Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 2
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The weird thing was, had it been only their personal lives coming apart, then everyone they knew would have been full of sympathy and help and advice and reassurance. But a failing business… people were too scared to say anything. They all kept their distance, and didn’t probe too much, even Polly’s fearless best friend Kerensa.
Perhaps it was because the fear – of penury, of losing the life you had worked so hard for – was too deep, too strong, and everyone thought their situation might be infectious. Perhaps it was because people didn’t really realise. Perhaps the pair of them had kept the facade up too successfully for too long: looking cheery; putting joint meals on the credit card and holding their breath when it was time for it to go through the machine; hand-made birthday gifts – thank goodness Polly could bake, that was useful; hanging on to the flashy black Mazda, though that would have to go now, of course. Polly didn’t care about the car. She did care about Chris. Or she had. In the last year or so, she hadn’t seen the Chris she knew at all. The sweet, funny man who had been so shy and awkward when they’d got together, then blossomed when he’d started up his own graphic design consultancy. Polly had supported him all the way. They were a team. She’d proved it too; come to work for the business. Put in her life savings (which after the mortgage hadn’t been much), fought and fought for custom, charmed and chased and exhausted herself in every conceivable way.
That made it worse, of course. When he’d finally come home that fateful night, a cold cold spring, though it felt more like never-ending winter, and sat down, and she’d looked at him, really looked at him, and he’d said, grimly, ‘It’s over.’
Local newspapers were closing, so they didn’t need advertising, so they didn’t need layout or design… and businesses didn’t really need flyers any more, or they did but they designed them themselves on the web and printed them out at home. Everyone was a designer now, and a photographer, and everything else Chris had once done so well, with so much care and attention to detail. It wasn’t really the recession, although that hadn’t helped. It was that the world had changed. He might as well have been trying to sell pagers, or cassette tapes.
It had been months since they’d last made love, but she’d woken often in the early hours to find him lying wide awake beside her, desperately doing sums in his head or just letting misery and anxiety churn around inside him. And she’d tried to find the right words to help, but nothing had.
‘No, that won’t work,’ he’d bark to her every suggestion, from wedding stationery to school yearbooks. Or, ‘It’s pointless.’ He’d become more and more obstructive, until working together was almost intolerable, and because he didn’t like any of Polly’s ideas for the business, and they had almost nothing coming in, Polly had less and less to do. She’d let him leave first in the morning so he could go for a run; my only form of stress release, he’d said, at which she’d bitten her tongue to stop herself pointing out that any time she suggested anything – a walk, a stroll down to the harbour, a picnic, things that cost nothing – he’d snarl back at her that it was useless and he couldn’t be bothered.
Polly had tried to get him to a GP, but that was a waste of time too. He simply wouldn’t admit that there was anything wrong – with him, with them, with anything. It was just a slump; it would be all right. Then he came across her looking on a jobs website and that had been the catalyst. The row they’d had that night had nearly blown the roof off, and it had all come tumbling out: how much money he’d borrowed, how much worse the situation was than he’d ever let on to Polly. She’d stared at him open-mouthed.
A week later – a silent, agonising week – he’d slumped in, sat down and looked her straight in the face.
‘It’s over.’
And now here they were in the wreckage of their business with the very nice Mr Gardner and Mr Bassi, and every happy dream and plan they’d come up with in the days when they thought they could do anything… every piece of paperwork she’d watched him sign as they popped the champagne, christened the desk in the lovely little office, goggled at their ad in the Yellow Pages… all of it was gone, into a world that really didn’t care how hard they’d worked or how much they’d wanted it or any of those reality-show clichés that actually were completely irrelevant in the scheme of things. It was over. All the pictures of lighthouses in the world couldn’t change that.
Chapter Two
‘Here are the things I have,’ said Polly, walking through the town, the chill spring wind catching her. She was desperately trying to gear herself up and count her blessings; she had a summit with her best friend and didn’t want to be in tears when she met her.
‘I am healthy. I am well, apart from the dodgy ankle that I twisted dancing in that bar, which served me right. I have my own faculties. I have lost my money in a business, but people lose more all the time. I haven’t been in any natural disasters. My family are all well. Annoying, but well. My relationship… people go through far worse. Far worse. It’s not like we have to divorce —’
‘What are you doing?’ said Kerensa, loudly. Even though she was tottering on really high heels, she still moved as fast as Polly did in her Converses and had caught up with her on her own way home from her management consulting job. ‘Your lips are moving. Are you actually going properly crazy? Because you know…’
‘What?’
‘Might be a strategy. Disability living allowance?’
‘KERENSA!’ said Polly. ‘You are awful. And no, I was counting my blessings, if you must know. I’d got to “don’t have to get divorced.”’
Kerensa pulled a face that would probably have expressed doubt if she hadn’t had so much Botox that it was often difficult to tell quite what she was feeling, although she would then immediately explain at high volume.
‘Good Lord, seriously? What else was there? Two arms, two legs?’
‘I thought we were meant to be meeting so you could cheer me up.’
Kerensa held up the clanking bag from the wine shop.
‘We most certainly are. So go on, how far did you get? Once you’d discounted homeless, jobless, all that.’
