Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery

by Jenny Colgan

  Kerensa shook her head.

  “Oh God,” she said. “Oh God oh God oh God. Everything . . . everything so horribly, horribly ruined. Everything so messed up. Because I made one stupid mistake. One stupid, stupid thing.”

  Polly blinked. “It’s always the women who pay. We always do. It’s been this way forever.”

  “I’m not some Victorian parlourmaid,” said Kerensa.

  “You might as well be,” said Polly bitterly. “You’re a fallen woman. We’re always left holding the baby. Suffering the consequences.” She thought about her mum.

  Kerensa looked down at the sleeping infant.

  “I love him,” she said. “I love him so much. I can’t tell you. As soon as I met him, as soon as they handed him to me, I just thought, I know you. I know you. Everything about you. Everything you are. And I love it all. I think all of it is perfect, and splendid, and I always will. But I’m going to have to pay for that.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Polly. “He might not say anything.”

  “But he might,” said Kerensa. “Maybe not now. Maybe one day. In the future. When something happens. When something goes wrong.”

  Polly shook her head. “I’ll beg him. I’ll deny it. I’ll . . . I’ll stand up in a court of law and swear against it.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Kerensa. “Because already every piece of happiness I have from my boy here . . . every word Rhonda says . . . it cuts me like a knife. Stabs me through and through. And I think it always will.”

  “One in ten,” said Polly. “One in ten men are raising children that aren’t theirs. That’s what they say, isn’t it?”

  “It can’t be true, though,” said Kerensa. “It can’t be. Surely. That can’t be right.”

  “We’ll never know,” said Polly. “Nobody will ever know. That’s the point.”

  She placed a hand on Kerensa’s shoulder and ran a finger down the baby’s cheek. His skin was so soft, so pure and new. He was perfect. None of this gigantic mess was his fault. She swore then, silently, that he would never, ever feel that it was.

  She looked at Kerensa.

  “I’m godmother,” she said fiercely.

  Kerensa nodded. “How are you going to reject the devil and all his works though?” she said. “We basically are the devil and all his works.”

  They looked at the perfect little face once more.

  “You’re not going to mess this up,” whispered Polly. “Neither am I. And neither is Huckle. He’ll come round. We’ll sort it. We will.” She smiled. “Friends. Not just there for the nice things in life. Although this, I will tell you, is a very, very nice thing.”

  Kerensa nodded and swallowed hard.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Polly.

  There was nothing more to say. Polly didn’t want to go, but she had to. She gave them one last hug.

  “I hate leaving you alone.”

  “Reuben will be back in a second,” said Kerensa. “Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll manage to keep both sides of the conversation going, as usual.”

  “He’s happy,” said Polly. “Your mum has headed off to contact everyone she’s ever known. Rhonda and Merv are happy. The baby is gorgeous. Everyone is happy. Our job is to keep it that way, don’t you think? Who knows? Maybe then we get to be happy too.”

  She thought of Huckle’s haunted, handsome face. Was it possible? Could it ever be? How careless life was.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Polly left the private wing profoundly and utterly choked and yet strangely happy at the same time—meeting the new baby had brought about in her some odd deep joy she hadn’t anticipated; something pure and lovely and wonderful. She’d expected to be worried when he arrived—as worried as Kerensa felt—but in fact he was so gorgeous she could feel nothing but hope. Surely everyone could love a baby enough. Even if Reuben found out? Even if the kid was taller than him and could grow more facial hair by the age of nine? He wouldn’t desert his family, would he?

  Except Polly herself had had a father who hadn’t wanted her. Who hadn’t wanted to know her. It was possible. Was it ever possible?

  As she reached the main entrance, deep in thought, she nearly collided with the woman who was standing stock still in the middle of the hallway, staring at her.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, but to her surprise, the woman put up a hand to stop her.

  “Polly,” she said.

  Polly focused, dragged herself away from her musings, and was brought up short in shock.

