Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan

Chapter Twenty-five

‘This is very odd,’ said Polly, looking suspicious as she fussed around the kitchen early doors. Huckle was staying at home. He was trying to do mail-out internet orders. It was not going so well. People got cross with him and ordered the wrong amounts or ordered different things or sent things back they hadn’t used or, worse, sent things back they patently had used, including honey they had eaten half of then decided they didn’t like, or cream they’d broken the seal of, or ancient gifts they’d received a year ago they’d suddenly decided they didn’t want, and the site collapsed all the time because their broadband was so awful. It was horrible, especially for Huckle, who liked people on the whole but he had to admit that if you were running a mail-order internet business, people were not very good at showing you their best side.

‘What?’ he said, looking up wearily. The sun was just coming up and Daisy and Avery were supposed to be getting ready for school but instead had decided to throw raisins in the air to see if Neil could catch them. He couldn’t, but he was having a very good time trying.

‘That puffin is getting so fat he’s unaerodynamic,’ said Huckle. ‘You should call the New Scientist. “Impossible Creature can Fly”.’

Neil came to an undignified screeching halt above a raisin that had fallen on the floor.

‘“And Make Holes in the Floor”,’ said Huckle. ‘Stop feeding Neil.’

‘It’s EXERCISE,’ yelled Avery, scurrying around the kitchen with his arms outstretched. ‘Why can Neil fly and I can’t?’

‘That’s a very good point,’ said Huckle. ‘Probably because you’re not fat enough.’

Avery immediately started gulping handfuls of raisins from the packet. Polly rolled her eyes and started clearing up.

‘I was saying . . .’

‘Oh sorry,’ said Huckle. It was very difficult with small children, they had both found, to ever get to the end of a conversation.

Polly tried to catch Daisy to brush out her strawberry-blonde hair. Nicely done, it was a heavenly cloud. Left the way Daisy liked to leave things, it looked like a witch’s mane and would take nine times as long to be attacked by a comb the next time, with Daisy in floods the entire time, deeply remorseful for not having combed it more often, but somehow even more determined to never let a comb near it subsequently. It was a battle Polly could already see stretching far into the distance, possibly for ever.

‘What?’ said Huckle, as Polly wrestled with the Tangle Teezer. It was the single most expensive item for hair Polly had ever bought. It was worth every penny.

‘I’ve forgotten,’ she said.

‘YAY, NEIL, TWO RAISINS!’

‘OW!’

‘Okay then . . .’

‘No, hang on . . .’

She looked up. ‘I got an email from Mr Batbayar.’

Huckle looked no more enlightened.

‘The piano teacher.’

‘The BEAR!’ screamed Avery. ‘Neil, we will teach you to peck out the eyes of a BEAR.’

‘Don’t do that, smalls,’ said Huckle. ‘What did he say? Is he upset at the cancellation?’

‘Actually,’ said Polly. ‘I hadn’t mentioned it, I was about to then I had coffee with that new shy girl up there and we overrun and I forgot. But, he said that the twins are doing so well he entered them for a scholarship and apparently they got it! For twins. Apparently loads of twins play the piano together.’

Huckle screwed up his face.

‘Really?’

He fired up YouTube and searched “twins piano duets”.

‘Huh,’ he said.

There were indeed vast numbers of twins, often identical, playing duets on huge pianos.

‘Well,’ said Polly.

Hearing the name of Mr Batbayar, Daisy and Avery had marched over to the ancient upright they’d rescued from the old schoolhouse before Reuben started developing it – literally nobody else had wanted it – and started banging away loudly. It sounded appalling.

‘Perhaps,’ said Huckle, ‘there weren’t many entrants to the scholarship.’

‘They do need to get them young,’ said Polly. ‘I suppose it will mean a lot of extra practice.’

‘And he didn’t know they were about to give up? This isn’t him being sneaky?’

‘No! And why would he, anyway, he doesn’t know us, and I can’t believe rural piano teachers make enough money they can hurl it all over the place.’

‘Cor. Well then.’ Huckle beamed proudly. He thought absolutely nothing was beyond the scope of his twins.

‘What’s that girl next door like? Why has she never been seen in the village? She’s incredibly mysterious.’

‘Ooh, no, she’s not! She’s got agoraphobia.’

‘Is that the stay-in one or the go-out one?’

‘Well, why don’t you think about it for five seconds?’

‘I’m very tired.’

Polly smiled at him.

‘Goodness,’ said soft-hearted Huckle. ‘I hate to think of anyone shut in.’

He looked out to the frothy bright waves gleaming, a distant rain shower heading their way under a cloud, but sun showing promisingly either side of it.

‘I know,’ said Polly.

‘That’s terrible,’ said Huckle. ‘Is there something we should be doing?’

‘Leaving her a trail of cakes, that kind of thing? Not sure,’ said Polly thoughtfully. ‘She seems nice though. I get the impression she’s had a bit of a rough time. I think she’s come here to get over it. Not everyone copes.’

Huckle put his hand over his eyes.

‘We will though,’ she said, going over to him and putting her arms around him. ‘We will.’

‘How?’

‘We could Airbnb the lighthouse. People love that kind of thing.’

‘But where would we live?’

‘We could move above the bakery.’

‘It’s one room!’

‘It’s a nice room.’

‘For two adults, two children and a bird. I’m not sure that’s going to work out.’

‘We could find somewhere cheap on the mainland. Away from the beaches and the nice bits.’

‘Yeah,’ Huckle sighed.

‘You know when I first arrived here it was all cheap,’ said Polly. ‘I paid nothing for that flat above the bakery.’

It was now occupied by a posh Pilates teacher whom Polly scuttled past most days before she got a lecture on her terrible posture.

‘Yes,’ said Huckle. ‘And then you only bloody gentrified the bakery, didn’t you? And sent it all upmarket and lovely and then people started moving in and then a posh restaurant came along and then bloody Reuben set up his stupid posh school and then everyone wanted a second home there and now nobody can afford to live there any more, especially not us.’

‘I know,’ said Polly. She lowered her voice. ‘We could maybe sell the lighthouse?’

Huckle rolled his eyes.

‘Yeah, no, clever people want to move here,’ he said. ‘Not idiots that want to live in a lighthouse.’

She smiled and they intertwined their fingers.

He looked over at the beef wellington she was whipping up for supper, her fingers easily entwining the pastry.

‘Can’t you do something like that for the posh second-homers?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ said Polly. ‘The locals want bread and cakes and pasties and I don’t think the posh folk eat bread at all. Plus they’re never here.’

‘There must be something,’ said Huckle. ‘Because we can’t sell our home. Maybe our best option is to let the twins grow up to become musical geniuses and make their fortune in the world of piano duets. Is that a thing?’

‘Let’s hope,’ said Polly. ‘I’ll just say thank you to Mr Batbayar.’

‘Also tell him to shave off his beard so the children will stop training their pet bird to peck out his eyes if he turns into a bear.’

‘I’m not sure if that will translate into Russian.’