by Jenny Colgan
She broke down.
‘The most amazing engagement ring… Oh God, Huckle! HUCKLE!’
‘Could you quickly say a handy yes or no?’ said Huckle. ‘Before I fall into the sea?’
Polly stood up and flung her arms around him.
‘YES YES YES YES!’ she hollered at the top of her voice.
‘You sound like Selina and that new boyfriend of hers,’ observed Jayden, who was still carrying rolls out to Nan the Van.
Carefully Huckle tied the seaweed around Polly’s fourth finger. ‘We’ll choose another,’ he said.
‘I like this one,’ said Polly stubbornly, and kissed him, then kissed him again. ‘Oh my! Oh my goodness!’
‘I can’t believe you’re surprised,’ said Huckle. ‘Everyone else in this entire town is totally going to yawn when we tell them. They’ve been on at me for months. I can’t go into the bakery without Malcolm’s mother harrumphing at me and making remarks about honest women.’
‘Well I don’t care about anyone else in this town,’ said Polly. ‘Except when I’m feeding them and taking their money and relying on them for friendship and emotional support.’
Huckle beamed at her as she held up the ring and admired it.
‘I don’t want another ring,’ she said. ‘Maybe you could just make me a new one every week when it starts to smell.’
‘We’re going to have health and safety round again.’
Huckle took her in his arms.
‘Do you… I mean… Do you think you could love me as much as you love Neil?’
‘Shut up,’ said Polly. ‘Totally almost!’
Then he held her close again and swung her round in the bright pink dawn light as another perfect summer’s day came in over Mount Polbearne, and the little village started to stir, and Mrs Neil fluffed herself importantly on her egg, and Jayden kept on loading up the trays of bread, and Polly and Huckle kissed on and on as if nothing could ever part them again, and Neil fluttered and flittered and flew up, round and round the whole height of the lighthouse, higher and higher, his feathers catching the very first rays of the morning sun.
‘And are you still dreaming about him?’
Selina’s face was distant.
‘Yes,’ she said, with a noise like a small sigh escaping her lips. ‘Sometimes. But now, it’s just like he’s there. Do you understand? Just like he’s there and it’s nice to see him.’
‘And how does that make you feel?’
‘Happy. Sad. Happy and sad. Isn’t that good enough?’
The therapist closed her notebook.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, it is.’
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to Rebecca Saunders, Jo Unwin, Manpreet Grewal, Hannah Green, Emma Williams, Charlie King, Jo Wickham, Victoria Gilder, David Shelley, the design team, the sales team and absolutely everyone at Little, Brown: it’s a fantastic team.
Thank you to everyone who got in touch after Little Beach Street Bakery, particularly Neil fans (you can speak to him on Twitter at @neilthepuffin). It is really amazing to get your messages – do get in touch if you would like at www.facebook.com/thatwriterjennycolgan or @jennycolgan on Twitter.
Thank you dear friends and of course Mr B and the wee bees, without whom a) nothing would be any fun at all, and b) there’d probably be fewer terrible drawings of puffins plastering every single wall in the house.
A special mention to the RNLI, an amazing organisation that remains, whatever the AA thinks, Britain’s fourth emergency service.
LEMON POSSET
My dad is a good cook and, in fact, every year he auctions himself off to raise funds for his rowing club. He will come round to your house and make dinner for you and your friends. Mind you, he also has a very generous pouring arm, so I’m not sure how much attention people pay to the food by the time it’s ready!
Anyway, here is my favourite pudding of his:
Serves four
300 g double cream
1 level tablespoon of caster sugar. (You’ll need to make it a few times before you can be sure of how sweet you like it. I put a tad too much in last time. [This is my dad talking by the way, in the brackets. Just assume I agree with him. Every time he makes it I think it’s awesome.])
Juice of one lemon
Berry fruits to taste (Strawberries are super, as are raspberries and blackberries)
Demerara sugar
Pour the cream into a pan over medium heat. Stir in caster sugar and bring to boil. Simmer gently for 3 minutes, continuing to stir occasionally. Take from the heat and let it sit to cool for about a minute then stir in lemon juice.
I usually prepare a small dish like the one I served you (he means ramekins – Jen) with some small fruit pieces in the bottom.
Put them in the fridge until set. An hour is usually enough and you can prepare a whole day in advance.
To serve, sprinkle some demerara sugar over the top of the now set possets, and brûlée. Serve with fresh berries on top and to the side, and of course ‘lashings’ of ice cream!
Thanks, Dad!
WORLD’S QUICKEST TRIFLE
This is just in case anyone ever grabs you and points a gun at your head and shouts ‘MAKE ME A TRIFLE! STAT!!!!’ so you don’t have to explain about the custard. It’s also delicious and lovely and light.
3 bananas
Tin of dulce de leche or condensed milk
A pot of mascarpone cheese
3 Crunchies
1 small can of whipped cream
Cover the bottom of a trifle dish in sliced bananas. Pour over a tin of dulce de leche (buy it as it is, or simmer a tin of condensed milk for three hours – remember, always make sure the tin is totally covered in water).
