Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan

Chapter Forty-one

Polly left it as long as possible to go to the bakery. Huckle tried to get her to have a sleep but she wouldn’t, instead moving round the kitchen cleaning up and putting away tins and ingredients. Everyone had stumbled home to snatch some rest, but she’d need to alert Jayden, her colleague, and, frankly, she had to have a look herself first.

‘I’ll go and get out the insurance papers,’ said Huckle, even as he was falling asleep himself, the twins safely in front of the TV now the power was back on. ‘But, you know . . .’

Polly did know. It was simply impossible to properly insure a tidal island that got cut off at every high tide, and they had all seen the problems people had had over the West Country with the 2018 floods. Even if they were up for any money, it would be a long time coming.

Polly sighed and pulled on her wellies.

‘I’ll come,’ said Huckle, but his eyes were already closing and his voice was trailing off.

‘I’ll call you if I need you,’ said Polly. ‘Don’t let the twins eat the leftovers.’

‘LEFTOVERS?’ said Avery who appeared to have the ears of a bat.

‘I’ll be back at lunchtime,’ said Polly. ‘We’ll have them then.’

‘Leftovers now!’

‘Come on, Neil,’ said Polly, grabbing her raincoat and pulling on her wellies. ‘Let’s go.’

It was impossible to believe when you stepped outside that there had been a storm at all. The sky was a fresh-washed blue, a few innocent-looking clouds drifting by. The sun bounced off the wet cobbles like a billion glistening diamonds, rendering the whole of Mount Polbearne almost too bright to look at.

Polly hadn’t brought her sunglasses, and wished she had, but was too bone-weary to go back and get into a whole ‘leftovers’ conversation again.

Instead she trudged onwards. After a few moments she was joined by someone – Marisa – whom she thought had left ages ago.

In fact, Marisa had been standing near the lighthouse, trying to give herself the courage she’d found last night to get back up the hill again, past everyone. Willpower, she’d found, was something that came and went. Or perhaps, when she thought about it, it was something you had a finite supply of and once you’d used yours up for the day you had to plug yourself back in to whatever your battery was – in her case, a chat with her nonna, in her house, cooking and watching TV.

But seeing Polly made her feel safe somehow. Even the little bird that seemed to follow her wherever she went cheered her up.

A thought leapt up in Marisa that she was being creepy and a bit of a stalker, but Polly’s face brightened to see her, and she tried to tell her brain to quieten down.

‘Hello,’ said Polly. ‘I thought you’d headed home.’

‘I’m . . . I’m going,’ said Marisa. ‘Do you mind if I walk with you for a bit?’

‘Not at all,’ said Polly, remembering Marisa’s condition. ‘I’ll walk you all the way if you like. But I can’t promise to be good company. I’m going to inspect the damage.’

‘Does this happen often?’

‘It’s getting worse and worse,’ said Polly glumly.

They crossed over onto Beach Street. There was still water running down into the drainways but most of it was gone.

What was left, however, was grisly. A thick black layer of silt and rubbish; mud and bits and pieces of flotsam; a foamy scum covering everything. It looked solid and unshiftable. Big wads of paper were bunging up the drains. Men from the council were already out cleaning up. There was a big truck along the road, sucking up as much of the rubbish as it could manage. Polly briefly thought how much the twins would adore watching a big muck-sucking truck, but continued on her way.

The front door of the Little Beach Street Bakery, all glass, the bottom pane repaired so many years ago when puffling Neil had been thrown against it during another storm – was completely impassable, the door warped, and a thick sticky layer of mud gummed up the entrance completely.

Marisa followed Polly round to the back door to the kitchen, which thankfully was a little higher up off the main road, and was untouched by the water.

Going into the dark kitchen – Polly didn’t dare turn a light on in case the water and the electrics had become horribly tangled up somewhere – was a dispiriting experience. The thick mud and water had got into everything and the smell was horrible; damp and rubbish and worse, infiltrating every corner of the once immaculate kitchen.

Tears pricked Polly’s eyelids. Everything they had worked so very hard for. Everything lost. Everything ruined.

‘Oh wow,’ said Marisa suddenly, out of the blue. ‘Oh my goodness! Look at these ovens!’

The ovens were state of the art; Reuben had bought them as a gift when Polly had considered opening the shop, he wanted a baker so much.

‘Are they ruined?’ said Polly, her lip wobbling. ‘God. They were expensive too.’

‘I know!’ said Marisa. ‘That’s what I mean! They’re amazing! Polly, I don’t think they’re ruined at all. They’d withstand a nuclear attack, these things.’

Polly was looking around, blinking and not really listening.

‘I suppose I’d better start with the hose,’ she said. ‘Andy’s got a power hose I can borrow once he’s finished with it. If I hose it for . . . God knows. Two months?’

‘I can help,’ said Marisa, but she was still distracted. ‘But you know, these are the ovens they have in the very best places.’

‘Well, nice of you to say . . . Let’s hope the electrics aren’t completely shonked.’

‘They make . . . I mean, they go up to about five hundred degrees!’

‘Six-fifty, actually.’

‘You know they make the best pizza in the world?’ said Marisa.

Polly looked up at her suddenly, her senses pricking.

‘I thought that was wood-fired ovens?’

‘No, if you get it hot enough you’ll still get a blister on the bottom. Then the sides caramelise slightly if you’re quick, then it’ll come out dark and sticky and crunchy all at the same time.’

‘God, that sounds good,’ said Polly.

Marisa frowned. ‘Do you serve pizza?’

‘We’re a baker’s. Most people would consider that fancy foreign muck. We do bread, cakes, pasties and biscuits . . . but I was looking to diversify . . .’

Both of them felt an odd excitement bubble up and Marisa tried to rein herself in, to stop herself sounding too excited.

‘I mean . . . you could do it at night.’

‘Yes, that’s what I need,’ said Polly wryly, who was truly very tired. ‘A longer working day.’

But she was interested, and Marisa was genuinely enthused.

‘They are lovely,’ she said. ‘They remind me of Italy.’

‘Is that home?’

‘Oh no,’ said Marisa. ‘Britain’s home. But my family is Italian.’

‘You look Italian. Oh God, sorry, is that all right to say?’

‘It’s fine. Good, in fact,’ said Marisa. ‘I am. And I like looking like my family. I spent a lot of time there when I was little. Then last year . . . my grandfather died.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Polly, and she sounded genuinely sad, which was more than a lot of people had managed to muster. She knew for most people the loss of a grandparent was a sadness, not a tragedy.

But Polly had lost her own father too recently to not feel profoundly affected by anyone losing a loved one, and too soft-hearted not to mean it.

‘It’s been tough,’ said Marisa, and then had to catch herself. ‘Sorry.’

They were, after all, standing ankle deep in the ruins of all of Polly’s hopes and dreams.

‘It’s been rough for everyone,’ said Polly. ‘It’s been rough all over. We can’t keep bursting into tears. Well. Maybe we can. But we’ll be all right.’

And that was when Marisa made up her mind.

‘Let me help,’ she said. ‘Let me help get the bakery back on its feet.’

Polly looked concerned and excited all at once.

‘Do you mean it?’

‘I’ve lost half my job,’ said Marisa.

‘I mean, it would have to be a kind of . . . I mean, I could only pay you depending on how it went,’ said Polly.

Marisa smiled and, for the first time in a very long time, showed a flash of what looked suspiciously like confidence.

‘With these ovens?’ she said, dark eyes flashing. ‘I think we’ll be all right.’

And Polly found that, somehow, she wasn’t crying any more.