Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan Read Free Book Online Page B

only by clipped-in, safety-harness-and-vest-and-helmet-wearing qualified lighthouse operatives.
    So naturally every sunny day they went up there with giant bean bags and sprawled out around the little platform. It was best if you didn’t look down between the metal slats, and not a great idea in high winds, but on a beautiful day it was absolutely stunning: you felt as if you were floating through the clouds. Today, Polly and her best friend Kerensa were on the sunny sheltered ledge at the top of the little staircase that led back into the main body of the lighthouse; Reuben was sprawled fearlessly across the metal walkway getting a suntan, and Huckle was perched on top of it with his back against the lighthouse itself, long legs stretched out to the other side, gazing out to sea. Dubose was sitting nearby and Neil was stomping about looking for more pastry scraps. His claws made a clicking sound on the walkway as he went round so often Polly thought he might get dizzy. When he got to Reuben, he just hopped up on his leg and walked over the top of him.
    Meanwhile, Reuben and Dubose had got into a ridiculous barney about grain subsidies, which had made Dubose all pink in the face but which Reuben was patently enjoying.
    ‘Poo on him!’ hissed Kerensa. ‘Do it, Neil, I mean it! I’m sick of this argument.’
    ‘NO MORE POO!’ said Polly loftily, just as Neil did in fact poo straight through the metal slats and all the way down to the rocks, where some children with fishing nets were pottering around looking for tiddlers and prising off shellfish. The five at the top of the lighthouse peered down and held their breath, then let out a collective sigh of relief as the poo splashed harmlessly into a nearby rock pool.
    ‘All I want is for my puffin to learn to use a human toilet,’ said Polly. ‘Is that really too much to ask?’
    ‘And the other reason grain subsidies are great —’
    ‘So anyway,’ said Reuben, ignoring Dubose and turning to Polly, ‘why don’t you let me buy you the bakery?’
    Polly gasped.
    Reuben was quite relentless when he got on to a topic. He was an old friend of Huckle’s who’d made a lot of money selling some kind of Internet thing in San Francisco – he often tried to explain it, but Polly could never quite get to the bottom of it. Anyway, now he owned a private surfing beach and stunning modernist house in north Cornwall. Kerensa was Polly’s best friend from Plymouth. Initially she’d thought Polly moving to a tidal island was the stupidest idea she’d ever heard of. Then she’d started visiting. She absolutely couldn’t bear Huckle’s loud friend Reuben, until she’d accidentally got off with him one night, and since then they’d been utterly inseparable, and were now married.
    ‘I mean it. This woman sounds worse than Mrs Manse. And this Malcolm… what does he do?’
    ‘Um, consultant?’ said Polly.
    ‘Um, grain subsidies?’ said Dubose, who was still standing up and beginning to feel a bit foolish.
    ‘What kind of consultant? Hospital consultant? Insolvency consultant? Would You Like Fries With That consultant?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘He sounds rubbish,’ said Reuben. ‘Let me buy him out. I’ll tell him I’m a major bakery consultant – which by the way I totally could be – and then I’ll buy both of them and then we’re done.’
    ‘Well we’re not done, are we?’ said Polly crossly. ‘I don’t want you to buy me out of trouble.’
    ‘Why not?’ said Reuben. ‘Buying people out of trouble is totally one of the things I’m amazing at.’
    ‘Is he always like this?’ grumbled Dubose.
    ‘You should probably sit down, Dubose,’ said Huckle. ‘We’re pretty high up.’
    ‘You’d be a worse boss than this Malcolm guy,’ mumbled Polly. ‘Anyway, no. Don’t. We’re friends. We’d only fall out. Please.’
    ‘But I always buy everyone,’ said Reuben, puzzled.
    Polly couldn’t explain to him, couldn’t make him see – in fact he