Add a layer of mascarpone cheese.
Put the Crunchies in a plastic bag and bang the heck out of them :) Sprinkle a thick layer of Crunchies over the trifle dish, then add the whipped cream or scoosh it out of a can if you’d rather. You can add crumbled flake to the top if they’re particularly terrifying gun-toting trifle gangsters.
CHEESE PINWHEEL
This is less a recipe and more of a guilty pleasure I’m afraid. I am not proud. I can’t even make this any more because I will just wolf the entire thing and probably not even tell the children. I’m sorry. I’m disappointed with myself. I bet you will be really good and generous and perhaps even store the leftovers in a Tupperware container for tomorrow! Ha, well I have no idea if it even keeps.
YUM YUM YUM. This makes a dozen or so. I am not even going to say how many that ought to serve.
Packet of puff pastry
Marmite/Vegemite to taste
one tbsp milk
one egg
250 g grated cheddar/parmesan/comté – whichever you like
Pepper
Heat oven to 180°C. Roll out the pastry on a floured surface: aim for very thin and square. Spread a very thin layer of Marmite or Vegemite, or neither if you think those things are utterly foul. Or make two; one with, one without.
Sprinkle the cheese over the pastry, leaving a border at the ends. Grate pepper over the cheese and roll up very tightly.
Put in fridge for fifteen minutes or so, then cut into slices, and wash lightly with egg/milk mix.
Place the slices on tray lined with baking paper and bake for 12–15 minutes until puffy and golden and YAWRGGH COOKIE MONSTER STYLE FRENZY!
Sorry about that.
KICK ASS CHOCOLATE CAKE
This is a chocolate cake for Big Events :) birthdays, and so on. It is MONSTROUSLY large and needs a really big tin. Ice it how you like – I love peanut butter icing but obviously if it’s a children’s party that won’t be suitable. Cream, chocolate frosting, or lots and lots of Smarties are all good alternatives.
300 g self-raising flour
150 g cocoa powder
50 g ground coffee
500 g sugar
500 g butter
8 eggs
4 tsp baking powder
/> milk
Heat oven to 170°C. Grease the inside of the tin REALLY REALLY THOROUGHLY with some butter. Then maybe again just to make sure.
Mix up the ingredients – just add the milk at the end if the consistency isn’t ‘dropping’. Mine never is, I blamed French flour. Then I used a hand mix.
Pour into the tin and wobble it about so it’s nice and even.
Cook for 30 minutes, then cover the top of the tin with baking paper or tin foil. It SAYS cook for a further 50 minutes or so, so check in at 80 minutes and see what you think, sometimes it’s longer.
Peanut Butter Icing
175 g peanut butter
110 g butter
300 g icing sugar
60 ml cream
Whizz up the peanut butter and butter, then gradually add the icing sugar in the mixer too. Add the cream to soften until it’s the right consistency.
PULLED PORK ROLLS
These are perfect for picnics. There are about a million ways to make pulled pork: as long as it’s cooked long enough to be gorgeously tender, it doesn’t really matter. I just use the simplest – I buy a huge hunk of pork (cheap cuts), cover it in olive oil, salt, pepper, a little sugar, then wrap it up tightly in silver foil and cook for one hour at 200°C, then five and a half hours at 120°C, then a quick 15 minutes at 200°C again. Then if you can bear it, leave overnight.
Then pull apart with a fork and stick in a bowl. To make the sauce:
250 ml mustard (English, not the stuff with seeds in)
150 ml brown sugar
180 ml cider vinegar
50 ml water
Plenty of black pepper
Chilli powder to taste – 1–2 tblspn
Cayenne pepper to taste (½ teaspoon)
30 g butter
1 tsp soy sauce
Bring all the ingredients, except soy sauce and butter, to the boil on the stove. Let it simmer for 30 minutes, then add butter and soy sauce: simmer for a further ten minutes.
Mix the sauce in with the pork. I serve in rolls with coleslaw on the side – they’re great for picnics!
Rolls
Make the buns too! Well, Polly totally would :) And these are super simple :)
500 g bread flour
100 ml warm water
1 sachet active dry yeast
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp oil
A pinch of salt
Stir together the water, yeast and sugar, and let it stand for five minutes or so. Then add the oil and salt, and then slowly add the flour, until you have a nice dough. Knead on a floured surface until it’s all smooth, then place in a bowl (oil the bowl). Cover with a tea towel and leave it somewhere cosy for an hour.
Cut the dough into 16 pieces, and make into balls. Put them on baking sheets (leave space between them to rise some more). Leave for another three quarters of an hour.
Bake at 200°C for 15–20 minutes, until a lovely golden brown!
