Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan

Chapter 20

Polly was opening up cheerfully, with Jayden her assistant making plaits in the back. There was still a chill in the air, and meatball plaits to go with a steaming cup of coffee were proving very popular. ‘Tastes like pizza,’ said Avery, giving them a hard look. The children’s greatest dream was of takeaway pizza, something they had seen on American TV shows and occasionally experienced at Lowin’s. There wasn’t a takeaway pizza place within range of Lowin’s house either but somehow Reuben made it happen.

The postie, who hated having Mount Polbearne on his beat – constantly lashed by the weather, nothing but hills, having to time his visits with the tides – came in, looking lugubrious as usual.

‘Hello, Janka!’ said Polly, who always tried to cheer him up. It had never worked one single time, not even on the golden days, when children paddled through rock pools with shrimping nets; when the sounds of happy laughter could be heard around the ice cream stand, and the whole town bustled with happy holidaymakers, and people thrilled by the beauty and strangeness of the place; little ones, faces sticky, scurrying up the streets and pointing at the lighthouse; the days when it felt like there could be nowhere more delightful to be on earth than Cornwall.

Janka grunted.

‘What’s up?’ she said, fetching him his regulation triple espresso, which she firmly believed did nothing to improve his temper.

‘Someone got their magazine subscription mixed up and complained about me to head office,’ he said crossly. ‘Apparently there is a python magazine that is about computers, and a python magazine that’s about really big snakes and if you get one you don’t really want the other.’

He downed his coffee. ‘Who even subscribes to magazines about really big snakes?’

Polly had a fair idea, but decided now was not the time to drop Lowin in it.

‘And,’ he said, even more crossly. He bent into his red wheelie bag and pulled out a huge box. Both of them recoiled. A very pungent scent was coming from it. ‘What even is this? How can it be legal to send this through Royal Mail? This is toxic waste! This is probably poison! I will probably end up poisoned and all I will have to show for it is a life trekking across that bloody causeway.’

‘In the loveliest corner of the world?’ suggested Polly, gingerly reaching out. ‘That . . . is it for me?’

He shook his head.

‘Marisa Rossi,’ he read.

‘Oh,’ said Polly. ‘We haven’t seen her.’

She thought about that crossly. Given that she’d given her keys and everything, a courtesy visit would have been nice, seeing as they were, you know, the community’s bakery. Maybe she was one of those people who thought all carbs were evil. Although she hadn’t looked like one of those people.

‘She lives all the way up the top of the town,’ said Janka heavily. ‘On an unpaved road.’

He looked at the large box.

‘It’s actually against Health and Safety for me to deliver to unfinished roads,’ he said.

‘Is it?’ said Polly sceptically. She knew Janka knew that she saw almost everyone in the village from time to time and if he could use her as a kind of free intermediary drop-off point, as she was right on Beach Street, he would. She was fighting this at all costs and made no move to touch the large parcel.

As the stand-off continued, fortunately the bell rang. It was Mr Batbayar, the very large piano teacher, who came in most days and was, Polly remembered, the girl’s next-door neighbour.

‘What you bakink today?’ he said, recoiling instantly at the smell.

‘Janka, you’re poisoning my shop,’ said Polly. ‘You’re going to have to take that out.’

‘I can get coffee anywhere, you know,’ said Janka threateningly.

‘No, you can’t!’

Mr Batbayar examined the box.

‘That is my street.’

‘It’s your neighbour,’ said Janka quickly. ‘Can you take it to her?’

‘Of course.’

‘You don’t have to!’ said Polly, but Janka was already out the door. ‘Argh. That confounded postie!’

The piano teacher blinked in surprise.

‘This is bad?’

‘Oh . . . no,’ said Polly. ‘I’m just not sure I can take on being local postmistress as well as . . . Anyway. Never mind. How are the twins getting on?’

‘They are very five,’ said the piano teacher, making it clear that that was about as much information as he was willing to give right then. ‘Six red things please.’

‘Mr Batbayar . . .’

‘Alexei, please.’

‘Oh, okay,’ said Polly. ‘I’m Polly. Anyway, one thing is, they’re called strawberry tarts.’

Alexei made a game attempt at shaping his mouth into four syllables that meant literally nothing to him, and smiled cheerfully in the way that often meant people stopped fussing him about his English.

‘And secondly, are you eating all of these yourself?’

Alexei gave her a look.

‘Um. No?’

