by Jenny Colgan
They didn’t say anything until they finally reached the end of the corridor and the automatic doors opened silently into the whirling wonderland beyond, the flakes illuminated by the lurid orange of the hospital’s external lights but the ugly parking lot and the squat buildings hidden by the beautiful soft white. The trees beyond were lit dimly by the glow from the city and had transformed into a Narnian wood, and without a word to one another they ran toward it.
Once safely inside, both of them screamed, “YESSSS!” at the top of their lungs, then grabbed one another and whirled each other round and round in the snow until they were pink-cheeked and sparkling-eyed with delight, and bursting with happiness. Huckle crushed Polly to him and she laughed, and Neil fluttered down from a tree he’d been exploring and watched them jump up and down with joy, then joined in.
At last the cold drove them back inside, both of them beaming. They went to the lobby to call a cab.
“Where are we going?” said Polly.
“Aha!” said Huckle.
“What?”
“You’ll see,” he said. “Stay here, I’m going to make a call.”
Polly waited, her heart completely full. Oh, the mind-bending, world-crushing relief. She took out her nearly-dead phone and texted Kerensa. She didn’t know what to say, so in the end she just put five hearts and loads of kisses, then some more hearts and a very small emoticon of the closest thing she could find. That was going to have to do.
She glanced up and back into the main body of the hospital, wondering where Huckle had gone.
And that was when she saw them. A large group of people walking along the corridor, quietly, slowly. They had their arms around one another, as if they were consoling each other. One, a woman around Polly’s age, was weeping, and a man was holding her close. There were a couple of children, walking solemnly, as if they knew something bad was happening but weren’t quite clear as to what it was. Someone was carrying a very small child, fast asleep, nuzzled against his mother’s neck.
And bringing up the rear, weeping copiously and supported by two older men—her brothers, by the look of them—was Carmel.
Polly shrank back, hidden by the vending machine, watching the sad parade of people walk past.
They looked—well, they looked normal. Nice. Mixed race, married to black and white, just a totally average, supportive, well-dressed family.
She turned away, in case Carmel saw her face, but Carmel was bowed over and blinded by tears.
Tony must have died, thought Polly. This was it. The father she had never had was no more. The kind of father he must have been, she supposed, she could see in the utterly distraught faces of the men and women passing by.
She stood stock still and watched, feeling incredibly sad and strange, as the party made its way out into the freezing night.
“Okay!” said Huckle, bouncing round the corner. “Madam, your carriage awaits. Hey hey!”
A cab had pulled up outside.
“Where are we going?” said Polly, glancing around the parking lot, but the family had dispersed.
“Just get in,” said Huckle, winking at the driver. Neil followed close behind.
Polly desperately needed to talk to him about her father, but she didn’t get a chance, as Huckle was bouncing up and down in his seat and talking about how amazing it was, and how great things were, and weren’t they lucky, and surely Kerensa would never, ever do anything like that again, and how now they would all appreciate every moment . . .
Polly looked at him.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes. I want to appreciate every moment.”
Just at that moment the car swung off the deserted road and through the massive gates of an enormous stately home.
“Where are we?” said Polly suspiciously.
Huckle smiled.
“Ah,” he said. “Hang it. Sometimes you have to do these things. It’s too dangerous to go home. This is the nearest hotel to the hospital.”
“Yes, but it’s . . .”
The gravel drive seemed a mile long. The trees were bent over with the weight of snow. A white winter moon shone through the clouds.
“It totally is.”
“We can’t afford this!”
“Sssh,” said Huckle.
“And I’m wearing a pinafore!”
“Yeah, yeah, you are.”
Polly sat up in alarm. “What’s up?”
“I called them and explained the situation,” said Huckle. “It’s either this or a night sheltering in Accident and Emergency pretending we’ve got broken wrists.”
A liveried man rushed out to open the taxi door, and they were ushered through a grand entrance into the most ridiculous stately home. There were precious antiques and oil paintings everywhere, and the wallpaper was made out of some sort of material. It was stunning. Polly looked round and fiddled nervously with her pinafore buttons.
“Now, Mr. Freeman.” The receptionist came forward smiling. “We heard all about you being caught in the storm. We know about your clothes situation, so if you need anything, just let us know and we’ll see what we can do. Also, we’ve taken the liberty of upgrading you to a suite.”
Polly turned on Huckle.
“What is this?”
“Nothing!” said Huckle. “I just said we’d had some fabulous news and could they look after us.”
“Pets are welcome here, aren’t they?”
Neil pretended to be lifting his foot to examine his claws and not eating the tinsel. “Um,” said the receptionist who was very nice and absolutely desperate to get home. “Sure! Also,” she confided, “we had a massive group coming tonight and they’ve all had to call off because of the weather. So you are definitely in luck. Enjoy.”
She glanced back at Huckle.
“I like your boyfriend’s accent,” she said.
“So do I,” said Polly.
The room was absolutely immense, with a four-poster bed in the middle of it. Polly nearly cried with happiness when she saw it. There was an enormous claw-footed bath in the bathroom, which had a heated floor and two incredibly fluffy robes hanging up, with slippers.