  “Carmel,” she said, her mouth moving but making barely any sound.

  Carmel was equally startled, but her face was joyful and full of excitement.

  “Polly! You came!”

  There was a silence. Polly swallowed hard.

  “Well . . .” she said. Carmel’s expression was so radiant, Polly hated to disappoint her. But she couldn’t . . . she just couldn’t . . .

  She should have realized that this might happen, but it just hadn’t crossed her mind—the hospital was vast, and the private maternity wing was tucked away in a pleasant building overlooking the gardens at the back. But of course, nothing was impossible.

  “No,” she said. “I’m here seeing somebody else.”

  Carmel’s face fell.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought . . . I thought . . .”

  “I never had a dad,” said Polly. “I never had one.”

  Carmel nodded. “I realize that. Completely and utterly. I do. I was wrong to contact you and I want to apologize.”

  “Thanks,” said Polly.

  “I shouldn’t have dropped a bomb in your life like that. It was wrong of me . . . I was distraught. Everything was so awful and I was thinking of him and what he was begging me to do, and not about you.”

  Polly nodded. “I understand that,” she said. She couldn’t help it, she liked Carmel.

  There was a pause, and Polly moved to walk away.

  “But,” said Carmel. “Perhaps you could see it as a favor . . . a favor to a stranger. Something you might do for anyone. For a dying man. I know he’s nothing to you. I think if I’d let him, you might have been a lot to him. It’s me you have to forgive,” she went on. “I had children of my own. I couldn’t risk . . . couldn’t risk my own family. Couldn’t. I told him if he ever went near your mother, if he risked our family again for somebody else, then I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions.”

  She blinked.

  “I hope one day you’ll understand what I did. I would have fought tooth and nail for my children to have a full-time father. I’m sorry about how that’s made you feel. I’m not sorry for keeping my family together.”

  Her eyes flashed as she said it. And Polly thought how she didn’t blame Carmel for fighting for her family. She wished her own mother had been better equipped to fight for hers. But that was what it was.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay what?” said Carmel. “Okay with what I did, or okay you’ll come and see him?”

  Polly thought for a long time. She thought of Kerensa’s innocent little baby, and how he deserved access to anybody who might ever love him. She wished Huckle was here. She wished she could somehow speak to her mum about it, but she’d already asked so much.

  She felt very, very lonely.

  “Are . . . are any of your children there?” she asked.

  Carmel shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “They’re coming this afternoon.”

  Polly nodded. She would go in, say hello, say goodbye and that would be it. She would have done her duty, fulfilled the last request of a dying man. It was the right thing to do. Then she would call Huckle and tell him to go and see the baby, no matter what was going on between the two of them. And then she would . . . well. She didn’t know. Get back to work, she supposed.

  “Yeah, all right then,” she said.

  The men’s oncology ward wasn’t anything like as nice as the private maternity wing.
It was gray, and there was a lot of coughing, and so much sadness.

  The Christmas decorations looked even more miserable here than elsewhere. Men gray around the gills sat with tracheotomy holes in their throats. Bored children rolled around eating sweets and complaining. Here and there curtains were drawn around the beds, with who knew what mysterious events happening inside. There was a strong smell of Dettol and spilled tea and something else Polly didn’t want to experience too intimately.

  She glanced around, unwilling to let her eyes rest on any faces. Her heart was beating strongly, too strongly. She felt her hands trembling and tucked them into the pockets of her jeans.

  Right at the end of the ward there was a bed underneath a window—it was the nicest, quietest spot on the six-bed ward, and instinctively Polly knew there was a reason why you got it.

  The figure lying on the bed was asleep; long, very thin. Even though his hair was mostly gray, she could see quite clearly the sandy streak in it. She wished she’d taken a minute to run a comb through her own hair, although she was at least wearing makeup; if you didn’t wear a full face of slap at all times, Rhonda asked you if you were sick, or had given up.