‘Really no, or is that what you think is the right answer no?’

‘The other one,’ said Alexei. ‘You try not to sell too many thinks?’

‘No, but you could mix it up a bit. Look, I have some beautiful asparagus tarts.’

‘I loff . . .’ He pointed at the little spears. ‘Yes! Six please!’

Polly put the strawberry tarts down. He gave her a bear-like look and she picked them up again, and he paid quickly, then shouldered the large heavy box like it was nothing and dinged out of the shop whereupon Polly spent a faintly irritating day explaining what the smell was.

Later that day it was still chilly, but Marisa didn’t really notice the weather. Had she been able to step outside she would have seen celandine blooming through the rocks that made up the end of the unfinished road; she would have seen swifts returning to lay their eggs in hedgerows and singing a cheerful song, the white flashes of cow parsley and the daffodils that thickened every hedgerow, as well as the woods full of bluebells back on the mainland.

But she didn’t notice any of that. She left open the balcony door open for fresh air, but apart from that the seasons were passing her by.

There was a knock at the door. She glanced up from the laptop – Nonna was out, and she was tidying up the archiving files.

It was becoming increasingly clear to her that, useful as she was, there was less and less homeworking she could actually do. One day they weren’t going to need her any more

The knock came again, and with it her instant physiological response: her mouth went dry, her hands started to tremble.

‘HELLO!’ came a loud voice.

Marisa’s heart sank. It was him. She knew it was him from next door. Of course it was. She wanted to pretend she wasn’t there, that nobody was in, but that was ridiculous.

‘HELLO! LADY NEXT DOOR!’

He sounded gruff and impatient.

Okay, she wasn’t going to be able to get away from this. Timidly she opened the door.

‘I HAFF PARCEL FOR YOU!’

In the morning light he looked larger than ever, his beetle brows jammed together, the parcel, square and wrapped in brown paper, looking small in his hands, even though it wasn’t.

‘Um . . .’

She started to stutter and he looked at her as if she was completely beneath his worth attentions.

‘I put here,’ he said. Then he did something odd. He picked it up and sniffed it. Marisa blinked at the oddness of his gesture. Who was this guy?

There was a parcel, square and wrapped in brown paper with her grandmother’s familiar handwriting, sitting on the top step. They both looked at it for a moment, the man’s beard obscuring half his face.

‘Um, thank you,’ she managed. He stood there watching for an instant, as if he were waiting for her to open the parcel, then nodded shortly and made to go back around.

‘MR BATBAYAR!’

A tiny little girl was rushing up the unfinished road, splashing in little puddles. She had vibrantly curly hair which shot out behind her and seemed bigger than her head.

‘MR BATBAYAR! I have learned ALMOST almost most of it VERY LOUD AND FAST.’

His face changed completely, and he beamed at the little girl.

‘Vivienne!’ he said, as if there was nobody he was more pleased to see. ‘Well. Now. What we say? Fast is last.’

‘Fast is FUN.’

He grinned wider.

‘It is fun. Hello, Mrs Cordwain.’

The similarly frizzy-haired woman smiled happily and followed the little girl up the steps.

‘You stay?’

‘It’s been giving me a headache all week,’ she said easily. ‘Another few dozen repetitions can’t make any difference now.’

‘I hear your mother say you do lots of practice,’ said Mr Batbayar to the little girl, who smiled with delight and nodded.

‘Also . . .’ went on the woman, smiling hopefully.

‘You want coffee?’ said Mr Batbayar, sounding much jollier than Marisa had heard so far.

‘I would love one. You make very good coffee.’

‘No. England coffee is very bad coffee. That is not a hard thing.’

Presently the small party disappeared into the house and moments later a very loud and fast and not entirely accurate version of the ‘Skye Boat Song’ came banging out from the little blue house next door.

Marisa stood there with the parcel she had been so delighted to receive only moments before, feeling suddenly very sad. How easy they had found the conversation, how relaxed the curly-haired woman had been, going out and about and into someone’s house. And they had both looked right through her.

Well. At least she had a parcel. Clutching it like a miser, she went back into the house and sat down. She recognised the wobbling antique handwriting and the sunny stamps; they had arrived on every birthday card of her childhood. It occurred to her, for the first time, that of course it must have been her grandmother who chose and wrote those cards, took them to the little ufficio postale and sent it safely on its way, in good time. Huh.

She realised very quickly why he had sniffed it.