OLIVE LOAF
500 g bread flour
1 sachet yeast
2 tbspn sugar
2 tbspn salt
1 cup warm water
1 tbspn olive oil
100 g olives, chopped (black or green, whichever you like)
Mix the warm water and the yeast and wait until it foams. Knead in the flour, sugar, salt, olive oil and olives until you have a smooth sticky dough. Cover and leave to prove for one hour, or until it’s doubled in size. Knead once more; leave for 45 minutes or until it’s doubled in size again.
Oil a loaf tin. Bake at 220°C for 30 minutes or until brown.
EASIEST WHITE BREAD
Yes! This was in the original Little Beach Street Bakery, and we are reprinting it because it is so simple, so good and so foolproof, that if you’ve never baked your own bread before we cannot think of a better place to start. So have a go, and send me a pic! Jenny xxx
700 g bread flour
1 sachet dried yeast
400 ml warm water
1 level tbsp salt
1 level tbsp sugar
Sift the flour, then warm it slightly in the microwave (I do 600w for one minute). Add the yeast, salt and sugar, then the water. Mix.
Knead on a floury surface for a few minutes until it’s a nice smooth ball.
Leave for two hours whilst you read the papers or go for a stroll.
Knead again for a few minutes.
Leave again for an hour whilst you take a nice relaxing bath.
Heat the oven to 230 degrees and grease a bread tin.
Leave in the oven for 30 minutes, or until it makes a hollow noise when tapped on the bottom.
Leave to cool as long as you can stand it, then devour.
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Chapter One
Christmas was over. The baubles had been carefully wrapped, the tinsel packed up, the great tree that stood in the middle of the little village of Lipton, nestled amongst the rolling Derbyshire hills, taken down, its hundreds of white lights coiled away and stored in the old timbered attic of the Red Lion pub.
The snow was still there; a cold Christmas had given way to an even colder January. At the Rosebury home where eighty-six-year-old Lilian Hopkins lived following the death of her erstwhile boyfriend Henry Carr on Christmas Eve, the snow made all outdoor walks and activities moot. Most of the residents played chess, knitted furiously, arthritis allowing, or watched television. Lilian mostly looked out of the window, a small smile occasionally passing across her face. Henry had been the love of her life, her childhood sweetheart from the war years, who had comforted her when her brother Neddie had been killed at the Front; who had held her hand and made plans for the future after he was called up, who had kissed her fiercely down behind the churchyard where the wild roses grew. He had been her first and only love; her old, neat face and tidy bobbed hair never betrayed the depth of feeling that had once burned there.
Meeting Henry again had been bittersweet: astonishing, wonderful and a strong reminder of time passed that could not be found again. But she had held his hand and been with him to the very end, and that was more, she knew, than many could say of the love of their life.
Further down in the village, the little mullioned windows of the sweetshop were cheerily lit up against the dark and cold, the boiled sweets in the window display glinting and glowing, the bell above the shop tinging every time someone else gave up on their New Year’s resolution and slipped inside for some warming peppermint creams, or marshmallows to float in hot chocolate.
And in the tiny back room of the little sweetshop, in the little sink installed there for washing hands and making tea, Rosie Hopkins was being violently sick.
It had been, at least for Rosie and her boyfriend Stephen, the most wonderful Christmas ever. Stephen had proposed on Christmas Day. There had been tearful goodbyes to Rosie’s family, who were visiting from Australia, all promising to be back for the wedding, or at the very least insisting that their honeymoon should take place in Oz, which had made Rosie smile. It was hard to imagine Stephen lying on a beach taking it easy with a beer. Stephen was more of a striding about the moors with a stick type person, Mr Dog lolloping ridiculously by his side (he was a tiny mongrel who always seemed to make people laugh. Rosie and Stephen were both very sensitive about people making fun of him).
They had gone back to work, Rosie to the sweetshop of course, which rang with the cheerful noise of children with Christmas money to spend, and Stephen back to teaching at the local primary school, which had two classes in its nicely restored building.
The year was bright and crisp in their hands, freshly minted, and they were too, everyone so excited by their news and enquiring into their plans for the wedding and the future.
Tina, Rosie’s colleague at the shop, who was also engaged, was delighted at their news. Rosie apologised for upstaging her,
and Tina said, don’t be ridiculous, they were going for a hotel wedding, whereas presumably Rosie would be after the full massive affair in the big house, Stephen being gentry and everything, and Rosie had shivered slightly and thought that Stephen would hate that. His mother was something of a snob and very concerned about lineage, and she would want to invite everyone in the surrounding counties who was in Debrett’s. Rosie found the whole thing madly intimidating, being particularly concerned that they’d make her wear family jewels that she would lose or break or something. The idea of that many people looking at her filled her with nerves anyway. She and Tina were very different.
Stephen hadn’t really mentioned the wedding itself, beyond referring to her as ‘the wife’ – not that she had ever thought he was the type of guy who would have a lot of input into invitation design and all that – and she occasionally fantasised about them just slipping off somewhere really quiet and doing it, just the two of them, at Gretna Green or a little room somewhere.
