Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery

by Jenny Colgan

  It wasn’t like that in Polly’s house. There, a mysterious shroud of silence covered everything. Her grandparents, with whom they had lived when Polly was little, had stiffened if Polly ever mentioned her father, so she had learned early not to ask questions, although she’d been extremely curious.

  And unlike Jackie, who had dated and eventually married a lovely man called Nish, for whom Polly and Kerensa had been giggly, rather naughty bridesmaids, Doreen had never moved on, nursing her parents until they’d died within six months of each other, using them as an excuse not to have a social life really, or have any friends of Polly’s around. The house was always quiet. Not much changed there: the same cross on the wall; the same school picture of Polly at six, with her strawberry-blond hair and missing tooth, against a bright blue background; her mother’s circled Radio Times in the tidy magazine rack beside the floral sofa.

  It was school that had saved her. There was a local school that had been founded for orphans hundreds of years ago. Now it was a posh private school, but it still had a mission to take in fifty or so children missing a parent every year on scholarships. Her primary school had suggested it, and she’d managed to pass the exam.

  The school itself was academic, backbitey, a tough environment with lots of clever children jostling to take first place. And the gulf between the paying pupils and the parentless charity cases was absolutely huge, socially unbridgeable.

  But Polly soon found she didn’t care about that, because in the intake of scholarship children she made so many friends, among them Kerensa. They became an almost impenetrable group who bonded closer than glue. They felt affinity with the young motherless princes; as they became teenagers they got drunk on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in each other’s basements; they looked out for one another and stuck together because they had all experienced something children shouldn’t have to.

  That was one of the reasons it had been so shocking for everyone when Polly had upped and moved to Cornwall. Thankfully Kerensa had moved too and kept in touch. It was also why what was happening now was so awful. If Reuben found out, and if he decided to have nothing to do with the baby, then the cycle would start again, and both Kerensa and Polly knew how much they wanted to break it.

  And it was why Polly was finding it so very difficult to take the next step with Huckle.

  The little red terrace was spotlessly clean as always. Frosties, her mother’s cat, who was pure black with cream paws that looked like they’d been dipped in milk, was sitting on the windowsill behind the net, watching her carefully. She was not an affectionate cat. Polly thought her mum should get a little dog like the old ladies in Mount Polbearne, something that would jump up and down and yap and be happy to see her and give her enthusiastic licks and cuddles. But Frosties lived up to her name and treated her mother with a casual disdain, like much of the rest of the world.

  Unlike Kerensa’s mother, Doreen had never dated again, despite looking perfectly presentable for her age (and even if she hadn’t, Polly thought, plenty of people found other partners later in life). Her existence had contracted to the local street, the church, the high street shops. Polly didn’t know if it was a bad life, but it was certainly a small one. Her mother was scared of everything: the internet, public transport, people who weren’t the same color as her, everything. In contrast, amongst Polly’s peer group, they dared each other, expanded their horizons, traveled far. Because they knew life was fragile, they embraced it rather than retreated from it. And that had opened up a great chasm between Polly and her mother. She couldn’t even ask, really, what her father had been like, or her mother would start to cry.

  Best not to, then, all things considered.

  So she nipped in quickly whilst Kerensa was in John Lewis, and said hello, and invited her mother to Reuben’s for Christmas, and Doreen of course immediately declined. Then they sat in near silence, and Polly felt, as ever, how much there was to say and how little ever actually got said. She wanted to ask her mother, “Should I get married? Should I have a child? Is it worth it? What do you think? Would I manage it? Could I?”

  But Doreen had nothing to say on the subject, and Polly didn’t know how to ask.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The phone ringing at night was a horrible thing.

  First of all it was so freezing, and only Polly would ever wake because Huckle was so used to her keeping weird hours late at night. So there was no point in her prodding him, even though statistically speaking it was far more likely to be his parents forgetting the time difference.

