Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery Read Free

hour nets were being mended, catches being tallied up, and a couple of the fishermen waved to Polly as she went past, asking what flavour of michette (a type of small loaf very popular with the working men) she was making that day. Then they all shouted a hello to Neil, who, Polly realised crossly, was following her to work again. It wasn’t good for him to come to the bakery: customers gave him too many titbits, and despite the fact that her kitchen was utterly spotless – thanks to Jayden, her assistant – if a health inspector ever came past and caught so much as a whiff of seabird, she’d be in trouble. The fact that nobody could possibly arrive on Mount Polbearne without absolutely everybody noticing was not, she had told Jayden sternly, the point.
    It had been almost a year since the great storm, a massive hooley that had blown up from nearly nowhere, wrecked the fleet, and cost the loss of Cornelius ‘Tarnie’ Tarnforth, captain of the
Trochilus
, and, briefly, Polly’s lover. The day had not yet come when Polly could walk along the stretch of boats without remembering him. It had taken the town a long time to heal.
    Polly dinged the bell of the Little Beach Street Bakery, with its pretty pale grey facade – painted by her ex, Chris – and its lovely italic writing:
Proprietor, Ms P. Waterford
. She rarely looked at that without feeling a wave of pride. There was a small queue of people already waiting, and Jayden was dishing up the warm morning loaves. Today there was a choice of pan, thin-sliced and the heavy sourdough that was a harder sell but that made in Polly’s opinion wonderful toast.
    ‘Hey!’ said Jayden. ‘Yes, everything came up very nicely. Except, uh, the chorizo michette. I had to… um, I had to… It was over-baked.’
    Polly looked at him sternly.
    ‘Was it really, Jayden?’
    She pulled off her coat and hung it on a hook, then went round the other side of the counter to get scrubbed up. Looking back, she saw Neil waiting patiently outside the door, occasionally hopping from foot to foot. He would do this until a customer came and let him in, which they always did. Not for the first time, she wondered about the availability of puffin obedience classes.
    ‘Yes,’ said Jayden, his round cheeks going suspiciously pink. The customers waited patiently, scanning the heavy old-fashioned glass cabinets to choose their cream buns for later.
    Polly raised an eyebrow.
    ‘They were really good,’ said Jayden in a low voice. ‘I’m sorry. I tried to only eat one.’
    The problem was, Jayden was a wonderful member of staff. Prompt, polite, kind, efficient, and he cleaned like a demon; years working on the fishing boats had made him precise and immaculate. He wasn’t at all handsome, but he was very sweet and charming and everybody liked him.
    He was also incredibly grateful not to be out with the fleet any more, which he had hated. He loved having an indoor job with regular hours. He was honest with the money and nice with the customers (at least the local customers; he was getting slightly better with the incomers and holidaymakers, with whom he was either brusque or tongue-tied).
    But he did have a terrible, terrible habit of chomping on the stock.
    ‘It’s not like I don’t know you’re doing it,’ said Polly, indicating his belly, growing ever stouter underneath his grey apron.
    ‘I know. I’m sorry.’
    He really was sorry too, his face bright pink. He had grown a moustache last year for Movember, and everyone said it suited him – it rather did – so he had kept it, and now he flushed to the tips of it.
    ‘I don’t mind you eating a bit,’ said Polly. ‘But you know, that was meat. It’s expensive.’
    Despite the moustache, Jayden looked about seven years old as he stared at the floor.
    ‘You’re not being cross with that nice young man,’ said Mrs Corning, the reverend’s widow. ‘He’s a blessing, so he is.’
    The other ladies in the queue agreed. For some of them,