Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery

by Jenny Colgan

  She looked up, her mouth still twisted.

  ‘I had no idea Neil was the most popular person in this town.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Polly sadly. ‘Yeah, he is.’

  ‘And I’m the psycho bitch who tried to get him killed.’

  ‘I’m sure they’re not saying that.’

  ‘Might as well be,’ said Selina. ‘You know, even the vet doesn’t like Lucas.’

  Polly kept a prudent silence.

  ‘How’s the shop doing downstairs?’

  ‘What, since I lost you your job too?’

  ‘Just asking,’ said Polly.

  ‘They put a pile of unsold tuna sandwiches outside the other day and it stank the place out for a week. Lucas went berserk, ripped open all the bin bags.’

  ‘Oh God, poor Jayden.’

  Suddenly Selina sank down on to a rock and crossly hurled a stone out to sea.

  ‘Poor Jayden! Poor Polly! Poor Neil! Poor everyone else. You know, this was the last place; the last place I could come. This is pretty much the end of the road for me. No job, nothing to do, the compensation is basically gone. And now I’m here and everybody hates me. I mess it up and I mess it up and I mess it up, and even when I don’t bloody mean to mess it up, it’s my bloody fault for owning a bloody cat, as if I’m the only person ever to own one of the damn things! I didn’t realise. I thought it was just some bird.’

  Polly shook her head.

  ‘Sorry. It was my fault. I’ve learned. He shouldn’t… I shouldn’t have had him as a pet. Seabirds aren’t pets. He shouldn’t have been following me about.’

  Polly’s voice caught in her throat.

  ‘It’s right that he’s gone.’

  Selina was still staring out to sea.

  ‘Everything I touch turns to shit.’

  Polly took off Huckle’s big warm shirt and wrapped it around Selina’s shoulders.

  ‘Sssh,’ she said. ‘It’s okay. It’s not your fault. None of it was your fault.’

  All the animosity Polly had been harbouring towards Selina and her cat melted away when she saw how fragile and sad Selina was; instead, she felt guilty for having avoided her, being too caught up in her own problems and too upset over what had happened to Neil to want to spend any time with her.

  It was getting freezing. Dawn was a little way off, but not far; it was the very coldest, bleakest hour of the morning, the time when absolutely everything feels at its worst.

  Polly knew only one way out of this. It was the first time she had felt like this in a while. Maybe it was being with someone else sad. Maybe it was the morning itself, or the truce that comes when you realise that, in fact, the rest of the world isn’t out to cause you pain and trip you up. That most people’s intentions are the same: just to get by the best they can, which sometimes succeeds and sometimes does not; that Selina wasn’t plotting to harm her bird and make her lose her job. That we are, in the end, just fallible human beings and we all make mistakes, and if you can forgive other people, then that is almost exactly the same as forgiving yourself, and feels just about as good.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Um. I was thinking.’

  Selina scrubbed her face crossly with the cuff of Huckle’s shirt, which made Polly a little sad as she would have to wash it and it wouldn’t smell of him any more.

  ‘What?’ Selina said.

  ‘You know,’ said Polly. ‘When I feel awful, there’s only one thing that makes me feel any better.’

  ‘I don’t really want a drink,’ said Selina.

  ‘It isn’t that, actually,’ said Polly.

  Selina looked at her.

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Come with me,’ said Polly, and she held out her hand.

  In the lighthouse kitchen, Polly turned on all the lights, which were horribly bright as they hadn’t got round to replacing the humming overhead fluorescent tubes. They both winced.

  ‘Okay,’ said Polly, noticing that Selina was still shivering. She really was most frightfully thin. ‘First things first. And first thing is coffee. Black.’

  ‘Does it have to be black?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Polly. ‘I forgot to buy milk again.’

  She turned on the coffee machine, instinctively glancing around for Neil, who was fascinated by the noise it made and liked to advance on it bravely. Then she remembered that of course he wasn’t there. He’ll be back soon, she told herself sternly.

  She filled two little cups with thick, creamy coffee and added sugar against Selina’s protestations.

  ‘Sssh. We have work ahead. Right.’

  She fetched the living yeast from the fridge, where it had been growing for weeks, uncared for.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Be quiet and drink your coffee,’ said Polly, running her hand under the mixer tap until the water was warm. She added the warm water carefully to the yeast and mixed them together.

  ‘That looks even worse,’ said Selina. ‘And it smells.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Polly. She tied on the ridiculous puffin apron Huckle had got her, and gave the much prettier Cath Kidston one to Selina.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  Polly took the flour down from the top shelf – the good stuff – and shook the entire kilo bag into a large mixing bowl. She added a sprinkling of finest sea salt, a pinch of sugar, and a little water, stirring all the time until with her expert eye she judged the consistency to be exactly right. Then she poured it into the bread mixer and adjusted the speed.