  Also there was the panic factor. Already Polly could feel her heart beating far too fast. Phones shouldn’t ring late at night unless you were expecting something nice, like your friend having a baby in Australia or something. Polly was not expecting anything like that.

  She experimentally stretched her foot out of the bed. The cold air felt sharp, like a knife. She hoped they weren’t going to get ice on the inside of the windows again. Neil had tried to sleep in the fireplace.

  She made a grab for one of Huckle’s enormous sweaters and leapt into some Ugg boots. She had a massive and, she felt, very valid objection to Ugg boots on aesthetic grounds—she had once seen a picture of a celebrity wearing them on what had looked like a really sweaty beach and had been opposed to them ever since—but the Cornish climate had somehow allowed them to worm their way in when Kerensa had given her a pair, seeing as she had six pairs and was feeling sorry for her poor relation. Kerensa looked fine in Ugg boots; she had legs like sticks. They did not suit, Polly felt, the more curvaceous lady.

  However, they were very useful under the circumstances, she thought now as she ran down the cold stone stairs. One of these days she was going to miss a step and trip and slip all the way down, but for now she knew every inch of them; every missing lip and worn section where generations of lighthouse keepers’ boots had marched patiently up and down.

  The phone was not stopping. Probably not a wrong number then, she thought glumly. Her mum was all right, wasn’t she? She’d seen her a couple of days ago, and it wouldn’t be like her to be up after nine p.m., unless Midsomer Murders was on, a program Polly thought entirely unsuitable for her nervous mother, though she wouldn’t be told.

  The phone was an old-fashioned thing they’d inherited when they’d bought the property, with big buttons that used to connect it to the RNLI. It looked quite excitingly cool, like a sixties retro piece of spy kit, and had a satisfyingly deep bell, which now thrummed through Polly’s chest like a chime of doom.

  She picked up the receiver anxiously.

  “Hello?”

  The voice on the other end sounded tremulous and nervous. Polly desperately hoped they were about to ask her for a minicab so she could go back to bed. They didn’t.

  “Hello . . . is your name Polly Waterford?”

  “Yes,” said Polly, feeling a horrible ominous cold shiver run through her. “Who is this?”

  “My name’s Carmel.”

  The voice was shaky, but deep. The name meant nothing to Polly.

  “I’m . . . I’m . . . a friend of your father’s.”

  Her father. Polly flashed back to herself as a small child, asking her mother where her daddy was, drawing pictures of him at school, and being told that there was nothing to ask about; that they were a family and that was all that mattered, wasn’t it?

  And Polly would say of course, they were totally a family and it was all fine, anything to stop her mum from getting too upset, moving the subject on as quickly as she possibly could so as to keep things nice and calm and happy.

  Then, as she got older, she would go into the kitchen and whip up yet another batch of bread, kneading the dough so furiously her knuckles went white.

  She knew that her parents had been together very briefly and that her father had cut off contact before she’d been born; that he paid some money on the condition that he never saw her—something Polly found particularly difficult—and that Doreen often said she didn’t want
his stupid money, but of course they needed it nonetheless.

  And that was all she knew about him. She didn’t know where he lived, she didn’t know what he looked like or what his relationship with her mother had been like. She had never received a letter or a present from him. She assumed he was just some Jack the Lad who’d come to town, had his fun and probably never given it another thought.

  As she’d grown older, she had wondered why her mother had never met someone else. Doreen had only been twenty-four when Polly had been born—plenty of time to start again. People did it all the time. She didn’t think her father had been abusive, and she knew they hadn’t been married. It was like her mum was stuck on this thing that had happened to her when she was very young—a man had got her pregnant and hadn’t stayed—as if this was 1884, not 1984.

  Throughout her schooldays Polly had seen absolutely loads of her friends’ parents remarry or couple up again—some more than once—with occasionally hair-raising results. But it had never happened to her mother.

  When she was in her teens, she’d kind of gone looking for her father online, but every time she found someone who might be him—Tony Stephenson wasn’t an uncommon name, after all; Waterford was her mother’s name—she’d panicked and hadn’t dared take it any further.