  She halted, nervous and unsure. Carmel leaned over the bed.

  “Tony,” she whispered. “Tony dear.”

  There was such tenderness in her voice—a lifetime’s worth, Polly reflected.

  The figure on the bed—you could see his hip bones through the thin sheets; it was extremely hot on the ward—stirred slightly. There was a drip above his head, presumably morphine. Polly hoped he wasn’t in pain. That whatever was eating him from the inside was being tended to carefully and effectively; that he wouldn’t be made to linger on in any way.

  But she didn’t feel anything beyond that. She didn’t feel the need to throw herself on the bed and shout “Daddy! My daddy!” She barely knew how daddies worked. Instead she stood there, her hands plunged into her pockets, trying to compose herself; trying to make her face into the right kind of expression: concerned without being fake or weird. Her mouth twisted a little, and she bit the inside of her cheek.

  “Tony,” said Carmel again, and he blinked and slowly opened his eyes.

  They were the exact same shade of blue-green as Polly’s own.

  Polly shuffled a little closer, into his field of vision. Carmel gently picked up a pair of horn-rimmed glasses from the bedside table and fitted them round his pale, narrow head. He stared at Polly as if he were looking at a total stranger.

  “Is it the nurse?”

  His voice was a little quavery, but she could hear him well enough.

  “No,” said Carmel, holding his hand. “No, Tony. This is Polly.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Polly?” came the voice finally. It cracked a little.

  “Yes,” said Carmel.

  Tony drew a long breath. It took him a while; he wheezed slowly, in and out. It sounded absolutely horrible.

  “Polly. Pauline?”

  Polly nodded.

  “Hello,” she said. She didn’t know what to call him, so she didn’t call him anything.

  Those blue-green eyes blinked again. It was absurd. Of course, what else could a baby be made up of but the information from both its parents—a toe shape here, an eyebrow there? That was all there was. She thought once again of Kerensa’s baby, then shook the image out of her mind. This wasn’t the time.

  “Nice to meet you,” she added, her own voice trembling.

  Tony’s veiny hand, with its protruding drip, waved feebly in the air in her direction. Polly, rather reluctantly, moved forward and put her own hand out. He grabbed it with slightly surprising force and she felt him squeeze. She glanced down and almost couldn’t stifle her shock: the same square nails; the same very long forefinger. She had her father’s hands.

  “It’s uncanny,” said Carmel. “Sorry. It’s why I couldn’t stop staring at you. Sorry.”

  Polly looked at her.

  “Well,” Carmel went on. “It’s just how it is, but none of your . . . none of your siblings look quite as much like him.”

  Polly couldn’t do anything other than nod.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Tony, his voice croaky. “I . . . It was . . .”

  “It’s all right,” said Polly. “I understand.”

  And as she said it, she felt a weight fall off her; something she had barely realized had been heavy on her her entire life. As she looked at the wasted figure of the man in the bed, she realized he wasn’t the perfect father figure she’d been dreaming of, that she’d wanted so very badly. Neither was he the bad bogeyman of her mother’s imagination, the implacable enemy to be hated forever. He was just a man who had made a mistake, exactly like the one Kerensa had made, more or less, and then had to live with it for the rest of his life.

  It was just there, nothing you could change or prevent. Once upon a time, perhaps, it could have been made better, but not now. And that was okay. Well, it wasn’t, but it had to be. Because it was all there was.

  “Are you . . . are you having a good life?” croaked Tony.

  Polly nodded. “Yes,” she said. She thought about Huckle and suppressed the thought that things might be unraveling at pace. “Yes, I am having a good life. It wasn’t always. Then I found out what I really wanted to do . . .”

  “You’re the girl that makes bread, aren’t you? I saw you in the paper.”

  “I am the girl who makes bread,” agreed Polly.

  “You should teach her to cook then, she’s always been rubbish,” he said, grinning a slightly ghastly grin in Carmel’s direction.

