Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 37

Polly decided to wait to have a cry until she was safely in the sidecar and nobody could see or hear her, apart from some visiting children, who couldn’t believe that anyone who got to ride in a sidecar could possibly be so sad they would cry.
She knew she was being ridiculous and overdramatic, and she couldn’t imagine what Huckle must think of her, but even so. Neil was only a little baby bird, but he had made her feel less alone at the loneliest point in her life. She was allowed to miss him. She wondered if this was what having children was like. Then she remembered her mother telling her that God made teenagers horrible so that you were happy when they left home, which explained a lot.
Eventually she got over her crying jag and realised, looking out through her goggles, that she didn’t have a clue where she was. They weren’t retracing the obvious route home; instead, they seemed to be driving down the north coast, the sea bobbing in and out of view every time they traversed a hill. She looked enquiringly at Huckle, but he was checking the road signs with a confused look on his face and didn’t notice. Then her foot touched Neil’s empty cardboard box and she had to concentrate hard on not crying again.
With a screeching howl from the brakes and a manoeuvre that nearly jolted Polly out of her seat, the bike made a sudden right turn down a sandy track.
‘Sorry,’ mouthed Huckle beneath the noise of the engine. Polly could see why he’d nearly missed the turning; it wasn’t signposted at all. She wondered where it led.
The bike bumped down the unpaved track. She’d expected it to lead to a farm, but instead it ducked down alongside a flat field and then up over some sand dunes, where a number of jeeps were parked up. Huckle pulled up alongside them, and stopped the bike. The sudden silence after the noise of the engine felt almost overwhelming.
Polly climbed out of the sidecar and stretched.
‘Where are we?’ She looked around. Huckle glanced at her, amused.
‘Have you stopped crying?’ he said.
‘Er, yeah,’ said Polly. ‘I think so.’
‘It’s okay to cry, you know.’
‘I do know,’ said Polly, rubbing at her face to get rid of mascara traces.
They stood at the top of the dunes and looked down. Polly gasped. They were at the very top of a long golden sandy beach. It was immense; it seemed to stretch on for ever. Huge blue waves pounded it, a rolling surf that went on for miles.
The beach was almost completely deserted except for one wooden shack and the bobbing heads and wetsuited bodies of about half a dozen surfers out in the water. Polly could only get a measure of the scale of the waves by how tiny the figures looked dancing on top of them.
‘What IS this place?’ she said. Even this early in the season the surfing beaches were all absolutely mobbed, surfers pushing and shoving each other out of the way, often having fights. But here…
‘It belongs to Reuben Finkle,’ said Huckle. ‘He’s like some Silicon Valley whizz-kid, yeah? Made an absolute mint selling top-secret defence gizmos. Retired at twenty-eight to surf all day.’
‘Impressive,’ said Polly. ‘Oh my God – what, this is his beach?’
‘This is his beach. His house is up there. It’s completely secret. But he lets a few friends use it from time to time.’
‘No way.’
‘I knew him back at Wharton… Anyway…’
Polly looked around. It was exquisite. The sun had come out and was making the fine sand glow. It felt like the first really warm day of the year.
‘Come on,’ said Huckle. ‘Are you hungry or still too sad?’
‘I am sad,’ said Polly. ‘But also a little bit hungry.’
Huckle took off his boots and socks and left them by the bike, and Polly did likewise with her Converses, then they both rolled up their jeans and slid down a dune. Polly fell on her bum and Huckle laughed at her and she stuck her tongue out at him, feeling almost normal.
The wet sand when they got down to the water’s edge was delicious; the water itself was still bracing, but lovely to splash through, so Polly did.
‘It’s amazing some people have so much,’ she said. Reuben Finkle’s house had come into view, an amazing modern glass circle that looked like something Tony Stark might live in.
‘Yeah,’ said Huckle carefully. ‘But isn’t it wonderful that he preserves something as beautiful as this? And he does a lot for ocean conservation.’
‘He sounds like a great guy.’
‘He’s a yutz,’ said Huckle. ‘But he does a lot for ocean conservation.’
After waving to some of Huckle’s buddies on the surf, they arrived at the little wooden shack Polly had seen from the dunes. It was painted white and, she saw as she got there, was actually a little café; there were tables and chairs sprinkled roughly about, a full bar and an open-plan enviably equipped kitchen.
‘Wow,’ said Polly. ‘Impressive. Why don’t people just come down and vandalise this place? The local kids must know. The road’s like right there.’
‘They do know,’ said Huckle. ‘They dream that one day he’ll let them come here too. Plus there are lots of rumours about CCTV and guards with machine guns.’
Polly glanced at him. ‘Seriously?’
‘Oh, they’re just rumours,’ said Huckle. ‘Probably.’
They sat down at one of the tables. It was comfortably warm, not too windy, the sun a gentle healing presence on Polly’s neck. She sighed with relief.
‘It’s beautiful.’
A short, wide man with an army haircut and a boyish, petulant face full of freckles came out from the kitchen wearing a white apron over his shorts.
‘HUCK! MY MAN!’
Huck raised his hand and did some kind of complicated high-five manoeuvre, which failed at the last moment. The cook punched him quite hard on the shoulder.
‘He has a chef?’ said Polly before she could help herself.
‘Who has a chef?’ said the short man.
‘Sorry,’ said Polly. ‘I was just asking about the man who owns all this. Hi. I’m Polly.’
‘And I’m the man who owns all this,’ said the man, sticking out his hand. ‘And I like to cook. But I also have a chef. Actually I have three chefs. Yeah. Cool. Reuben Finkle. Good to make your acquaintance. You a friend of Huckle’s, huh? Huh? Yeah? Am I right? A special friend? A special sexy friend?’