  She didn’t know what was out there; she didn’t know what she might uncover. What if he had an entire family who looked like her but who he’d stayed with, who he loved? How would she feel about that? Would they even want to know her? Did she mean anything to him other than a long-forgotten direct debit? Did he ever think about her? Or was she just a night of fun he barely recalled, now too busy with all his other children having happy loud Christmases round the fire while she sat with her mum, her nana and occasionally her awkward Uncle Brian watching BBC One, as Nana didn’t trust the other channels.

  School had helped so much—she could pretty much pretend he was dead, it didn’t make much difference—and then first pouring herself into the business with her ex, Chris, and after that the amazing surprise of moving somewhere so out of the way and finding so much happiness doing something as basic as baking bread for a living, something she actually cared about: all of these things had changed her beyond recognition and she had been too busy living her own life and being an adult to care any more. Sometimes, when she saw a father tenderly pick up his daughter and carry her proudly on his shoulders, she might feel a tiny pang, but it had been going on too long now for it to hurt much. Some people got two parents, some started out with two and lost one; everyone was different. But you couldn’t lose what you’d never had, and she wasn’t going to let it get in the way of her happiness.

  Well, that was what she’d thought, until now; until this telephone call.

  “I’m so sorry,” came the voice again. “It’s just . . . I’m afraid he’s not well. And he’s been asking for you.” Polly swallowed.

  “Where are you?”

  “Ivybridge.”

  Devon. No distance away, not at all. Basically just up the road. All that time. He’d have seen her maybe; in the South West Post, where they’d run an article last year. Had he read it and thought about her? Or . . . well, who knew?

  “Whereabouts?” she stuttered.

  “In the hospital, darling,” said the tremulous voice. “He’s in the hospital in Plymouth.”

  Polly blinked. She felt a rush of emotion that at first she couldn’t quite work out. Then she realized. It was part worry and sadness, but a lot of it was anger. How dare he come into her life right now, making emotional demands on her like this? How dare he?

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. Then the voice again, which was sweet, with a Welsh tinge.

  “I would . . . I’m sure he’d . . . Polly, I’m sorry. I would totally understand if you weren’t in the least bit interested.”

  Polly’s anger was growing.

  “Who are you?” she asked, quite brusquely. Behind her she felt a touch on her shoulder. It was Huckle, groggy and confused-looking at the fierce expression on her face.

  She pressed his hand with hers to let him know she appreciated it, then shooed him away with a serious look.

  “I’m . . . I’m his wife,” came the voice.

  “Right,” said Polly. “So he married you and you don’t actually have a clue about him at all? He didn’t bother to tell you any of this stuff when he finally grew up? That he already had a daughter? That didn’t cross his mind?”

  “No,” said the woman. “No. We’ve been married . . .” There was a sob in her voice. “We’ve been married thirty-five years.”

  Two years longer than Polly had been alive. And then she understood.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was 4:30 a.m. Polly would have been getting up shortly in any case. She was in two minds. She hadn’t phoned her mum. She hadn’t phoned anyone. She was in Huckle’s arms, wishing she could just stay there forever and never have to move. His touch, his lovely smell tightly wrapped around her; it was the safest place in the world, the only place she wanted to be.

  She laid her head against the golden hairs of his chest and sighed. Huckle knew about her dad, of course, or at least as much as she did, which wasn’t much. His own family were noisy and affectionate, and apart from DuBose, his black sheep brother, they seemed nice and pretty normal, so she didn’t know if he could possibly understand. It wasn’t like losing a father, losing someone you loved. It was the weirdest sensation out there: that somebody, a person you didn’t know, shared various things with you—Polly’s unusual red-gold hair, for example, didn’t come from her mother’s side at all. You were half a person you’d never met.

