Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 71

‘We’re just off to torch the bakery,’ said young Kendall.
‘Seriously, though,’ said Archie, leaning over, ‘why don’t we come with you when you go to confront him? Or are you going to call Paul out?’
Paul was the duty PC, who was very rarely needed in Polbearne.
Polly hadn’t considered doing either of these two things.
‘Well, I don’t know.’
‘Otherwise he’ll just do it again,’ said Archie. ‘We don’t mind coming. We’re not working tonight anyway.’
‘Why not?’ said Polly. ‘It’s not like you to take a day off.’
‘Forecast is right grim for later.’
‘Seriously?’
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Out on the blue water, white-sailed boats bobbed around as in a child’s drawing. It was beautiful; a picture-perfect English seaside day, with the bread sales to prove it.
‘Oh, aye. That storm that never broke yesterday, it ain’t gone anywhere. I reckon it’s just biding its time. Building up more, I would say.’
Polly looked at the blue sky.
‘I will never understand the weather.’
‘No one understands it,’ said Archie. ‘No one understands it but us fishermen, and nobody ever listens to us.’
Polly thought of something and twirled round.
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Did we take a picture of the graffiti before we painted over it?’
‘Why would you do that?’ said Kendall.
‘To show the police constable,’ said Polly.
‘Ah,’ said the boys. Alas, in their excitement at helping, nobody had thought to do that.
‘Not to worry,’ said Polly. ‘I just really hope this isn’t going to happen again.’
Archie frowned. ‘Hoping isn’t enough,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have to confront him, like. Has he been mean to you before?’
Polly nodded and, haltingly, described how Malcolm had bullied her. The fishermen were shocked. As she served the last of her customers and put up her ‘Sold Out’ sign, they debated amongst themselves and insisted that she come back to the island with them on the boat to talk to Malcolm – the tide was coming in and the causeway was under water.
‘Just a chat,’ said Archie. ‘Unless you’d rather we went ourselves.’
‘Nooo,’ said Polly. She sighed. She hated confronting things head on, and that seemed to be about all she was doing at the moment.
Her heart started beating faster as she cashed up the takings – up again, she couldn’t help noticing: the tourists were flooding in in force, and she had put the article up in the window of Nan the Van so people could read it for themselves. Even better, the Western Morning News had picked it up and were coming to interview the ‘local success story’ themselves, which would definitely help trade. So she should by rights be feeling happy. Instead, of course, she felt anything but. There was a snake in paradise.
It was still a perfect day as she locked up Nan the Van. She glanced worriedly round the car park but it seemed full of totally normal-looking families: tattooed dads, mums admonishing their children not to run towards the sea; people glancing at their watches and the tidal chart; a couple loitering by the van in case it suddenly burst into life again.
She was full of nerves. Normally she would always sit down in a boat, but today, slightly self-consciously, she stood up in the prow.
‘What are you doing up there?’ said Archie.
‘Giving myself courage,’ said Polly, adjusting her balance. There was a slight swell, more noticeable than the beautiful day would suggest. ‘I’m pretending I’m Napoleon.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Archie. ‘Well I thought that, obviously, but I didn’t like to say.’
‘Who’s Napoleon?’ said Kendall. ‘Did he burn a lot of stuff?’
Polly stared straight ahead at the shadow of Mount Polbearne looming huge and forbidding against the sky. Normally she saw it as the loveliest and friendliest of places, bathed in freshness and light, but today it appeared as a rocky outcrop with a sinister shadow.
Still, she set her chin towards the horizon as the little boat puttered on, attempting to hold on to her courage, trying to rehearse what she was going to say.
‘Just be calm and dignified,’ said Archie behind her. ‘Tell him you’ve got photographs you’re turning over to the police.’
‘Um,’ said Polly. ‘Yeah, we should totally have taken those.’
‘And that you have a witness.’
‘A witness with a grudge,’ said Polly.
‘I’m an upstanding member of the community,’ said Jayden. ‘Although I am a bit deranged by heartbroken grief. Just at the moment, you know.’
‘And that if he doesn’t stop his campaign of harassment and intimidation, he’s going to be in serious trouble.’
‘And THEN we’re going to burn his shop down!’ piped up Kendall.
They moored up opposite the Little Beach Street Bakery. It needed its paintwork touched up, Polly noticed sadly. Her own name of course had been painted out already, but the salt tides were harsh on the cornices, and the grey was streaking and fading. The windows were dirty, and a few dusty Empire biscuits were laid out here and there. To Polly’s fury, ‘as mentioned in the Bugle on Sunday’ was taped in the window with peeling sellotape.
She could cry to see what had happened to her once beloved little bakery. There were lots of cheery people walking up and down the winding cobbled streets, eating ice creams from Muriel’s, fish and chips from Andy’s – his beer garden was absolutely full to the brim of people enjoying the fabulous weather. Over the other side of the rocks, the beach was teeming with children picking hermit crabs out of rock pools with shrimping nets, and teenage girls giggling and fiddling with their signal-less phones and pulling down the sides of their fifties-style bikinis. Picnics were unpacked, including several of her own loaves; suncream was slathered on unimpressed toddlers; waves were run into with shrieks, then equally quickly reversed out of.
But the Little Beach Street Bakery was completely deserted.
Archie looked at her.
‘Do you want us to come in with you?’
‘No,’ said Polly, more bravely than she felt. ‘But could you hang about outside? Just in case he starts throwing rock-hard buns at me?’