Page 14 of Sunrise By the Sea

‘MOANA! MOANA!’

They looked at the books together. Another hotel chain had moved to a bulk supplier, Huckle explained. They just couldn’t make it work.

It didn’t matter how many times they went over it. They weren’t going to make it. Unless this summer was an unlikely hit. Unless there were a million billion weddings, even though weddings had taken a turn for the quieter, after the last floods. And even then. Unless there was an influx – but after last year, when there had been so much rain and it had been so stormy and damp . . . well.

She sighed and closed her eyes. The heating could come off. They’d done without it before.

She could always ask her mother for help – a problem shared was a problem halved and all that – but her mother lived on a small pension and Polly knew that if she told her, she would fret to the hills and back which would simply give her another problem.

And if she told her best friend Kerensa, she’d try to give her money, Kerensa being incredibly rich, and that would just be absolutely awful. If anything, Polly spent more on Kerensa than she did on her other friends, just in case she ever looked like she was taking advantage. She took Champagne, not Prosecco; insisted on splitting dinner. She wasn’t entirely sure Kerensa even noticed.

And her other friends, dotted around the country, weren’t necessarily finding life any easier than she was at the moment and thought that she and Huckle, living in a groovy lighthouse on a gorgeous island in Cornwall, were the luckiest people they knew anyway, even if their children did fall down the stairs about once every three days.

‘I could . . . well, I don’t think I could . . . I could look for a corporate job,’ said Huckle, as she moved over and lay down on the sofa, her head comfortably in his lap. It was a terrible position to have a serious discussion from, which, she knew, was why she had chosen it.

‘On the plus side, you don’t actually smell bad,’ she said. ‘Or at least, I like it.’

Huckle smiled, seeing she was trying to distract him, and coiled a length of her pale red hair around his finger.

‘You’re not listening,’ he said. ‘I could go back to the office.’

He had tried working at his corporate job once before, back in America. It had not gone well.

She grimaced. ‘You can’t,’ she said. ‘It’s too far. Even if they’d have you back, which they probably wouldn’t. And you’re getting too old. They’ll be running on cheap interns now.’

Huckle shrugged. ‘Maybe Reuben could find me something?’

Polly winced. ‘He’d makeyoupay.’

‘He would.’

They held each other. Neil was sleeping in his box but opened a beady eye just to check on them.

‘Just you and me, kid,’ said Polly, hoisting herself up to sit on his lap.

‘Just you and me,’ he said, burying his head in her lovely hair.

‘We’ll figure something out,’ said Polly. ‘But in the meantime I’m going to switch the heating off.’

Huckle groaned. The nights were still chilly and the lighthouse got the full brunt of every gust of wind that came along.

‘It’s a shame you’re so tired,’ said Polly, ‘given this is the last night you’ll see me not swathed in nine layers of old fishermen’s jumpers.’

Huckle’s voice was muffled as he nuzzled in closer to her neck.

‘I’m not that tired.’

She wriggled on his lap. ‘Well, that’s good.’

She moved closer to him, pressing herself against his flat stomach.

‘MUM! Come see the song you like! The man is dancing.’

Huckle frowned. ‘This isn’t the bit where you fancy the god Maui again, is it?’

‘He’s a very attractive cartoon god, what’s not to like?’ said Polly without moving. ‘Goodness, and I thought I was in the mood before.’

Chapter Twelve

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