  Most of the time she never even thought about him. Sometimes she did. But she’d never gone looking for him; never been particularly interested in trying to make up the pieces of the puzzle. She knew friends from school who had, and in general, they’d been severely disappointed, as well as upsetting the parent who’d actually brought them up. And it wasn’t as if she had memories. He’d gotten her mother pregnant, that was all.

  And now, somehow, he’d tracked her down—Huckle agreed with her that it was probably the piece in the paper they’d done last year; a nice journalist had come and asked all about the bread van Polly was running, and recommended it to everyone, and she had felt like quite the sensation for a week or so.

  He must have seen it. That must have been it.

  Polly blinked hard. She looked up into Huckle’s eyes.

  “What do you think? Should I go and see him?”

  Huckle shrugged. “It’s up to you,” he said.

  Neil had woken and had stalked across the kitchen counters as he usually did, leaving floury footprints behind him. He jumped up on to Polly’s shoulder, knowing instinctively as he always seemed to that she needed him there for comfort.

  “Don’t tell me that!” said Polly. “Tell me to do something one way or the other and that will help me decide!”

  “Okay, well, l think you should go.”

  “I don’t want to go! He never knew me! He never cared for me! Not a Christmas card, nothing!”

  “Okay, don’t go.”

  “But this might be my one chance to meet the only father I’m ever going to have!”

  Huckle was still holding her tightly, even though Neil was breathing fish fumes in his face.

  “Okay, so go.”

  “But I don’t owe him anything! You know, my mother never moved house her entire life. He’d have known where to find her. I think that’s why she never moved. And he never once bothered . . .”

  Huckle nodded.

  “No, you’re right. Don’t go.”

  Polly stood back.

  “You are absolutely no use at all.”

  “I’m not, I know.”

  Polly breathed deeply.

  “Okay,” she said. “I know what I’m going to do.”

  “Toss a coin?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m going to get in the van and drive there.
Then when I’m outside the hospital I’ll see if I know what to do.”

  “You’re putting it off? How does that even work?”

  “I don’t know,” said Polly. “I’ll figure it out as I drive. I’ll call Jayden and wake him; he can get Selina down to cover the basics.”

  She grabbed her big parka and went to throw it on over her pajamas.

  “I’m just saying,” said Huckle carefully. “I’m just saying that if you decided to go in, you probably wouldn’t want to be in your pajamas. But also if you want to, that is completely fine too.”

  “Gah,” said Polly. “No, you’re right.”

  While she ran upstairs to get changed, Huckle grabbed a clean shirt and washed in the sink.

  “What?” she said when she came downstairs to find him dressed.

  “I’ll take you.”

  “What do you mean? No, I’ll be fine. What if I change my mind? You’ll lose an entire day.”

  “Yeah, right, for something that might actually be quite important. You can change your mind. But I don’t like you thinking about it whilst also sitting in traffic. I don’t like that at all.”

  “You know if you’re taking the bike . . .”

  “I know, I know.”

  Neil loved the sidecar.

  “I still might change my mind.”

  “Well, if you aren’t changing it now, you’ll need to get a move on. The tide is turning.”

  The tiniest glimmerings of dawn could be seen as they trundled across the treacherous causeway. It was strictly forbidden to cross it at night, but nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to that. Huckle steered the motorbike with its ancient burgundy sidecar carefully along the cobbles, the water lapping at the sides of the ancient narrow road.

  It was freezing in the sidecar, even under the waterproof cover; Polly curled her fists into the sleeves of her sweater. Her hair was whipping out behind her underneath the old-fashioned helmet. Neil didn’t mind the cold, of course, and Huckle was concentrating on the slippery, treacherous road beneath them. She shrugged down further in her layers and gazed out toward the dawn, enjoying the sense of motion beneath her and the quiet emptiness of the road ahead. Not quite empty, of course; this early in the morning there were tractors and farmers out and about; milkmen and postmen and, of course, bakers. The lighthouse flashed behind them—Polly hardly noticed it these days—then switched itself off as the pink spread across the sky and the morning was fully there.