Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 25

‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ said Polly. ‘I’m turning into a carb-pusher.’
Patrick looked glum. ‘I know, it’s just…’
‘You love bread. Well, fortunately…’
Polly reached into her bag and brought out a Tupperware box. She had figured it couldn’t hurt to be prepared.
‘Honey and flaxseed. Toast it with butter, I would say. It’s also a very good soldier bread for boiled eggs.’
Patrick inhaled it.
‘Now that,’ he said, ‘is sensational. Thank you.’
In the end, it was Huckle who got them found out. He literally, as they realised later, laid a trail of breadcrumbs to her door. It was early on a Saturday morning. Polly had just finished checking her emails in despair – there was nothing out there – and looking at all the jobs pages online. The only two jobs that interested her and suited her skill set were both unpaid internships. But since she couldn’t afford to move back to Plymouth and she couldn’t afford a car to get her there, what the heck was she meant to do?
She was looking out to sea when there was a rattle of pebbles on her front windows. She frowned – the sea sometimes splattered against them when there was a storm, but not normally on a quiet morning. She leant out. Standing there grinning broadly was Huckle, his blond hair shining in the sunlight. He looked, oddly, too big for the tiny harbour; an alien transplanted from a huge country to a small one. It didn’t seem to trouble him though.
‘Hey!’ he said. ‘You know what day it is?’
Polly pulled at her hair – she’d barely touched it that morning – and rubbed her eyes.
‘Is it Huckleday?’
He grinned again, all those teeth.
‘Every day is Huckleday. But also: Saturday!’
‘Yes…’
She wished she had a weekend now. Amazing, all those Monday mornings she’d cursed getting out of bed and having to go to work, but now she would love to have those days back again. Ha, stupid contradictory life.
Huck pulled out two jars of honey from behind his back.
‘On Saturday morning, you have bagels. Everyone knows that.’
‘Did you bring the bagels?’
‘NO!’ he shouted. ‘That’s where you come in.’
‘Did you bring coffee?’
‘Nope!’
‘The newspapers?’
‘Nope!’
‘Fresh eggs?’
He shook his head.
‘I brought honey!’
Polly smiled. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I guess that’ll have to do.’
Bagels were tricky things, Polly knew, and she set the pot on the stove ready for boiling. Whereupon Neil, who’d been practising his new-found skills (Polly didn’t think he was ready to go to the sanctuary just yet), immediately hopped and fluttered up on to the table, and from there on to the countertop, and from there up on to the edge of the pot and, triumphantly, into it, gliding along the top like a rubber duck.
‘OUT of there,’ said Polly, exasperated. He did this every time she put water on the stove. Not only was it a waste of water, she was worried about boiling him to death one of these days.
‘I thought you and the puffin weren’t serious about living together,’ commented Huckle, returning after being dispatched to Muriel’s little store for fresh coffee, the papers, an onion and some cream cheese. He’d popped to the fishmonger’s van too, and brought back some smoked salmon and two lemons, and Polly smiled at him cheerfully.
‘That’s better!’
‘Most people like my honey.’
‘I like your honey,’ said Polly. ‘I like it very much. But man cannot live on honey alone. And neither can girls. Or puffins. Here, you knead this half.’
They set to work pounding and twisting the dough. Polly couldn’t help but notice how muscular Huckle’s forearms were, the hairs almost invisible against his lightly tanned skin.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Bees.’
‘Bees,’ he agreed.
‘You’re… a career bee-ist?’
‘An apiarist.’
‘Sure, I knew that.’
Polly pushed the dough hard with the flat of her hand. It rolled in a satisfying way.
‘Don’t overknead,’ she instructed Huckle, who looked as if he might squash the dough beneath his huge palms. ‘You’ll make them too chewy.’
‘I like ’em chewy.’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘You eat your half. I’ll eat my half.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘You didn’t answer my question about the bees.’
‘Yes. No.’
Polly glanced at him sideways.
‘Are you on the lam?’ she asked.
‘Huh? Me? No. Not exactly.’
‘When you say “not exactly”, that makes me think you’re absolutely on the lam. Did you shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die? You sound a bit like someone who might do that. Oh my God, I’m going to be like one of those terrible American women who write to prisoners on death row!’
Huckle smiled his slow grin.
‘I didn’t shoot anyone, no. The cops aren’t looking for me. Purely personal reasons.’
They kneaded on in silence.
‘I moved here for personal reasons too,’ said Polly. ‘My life went down the toilet.’
He raised an eyebrow politely, but didn’t push.
‘I suppose that’s why everyone moves here,’ she said, fishing, but all she got was the eyebrow-raise again.
‘Oh God, that sounded rude,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s lovely and everything…’
‘I think it’s lovely,’ said Huckle. ‘I think it’s completely beautiful.’
‘What’s it like where you come from?’
‘Flat,’ said Huckle. ‘Everything is flat, and big, and there aren’t many people and it goes on for miles. And lush, like a jungle. Lots of green plants that can eat you.’
‘Where are you from, the rainforest?’
‘Savannah, Georgia.’
‘What’s that like?’
‘It’s beautiful,’ he said simply. ‘In a different way. It’s very old-fashioned. Has all these little garden squares.’
‘In America?’ said Polly. ‘I thought America was all modern.’