
The room was absolutely immense, with a four-poster bed in the middle of it. Polly nearly cried with happiness when she saw it. There was an enormous claw-footed bath in the bathroom, which had a heated floor and two incredibly fluffy robes hanging up, with slippers.
‘Oh my God,’ said Polly. Huckle grinned. He knew how much she absolutely loved a bath, and while she turned on the taps and filled it full of foam from a selection of expensive smellies, he went and poured them both very large gin and tonics from the minibar.
As Polly wallowed blissfully in the endless superhot water, sipping her G&T, Huckle knelt down beside the bath.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I don’t like doing it very often. But being a workaholic like you sometimes really pays dividends.’
‘Your meeting went well?’
He frowned. ‘Better than well. I always work better when I’m miserable. It’s so weird.’
‘What happened?’
‘I’ve sold the new range to a whole chain of beauticians. Fresh honeycomb wax, all local, all organic.’
Polly looked at him in astonishment.
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously. Common or garden wax is no longer good enough for the tender mimsies of the south-west.’
‘So you’re paying for this place with pubes?’
Huckle grinned. ‘Is it worth it?’
Polly beamed. ‘Oh my God, yes! You clever thing! Yes!’
‘Just don’t ask me to work like that every week. It’s exhausting!’
After she’d soaked for long enough, but before she passed out from utter fatigue, they got into bed and ordered far too much from room service, then she told him everything that had happened with her father, and he, in his perfect, gentle Huckle way, simply listened; properly listened to everything she had to say, in the way she’d missed so very much.
When she was finished, he didn’t ask how she was feeling or say anything stupid about closure. He just said, ‘Oh.’ And ‘That sounds hard.’
And Polly nodded, and thought about the odd counterbalance of weights in the universe – how bad things could happen, and sometimes wonderful, wonderful things could happen, but you weren’t always fated to be in the heart of the story; sometimes it simply wasn’t about you; you didn’t always get all the answers.
And some days, when you were lying in a four-poster bed, with the person you loved more than anything else in the world asking if you would like more club sandwich, and should you curl up and watch a film together, and saying that you might have to stay tomorrow too because everything and everyone would be snowed in…
Well. Sometimes that was all right in itself. Sometimes that was more than enough. Sometimes it was everything.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Polly woke on Boxing Day feeling happy and sad at the same time and didn’t know why, then she blinked and realised.
Outside, the beautiful grounds of the hotel were completely covered in a thick blanket of snow. Amazingly, someone had come in the night and taken away her clothes, and returned them laundered and folded up in tissue paper. This was, she thought, as nuts as all the extraordinary things that had happened over the last couple of days.
They ate a ridiculously huge breakfast, then went for a wander around the grounds, kicking up snow with their feet. Polly had spoken to Jayden, who was still trying to talk Flora round, and now she was fretting about the old ladies, who might not be able to get down the treacherous cobbled pathways to the bakery or Muriel’s little supermarket. She would need to go back soon, to make deliveries to her elderly customers, who relied on her. There were always plenty of emergency supplies on Mount Polbearne, because of its often sticky winters, but it was good just to have a quick check in on everyone, make sure they were all all right.
‘Hush,’ said Huckle. ‘It’s Boxing Day. Everyone in Britain has far more in their house than they can possibly eat in a million years. Everyone will be fine for a few hours. Please. Trust me. Relax.’