They had stopped outside Kerensa’s immaculate Plymouth town house, which had two little orange trees either side of the polished red door with the brass knocker.
Perhaps it was because the fear – of penury, of losing the life you had worked so hard for – was too deep, too strong, and everyone thought their situation might be infectious. Perhaps it was because people didn’t really realise. Perhaps the pair of them had kept the facade up too successfully for too long: looking cheery; putting joint meals on the credit card and holding their breath when it was time for it to go through the machine; hand-made birthday gifts – thank goodness Polly could bake, that was useful; hanging on to the flashy black Mazda, though that would have to go now, of course. Polly didn’t care about the car. She did care about Chris. Or she had. In the last year or so, she hadn’t seen the Chris she knew at all. The sweet, funny man who had been so shy and awkward when they’d got together, then blossomed when he’d started up his own graphic design consultancy. Polly had supported him all the way. They were a team. She’d proved it too; come to work for the business. Put in her life savings (which after the mortgage hadn’t been much), fought and fought for custom, charmed and chased and exhausted herself in every conceivable way.
That made it worse, of course. When he’d finally come home that fateful night, a cold cold spring, though it felt more like never-ending winter, and sat down, and she’d looked at him, really looked at him, and he’d said, grimly, ‘It’s over.’
Local newspapers were closing, so they didn’t need advertising, so they didn’t need layout or design… and businesses didn’t really need flyers any more, or they did but they designed them themselves on the web and printed them out at home. Everyone was a designer now, and a photographer, and everything else Chris had once done so well, with so much care and attention to detail. It wasn’t really the recession, although that hadn’t helped. It was that the world had changed. He might as well have been trying to sell pagers, or cassette tapes.
It had been months since they’d last made love, but she’d woken often in the early hours to find him lying wide awake beside her, desperately doing sums in his head or just letting misery and anxiety churn around inside him. And she’d tried to find the right words to help, but nothing had.
‘No, that won’t work,’ he’d bark to her every suggestion, from wedding stationery to school yearbooks. Or, ‘It’s pointless.’ He’d become more and more obstructive, until working together was almost intolerable, and because he didn’t like any of Polly’s ideas for the business, and they had almost nothing coming in, Polly had less and less to do. She’d let him leave first in the morning so he could go for a run; my only form of stress release, he’d said, at which she’d bitten her tongue to stop herself pointing out that any time she suggested anything – a walk, a stroll down to the harbour, a picnic, things that cost nothing – he’d snarl back at her that it was useless and he couldn’t be bothered.
Polly had tried to get him to a GP, but that was a waste of time too. He simply wouldn’t admit that there was anything wrong – with him, with them, with anything. It was just a slump; it would be all right. Then he came across her looking on a jobs website and that had been the catalyst. The row they’d had that night had nearly blown the roof off, and it had all come tumbling out: how much money he’d borrowed, how much worse the situation was than he’d ever let on to Polly. She’d stared at him open-mouthed.
A week later – a silent, agonising week – he’d slumped in, sat down and looked her straight in the face.
‘It’s over.’
And now here they were in the wreckage of their business with the very nice Mr Gardner and Mr Bassi, and every happy dream and plan they’d come up with in the days when they thought they could do anything… every piece of paperwork she’d watched him sign as they popped the champagne, christened the desk in the lovely little office, goggled at their ad in the Yellow Pages… all of it was gone, into a world that really didn’t care how hard they’d worked or how much they’d wanted it or any of those reality-show clichés that actually were completely irrelevant in the scheme of things. It was over. All the pictures of lighthouses in the world couldn’t change that.
Chapter Two
‘Here are the things I have,’ said Polly, walking through the town, the chill spring wind catching her. She was desperately trying to gear herself up and count her blessings; she had a summit with her best friend and didn’t want to be in tears when she met her.
‘I am healthy. I am well, apart from the dodgy ankle that I twisted dancing in that bar, which served me right. I have my own faculties. I have lost my money in a business, but people lose more all the time. I haven’t been in any natural disasters. My family are all well. Annoying, but well. My relationship… people go through far worse. Far worse. It’s not like we have to divorce —’
‘What are you doing?’ said Kerensa, loudly. Even though she was tottering on really high heels, she still moved as fast as Polly did in her Converses and had caught up with her on her own way home from her management consulting job. ‘Your lips are moving. Are you actually going properly crazy? Because you know…’
‘What?’
‘Might be a strategy. Disability living allowance?’
‘KERENSA!’ said Polly. ‘You are awful. And no, I was counting my blessings, if you must know. I’d got to “don’t have to get divorced.”’
Kerensa pulled a face that would probably have expressed doubt if she hadn’t had so much Botox that it was often difficult to tell quite what she was feeling, although she would then immediately explain at high volume.
‘Good Lord, seriously? What else was there? Two arms, two legs?’
‘I thought we were meant to be meeting so you could cheer me up.’
Kerensa held up the clanking bag from the wine shop.
‘We most certainly are. So go on, how far did you get? Once you’d discounted homeless, jobless, all that.’
They had stopped outside Kerensa’s immaculate Plymouth town house, which had two little orange trees either side of the polished red door with the brass knocker.
