Marisa still preferred being in the kitchen to facing front, and it helped her, not having to face anyone. But it couldn’t last forever, and as the weeks went on and spring turned into summer, she couldn’t help but start to very shyly smile at a few regulars here and there. Polly didn’t push her, was careful and gentle with her, and their friendship deepened day by day.
Polly liked, too, the way the children had taken to her. It seemed a cliché to think of her doing particularly Italian things, but Marisa didn’t ever mind the children in the kitchen, as long as they stayed well clear of the ovens, and was happy to make them wash their hands and put on their little aprons, whereupon she’d give them a job to do and supervise them carefully. There is no quicker way to most mothers’ hearts than someone taking their children seriously.
And she was tidy, which was useful. And they both liked listening to the same nineties musical radio station which also helped as they could occasionally have a quick vogue around the back kitchen when Polly was on the edge of total and complete collapse.
Gradually, slowly, Marisa got on nodding terms with the Kuelin family, who were delighted with the ability to feed all the children once a week without it taking an hour and people throwing things at the wall; Samantha and Henry, the second-homers, who liked to badger her about what local ingredients she got from Italy and talk about stuff like terroir and, while obviously being very annoying, were so genuinely and intensely interested in how she made her food the way she did that she ended up opening up to them completely, and ordering the precise strain of her grandmother’s tomato plants for them.
There was Mrs. Baillie who was furiously interested in her next-door neighbor and whether he had any lady visitors (not including herself, Marisa noticed, rather ruefully), and was it true he was a great composer who had left a tragic love affair and Marisa said politely that she didn’t know and Mrs. Baillie had sniffed and said, oh well, he was going to love her new rendition of “Eternal Flame” and Marisa had made a mental note to prepare herself for that.
And there was Reuben, of course. Reuben didn’t care if you were shy or not, it meant nothing to him. Actually, he quite liked it as it gave him more space to tell you about all the awesome things he’d done and how much money he had. Marisa was actually genuinely quite frightened of him, partly because he was frightening and partly because they were attracting so much business she was worried he was going to turf her out of her house and lease it to some rich people, finished road or not.
Inch by inch, little by little, though, Marisa felt the dread lifting, found herself looking forward to work, happy to be there, pleased to see the regular customers and happy to be useful and supporting Polly, who was drooping but still would not and could not stop.
The only person it was really going to kill was Polly; the hours were absolutely punishing. Jayden could open up some days, but not every day, and she found it incredibly difficult to sneak back and nap in the afternoon; she just seemed to have lost the habit since the children were born; always a tiny bit on edge, in her sleep, for one of them falling out of a window. It had switched something in her fundamentally.
And she missed her evenings with Huckle—even as he picked up all the slack; cooking, bath times, stories, everything they used to share he was now handling every night by himself, willingly and without complaining—but she missed them very much. Bedtime stories were her favorite part of the day; the children, finally worn out, sweetly scented, Avery’s fair hair combed out neatly into a parody of a little American boy, exactly like Huckle at that age; Daisy in her pretty flowered pajamas, one either side on Avery’s little truckle bed. The room wasn’t big enough for two full beds set apart and they refused to be separated, so the truckle it was. One day they would get a bunk bed. It was the great aspiration of their childhood and they spent many happy hours bickering over who was going to sleep on the top bunk, and working out a complicated rota system somewhat hindered by Avery’s slowness to grasp the days of the week and being constantly frustrated that they were an odd number.
They had drifted through The Big Red Bath; Moomins, Goodnight Moon even though it terrified them both; In the Night Kitchen likewise; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but not the Great Glass Elevator as it was Very Very Strange; The Gruffalo more times than Polly could count, and she had been gearing them up, as they neared six, to enter Narnia for the first time . . .
It was her favorite part of the day, sleepy and cozy and knowing Huckle was downstairs, with supper on the way, and perhaps a glass of wine poured and the fire roaring and Neil doing little bird snores in his cardboard box.
She knew, every night, as she yawned over the accounts in the bakery, that this was absolutely the best thing for them; that Marisa, completely unexpectedly and out of the blue, had saved them all; that it was an extraordinary stroke of luck.
But oh my God she was so bone weary.
“Can’t I toss pizza?” said Huckle. “How hard can it be? I’ll wear a nifty hat and everything.”
“Well, obviously you could,” said Polly. “But it doesn’t solve the problem of both of us being at home to spend time together and have a cuddle and all the things I want.”
“I tried to give you a cuddle last night,” observed Huckle. “And you snorted and did a massive snore right in my face.”
“Well, exactly. And I can’t afford to hire someone yet,” said Polly. “But this is . . . it’s going to be good for us.”
“I can tell that,” said Huckle, “because you look so bright and breezy about everything.”
“This is a problem,” said Polly.
“You know what would probably bring in enough to hire someone a couple of nights a week?”
“Don’t say it.”
“Catering Lowin’s birthday party.”
“I TOLD YOU NOT TO SAY IT!”
* * *
Polly caught Marisa doing her breathing exercises one night, and instead of being scornful—which Marisa, for some reason, had thought people would be—was incredibly interested and insisted they sat down with a cup of tea and try them together. Poor Polly lasted precisely fifteen seconds before dozing off so quickly she almost toppled off her chair. Marisa thought she had never needed Alexei so much; he needed to come and play something rousing in front of the kitchen. And just as soon as the thought of him stopped making her blush bright red, she was absolutely going to send him that note.