Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan

Chapter Thirty-three

About two weeks after the first storm came the second. It even had a name, this one: Storm Brian, scheduled to cross the Atlantic at terrifying speed, hit the north coast first then come straight across to Mount Polbearne before travelling on to the coast of Northern France.

Spring storms were common, but seemed to be more severe this year. Polly was worried; the lighthouse could take anything the weather could throw at it, and had indeed been built for that very purpose, but the bakery was on very low ground right along the harbour, with only the old crumbling walls protecting it from the wrath of the seas. The beautiful grey paint job done by her ex, Chris, seven years before, was very faded now and desperately needed redoing but they just didn’t have the cash. Huckle kept offering to take the black and white lighthouse paint and just stripe the bakery too but Polly kept refusing for the plain and simple reason that it would look absolutely ridiculous and she couldn’t bear having to explain it to everyone.

But the water had risen high with the last storm and she kept looking at the weather forecast satellite picture as the ominous circle of tight lines moved closer and closer.

‘Stop looking at that thing,’ said Huckle. ‘You’ll scare everyone.’

‘I am scared!’ said Polly. ‘It’s dangerous! For everyone along the seafront!’

‘Well, everyone just needs to go visit people further up the hill,’ said Huckle. ‘Come on. This is an island in Britain. How on earth could it not be very used to having storms?’

Being from humid Savannah, Georgia, which had vast electrical storms and excruciatingly damp heat in the summer time, Huckle had always found the British attitude to any kind of faintly extreme weather highly amusing (unless he was attempting to catch a train that had been cancelled because there were a few leaves on the line).

‘ARE WE HAVING A STORM?’ said Avery. He had been very, very impressed by the lightning they’d had the previous month. Daisy and Neil had been less impressed and had both been found in the cupboard under the winding staircase, trembling.

Huckle gave a ‘see?’ look at Polly and went and picked up Daisy who was gazing up with huge eyes.

‘Storms,’ he said, ‘are just the people upstairs moving their furniture.’

‘WHAT PEOPLE UPSTAIRS?’ said Daisy, suddenly even more petrified.

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ hissed Polly. ‘Is that meant to make her feel better?’

‘Oh,’ said Huckle. ‘My mom always told me it was just God moving furniture and I thought it might help. It helped me.’

‘OH, IT’S GOD,’ said Avery flippantly. ‘YOU KNOW? GOD? IN THE SKY?’

‘Is he upstairs?’ asked Daisy in terror.

‘Yes,’ said Avery.

‘No!’ said Polly.

‘He’s everywhere,’ said Avery confidently.

Polly didn’t want to get into this right now.

‘Listen,’ she said, coming to sit on the old squashy sofa in front of the woodburner next to Daisy in her father’s arms. She beckoned to Avery, who joined her, and Neil sat between them on Polly’s shoulder.

‘We are in the safest place we can be. They built the lighthouses so safe that we can make other people safe and look after sailors.’

‘In case they crash. BANG!’ said Avery cheerfully. He slid off her lap and started acting out a dramatic shipwreck scene. ‘OH NO! BANG BANG! ARGH! I’VE FALLEN IN WATER ARGH I DIE!’

He performed a dramatic death scene then looked suspiciously at Daisy.

‘Come on! You can be a dying sailor! Arggh!’

Daisy shook her head mutinously and clung to her father.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ said Polly for what felt like the billionth time that year. ‘It’s going to be fine.’

‘It might not even hit us,’ said Huckle. ‘It might go straight past.’

Polly glanced at her weather app. That wasn’t what the bright warning sign was saying. That wasn’t what it was saying at all.

You could feel it; you could taste it on the tip of your tongue. A tingling, something crackling in the air. A smell of ozone – not the normal ozone smells of waves and droplets and the usual bright salty air, but something different, slightly electric.

Down in the village, Polly noticed the quick furtive moves of the customers, who were buying extra bread, commenting on the sandbags that had been placed along the harbour front. Andy from the pub next door wandered in, conferring anxiously on the phone with someone. He confessed he was considering getting off the island tonight but realised he couldn’t – but he’d moved all his valuables upstairs.

‘Seriously?’ said Polly, glancing around. The only truly valuable thing in the shop, apart from the cash register, were the very expensive ovens Reuben had bought her when she started the business, but they were bolted to the floor. Goodness knows what she could possibly do with those.

‘Some of the old folk are going up to the school. They’re setting up camp beds.’

‘You’re kidding.’

But as more and more people came into the shop it became clear the rumour was true: they had put up camp beds in the classroom – school had been cancelled that day in case the boat couldn’t get back, much to the delight of the children – and were inviting any of the older people in the lower reaches of the village to evacuate there just in case.

‘Of course I shan’t be,’ Mrs Baines was loudly proclaiming to anyone who would listen. ‘This is just government interference as usual! They’re going to put chips in us! Same as that mast! Ever since they put up that mast there’s been nothing but trouble, haven’t you noticed? Do they think we’re stupid?’

Polly gave the traditional tight smile.

‘My house has been standing for two hundred and fifty years,’ went on Mrs Baines. ‘I’m not scared of one little storm.’

But by two p.m. it was clear that this was not one little storm. The sky darkened, little by little, and then faster and faster, as if more and more clouds were arriving and crushing down on top of the previous ones in an effort to find room to fit. They shaded dark grey to almost purple; the effect, along with a change in air pressure that made people’s ears pop, was very unsettling.

‘I’m closing up,’ said Polly on the phone.

‘Good,’ said Huckle. ‘Come home.’

‘How is everyone?’

‘It’s a three Moana day,’ said Huckle. ‘Only for Daisy. Avery is cool with it.’

‘Okay,’ said Polly. She glanced around. ‘Well, we sold everything.’

The harbour walkway, though, was completely deserted.

Just as she said that there was a sudden crack of thunder.

‘Come home, please,’ said Huckle. ‘Oh hang on, do you need help moving the sandbags?’

The rain started to pitter-patter.

‘This would have been a terrible time to mention it if I did,’ said Polly. ‘It’s okay. Andy’s doing them for me.’

‘Well, come then,’ said Huckle, as another flash of lightning zinged. This storm, Polly ascertained, was absolutely in no way messing about.

So she went to lock the door, and looked around her clean pretty little shop, with its shining glass and silver display cases; the shelves of loaves – empty now – above her head; the basket for the baguettes. Impulsively, given it weighed an absolute ton, she grabbed the huge expensive coffee machine they had bought years ago at that trade fair when they were – to be absolutely fair – completely hysterical and jittery from drinking too much coffee – and placed it upstairs outside the Pilates teacher’s door – she’d gone back to the mainland, wisely, Polly felt.

Then she went back downstairs, and found herself patting the lintel of the Beach Street Bakery, leaving her hand for just a second, thinking of how much that little shop contained; as much as her heart.

Then she locked the door tight and ran like the wind in the direction of the strong, solid lighthouse and the little circle of people and animals that were everything she treasured and everything she called home.