Page 62 of Sunrise By the Sea

He looked at the bakery sadly. The water was already all over the floor, the rain still showing no signs of shopping. He dreaded telling Polly.

‘I don’t think we’re going to be open tomorrow.’

‘Um, I can try,’ said Marisa, ‘but I think that’s everything I had in the house.’

Huckle blinked, the water running down his nose.

‘You could go to the lighthouse,’ he said. ‘We put everything there.’

‘It’s two o’clock in the morning.’

‘Nobody’s asleep,’ said Huckle grimly.

Marisa thought about having to go up to someone else’s house. On the other hand, it was Polly.

‘The old folk are really going to need something in the morning.’

‘You all are,’ said Marisa. That decided her. ‘Okay. I’ll go. I’ll do it.’

Chapter Forty

Marisa had to knock on the back door several times to make herself heard over the wind and the rain. Would this storm ever blow itself out?

Finally, she heard a tired voice say, ‘I’m coming, I’m coming.’

Polly opened the door to a drowned rat; she barely recognised her at first.

‘Come in, come in,’ she said, as Marisa slightly pitched forwards into the incredibly lovely warmth of the kitchen, where an Aga was radiating heat. The kitchen had always been the warmest room in the lighthouse, due almost entirely to it not being in the lighthouse; it was in an ugly late sixties flat-roofed pebble-dashed extension which, for all its failings, at least benefited from double glazing.

‘Oh my God! Are you all right? It’s wild out there. I’ve just got the children off to sleep.’

‘Aren’t you going to sleep?’

Polly didn’t want to say what she’d been doing in the ten minutes since Daisy finally gave up the unequal struggle against dozing off, Avery having exhausted himself shooting at the lightning.

Staring out of the window she could see the hurricane lamps of the people working down below, desperately trying to shore things up. But she could see in the dim light that the water was still running; that Beach Street did not look normal, with cobbles, but instead shining and reflective and liquid; that the bakery could not hold.

She had been crying.

It was gone and they were going to be ruined, even as she watched the men and women of Mount Polbearne work for all they were worth, with every last breath.

‘Um,’ said Marisa. ‘I made them some food, but it’s all gone and your husband thought maybe we should make something for the morning and maybe I could do it as it’s not so far? And I don’t have any flour left. Your husband suggested I come here . . .’

All of this came out in a rush as it was one thing having Polly in her house, where she was safe, but being in someone else’s felt like a different kettle of fish altogether, but Polly knew what she meant and couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it. And thank God, Huckle was okay.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘We moved all the flour here as a precaution.’

She turned to Marisa and pasted a smile on her face.

‘First, let’s get you out of those wet clothes,’ she said. ‘That was amazing of you to do to that.’

‘It was the least I could do,’ murmured Marisa. But she was still incredibly pleased to hear praise – genuine, well-meant praise. Nobody had found her much of anything but a weird disappointment for so long, no matter how patient with her they’d tried to be.

‘It’s going to be jogging bottoms and they’re going to be too big for you,’ warned Polly, heading towards the door and returning with a big, old and worn but still cosy clean towel. ‘I’d like to tell you that I was an immaculate dresser before I had the children but I’m afraid I would be lying to you.’

Marisa found herself smiling.

‘Dry is absolutely a hundred per cent everything, thanks.’

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