Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan

Chapter Fifty-four

Marisa would have told Polly what she was doing, but Polly would have got overexcited – being an old married lady meant she loved to hear about other people’s love lives. And she wouldn’t have told Nonna because Nonna of course would have implied that what she was doing was very sluttish and she shouldn’t be chasing a man who hadn’t even come to visit her since she’d been over which was, frankly, not a bad point.

And she couldn’t have told anyone how much mental energy she was expending on the whole thing because it was embarrassing, kind of how she was at fourteen, mooning over Ishmael Mehta in her chemistry class who had the most directional haircut in the entire school, with a Nike swoosh shaved into his skull.

So she kept it to herself. And worked on it very slowly, and carefully, the paper upside down, sitting out on the sunny afternoons – and occasionally dozing off, if it was quiet or there was someone good in, like young Edin, the talented boy, who kept getting better and better, and she could happily sit listening to that, feeling relaxed as he played.

Until finally it was done, and she took a deep breath and put it an envelope and, once more – and, ridiculously, equally nervous this time as last time, although for completely different reasons – picked a time when he was very busy with the twins, hammering away on either side of the keyboard at a deafening volume as ever, and slipped it under his door.

Of course this was a mistake with five-year-olds in the room, on a par with leaving an unattended box of strawberry tarts. Marisa didn’t know a lot of five-year-olds. The music next door stuttered to a halt.

‘There is POST! There is POST! POST CAME!’

There was a scramble of little footsteps.

‘We will get your post!’

Marisa was for once pleased she had somewhere else to go that wasn’t home. She set off down the hill at a brisk rate to avoid answering questions. Huckle, who was sitting across the street looking at his online banking on his phone for the first time in months without wanting to cry, glanced up and smiled.

‘Hey, can I get my wife back any time soon?’

She smiled at him.

‘Soon as we run out of pizza you can.’

He rolled his eyes then came down to join her.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Thanks. We really owe you for what you did.’

Marisa blinked. That was exactly how she felt about them.

‘Are you kidding? I really needed a job.’

It had never occurred to her that she had helped them. She hadn’t thought anything was going wrong at all with Polly; had thought, apart from a little bad luck in the storm, Polly had the most enviable life she could imagine. A bakery, a lovely husband, two beautiful children, a bird . . . well, she wasn’t particularly desperate for a bird but even so. Polly seemed so sorted. It made her heart lift to hear praise.

‘And . . .’

She had been about to go further but didn’t. She didn’t want to say that Polly had saved her in a deeper way, that she, and her nonna and Anita and, yes, Alexei too . . . that these people had built her a key, piece by piece, to unlock her prison door.

‘Well. It’s just cool,’ she managed eventually.

Huckle beamed. He was a sunny soul.

‘There we are,’ he said. ‘The universe had a plan.’

‘I don’t think the universe ever has a plan,’ said Marisa.

‘Ssh,’ said Huckle. ‘The universe will hear you and totally mess up the plan.’ He glanced back. ‘Okay, let me go get those monsters. They’re meant to be extra talented but I have to say, I’m not hearing it.’

‘Oh, I do,’ said Marisa quickly, not wanting him to suspect what she had done. ‘It’s really obvious when you live next door.’

‘Well,’ said Huckle, beaming, and the pleasure Marisa felt at making another human being happy outweighed the fact that she had patently lied to do it. She found herself wondering briefly what Father Giacomo would say to that but shook it out of her mind and headed down into the village to start another busy evening shift trying to explain to people why she didn’t allow pineapple on her pizza although they were welcome to add it at home if they wished. Neither did she do ‘stuffed crust’ or anything with the word ‘feast’ in it.

Because she had found her voice, she said it with a smile, and by the time people had eaten their first slice, they simply didn’t mind.

She and Polly found an easy rhythm working together, even if Polly did it on several cups of very strong coffee.

‘You know,’ Marisa said, ‘it’s not difficult, not really. Couldn’t Jayden do some nights?’

‘Hmmm,’ said Polly. It was still a question of money, but she also found it incredibly difficult to leave the business at such a fledgling stage. She needed to see which bits of the evening were noisy, which were quiet, how it ebbed and flowed, what would happen when the novelty wore off.

The phone rang. It was a house in Looe, the town on the mainland directly facing them. Could they possibly deliver their pizza by boat?

‘We had one a week ago,’ explained the woman on the other end of the line, ‘and I just can’t stop thinking about it.’

Polly and Marisa looked at each other.

‘It’ll be freezing,’ said Marisa. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘The price of the boat . . .’ said Polly.

‘I know,’ said the woman. ‘But it’s really good pizza.’

‘We need drones,’ said Marisa as Polly put the phone down.

‘Don’t get ahead of yourself,’ said Polly, smiling. ‘Drones, really.’

‘Not really.’

‘Okay,’ said Polly. ‘Sorry. Sleep deprived.’

‘You really should . . .’

‘I know, I know. I will take a night off when—’

‘Three margaritas and two pepperoni please!’

It was Jayden.

‘I can’t get you working in here,’ said Polly. ‘You’ll eat all the stock. Have you got guests in?’

Jayden had the grace to look a bit embarrassed.

‘Yes,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘We totally do.’

‘How’s married life?’ said Polly.

‘Well, I think we’re finally getting to the stage where we’re comfortable with each other,’ said Jayden, who had always been in awe of his pretty young bride Florrie.

‘Don’t get too comfortable,’ said Polly. Although it was a losing battle trying to stop Jayden’s natural physique becoming completely spherical. It was simply how he was built.

When he had been a fisherman, a long time ago – and hated it to the very depths of his being – he had managed to stay in reasonable shape with the intense physical labour. Working in a bakery was simply not the same as being on a fishing boat in a force five for thirty-six hours into the eye of the storm.

Not having to gut fish made Jayden happy every single day of his life. His sole deepest fear was that Florrie would get on Bake Off – she was an excellent patissier – and leave him for Paul Hollywood. Apart from that he led the life of almost total contentment, the kind won by contemplating every day how you have escaped a terrible fate.

‘I think being comfortable is very nice,’ he said, and Polly grinned and gave him a stonking staff discount then thought better of it and waved him away without asking for anything – she paid him what she could afford, but it was little enough.

‘No, don’t do that,’ moaned Jayden.

‘No, I mean it. Take them. You’re opening up tomorrow and I’m having a lie-in.’

‘Nooo,’ he said. ‘Because I love this pizza. And if you don’t let me pay I can never come back as often as I want to have pizza. I can never come back again otherwise I’ll be the big elephant who ate all the pizza profits and that will make me so sad. Pleeeease.’

Polly took his money, even though she felt bad doing it.