  “Shut up, you,” said Carmel, and Polly could see again the massive weight of affection that had obviously survived everything life could throw at it, still more or less shining brightly. Would she ever have that?

  She tried to smile at him.

  “Yes,” she said. “I love what I do. It took me a while to get there, and I’m massively overworked and exhausted all the time and I don’t make any money and all that stuff, but I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life.”

  Tony nodded. “Good,” he said. “That’s really good, isn’t it, Carmel?”

  Carmel smiled. “She must have had a wonderful mother,” she said softly, and all three of them fell silent for a moment.

  “Is she . . . Do you want to meet the others?” said Tony hopefully, as if he knew already that he was asking too much.

  “No,” said Polly. “No. I don’t think so. I have my life and they have theirs, and I wouldn’t want to complicate matters. Complicate everyone’s lives.”

  “It was me who did that,” said Tony.

  Polly took her hand back and stepped away from the bed.

  “It was nice to meet you,” she said softly. “But I’m going to go now.”

  “Aye,” said Tony. “Aye, yeah, that’s all right. Of course.”

  He looked at her, and his eyes were glistening with tears.

  “Do you forgive me?”

  Polly nodded. “Of course,” she said.

  “Thank you. Do you have little ones?”

  “No.”

  “Oh well. I know this will sound wrong, but . . . you should, you know. It’s . . . Having a family . . . I shouldn’t be telling you this, but . . . it’s wonderful. It’s a wonderful thing. A family of your own.”

  Polly felt this was going too far.

  “Goodbye,” she said.

  Carmel jumped up. Her eyes were full of tears.

  “Sorry about that,” she said, walking her to the ward door.

  “It’s all right,” said Polly stiffly. “He was being honest. He chose you. And that’s all right. He’s lucky to have you.”

  Carmel bit her lip.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for doing this for him. I know you didn’t want to. It means . . . It means so much.”

  And instinctively she threw her arms around Polly, who stood, a tad reluctantly, then found herself hugging her back.


  “Okay. Goodbye now,” said Polly. This would have to do. She turned.

  At the end of the corridor, she heard a yell. It was Carmel, calling her name. She turned back.

  “Sorry!” said Carmel. “Sorry. Sorry to bother you, sorry to keep bothering you, I really am. But: can I ask you for one last thing? Sorry. I know it’s too much. But it is Christmas . . .”

  Polly blinked and stood still, not saying anything.

  “Could I . . . could I possibly have a photograph of the two of you together?”

  Polly nodded. “Of course,” she said.

  Their first-ever photo. The first father-and-daughter photograph Polly had ever had.

  She sat down on the bed feeling weird and awkward, with a stupid lump in her throat she couldn’t dispel, and took her father’s wizened hand fully in her own, grasped it, fingers interlaced, for the first and the very last time, and squeezed it, and he squeezed back as if they could connect with each other just here, just this one time, and then the photo was taken and it was time to go.

  “Any time you need me,” said Carmel, “come and find me. Here’s my number. Anything. Any questions. Come and find me.”

  And Polly turned and walked slowly out of the hospital, into the parking lot, where the first snow of the season was starting to fall; blanketing the ugly hospital buildings, covering the pain and sadness, turning the world fresh and white and new again, starting over with a clean slate.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Polly had picked up Nan the Van—which Reuben had kindly got a flunky to bring over when she’d explained she only had one mode of transport, and Nan was it. She drove slowly away from the hospital, the world changed in front of her eyes. The gently falling flakes turned into a flurry, then began to fall steadily, silently, covering the ground. The light was fading from the afternoon and Polly tried not to worry about how she would manage the causeway. She would get home somehow, back home to her puffin and her lighthouse and her oven, and she could figure everything else out later. Or maybe sooner.

  Because the thing was, she guessed, you always thought you had time—time to fix the relationships that had broken down; to do all the things you thought you’d get around to; to finish everything, tie it up with a neat bow and that was it.