Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 26

Malcolm snorted. ‘Yeah, fine. They can come and take all the pictures they like. Maybe you could glam up a bit, actually? Wouldn’t hurt to put a bit of lippy on, would it, darling, when they come to take the shots? Maybe a short skirt.’
Polly furrowed her brow.
‘I haven’t got any short skirts.’
‘No,’ said Malcolm pensively, giving her a quick up and down. ‘Well maybe that’s for the best.’
Polly served another customer wordlessly, clenching her nails into her palms.
‘So anyway, that’s settled,’ said Malcolm, dumping a large pile of slightly stained paperwork on her desk.
‘What’s settled?’ said Polly, pinging the till and turning round.
‘From next Monday,’ said Malcolm, ‘everything will get delivered centrally. One delivery a week. From a factory, like you said. You sell that, put some lippy on, we’ll have this place making money in no time. I’ll just take a couple more of those roll things on my way out.’
Huckle wished he knew how to stop Polly crying. Every time she managed to control herself, another wave would come over her and she’d lose it again.
‘And… and the newspaper is going to come and see me… and I’ll be serving up some fricking ham and pineapple sandwich on WHITE PLASTIC BREAD! And everyone will laugh at me.’
‘Hush,’ said Huckle. ‘Nobody reads papers.’
‘Don’t YOU start.’
She snivelled again.
‘And once a week! How can you have a bread delivery ONCE A WEEK? What’s it going to be like? It’s going to be worse than Mrs Manse’s!’
‘Hush,’ said Huckle. ‘You can just sell the contraband on the side, like you did when I met you.’
‘I can’t,’ said Polly, sobbing. ‘I can’t, because then I didn’t have the mortgage, did I? I didn’t have to have a job; I didn’t have much, but I could just about survive. But I can’t do it again. I’m a discharged bankrupt, it’s been hard enough as it is. If we lose the lighthouse…’
Huckle rubbed her back.
‘We won’t lose the lighthouse. I can get a job again in a minute.’
‘Yes, but not a job where you’ll be home every night to cook and play with Neil!’ said Polly. ‘It’ll be a job that needs you to wear a tie and not live on an island, won’t it?’
Huckle shrugged, acknowledging the difficulty.
‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘Oh God, it might be a job in America.’
‘No,’ said Huckle. ‘It will be a job wherever you are.’
‘But I want to be here,’ said Polly. ‘I want to be here with my bakery. But I can’t start over again! I just can’t.’
‘You can,’ said Huckle, although they both knew how impossible it would be.
‘I can’t!’ said Polly. ‘Malcolm and Janet would run me out of town. They would. They’d probably apply to some town hall about having me shut down; they’d make sure I couldn’t rent premises. And I couldn’t do it anyway. Can you imagine me trying to get a business loan? I want to open a bakery in a town of eight hundred people that already has two bakeries. Oh, and it’s on an island and I’m a discharged bankrupt with a ridiculous overpriced mortgage because I live in a stupid lighthouse.’
‘I feel you’re focusing very much on the negative,’ said Huckle carefully. Neil waddled over from where he’d been biting the tea towels and rubbed himself on her ankle.
‘Tell me what the positives are, Huckle. Please tell me and I’ll try and focus on them.’
Polly sank to the ground and buried her face in her hands. She was such a picture of misery, Huckle felt his heart ache for her; she looked like an inconsolable child.
‘Ssh,’ he said. ‘The positives are… maybe there’ll be a sudden retro fashion for white-bread sandwiches? You could call it… I don’t know. Mother’s Pride.’
Polly didn’t raise her head.
‘Or maybe,’ he said, ‘you won’t mind not having to get up and bake every day.’
She looked at him then, aghast.
‘But that’s what I do,’ she said. ‘That’s all I want to do. I love it.’
Huckle put his arm round her.
‘We can find somewhere else to do it,’ he said. ‘There’s always somewhere else.’
‘I don’t want to be anywhere else.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Huckle. ‘You and me together, wherever we want to be: what can possibly go wrong?’
‘Eep,’ said Neil.
‘Oh yeah,’ said Huckle.
He sat down beside them both as the evening light shone golden through the lighthouse windows.
‘Well this is what you English call a pickle.’
Polly took a walk the next morning after she’d prepared the day’s dough. She wanted to get some exercise, shake off the cobwebs and the crossness; she’d found, too, that a walk often cleared something up in her head, helped her see the way a little more clearly, and she hoped it would today, because she’d lain awake half the night feeling totally helpless, until Huckle, fed up with her wriggling, had turned her towards him and said, ‘Now, stop it, this is ridiculous. Go to sleep right now.’
And strangely, something about the power of his words had relaxed her body, and she had, finally, fallen fast asleep.
It was a bright, windy day with a hint of grey cloud above the scudding white, but the rain would probably hold off. Polly never bothered with the weather forecast. It simply didn’t apply to them, out on this little rocky outcrop between Cornwall and France. It was certainly chillier out in the water, and windier. But they often escaped the heavy rain that sometimes sat low over Cornwall’s rolling green hills and fields; the mainland could be completely smothered in thick cloud whilst Polbearne gleamed in fresh sunlight, and it felt like their little semi-island wasn’t actually connected to the real world at all.
Polly set off in the direction of the beach. The causeway was open, but it would be covered over again in a couple of hours, so she would just have to get by by marching in a circle, possibly doing a couple of circuits if she needed to. But the cliff above the beach was quite steep, so at least she’d get some exercise.
Neil came with her, hopping cheerfully from stone to stone, fluttering a little, then coming down to settle; occasionally, if they hit a flat bit, perching on her shoulder.