Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 73

‘Mummy said I can have cake in the cake shop! She said it’s a very famous cake shop.’
His mother came up behind her, a cheery-looking sort in a polka-dot skirt and white blouse.
‘Well it used to be,’ she said, peering at it unoptimistically. ‘I remember it from last year, it was just amazing.’
‘Things change,’ said Polly in a dull voice.
‘Don’t they.’
‘Also they have a BIRD in the cake shop!’ confided the little boy.
‘I don’t think he’s there any more,’ mumbled Polly. The boy’s face fell.
‘Don’t worry, Josephus,’ said his mother, inspecting the dusty window display with a disappointed look. ‘Shall we just have an ice cream instead?’
‘ICE CREAM! ICE CREAM!’ shouted the little boy with the strange name, delighted, and skipped off past the bakery and up the hill with his mother. Polly sighed.
Polly sat out on the other side of the harbour wall, tears running down her face. Her place, the place she had defended, that she loved; her home, where she had thought she belonged: it was as if a toad had crept in, a big poisonous wart at the middle of everything.
Selina came by and looked like she was going to walk straight past. Polly called her over.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I need a friendly face.’
Selina looked at her strangely. Polly thought she was being paranoid. Suddenly she felt like the world was against her. It wasn’t helpful.
‘Oh Selina,’ she said, sadly.
‘What’s up?’
Polly shook her head.
‘I can’t… Everything’s gone wrong,’ she said. ‘Everything.’
Selina sniffed and didn’t say anything.
‘Why are you so hungover?’ said Polly.
Selina bit her lip and her face stiffened.
‘Sometimes my coping mechanisms run out,’ she said. She looked at Polly. ‘Jayden came to the pub with me.’
‘He seemed all right this morning,’ said Polly.
‘He must still have been drunk, then,’ said Selina.
Polly rubbed her back.
‘It’s okay. We’ve all been there. In fact, next time, call me. I know where Andy keeps the last of Kerensa’s stock of drinkable wine.’
Selina shrugged Polly’s hand away.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ she said, and headed off.
Even though it was only the middle of the afternoon and the sun was still warm, the clouds were massing again: the same heaviness in the air, the odd yellow tinge to everything. Polly wandered back towards the town and caught up with Jayden.
‘Everyone is AWFUL today, Jayden,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I feel sick.’
He looked up at the sky.
‘That’s not a good colour,’ he said. ‘I’m going to tell the boys not to go out.’
‘They aren’t. Archie’s got very cautious with the weather. Anyway, what’s up with you?’
‘I went drinking with Selina,’ he said.
‘Just drinking?’
‘Yes,’ said Jayden, although he flushed pink. ‘I won’t do that again.’
‘Did you both get mortalled? She’s being really weird today.’
Jayden didn’t say anything.
‘Also, if you were drinking all night with Selina, how did you get up at five a.m.?’
‘Did I?’ said Jayden. ‘Oh yes. Cor, I didn’t even remember that.’
‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ said Polly. ‘I am going to have a word with Andy. Selling drinks that make you forget things on an island is the most lunatic thing I ever heard. You could both have wandered off the causeway and killed yourselves. Right, away with you. Go to bed. Tomorrow we work.’
Her face turned grim. ‘Malcolm has declared war. And we’re going to win it.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Polly made up what she reasonably could for the next day, knowing on some level that she had to tell Huckle about the bullying, but not wanting to use emotional blackmail to bring him home, especially given what Clemmie was going through. She sighed. How could someone hate her that much? It was a horrible feeling.
She sat in front of the lighthouse window. The clouds really were the oddest colour, a kind of heavy mustard, with a purplish tint. It was an ugly colour, like something you’d see in the picture of an alien land, and it made Polly very uneasy. The sun did still burst through the clouds though, and the pleasure boats were all still bobbing about. The fishing boats on the other hand were safely moored to the side. Archie would get a good night’s sleep tonight.
She dozed off in the chair into an odd dream of Tarnie swimming in the water; he kept surfacing and calling for Selina, but only Polly was there to hear him. She found herself telling him, no, it’s not me you want, it’s not me, but he couldn’t hear her, just kept reaching out his long brown arms; his hair, longer now, entwined with seaweed; his blue eyes beseeching her, telling her he was confused between the deep and the world; begging her to hear him. She could not hear him. And then he SHOUTED!
She jumped up, startled, as the second gigantic clap of thunder rattled the lighthouse doors; the noise was extraordinary. It must be very close, the storm. Just as she was thinking this, a huge bolt of lightning shot across the sky in front of her eyes, illuminating the purple sea. The clouds were racing now, faster and faster; it was not yet night-time, but it was as dark as night. The waves were moving in jagged, fearsome points, this way and that, the dips between them growing deeper and deeper. Somewhere in the lighthouse there was another huge bang. She jumped in alarm – she had left one of the windows open (she always did, in case Neil came home, even if it did occasionally soak her bathroom floor) – and started downstairs, slightly anxious, with the strange clammy foreboding that comes from waking from a deep sleep and a bad dream, to close it.
As she did so, there was another bolt of lightning, an extraordinary clap of thunder, and all the lights in the lighthouse went out.
Trapped in the dark of the circular stairway, Polly swore and hung close to the wall till she could feel her way down. Sure enough, it was the downstairs bathroom window that was open. She moved over carefully, shut the window and peered out.
This side of the lighthouse looked towards the town. But now there was no town to see: all the electricity had been knocked out. Thank God the lighthouse lamp had its own separate back-up generator that kept its beam rolling around the darkened rock of Mount Polbearne.