Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 20

‘Or maybe the truth would help?’
‘Sometimes the truth helps,’ said Polly. ‘Other times it makes everything a million times worse, especially when the other person isn’t there to shout at. I thought he was single, remember? If he’d even bothered to mention her, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near him. It was all his fault. So why make her feel worse? Plus, she needs friends right now, and I think we can be that.’
‘Well, as long as you manage not to sleep with her brother or anything… Where’s the Huck?’
‘At a honey conference in Devon, would you believe,’ said Polly. ‘It’s like three hundred apiarists. They all get together to discuss floral patenting and hive conservation and drink mead. But Dubose is coming.’
‘He’s cute,’ said Kerensa.
‘Yes,’ said Polly. ‘He’s slightly less cute when he leaves his laundry all over the stairs and spends a lot of time complaining that there’s not much to do here.’
‘There isn’t much to do here.’
‘See, I get enough of it from you. I don’t need it from anyone else.’
‘Okay,’ said Kerensa. ‘Tell me about Huckle’s conference. Tell me they get dressed up.’
‘Well, there’s a dinner…’
‘No, I mean tell me they get dressed up as bees.’
‘They do not get dressed up as bees.’
‘That is so disappointing.’
‘Well,’ said Polly, ‘I might have bought Huckle a black and yellow striped sweater.’
‘No way!’ said Kerensa, grinning. ‘Are you making him wear it?’
‘Are you joking? He fills this house head to toe with puffin shiz. I need to get my revenge somehow.’
‘Ha,’ said Kerensa. ‘Do you think they listen to a lot of old Police songs?’
‘“Don’t Buzz So Close to Me”?’
‘“Da Bee Bee Bee, Da Ba Ba Ba”.’
The two girls burst out laughing.
‘Okay, we’re obviously pissed already,’ said Kerensa, looking at her glass. ‘I think we need to go out before we’re too pissed to get down the stairs. Down is harder than up when you’re pissed.’
‘I know, like horses.’
‘What do you mean, like horses?’
‘Horses can walk upstairs but not down. If you find a horse at the top of a lighthouse, it’s really terrible news.’
‘I do not know how I functioned in the world without knowing that.’
Kerensa slid a long-sleeved, very plain but clearly insanely expensive dress over her head.
‘Cor, that looks like it was made for you,’ said Polly cheerfully.
‘Um, yes,’ said Kerensa. ‘That’s because it was.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously,’ said Kerensa. ‘Someone stuck a pin in me at the fitting and Reuben threatened to sue them.’
‘Your life is weird now,’ said Polly.
‘You’re the one whose most pressing future purchase is a FIREMAN’S POLE.’
Dubose joined them as they left the lighthouse. He was wearing a pale grey shirt that Polly knew for a fact was Huckle’s, but she didn’t mention it.
The air was warm and stiller than it had been recently as they walked companionably down across the rocks, Kerensa as usual in ridiculous shoes. Neil came fluttering up from the rock pool he’d been splashing in – his outdoor swimming pool, as Huckle called it. Kerensa bent down.
‘Hey, small bird,’ she said. Neil eeped at her. Kerensa was not his favourite. She never carried snacks and she didn’t like getting bird footprints on her expensive clothes.
‘You know, I saw a million puffins coming down here today. And do you know what they were doing? They were playing with their mates, right? Flocking and shagging and making noise and bouncing about all over the place. Have you got no mates? You haven’t got any mates, have you?’
Kerensa straightened up.
‘Your bird’s weird. You need to sort him out with some friends or a girlfriend or something.’
Polly stiffened.
‘He seems perfectly happy to me.’
Neil hopped towards her feet and rubbed his head affectionately on her tights. His beak caught and he accidentally started a ladder in one of them. Kerensa rolled her eyes, but Polly just scratched him behind the ears, which he loved.
‘I’m just saying. He’s not a baby any more. Shouldn’t he be out and about more?’
‘Yeah,’ said Dubose. ‘That bird needs to get laid.’
‘Well I’m not stopping him,’ said Polly in an injured tone. She got very defensive about Neil. ‘If he wants to meet a lady puffin, he can do that whenever he likes.’
‘How’s he going to meet one if you don’t take him to any flocking areas?’ said Kerensa. ‘Do they have Tinder for puffins? They could call it Flounder. Heh heh heh.’
Polly sighed. She did wonder sometimes, in her heart of hearts, if she should have been stricter about taking Neil back to the sanctuary, once he’d escaped and come back to them. She did worry about thwarting his natural development by making him so dependent on them – he couldn’t hunt if his life depended on it, could barely fly and even by puffin standards had a distinctly rounded tummy. Plus if this new guy Malcolm was going to be absolutely determined that birds wouldn’t be allowed in the shop…
‘Did you just come down from your castle tonight to give me grief?’ she said to Kerensa.
‘Always,’ said Kerensa. ‘Did you come down from your tower tonight to give me a drink? Because I have to say, I’m feeling rather thirsty.’
‘Partaay!’ said Dubose.
The Red Lion was already buzzing when they got there. It wasn’t the holiday season yet, but early and unexpected sunshine had meant extra day trippers, which meant happy workers, so nearly every table in the cobbled courtyard was full.
Andy had a band playing, a bunch of fishermen from down the coast at Looe. There was a fiddler, an accordion player wearing a flat cap, a singer and a percussionist.
‘Fuck me, it’s the Mumfords,’ said Kerensa gloomily, but Polly enjoyed listening to the traditional shanties on a starry spring night within sight and sound of the sea. They did ‘Sir Patric Spens’ and ‘The Poorest Company’ while Kerensa went to the bar. She started shouting before she even got there, until the scared-looking bartender remembered her from last time and went to the back of the fridge where he kept her secret stock of decent Chablis, as opposed to the warm horse piss that made up their wine list the rest of the time.