  After that, she covered two of the surfaces in the kitchen with plenty of soft flour, and divided the mixture in half.

  ‘Right,’ she said.

  Selina eyed it carefully.

  ‘I don’t cook,’ she said.

  ‘Well that’s useful,’ said Polly. ‘Because this isn’t cooking, it’s baking.’

  She turned on the radio. Local radio was good this time of the morning, as the DJ, Rob Harrison, played lots of loud getting-up songs for the early-morning farmers and fishermen and surfers and fruit-pickers: it was as if he knew they needed a hand.

  ‘This’ll do,’ she said, as Pharrell blasted across the room. ‘Let’s go.’ She started to punch and pull at the mass of sticky dough. ‘Just do what I do.’

  Selina stared at her, then glanced at her very nice manicure.

  ‘Take your rings off,’ said Polly. ‘Come on.’

  Selina looked down at her fingers, her hands trembling.

  ‘Oh,’ said Polly, stopping her kneading for a second. ‘Sorry. Don’t take your rings off.’

  Selina’s slim wedding and engagement rings sat on her right hand, not her left; on her widow’s finger. Polly hadn’t noticed before. Selina looked at them for a long moment.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I will. I shall. They’re chains to me.’

  Polly didn’t say anything for a long moment as Selina looked at her hands again. Then slowly, gladly, she drew both the rings off over her finger and, with one swift movement, plunged her hands into her big sticky ball of dough.

  ‘Argh!’ she said, smiling for the first time.

  Polly nudged the radio up with her nose, a talent well developed in almost all bakers, then they really got down to it: punching, hurling, throwing the dough about, beating it and taking out on it everything they had against the world. Polly knew it was almost impossible to over-knead dough by hand – it was the mixer you had to watch out for – so happily got into it, realising as she did so how much she had missed this; how much she had missed the sore feeling, the workout in her arms as they whacked and threw the dough. She felt the knot in her shoulders begin to gradually relax and work itself out; her shoulders themselves descended, and she realised they must have been sitting somewhere up around her ears, as if carrying all the troubles of the world on them, or holding up the sky on their own.

  The radio changed to another fantastic high-energy song, exactly what they needed, and Polly felt she was hearing music for the first time in a long while; enjoying it as s
he hadn’t for months. She even felt her hips start to move, and a smile spread across her face as she noticed that Selina was so engrossed in what she was doing, so involved in hitting and pulling and punching the dough – or Tarnie, or her troubles, or whatever it was – that she too was twitching involuntarily in time to the music.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Polly encouragingly, as the dough began to change, to become smooth and malleable as the gluten became more elastic.

  ‘Wow,’ said Selina, slightly pink in the face and out of breath. ‘This is like boxercise.’

  ‘Tastes a lot better than boxercise,’ promised Polly.

  Behind them, the first fingers of pink were beginning to cross the sea.

  ‘Right,’ said Polly. ‘Let’s get them to the warm spot… Curses!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My oven has been off for so long. Normally it’s never off,’ she said sadly. ‘And I always have a warm spot. Oh well.’

  She turned the oven on anyway, and set the dough inside bowls covered in clean tea towels to rise. Then she deftly washed up and cleaned the surfaces. When she turned to offer more coffee, she found Selina sprawled across the table sleeping as deeply and contentedly as a child.

  Polly fetched a blanket from upstairs, gently moved Selina to the armchair by the doorway and covered her up, then wandered outside with her coffee. The dew was lying heavily on the scrubby grass between the rocks, the sky lightening by the second. She needed to check the dough; the fishermen would be back soon, and it would be nice to have something warm to give them. She would crack open one of Huckle’s last batches of honey, the orange flower, with the faint citrusy flavour she loved so very much.

  She found herself humming happily, putting the dough into tins and leaving it to rise again. Her fingers itched, used to doing ten times this much work in the morning, and she suddenly realised how much she had missed it. She really had. Not getting up at the crack of dawn might at first have seemed a bit of a luxury, but work was her; it defined her. Not working was making her sad and stressed. She needed to start getting things organised, she thought, putting the bread tins into the oven and deciding to quickly make some flaky pastry for croissants. Couldn’t hurt.

  The smell of baking bread woke Selina from where she was curled up like a cat on the armchair. Even though she had only slept a couple of hours, she stretched luxuriously.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, blinking her long cat’s eyes open. ‘What is that? It smells divine. I feel hungry.’ She looked puzzled. ‘I never feel hungry,’ she said in confusion. ‘Why am I hungry?’

  ‘Hey,’ said Polly. ‘I think you’re hungry because you helped make your own breakfast.’

  ‘I did?’ said Selina. She frowned. ‘God, I thought I dreamed that.’ She looked around her. ‘But here I am, in a lighthouse.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Polly. ‘Here.’