“Oh my God,” said Polly. Huckle grinned. He knew how much she absolutely loved a bath, and while she turned on the taps and filled it full of foam from a selection of expensive smellies, he went and poured them both very large gin and tonics from the minibar.
As Polly wallowed blissfully in the endless superhot water, sipping her G&T, Huckle knelt down beside the bath.
“You know,” he said, “I don’t like doing it very often. But being a workaholic like you sometimes really pays dividends.”
“Your meeting went well?”
He frowned. “Better than well. I always work better when I’m miserable. It’s so weird.”
“What happened?”
“I’ve sold the new range to a whole chain of beauticians. Fresh honeycomb wax, all local, all organic.”
Polly looked at him in astonishment.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. Common or garden wax is no longer good enough for the tender mimsies of the southwest.”
“So you’re paying for this place with pubes?”
Huckle grinned. “Is it worth it?”
Polly beamed. “Oh my God, yes! You clever thing! Yes!”
“Just don’t ask me to work like that every week. It’s exhausting!”
After she’d soaked for long enough, but before she passed out from utter fatigue, they got into bed and ordered far too much from room service, then she told him everything that had happened with her father, and he, in his perfect, gentle Huckle way, simply listened; properly listened to everything she had to say, in the way she’d missed so very much.
When she was finished, he didn’t ask how she was feeling or say anything stupid about closure. He just said, “Oh.” And “That sounds hard.”
And Polly nodded, and thought about the odd counterbalance of weights in the universe—how bad things could happen, and so
metimes wonderful, wonderful things could happen, but you weren’t always fated to be in the heart of the story; sometimes it simply wasn’t about you; you didn’t always get all the answers.
And some days, when you were lying in a four-poster bed, with the person you loved more than anything else in the world asking if you would like more club sandwich, and should you curl up and watch a film together, and saying that you might have to stay tomorrow too because everything and everyone would be snowed in . . .
Well. Sometimes that was all right in itself. Sometimes that was more than enough. Sometimes it was everything.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Polly woke on Boxing Day feeling happy and sad at the same time and didn’t know why, then she blinked and realized.
Outside, the beautiful grounds of the hotel were completely covered in a thick blanket of snow. Amazingly, someone had come in the night and taken away her clothes, and returned them laundered and folded up in tissue paper. This was, she thought, as nuts as all the extraordinary things that had happened over the last couple of days.
They ate a ridiculously huge breakfast, then went for a wander around the grounds, kicking up snow with their feet. Polly had spoken to Jayden, who was still trying to talk Flora around, and now she was fretting about the old ladies, who might not be able to get down the treacherous cobbled pathways to the bakery or Muriel’s little supermarket. She would need to go back soon, to make deliveries to her elderly customers, who relied on her. There were always plenty of emergency supplies on Mount Polbearne, because of its often sticky winters, but it was good just to have a quick check in on everyone, make sure they were all all right.
“Hush,” said Huckle. “It’s Boxing Day. Everyone in Britain has far more in their house than they can possibly eat in a million years. Everyone will be fine for a few hours. Please. Trust me. Relax.”
So they walked in the beautiful, sunny, snowy grounds, talking of this and that: of Huckle’s new business line, how he was going to have to outsource production even more, beyond Dave, his regular bee man, and how it ought to work; and of what Kerensa and Reuben would call the baby—Huckle was fairly sure Herschel would win, and Polly accused him of only liking it because it sounded like Huckle.
Then there was a pause as they walked, and Polly said, “I am so sorry,” and Huckle said, “Me too.”
Then Polly said, “Will that do?” and Huckle thought, just for a brief moment, about bringing up how the hotel might be a nice place to get married one of these days, but decided they’d been through enough for now. He was so relieved that they were back, that they were Polly and Huckle again, that he was determined never to rock the boat about anything, not even when Neil had made pancake-butter footprints across the posh restaurant table and the maître d’ had pulled a face that Polly had patently ignored. No. Not even then.
He tugged her braids under the big woollen hat.
“Of course.”
And they squeezed hands again, and thought they had had a very narrow escape after all.
After a while Huckle said, “Do you think you might go to the funeral?”
Polly blinked.
“No,” she said. “I met him. I kind of understand—I do understand. The stuff people do in their twenties . . . they’re not grown up really. And in the end . . . Well. He learned his lesson, didn’t he? He went back and raised his family and he obviously really loved them and was a wonderful father. I was his mistake, but that wasn’t my fault. My mum could maybe have dealt with it slightly differently, but it was a great love affair for her, and it wasn’t for him. And that’s nobody’s fault either; sometimes these things just don’t shake down. But no,” she said. “I don’t think I need to hear lots of people stand up and say what a great guy he was, you know?”
Huckle nodded. “Of course.”
They walked on in silence.
“What about his children?” he asked.
Polly thought back with a pang to the close-knit-looking group of smartly dressed people. How nice it must be, when things were really tough, to have people to lean on like that. She’d never known what it was like to have brothers and sisters. Huckle’s brother was a bit of a rogue, but he was family. She would have liked something like that.