Inside, carefully wrapped, she found treasure.

There was Barilla pasta and Mutti tinned tomatoes, straight from the store. Carefully wrapped in straw was a tiny pot of homemade tapenade scented with everything good. There was a jar of tomatoes her grandmother had dried herself on a corner of the little sunny terrace where it was too hot in the afternoon but glorious at any other time of day. A big hunk of parmesan, and, instantly recognisable from the second she’d picked up the box – the smell of it pervading everything, overpowering and absolutely enchanting and something that had probably perfumed the entire Mount Polbearne postbag (Janka did indeed complain about being expected to deliver it; head office had regrettably replied that unless it was a fungus that was likely to explode they were unable to intervene in this instance) – a large brown truffle.

She buried her nose in it; it was extraordinary. Deep and rich and heavy with scent; to be used sparingly and stored carefully, otherwise it would contaminate the entire rest of the house and, quite possibly, the street. She immediately fetched a tupperware container, and sealed away her treasure carefully.

There was more. Local sea salt, and even some potted basil so she could grow her own, although what could possibly thrive in the harsh rocky salted sand of her new home and survive the brisk westerlies she couldn’t imagine. A jar of plump shiny black olives, a twisted vine of garlic which would have smelled amazing if they hadn’t been pushed sideways by the truffle and a bottle of exquisitely good first-press olive oil.

She pulled them out carefully. It was amazing. The one thing her grandmother could have done for her right now that was as close as could be to putting her arms around her and giving her a hug. She glanced over at the Skype window, but her nonna wasn’t in view.

She smiled ruefully at her nonna’s bossiness. It genuinely did hurt her that she wasn’t eating properly.

She thought of her dinner for that night – a stodgy and not very appetising ready meal, with microwave noodles and almost certainly not enough vegetables – and sighed. It had been so long. The joy she had always found in making food.

‘SO!’

The voice from the laptop startled her. She sat up. It was Nonna, of course, returned from her siesta.

‘I got your parcel!’

‘I see!’ The woman was grinning broadly.

Glancing behind her, Marisa saw all the tins laid out on the countertop.

‘It must have cost a fortune to send.’

‘Yes, it ate in very heavily to the money I had to spend on designer clothes for the Christmas ball at the Duke of Lombardy’s.’

‘Aren’t you a little old to be sarcastic?’

‘Oh yes, you go to so many balls.’

Marisa grinned. It was strange. Her grandmother was as snappy as ever, but somehow, she’d got used to it. She wasn’t so freaked out any more. She thought about Anita and what it said in the book. Repeat the thing you’re scared of . . . until you’re not so scared. But talking to Nonna was easy. It was everything else in the world that was difficult.

‘Well. Go on then!’

‘Go on then what?’

‘Tell me at least you have an onion.’

‘If you think for one second I’m going to cook with you standing there shouting at me, you are very wrong about things.’

Her grandmother folded her arms.

‘I will watch and not say anything.’

‘That is not possible for you.’

‘It is completely—’

‘See, you’re at it.’

Nonna made a zipping noise with her mouth and sat back with her arms still folded, pulling a cardigan around herself, even though Marisa had looked at the weather forecast and it was a balmy twenty-six degrees in Imperia that morning.

She moved self-consciously towards the countertop and dug out one of the rather ageing onions she had ordered online when she’d first moved, thinking optimistically it would get her cooking again. It had not, when it came down to it, and they had sat there in the dark cupboard beside the sink, like a reproach.

She selected one of the knives from the holder. They had never been used. Everything here was so new.

‘What kind of knife is that?’ came from behind her.

‘I don’t know. Ssh!’

‘Well, you can’t cut anything with that knife.’

Marisa sliced through the onion, far away from the tips, just as her grandfather had shown her, long ago, to avoid crying.

‘That’s too far down to cut an onion! You are wasting half an onion.’

‘I am going to hang up now,’ said Marisa.

‘But you can’t do this alone!’

‘Well, I’m going to give it a try.’

‘Just put me on mute.’

‘But then you look like one of the muppets.’

‘Do not be rude to your nonna.’

‘I think Un posto al sole is just starting.’

However much fun shouting at her granddaughter was, it wasn’t worth missing Un posto al sole for, and Nonna, sniffing, backed down.

‘I won’t be far away.’

‘I’ll call you if I forget what pasta is.’

‘So young and such a smart mouth.’