Page 86 of Sunrise By the Sea

‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘We’re going to be rich.’

‘Yay!’ said Daisy and Avery, their faces smeared with sauce.

Chapter Fifty-one

And to Marisa’s astonishment, things moved quickly after that. The most difficult bit, she realised, writing in her workbook, had been getting down the hill.

As half-term approached at the end of May, with the promise of sweet weather, the tourist crowd began gradually to return to Mount Polbearne.

It wasn’t like how it had been, of course, not teeming crowds – for starters, they hadn’t finished repairing the causeway to make it safe for cars so people were still coming in boats or walking tentatively over a temporary metal gantry. The local news had done a small feature on the children who went to school by boat which had been picked up all over the world and launched lots of enquiries, so Reuben was happy and, with people travelling less off the island, Alexei, Marisa could hear, was busier than ever.

But from the second the bakery shut at four till they reopened at six, there was a palpable sense of anticipation in the town, and plenty of daytrippers furious they had to wait about till later, till the ovens stopped producing bread and cakes and moved on to pizza instead.

‘We still need repainting,’ said Polly. ‘We should do something with a pizza theme.’

‘I am not sure that’s wise,’ said Marisa. ‘I think the grey is nice.’

They had tentatively agreed to work together for a couple of months and see how things went before formalising their agreement. Marisa didn’t think that with such a tiny population – about 1500 souls all in – they could possibly sell that much pizza five nights a week to make them sustainable, but Polly pointed out how many visitors they got, and also, they were quite shocked to discover, an astonishing number of people would happily eat pizza at least once a week, or even more often.

‘At least it’s the very best kind,’ said Marisa, fulfilling another order for the Gillespies, whose myriad small boys at least burnt it off charging up and down the hilly streets of the town looking for cats to frighten or grockle children’s sandcastles to stomp on.

Plus, of course, the second-homers, who tended to bring large house parties full of people and were more than delighted to find what was essentially a super posh all-natural ingredients gourmet pizzeria on their doorstep. Huckle pointed out to Polly that this was making things worse instead of better and she had agreed with him without actually knowing what to do about it.

Marisa now worked a couple of hours on admin for the council, paid part time, made up a new batch of sauce every day, then at five headed down to the bakery to work like a demon until nine p.m., when, to the horror of the drinkers in Andy’s bar, they did last orders, causing a massive last-minute scuffle. Andy was relatively good-natured about it, given they were cutting into his fish and chip business, but more tourists was more tourists for everyone, and so in the end he couldn’t really complain. It was long hours – but it was, amazingly, working.

Chapter Fifty-two

Marisa’s strange new hours meant that even though she was coming and going – quite happily, on that same route – she didn’t see Alexei at all, which was probably quite useful after the hideous embarrassment of their dinner.

He hadn’t been in for pizza, which was a mystery because she had, quite despite herself, ended up meeting almost every single person on the island as there was no one who could resist at least trying it, and once they’d tried it, they normally came back for more, except for Mrs Bradley, who thought it was foreign muck and didn’t say exactly those words but looked like she might every time she asked Polly in a very enunciated fashion for BATH buns and EMPIRE biscuits, and said, ‘I’m sorry, but . . . does it smell like garlic in here or is it just me? Goodness. Garlic in a bakery, I can’t get my head round the new-fangled way of doing things at all,’ and pretended to laugh.

It did produce another problem, though: once she got home at ten, she found herself still too geed up and unable to sleep and would watch television, drink tea, try and email friends she’d been out of touch with for far too long – and stay up till one in the morning or so, then sleeping in much longer than usual as her work day had turned topsy-turvy.

Except, of course, every morning Alexei would be welcoming students and performing scales by eight a.m. or so, clanging into her early morning woozy dreams.

Well. Serve her right. But even though she was embarrassed about her drunken night, she thought one thing might work – tell him he could play in the evenings. If she did it right . . .

It still felt insulting: I’m not here in the night any more so play as much as you like. But that seemed all right, didn’t it? She couldn’t do much about the mornings, but she could at least improve something. A little bit.

Anita was surprisingly insouciant about it.

‘I thought you’d have a view,’ said Marisa suspiciously. Anita beamed.

‘Marisa,’ she said. ‘Look at you! You’re going out to work every day! Three months ago you couldn’t leave the house. I asked you to do a tiny thing every day, and you took it and ran with it more amazingly than I could ever have expected. I almost never fix anyone . . .’

She swallowed and realised she’d obviously gone too far.

‘I mean, it’s very difficult often for people to get over certain stubborn anxiety issues. Some of them really bed in and people find it very difficult to overcome them.’

She couldn’t stop smiling.

‘But you – look at you. You’ve made friends. Created interpersonal relationships . . .’

‘Yes, a really bad one!’ said Marisa. ‘That’s what I need to talk to you about.’

Anita’s eyes danced. ‘I’m not that kind of therapist, I’m afraid. I’m signing you off.’

‘What?’

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