She loved to visit Italy – but she was British. And while this saddened her mother, it delighted her grandfather, who was overjoyed at his proud independent grandchild, and would always squeeze her hand and tell her he was proud of her.
Marisa could see the villagers now down at the docks, hauling at rocks and sandbags, digging, and doing their best against the rising tide of water.
She had done it.
Chapter 39
She moved on, desperately looking for Alexei’s face; or at least a face she knew. She saw the blond man who was the father of Polly’s twins. His face was drawn and exhausted-looking.
She waved tentatively and he didn’t look pleased to see her.
‘Everyone should be indoors,’ he said in his American accent. ‘You shouldn’t be out unless you can help.’
Too timid to talk, Marisa held up her boxes.
‘Food.’
She opened the boxes and took out the kitchen roll and passed round the warm bread and as much tea as she could pour out.
The helpers fell on it with signs of enormous gratitude. Marisa found herself looking around for Alexei – he was normally easy to see – but he was over on the other side of the port trying to help move cars out of the way with several of the seamen, and didn’t seem to spot her.
‘This was brilliant,’ said Huckle, his mouth full. ‘Thank you. I’ll keep some for the others. You should get out of the weather.’
‘Can I help?’
‘You did.’
He looked at her.
‘Could you . . . could you possibly make some more? Maybe take it up for the old people? They’ll need breakfast.’
He looked at the bakery sadly. The water was already all over the floor, the rain still showing no signs of shopping. He dreaded telling Polly.
‘I don’t think we’re going to be open tomorrow.’
‘Um, I can try,’ said Marisa, ‘but I think that’s everything I had in the house.’
Huckle blinked, the water running down his nose.
‘You could go to the lighthouse,’ he said. ‘We put everything there.’
‘It’s two o’clock in the morning.’
‘Nobody’s asleep,’ said Huckle grimly.
Marisa thought about having to go up to someone else’s house. On the other hand, it was Polly.
‘The old folk are really going to need something in the morning.’
‘You all are,’ said Marisa. That decided her. ‘Okay. I’ll go. I’ll do it.’
Chapter Forty
Marisa had to knock on the back door several times to make herself heard over the wind and the rain. Would this storm ever blow itself out?
Finally, she heard a tired voice say, ‘I’m coming, I’m coming.’
Polly opened the door to a drowned rat; she barely recognised her at first.
‘Come in, come in,’ she said, as Marisa slightly pitched forwards into the incredibly lovely warmth of the kitchen, where an Aga was radiating heat. The kitchen had always been the warmest room in the lighthouse, due almost entirely to it not being in the lighthouse; it was in an ugly late sixties flat-roofed pebble-dashed extension which, for all its failings, at least benefited from double glazing.
‘Oh my God! Are you all right? It’s wild out there. I’ve just got the children off to sleep.’
‘Aren’t you going to sleep?’
Polly didn’t want to say what she’d been doing in the ten minutes since Daisy finally gave up the unequal struggle against dozing off, Avery having exhausted himself shooting at the lightning.
Staring out of the window she could see the hurricane lamps of the people working down below, desperately trying to shore things up. But she could see in the dim light that the water was still running; that Beach Street did not look normal, with cobbles, but instead shining and reflective and liquid; that the bakery could not hold.
She had been crying.
It was gone and they were going to be ruined, even as she watched the men and women of Mount Polbearne work for all they were worth, with every last breath.
‘Um,’ said Marisa. ‘I made them some food, but it’s all gone and your husband thought maybe we should make something for the morning and maybe I could do it as it’s not so far? And I don’t have any flour left. Your husband suggested I come here . . .’
All of this came out in a rush as it was one thing having Polly in her house, where she was safe, but being in someone else’s felt like a different kettle of fish altogether, but Polly knew what she meant and couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it. And thank God, Huckle was okay.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘We moved all the flour here as a precaution.’
She turned to Marisa and pasted a smile on her face.
‘First, let’s get you out of those wet clothes,’ she said. ‘That was amazing of you to do to that.’
‘It was the least I could do,’ murmured Marisa. But she was still incredibly pleased to hear praise – genuine, well-meant praise. Nobody had found her much of anything but a weird disappointment for so long, no matter how patient with her they’d tried to be.
‘It’s going to be jogging bottoms and they’re going to be too big for you,’ warned Polly, heading towards the door and returning with a big, old and worn but still cosy clean towel. ‘I’d like to tell you that I was an immaculate dresser before I had the children but I’m afraid I would be lying to you.’
Marisa found herself smiling.
‘Dry is absolutely a hundred per cent everything, thanks.’
Polly came back – and oh, the bliss of changing out of wet clothes and into big fluffy dry socks, a clean T-shirt, a red hoody and, in fact, a pair of dungarees which were the first thing Polly could find to hand that was clean.
‘Oh, you look rather cute, that’s annoying,’ said Polly when Marisa had changed. ‘You should keep that red hoody, it suits black hair. It looks mad with red hair, I don’t know why I bought it.’
She also looked a bit mischievous.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I dug this out as well. If we’re going to be up all night baking . . .’
Marisa nodded.
‘Well. I think we need some help.’
And she pulled from behind her back a very old dusty bottle of Prosecco that had been brought for a party and forgotten all about.
The kitchen being so far from the children’s bedrooms, they could happily whack on the radio, which they did, avoiding anything that gave frightening weather updates and sticking to a nineties station that offered up a comforting menu of Britney and the Backstreet Boys, much to their delight, even though Marisa was really too young for them, and Polly had to stop while the dough was proving and put the videos on so she could choose a favourite.
They danced as they moulded pies and muffins, flour liberally sprinkled all over the kitchen, including on Polly’s nose, and Polly started laughing at Marisa’s horrified reaction to noticing bird prints in the flour.
‘We’re going to kill the entire village,’ Marisa had gasped.
‘Well, bit too late now if that’s what’s going to happen.’