Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan
Chapter Fifty-five
The night flew by, Marisa noticed, in the same way her old job had done. When you worked with people you liked, and you were busy, it wasn’t really hard, it was kind of . . . well, not fun: you still had to clean the oven. But that endless, slow dragging sense of time that had been sitting on her while she’d been at home; the sense of waste that grief and illness had given her. That had gone.
One night they’d even brought Nonna down on the laptop to see the ovens. She had of course sniffed that they weren’t using wood burners even when Marisa attempted to explain that they weren’t fitted, it would take hours to get them up to temperature and there weren’t any trees for miles around. She had nonetheless seen a smile creasing that old face, along with something that looked like pride.
‘So my Lucia goes all the way England, and you work in a takeaway,’ she said. ‘That is the way of it.’
And Marisa hadn’t minded the sting in her words at all.
‘I like it,’ she said. And she wasn’t lying.
‘Don’t tell your mother,’ said Nonna, and Marisa winced. That was the one piece of her life that was still broken, that still hurt when she probed it, like a cracked tooth.
But she still had a half-smile on her face swinging uphill on a mild warm night, clear overhead, a few stars popping out, thinking of Jayden and his commitment to the pizza place (Polly’s Pizza it had become known as, swiftly and inevitably) being so strong he’d insisted on handing over money when it wasn’t even called for. She was so busy, she almost forgot to agonise about the note.
Well. It was gone now and there was nothing to be done about it.
It was only when she turned into the little road, happily enjoying the scents of the night air, the calling of the gulls shearing out across the water – although of course when local people complained about their rat-like qualities she absolutely publicly agreed with them – that she saw him, his large form perched on her balcony, outlined in the moonlight.
He stood up when he saw her, spread his arms wide and Marisa suddenly got a terrible pang. Imagine if he was waiting for her, every night, just waiting to welcome her home. Imagine if that was her life.
She thought of Huckle – he and Polly must have been married for ages – desperate to get his wife back home again. Even of bloody Caius unable to live without his little coterie. Sometimes it felt like she was the only person by herself. She had been focusing so much on just getting herself out of the house that she hadn’t stopped to consider what it would be like having nobody waiting for her when she came back to it.
Was he cross? She didn’t think so. Not this time. Surely. Surely? Her heart started to beat a little faster in her chest.