The object of their ire became clear: the lovely wooden steps up to the front door, necessitated by the steep gradient of the hill this far up. Marisa wondered what it was they were supposed to be unloading from the van and manoeuvring up the steps. Perhaps it was a washing machine. She already had one of those, brand-spanking-new too. Marisa hadn’t expected to get so excited about a new washer-dryer, but there you go. It had been a quiet few months
As she watched, though, it became clear this wasn’t a washing machine at all. In fact, she watched with mounting horror as the object slowly emerged from the van onto a trolley – it was a huge black piano. Not a grand but even so, the idea of them getting it up the delicate wooden steps was somewhat concerning.
There was a lot more shouting and she retreated to the other side of the sitting room. Oh God. Were they all moving in? With a piano? She thought back. Of course. Her new neighbour. He was the children’s piano teacher. But . . . at the school, surely. He was the school music teacher, right? It hadn’t occurred to her at all that he would have a piano here. Surely he did it all up at the school? This was a rental – who put a piano in a rental?
CRUMP. There was another loud bang on the side of the house How thick were these walls anyway? she wondered. She had assumed that nothing could possibly be worse than Caius’ party-threesome house.
Perhaps she had been incorrect in this assumption.
She looked around the pristine sitting room, with its gorgeous views and pale beachy colours. Well, it had been a dream home for . . . almost an hour.
No, no, maybe it would be lovely. It would be lovely. A little bit of tinkling piano. It would be lovely maybe.
SNAP!
Oh my God, was that a step?
Chapter Eleven
Polly hated Huckle being on the road. It had got harder and harder, everything had. Well, no. The bakery was as bustling as ever, but there was a limit to how much you could make selling pasties and gingerbread even if – as she was very proud – they would be the best pasties and gingerbread you could get your hands on for miles around. Of course, part of the reason for that was that she used high quality local ingredients in everything she made which meant that her profit margins weren’t what they might be either.
Huckle, who had retired from the rat race to raise bees, had gone back into the rat race when he realised just how much it cost to run an absurdly inconvenient home, two children and one puffin, selling his honey for local natural beauty products to spas and hotels.
Which had been fine but his honey business was now looking wobblier and wobblier. Bigger chains had come in, and honey seemed to get cheaper in the supermarket week after week. People didn’t really care how organic things were if they were feeling pennies pinching and after a couple of bad seasons and bad weather, they certainly were.
Huckle was the sweetest-natured and most laid-back of men but he was starting to get a furrow in between his eyebrows.
Life had rushed by the last few years, speeded up as quickly as the lighthouse lamp turned round, lighting the sailors on their long journeys past. From their first meeting at his cottage, wearing his beekeeper costume . . . through their bumpy romance, to her engagement ring, carefully preserved now in a little glass box, made of dried seaweed . . . to the wedding Kerensa had organised for them when Polly was simply too busy to do it herself – nothing they had done had been conventional. But all of it had been fun.
And since the babies had come, they had spent a lot of it in a hurly-burly, even if it had been fun too – nappies and Peppa Pig and talcum powder and rushing out the door and having food on you and first steps and exhaustion and laughter and bewilderment – but they had never stopped moving; everything had always been crazy. But good crazy.
Was that about to stop? wondered Polly. It felt rather like her worst fears were being confirmed, as he rang her – his sweet southern accent without all of its normal jocularity – just to tell her he was coming home early, which pleased her and worried her all at once; he told her which tide he would catch, and she said fine, and he hung up, and in the silence was a stop, immediately filled by the children appearing at her side.
‘Where’s Daddy? What Daddy saying? Avery and me would like to know, please?’
Daisy was being polite which meant, Polly knew, that she was worried about something.
Polly pasted a large smile on her face.
‘I think,’ she said. ‘I think Daddy is going to come home early.’
‘Hooray!’ said Daisy.
‘Boo!’ whined Avery.
‘Stop that,’ said Polly. She didn’t have time for this now. Avery had announced that he was going to be Polly’s twin and/or husband and he hated everyone else in this stupid family and Polly was trying to ignore it – she knew it was a natural phase but she wished he would get over it.
‘Maybe Daddy stay will away working,’ continued Avery, taking Polly’s hand and giving her a sincere blue-eyed look which he had found very effective on his darling mama even at this tender age. ‘Then we can get married.’
‘No, he’s coming home and we’re going to be a family,’ said Polly. Possibly a poor one, she didn’t add.
It was in the tilt of his shoulders as he walked through the door, the cast of exhaustion on his handsome face even as he collapsed onto the old sofa and let Daisy swarm all over him.
Avery sat and started singing a little song to himself about everyone he didn’t hate, mostly Mummy and Neil.
Huckle cuddled his daughter while staring straight over her head, and Polly brought him a glass of wine and he smiled at it, but didn’t move to pick it up.
Coldness gripped Polly’s heart. She’d been through the agony of losing a business once, many years ago after the banking crash. It’s what had brought her to Mount Polbearne in the first place.
But she’d been young then; more than able to pick herself up and start over. She didn’t have responsibilities, employees; Christ, she didn’t have children.
‘Tough week?’ she said tentatively. Huckle turned his tired eyes to Polly.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said, his hands still gently stroking Daisy’s hair. He’d lost weight, thought Polly. Whenever he’d been on the road for a few days, she always found herself assessing him for the first time again; even with his suit crumpled and his blond hair in need of a trim, and his blue eyes tired – in fact, perhaps because of those things too – he was still the most attractive man she’d ever seen in her life, still the golden boy she’d come across once, taking off his ridiculous beekeeper hat, insects buzzing on a spring zephyr, hollyhocks growing wild over his head.
She would have taken him straight to bed if the children were not there and if he wasn’t patently completely and utterly exhausted beyond reason.
‘Okay,’ she said softly, and laid the table for a pork pie, carefully made from a hot water crust which he loved, the insides scented and delicious, a fresh early summer salad on the side, with tomatoes from Reuben’s terrible forcing greenhouses; that Polly secretly thought were cruel to plants – the tomatoes, nonetheless, were bright, sweet, red love-hearts of things.
‘Don’t come to the table, it’s okay,’ said Polly, making him up a plate.