Sunrise by the Sea (Little Beach Street Bakery #4) - Colgan, Jenny Page 0,2
she couldn’t get them out enough, the pleasure of building dens indoors and helping Mama bake having grown stale. The storms had been getting worse – climate change, she knew – and the winters were getting harder.
‘What’s up when I’m away?’ Huckle asked now, following her in while simultaneously half-listening to Avery talk about how Lowin was getting the biggest snake in the world for his birthday.
‘Usual,’ said Polly. ‘Oh no, I forgot! Reuben’s waifs and strays are arriving!’
Chapter Two
At that moment, over in Exeter on the mainland, one of Reuben’s waifs and strays had no idea that was what she was about to become.
Caius – ‘pronounced “keys”’, as he liked to tell people snottily when they attempted it for the first time, unless they by some chance got it right, in which case he would say, ‘It’s “ky-us”, actually?’ – was banging heavily on his flatmate’s bedroom door, but to no avail.
‘Marisa!’
It was, fair enough, hard to hear over the racket.
Caius theoretically liked having lots of friends who were DJs, or said they were, but then he made the mistake of asking them to come and play at his parties and it was horrendous and they all squabbled with each other over how expensive their headphones were, and mixed up their stupid boxes and vied to play very obscure stuff, and frankly, it was a racket.
If he’d cared about his neighbours he would have factored that in too, but, being rich and good-looking, Caius so rarely met people that didn’t like him that he often found it hard to imagine what that might be like.
The flat was absolutely heaving, mostly with people he knew, kind of, some he didn’t, but they were good-looking and appeared well-off, so that was fine too.
But he needed the little room his parents had insisted he let out – something to do with ‘learning how to take responsibility’ or ‘managing efficiently’; it had been hard to tell, he had been on the worst comedown while they’d been talking to him and he still had his earpods in so it could have been anything.
‘Marisa,’ he yelled again, as loud as he could. He winced. Caius didn’t really like shouting; he liked drawling or, even better, not saying anything at all and merely waving a hand at waiters bringing him things.
‘Marisa! Come on, it’s a party! Can’t you make us some canapés?’
Still no reply. He pouted. She must have heard him by now.
Marisa used to be fun. Well, not fun, exactly: she had a real job and went to bed at a reasonable hour. But she cooked and smiled and was funny and he quite liked someone kind of looking after him.
Then she’d gone all quiet and sort of vanished and he knew she’d told him why, some family shiz, but he kept forgetting, and it was really terribly tiresome.
‘Marisa! People want to use this room! For coats!’
‘And also sex and taking drugs,’ said one of a trio of people in black eyeliner appearing behind him, the other two vigorously agreeing.
‘No! Totally none of those things, just probably coats!’ said Caius. He frowned. ‘You know there’s tequila out here, right? There’s tequila out here and none in where you are, which means I don’t understand you at all.’
Well, they agreed about one thing, thought Marisa. Because she didn’t understand herself either.
Chapter Three
Inside her little box room – like many of these expensive new builds in Exeter, the main room was flashy and showy with a big glass wall and a balcony, but the smaller bedrooms were done on the cheap – Marisa Rossi sat on the end of her bed, knees up to her chin, headphones on, the clatter beyond the door more or less white noise.
Another party. Another night when the rest of the world was out and about, having fun.
And, in the scheme of things, losing a grandparent was hardly heartbreaking loss. A lot of people lose grandparents. Everyone, when you think about it.
And they all still seemed able to go to parties. Everyone but her.
But somehow, she could only think of her nonno, Carlo: her kind, funny grandfather in Imperia, Italy, descended from generations of shipbuilders – a tradition that had only stopped with her mother, Lucia, who had left for the UK to find a better life, and married a man from Livorno, just down the road. Marisa’s father couldn’t bear the cold and the rain and left England – and Lucia alone, with