“Mmm,” she said. “They all . . . I’m sure they all have their own lives. I’m the last thing they need to complicate matters.”
“Yes, well, wait till they discover you make the world’s most awesome bread. You’ll be welcomed with open arms,” said Huckle cheerfully.
Polly shook her head. “God, no. What if they think I’m there to cause trouble, or to get at his will?”
“Do you think there’s any money?”
Polly shrugged. “Dunno. Don’t care.” She frowned. “I wonder if my mum will keep brooding.”
“Maybe she’ll have to get a job,” said Huckle.
“Huck!”
“What? There’s nothing wrong with her. Do her good to get out of the house a bit.”
“She’s fragile,” said Polly.
“Maybe she’s like that because everyone’s been tiptoeing around her for so long.”
“She looked after her own parents very well.”
“That’s true,” allowed Huckle. “She should look after other people’s. For money.”
“Hmm,” said Polly.
They’d made a full circle of the grounds and were back at the grand entrance. Polly was looking longingly at the posh indoor spa arrangement.
“I’d love a swim.”
And as if by magic, a swimsuit in her size was found, and they went and swam under an indoor waterfall and bathed in clouds of puffy steam in the steam room and giggled in the jacuzzi, and despite the fact that they spent less than twelve hours at the beautiful country house hotel, it was one of the nicest holidays Polly had ever had in her life.
Chapter Forty
The snow was settling in, possibly for a long stay, but the sun was out, the roads were clear and there was hardly any traffic—people were obviously staying in, settling down for the lovely hazy days between Christmas and New Year with chocolate and liqueurs and a general sense of having nowhere to go and nothing to do except a jigsaw and some audio books.
Polly and Huckle took a cab to Nan the Van, which was still parked safely by the side of the road. When Polly turned the key in the ignition, amazingly the engine roared into life first time, and she climbed behind the wheel while Huck went to start the motorbike. Before they headed off, Polly called Kerensa, who announced cheerfully that she was coming home with Lowin, whereupon Reuben yelled, “Herschel!” in the background and a squabble commenced, which sounded exactly like Kerensa and Reuben getting back to normal.
“Are you sure you should be coming home so soon?” said Polly.
“Oh yes,” said Kerensa, a sparkle in her voice. “I know most people are meant to feel a bit tired and washed out after childbirth. But I feel oddly good.”
“Because my baby is awesome,” came the voice in the background. “Totally the most awesome.”
Polly smiled down the phone.
“My godson too,” she said.
And still the snow came down.
Polly started making batches of bread every morning and delivering it to the elderly of the village, and eventually, when people kept catching her on her rounds, to just about everybody else as well. She’d given Jayden some time off—he rather looked like he needed it—and when she finished in the bakery, she headed back to the lighthouse, where they kept the stove running day and night for once, keeping the sitting room at the top of the house warm and cozy, and heating the bedroom too.
And when the day’s work was done—for Huckle had a lot to do too, with the business taking off—they ate buns and crackers and cheese and drank champagne and lazed in bed, watching films and looking at the snow coming down and listening to reports recommending that people not travel unless it was absolutely necessary, and smugly chinked their glasses together because they didn’t want to travel
at all.
Reuben and Kerensa were, if the hourly photographs were anything to go by, completely immersed in a babymoon of gigantic proportions, cuddling and cooing and sending loved-up pictures of their three hands or feet, or of them all snuggled up in a bed the size of Polly’s mother’s front room, beaming mightily and joyously, Reuben fully back to his bouncy King of the World persona, the baby looking more like him every day.
Kerensa looked exquisite; a large, soft, beaming earth mother, the drawn look gone from her eyes. It helped that the baby was a perfect eater and sleeper—according to his father—and that they had absolutely oodles of help around the place, but regardless, she was a changed person; back to the fun, confident, wonderful best friend Polly had always known, and she was entirely thrilled for her.
Polly phoned her mum every day—which she didn’t normally do—and somehow, because they’d had to throw everything up in the air, because they’d had to talk about things that nobody had ever wanted to talk about, she finally felt she understood a huge great tranche of her life that had formerly been a mystery to her. And because she understood this, it was as if things had become lighter, easier between them; as if her mother was no longer holding up massive barriers, desperately trying to control what Polly knew and how she felt.
She thought of her dad from time to time, with a slight air of melancholy. But it was what it was. Nobody had a life untouched by sadness, not in the real world. And for now, looking at Huckle playing ping-pong football with Neil in front of the fire, his long body stretched out, his shaggy hair glinting golden in the firelight, she felt that in so many areas of her life, she was so blessed that she couldn’t complain. Lots of people didn’t have what she had. And she had so very much.
She knew that at some point next year they would get married, but that would be next year. She could think about the organizing and the costs and everything then. It would be lovely. Fine. Small. Just what they wanted. She didn’t need to get superstitious about it any more, terrified about it, or just worried in general because she’d never known how it was meant to go. It would just be her and Huckle. She wasn’t desperately looking forward to it, but it would be fine. It really would. Marriage, babies; whatever came next. She was ready for it all.