Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 33

Huckle looked as close to furious as Polly had ever seen him. Slowly, tentatively, the door handle turned.
There was silence in the room.
‘Is he… is he okay?’ said Dubose. He genuinely did look completely and utterly distraught.
Huckle shrugged. ‘No thanks to you,’ he said. ‘And Polly lost her job.’
‘Oh God, man,’ said Dubose. ‘I had no idea. I am so, so…’
Huckle shook his head. ‘You never do, do you?’
‘Why?’ said Polly quietly. ‘Why were you with Selina? You know she’s gone through something awful.’
‘Yeah,’ said Dubose. ‘She said to me, “I’ve been through something awful, and I need to do something nice.” That’s all it was.’
‘Would Clemmie think that?’ said Huckle, his face still stony.
‘Oh here we go again,’ said Dubose. ‘Perfect Huckle with his perfect life and perfect girlfriend, life all sorted.’
Polly and Huckle shared astonished glances.
‘And Dubose the total failure dropout as usual. Selina invited me over, and the fact that she had you in too means she obviously wasn’t as ashamed of me or as bothered by me as you guys are. She was happy to see me, by the way. She didn’t bother asking blah blah Dubose how’s your four-thousand-miles-away girlfriend or yadda yadda Dubose how’s that farm you’re on holiday from? We’re two grown adults.’
‘Who nearly killed our puffin.’
‘That’s…’ Dubose lifted his hands in consternation. ‘That’s CAT business.’
He turned on his heel.
‘Right, fine. You got me. I’m going.’
‘Dubose,’ yelled Huckle down the steps after him. ‘Don’t go. We’ll sort it out.’
But there was just the noise of Dubose banging around in his bedroom.
‘It’s okay,’ he shouted up. ‘I’m out of your hair now! No need to keep letting you down.’
Huckle ran downstairs.
‘Bosey,’ he said. ‘Bosey, please.’
But Dubose had gone.
It had been a long day. Polly and Huckle sat in silence, Huckle trying to contain his anger.
‘He always does this,’ he said at last. ‘Rushes out when the going gets tough.’
Polly was kneeling by the tea box, looking at a snoozing Neil.
‘Will he come back?’
Huckle shook his head.
‘I don’t know. Maybe he’ll go home. He must be needed at home.’ He yawned. ‘Oh God, what a crappy day. Come on, let’s go to bed.’
Polly took a longing look at Neil.
‘No,’ said Huckle. ‘He’s not getting in the bed. That is where I absolutely draw the line. Bed is for you and me. In fact, that is the only thing that might take our minds off everything right now.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Polly, shaking her head. There was a pause.
‘Ah,’ said Huckle. ‘A challenge.’
He drew her closer to him, and pulled down her T-shirt, gently kissing the top of her freckled shoulder. Polly opened her mouth to say something, but he shushed her.
‘Come and look at the sunset. Forget everything else. I am going to do things to you, and they are going to take a long time, because you are sad and have had a terrible day, and I am sad and have had a terrible day, but fortunately there are two things in my favour: one, shock makes people slightly horny, it’s a well-known fact. And two, I am an extremely patient man and I have nowhere to go and nothing else to do but make you happy.’
Chapter Ten
‘Did you feel that it helped?’
‘Sleeping with an American who was only passing through, and breaking up the one friendship I’d made since I arrived?’
Pause.
‘Well, I’ve had better evenings.’
‘Do you think you can be a little gentler on yourself?’
‘I’m not sure I deserve to be.’
Polly woke the following morning feeling much more optimistic. By the time she and Huckle had fallen into a contented, exhausted sleep, it still hadn’t been that late, and she had, of course, no bakery to wake for and slept all the way to eight o’clock, which in her terms was the equivalent of about noon.
The sun was shining straight through the bedroom window, glistening across the waves, which were bouncing merrily. One or two thready clouds danced across the turquoise sky, but otherwise it was a perfect, perfect day. She threw open the funny little curved window and took in great breaths of fresh salty air.
She turned round. Huckle was still fast asleep, his huge arms flung out across the tiny bed. A ray of sunlight landed on his hair, brightening it to gold, and caught the fine curls on his chest. He was quite, quite beautiful, and it did her heart good just to look at him for a little while. She loved him so much it scared her sometimes: scared her into worrying that one day things would change and she wouldn’t love him, or he wouldn’t love her, or some other catastrophe.
That wouldn’t happen to them, she vowed. Yes, it was going to be tough – really tough. But she’d had tough times before and come through them, hadn’t she? He was there for her. It would be fine. It would be all right.
She padded upstairs. To her intense joy, Neil was up on his feet. He was waddling about, tentatively but independently, and eeped happily to see her. She mixed him up some tuna with his antibiotics, and examined his stitches, but they were clean and dry, she was delighted to see.
‘Well you are a sight for sore eyes,’ she said, kissing his head. Then, not knowing quite what to do with herself when she didn’t have huge batches of loaves to make up, she pottered around the sitting room, tidying up the plates and glasses she hadn’t had time to put away last night before… She smiled at the memory.
She switched on the coffee machine. There was some cheese bread left over from yesterday: she would toast it for Huckle. She didn’t really feel like baking today. Or ever again, she thought glumly. Huckle had declared the night before that they would take the day off and have a wonderful time and go up and have lunch at Reuben’s, but she didn’t really feel like it. Also, she was slightly terrified that she might have a couple of glasses of wine, then Reuben would offer to buy her the bakery or hire a hitman or something, and she wouldn’t be able to resist. Plus she needed to nurse Neil. But Huckle had been very persistent.