Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 81

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Huckle.
‘’Cause it sounds to me like you like her a lot.’
Huckle shrugged.
‘And she might have liked you too. In fact I think you might have been a total pair of idiots.’
‘Thanks for that,’ said Huckle, taking a long sip of his coffee. ‘How’s…’
Candice went a little pink, and smiled.
‘Er, you know… now that I’ve heard all about Little Miss Bakery, I am a lot less bothered about telling you this, but Ron and I are getting married.’
‘Congratulations!’ said Huckle, and again to his amazement, he found that he genuinely meant it. Ron and Candice were well suited he did three triathlons a year.
‘Thanks,’ said Candice. She looked at him.
‘You were so daft to run away like that,’ she said. ‘Well, that’s what I thought at the time. But now… I’m not sure it didn’t suit you. You look well, Huckle.’
He smiled. ‘Oh, anywhere suits me.’
Candice arched an eyebrow.
‘Hmm,’ she said as they stood up to go. ‘Stay in touch. If you’re staying.’ She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
‘Sure,’ said Huckle, watching as she clip-clopped her way down the sidewalk.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
They were all gathered in Polbearne’s new posh restaurant, summoned for a meeting by Samantha and Henry, who, despite being incomers, had somehow contrived – as well as providing the local builders with a huge amount of work, and persuading several of their posh friends to buy tumbledown cottages, which pleased everybody – to take over the running of the town. They had called a meeting about ‘the Greatest Danger of our Time’, according to the posters they’d put everywhere, and nearly everyone had turned up obediently, partly interested, partly because there wasn’t much else to do now the summer rush was slowing down, and partly because they suspected, correctly, that Samantha and Henry might provide free wine.
Patrick was there from the vet’s; Muriel, of course; Mrs Manse, sitting alone imperiously; Archie and Kendall from the boats, and Jayden. Polly was sitting at the side, with Neil, stifling a yawn.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked Patrick. She knew that the unspoiled, unmodern ambience of the village was what appealed to him about Polbearne. He felt they had something there, an unbroken link to the past – several of the older residents still spoke a little Cornish they’d heard at the feet of their own grandparents. The idea of change terrified him.
Just then, Samantha stood up and pinged her glass.
‘Now, I’m sure you’ve all heard the news,’ she said, which she knew wasn’t the case because she’d only got it herself from a planner she’d made a huge effort to cultivate on the mainland so he’d let her build a roof garden.
People shook their heads, and Samantha explained.
The new summer rush had never slowed, not even for a second, but it wasn’t that that was changing things; it was the wreck. The police had sealed off the beach, and special ships had come along and siphoned all the diesel off the ship – about forty thousand gallons – but there was still a lot of merchandise on the bottom of the ocean and the ship needed to be taken away for scrap. Every day, ducks were washing up; taken by the tides, they had been found as far away as Exmouth, and Land’s End.
But back in Mount Polbearne, the problem was local. Lorries and diggers and diving vessels and personnel needed to get into the town to work, and they needed to get back at night-time, regardless of the tides. The new residents wanted building work done to their houses, which also meant trucks and lorries and diggers. And they wanted to drive their cars. Daytrippers too didn’t want to risk getting stranded or take an overpriced ferry boat back to the mainland. The talk had been around for years, but it had started to gain more and more momentum, particularly when a car broke down one summer Sunday on the causeway just as the tide came in, and the family inside, including very young children, had had to make a heart-stopping dash for it as the water lapped around their knees. Something had to be done, was the general consensus, and the local council, delighted with the regeneration of the area, had applied to the central development fund for a bridge to connect them to the mainland.
There was a gasp around the room, then an immediate burst of noise.
Some people thought it was a great idea. It would open up the town to more people. It would mean you could go and do a supermarket shop and not worry about getting back in time. It meant no more being stranded in the wintertime when the storms made the causeway impassable for days. It meant the fishermen could get their fish to market faster, and that people could live on the Mount and commute. Jayden was very excited, pointing out that he wanted to go to a nightclub in Plymouth and flash his new-found ‘indoor job’ status. The fishermen grumbled a bit about the imminent loss of their water taxi income, but most understood that there was no halting progress, that it had always been just a matter of time. Patrick, of course, was valiantly opposed.
‘Well can’t they all go and live in those places, then? The pizza-ordering places? And we can keep this as a place where you can’t order a pizza.’
Polly suddenly felt like she’d love a pizza, but didn’t feel she could mention it. Maybe she’d make some in the shop. Maybe, she thought suddenly, she could be the pizza concession – she had the oven, she’d just need to work slightly different hours. It would be tricky, but not impossible, and given the amount of hungry men currently working in the town, probably extremely popular.
‘Hmm,’ she said, in two minds.
‘Abso-bloody-lutely not no bridge!’ thundered Henry in his pink cords. ‘We’d get all sorts in here.’
All the Polbearnites, including Polly, rolled their eyes, and helped themselves to another glass of the wine Henry was paying for.
It was a lot to think about, and the main topic of conversation of everyone who came into the shop, along with the fact that a famous pop star had tried to buy the lighthouse.
‘The LIGHTHOUSE is for sale?’ said Polly in amazement. She still had broken nights, despite spending a lot of money on blackout curtains. How could you live in that?
‘Well no, it’s fine when you’re inside it,’ said Muriel. ‘It’s the only place in Mount Polbearne you can’t see the damn light.’