Page 43 of Sunrise By the Sea

‘Well,’ she said carefully. ‘Silence is nice too. Listen?’

The push and pull of the water came back and forth. Another gull answered the cry. The lighthouse flooded their windows, briefly, and off again. There was the distant clatter of the masts of the fishing boats, clicking in the wind.

He did listen, tilting his large head to the side.

‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘Perhaps that is just a different type of music.’

‘Perhaps it is,’ said Marisa quietly.

Chapter Twenty-five

‘This is very odd,’ said Polly, looking suspicious as she fussed around the kitchen early doors. Huckle was staying at home. He was trying to do mail-out internet orders. It was not going so well. People got cross with him and ordered the wrong amounts or ordered different things or sent things back they hadn’t used or, worse, sent things back they patently had used, including honey they had eaten half of then decided they didn’t like, or cream they’d broken the seal of, or ancient gifts they’d received a year ago they’d suddenly decided they didn’t want, and the site collapsed all the time because their broadband was so awful. It was horrible, especially for Huckle, who liked people on the whole but he had to admit that if you were running a mail-order internet business, people were not very good at showing you their best side.

‘What?’ he said, looking up wearily. The sun was just coming up and Daisy and Avery were supposed to be getting ready for school but instead had decided to throw raisins in the air to see if Neil could catch them. He couldn’t, but he was having a very good time trying.

‘That puffin is getting so fat he’s unaerodynamic,’ said Huckle. ‘You should call theNew Scientist. “Impossible Creature can Fly”.’

Neil came to an undignified screeching halt above a raisin that had fallen on the floor.

‘“And Make Holes in the Floor”,’ said Huckle. ‘Stop feeding Neil.’

‘It’s EXERCISE,’ yelled Avery, scurrying around the kitchen with his arms outstretched. ‘Why can Neil fly and I can’t?’

‘That’s a very good point,’ said Huckle. ‘Probably because you’re not fat enough.’

Avery immediately started gulping handfuls of raisins from the packet. Polly rolled her eyes and started clearing up.

‘Iwassaying . . .’

‘Oh sorry,’ said Huckle. It was very difficult with small children, they had both found, to ever get to the end of a conversation.

Polly tried to catch Daisy to brush out her strawberry-blonde hair. Nicely done, it was a heavenly cloud. Left the way Daisy liked to leave things, it looked like a witch’s mane and would take nine times as long to be attacked by a comb the next time, with Daisy in floods the entire time, deeply remorseful for not having combed it more often, but somehow even more determined to never let a comb near it subsequently. It was a battle Polly could already see stretching far into the distance, possibly for ever.

‘What?’ said Huckle, as Polly wrestled with the Tangle Teezer. It was the single most expensive item for hair Polly had ever bought. It was worth every penny.

‘I’ve forgotten,’ she said.

‘YAY, NEIL, TWO RAISINS!’

‘OW!’

‘Okay then . . .’

‘No, hang on . . .’

She looked up. ‘I got an email from Mr Batbayar.’

Huckle looked no more enlightened.

‘The piano teacher.’

‘The BEAR!’ screamed Avery. ‘Neil, we will teach you to peck out the eyes of a BEAR.’

‘Don’t do that, smalls,’ said Huckle. ‘What did he say? Is he upset at the cancellation?’

‘Actually,’ said Polly. ‘I hadn’t mentioned it, I was about to then I had coffee with that new shy girl up there and we overrun and I forgot. But, he said that the twins are doing so well he entered them for a scholarship and apparently they got it! For twins. Apparently loads of twins play the piano together.’

Huckle screwed up his face.

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