  She served the fresh bread at the rough wooden table, spread with melting butter over its light-crumbed soft centre, the well-kneaded crust crispy and nutty. A spoonful of honey over the top and a huge mug of tea (Polly disliked tea mugs that held less than about a pint) completed the simple repast. The early-morning sun shone in through the windows.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Selina. ‘Oh my God, this is absolutely perfect.’

  She tore into the bread with her little, very white teeth. Polly smiled. It felt undeniably good to be feeding people again.

  ‘Well it should be,’ she pointed out. ‘You made it.’

  ‘Oh my,’ said Selina. ‘Well I am brilliant.’

  Polly smiled again.

  ‘Eat as much as you like,’ she said, holding up a large tray piled with thick honey sandwiches and an empty mug. ‘I’m just going to see the fishermen.’

  She could see their boats chugging across the horizon. She hoped they had had a good night.

  ‘What’s the cup for?’

  ‘Fishermen make the best tea on earth,’ said Polly. ‘I always fill up from their urn.’

  The boys were cold, hungry, exhausted and entirely delighted to see Polly again.

  ‘I thought you’d gone for ever,’ said Kendall. ‘I thought you might go and live with your bird.’

  Archie snorted. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Kendall. You mean with Huckle.’

  Kendall looked at Archie.

  ‘Could have been either, I say.’

  ‘Good God,’ said Polly. ‘What kind of a crazy lady do you think I am? Don’t answer that.’

  Fortunately they were all busy chewing.

  ‘How’s business?’ she asked Archie, who just shook his head. He still looked so unhappy.

  ‘I’m doing my best,’ he said, then drew closer to her. ‘I just… I just wish…’

  ‘What?’ said Polly.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Archie miserably.

  ‘Tell me.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well last night… you know it was a little choppy?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I’m just… I just get so scared.’ He looked away. ‘I’m… I’m terrified, Polly. I really am. I feel I have no business being in charge of the boat or the men or anything like that.’

  ‘But you’re doing a great job! Everyone thinks you’re brilliant!’

  ‘That’s because I’ve never been tested,’ said Archie, with feeling. ‘They haven’t found me out.’

  ‘Hush,’ said Polly. ‘Anyway, everyone feels like that.’

  Archie held up a sandwich.

  ‘Easy for you to say,’ he said. ‘When you can make stuff like this.’

  Now that Polly was feeling more in the swing of things, she headed to the mainland – where they had a decent Internet connection – to meet Reuben, who had been drafted in to help with Operation Van.

  They met in a little café in Looe, where all the men had beards and wore lumberjack shirts and the drinks were served in jam jars. Polly found this very peculiar.

  Reuben turned up forty minutes late, which was all right, as it gave her time to go through all the vans that were on offer. Almost all of them were old burger vans that looked heavily engrimed with the grease of a thousand late-night drunks stumbling out of nightclubs, but Polly wasn’t afraid of a little hard work. They ranged a lot in price, from two and a half thousand upwards, but Huckle had been adamant that they use his money to get exactly what they needed.

  ‘If you’re going to do this,’ he said, ‘you have to do it right.’

  She also had a file open to list the things she needed to do. The actual baking economics she could do in her sleep; she had worked long enough to know exactly what she needed and how much she needed to charge. In fact, with fewer staff, no rent and few fixed costs, she could get away with less than the bakery.

  And as she had no regular clientele to service, she could concentrate on the stuff with the slightly bigger profit margin – sandwiches and pizza as well as the loaves – and leave the cakes and buns to Malcolm’s plastic patrol. She would, in any case, need to make a very clear case to the town hall that she was not doing the same as the existing businesses; she was going to try and license it as a snack bar.

  She scrolled through the list of bedraggled-looking second-hand vans, her heart sinking slightly as she did so. Each one, she thought, represented someone’s hopes and dreams come to nothing; their brilliant catering idea turned to dust. Who did she think she was to suddenly start something up in the middle of nowhere and expect it to work? Was she mad?

  She couldn’t think like this, however. She couldn’t. This was their best option at this point – her only option as far as she could tell – and Huckle was busting a gut thousands of miles away just so she could have this opportunity. She scrolled through page after page of trucks that sold pasties and dirty white converted caravans… and then she saw it.

  She looked at it. Then she looked away. Then she looked at it again, her negativity forgotten.

  Piaggio Porter 2010, it said.
<
br />   It was markedly more expensive than all the other trucks there. But…

  It was a converted VW-style camper van, in a two-tone colour scheme of dark red and white. One side slid open to reveal rails of baking trays, just like in the bakery. Behind them was a professional wood-burning oven. On the other side was a window that opened out to sell through, with a canopy over it. It looked to be in absolutely perfect nick; the description announced that it had been kitted out to sell pasties two years before, at a cost of £30,000. Whether this was true or not Polly couldn’t say, but it looked absolutely perfect. Which was probably, she reflected, why it was twice as expensive as everything else for sale in the category.