‘Where is it?’ said Marisa suspiciously.
‘I mean, it’s very picturesque . . .’
‘Where?’
‘I can’t . . . one of those limey words. I want to say Potbeans?’
She looked at him.
‘Mount Polbearne?’
Everyone knew Mount Polbearne. It was a remote tidal island off the southern coast of Cornwall; a tourist attraction, but a tiny place.
‘You know it?’
‘Of course I know it – it gets completely cut off for half of every day and you can’t own a car there and in the winters it gets cut off for months and you’re miles from anywhere.’
‘I thought,’ said Caius, ‘that would be perfect for you.’
The bell rang. Marisa looked up worriedly.
‘Uh, yeah, the guys are just coming over to . . . hang?’ said Caius hopefully, as Marisa dived back into her room.
Chapter Five
The party noise that night was . . . prolonged. Marisa tucked her head under her pillow and found she was too exhausted even to cry. Sleeping had been hard for so long – possibly because she was taking so little physical exercise she simply wasn’t tiring herself out enough. But this was pushing her beyond her limits.
She looked at the link Caius had sent over. Well. It was there, it was available and it was a lot less than she was paying at the moment to live in a lovely two bed right in the middle of a vibrant city, even though she couldn’t take a single step into that vibrant city; she barely looked out of the window.
And what choice did she have? Nobody wanted her, not really. She couldn’t face crashing her mother’s full life with her sadness and gloom; her mother had loved her own father, of course, but she had taken a more pragmatic view. Life was for living and celebrating: he had been old, very old, and had had a long and happy life with a family he adored and a job which, while it didn’t make him a rich man, had made him a satisfied one. So the blubbing and the dressing gowns at teatime seemed to her mother self-indulgent at best; at worst, an active insult to a man who lived and loved and worked his whole life. Marisa didn’t know how to bridge the chasm between her mother and herself. She didn’t know how to bridge the chasm between herself and the rest of the world.
And the idea of going out and meeting other people, finding somewhere else was . . . it made her freeze. It wasn’t possible. Not at all. No.
She looked at the location again.
Her friends all promised to charge down to visit. They also wanted to organise a big leaving Exeter bash for her, but she said she was just too busy at work. Also, she had a feeling Olive was about to get engaged. Which was brilliant, amazing, she should be thrilled for her. And yet she felt nothing at all. It was terrifying. She texted Mahmoud, who just said, yeah babe, cu round, which didn’t make her terrified, it made her sad – again, with herself, for settling, always, for so little, for always being afraid to ask for what she wanted.
Nazreen was disappointed, of course; she’d wanted Marisa back in the office, and sharply asked how long this was for. There was a limit to how much admin work there was to do. Marisa added this to the long list of other things she had to worry about. Somewhere quiet and out of everybody’s way must, she thought, be the right move.
Chapter Six
Reuben had built the new holiday homes when he’d renovated the school – Lowin went there and of course he had to have the absolute best of everything, so Reuben had to do up the school and figured he might as well do a little bit of business while he was about it.
The renovation however had turned into a massive nightmare as anyone within touching distance of Mount Polbearne had suddenly decided that their children absolutely had to go to the place with the cool new gym and the music instruction and the small classes and the adorable commute. There were even plans for an art department, currently held up in the planning committee as Reuben could only hold off on being rude to people for so long.
Archie, one of the more enterprising fishermen, set up a mainland commuting boat so they weren’t dependent on the tides and the children loved it. Even Lowin got fed up of being taken privately on the Riva boat and insisted on joining the little outboard motor and wearing his own life jacket with his name written on it. Everyone else’s was written on in Sharpie, but his was embroidered. They all had a great time.
The school was a huge hit. But the holiday cottages had encountered a snag – the years of terrible weather and flooding had meant they couldn’t produce a stable road to them: some of the houses existed, but you couldn’t easily drive to them, park at them, get a buggy along the street and so on.
Reuben’s new plan was to offer them as longer-term lets to people that wouldn’t be packing and unpacking every five minutes, then keep haranguing officials till they either built him a new road or invented hover bikes.
He had tenants turning up: the school music teacher, who was having trouble with the commute; and some irritating flatmate of his nephew (who had been sent to the UK and who Reuben was meant to be keeping an eye on, which meant he just sent him extra money from time to time). Anyway, keeping Caius quiet kept Reuben’s annoying sister off his back while she went through her third divorce, so that was always something.
He’d given the keys to Polly the previous week and asked her to let everyone in despite her clear and obvious objections that she was running her own business and couldn’t take time off in the middle of the day to do that for him, didn’t he have anyone from his multimillion-dollar corporation, or perhaps his wife, you know, the one who didn’t have a job?
Good-natured Kerensa had laughed and said of course she did, she was getting her nails done so that Reuben didn’t leave her for a twenty-year-old and Reuben had said damn straight. Polly had said, well, it used to be that only Reuben was a putz but it appeared that marriage had infected Kerensa as well and now they were both putzes. To which Kerensa pointed out that they were putzes who were also pouring Polly another glass of champagne while Lowin’s nanny looked after her children. (Polly had her own thoughts about this as Lowin’s nanny tended to run after him, while backing him up every time he tried to terrorise Avery, which was often. Daisy versus the nanny, on the other hand, was a surprisingly fair fight.)
So Polly had a new thing to add to her already long to-do list that Monday morning, including reassuring Huckle that his business trip would be worthwhile – sales needed confidence too, and his handsome face had looked so worried that morning. She thought he was brilliant and his honey was awesome and she’d done her best to perk him up. Then there was Avery who had taken to wearing a pair of Daisy’s stripy tights round his neck and calling it his pet snake Jiminy, which had caused quite the kerfuffle that morning, as well as the fact that he’d caught the tights on the doorknob on his way out to school and nearly garrotted himself. And now she had Mrs Bradley standing in front of her sighing and saying, ‘Pasties again.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Polly, trying not to sound stiff. ‘We are a bakery in Cornwall.’
‘I’m just saying, you could mix it up a bit.’
‘I did mix it up! I did chilli bread and nobody would talk to me for a week.’