Page 2 of Christmas at the Little Cornish Bakery
Peering closer at the faded colours, Lola felt a nip of cold air at the nape of her neck and her tiny apartment was filled with the scent of the sea.
‘Polcarrow, Cornwall,’ the name triggering a memory.
‘Polcarrow,’ she repeated. She’d seen it before somewhere.
She tapped her fingers on the postcard, running the name through her brain until it clicked into place.
Lola frantically flicked through the pages of the notebook until she came to the scone recipe.
The paper was smudged and soft from use, the ink mired by sticky fingers from baking, but there it was, next to the word ‘Scones’, written in tiny curling letters in faded pencil: Polcarrow .
A memory assailed Lola, sunlight filtering through yellow kitchen curtains, flour-strewn countertops, the scent of something baking in the oven.
Lola recalled tracing her fingers over the unusual word, forming the letters with her mouth before asking her grandmother what a Polcarrow was.
Lola still remembered the way Ruby had frozen before quickly pulling herself together, tugging the book from Lola’s hands and cramming it back on the shelf. ‘A place,’ she’d said, ‘somewhere I went a long time ago. Now, what colour shall we ice the cakes? Blue or pink?’
Polcarrow had been tucked away in Lola’s mind after that, pretty much how the postcard had been hidden in the book.
Her younger self had thought nothing of the way Ruby had changed the subject, but now Lola’s intrigue got the better of her.
She picked up her phone, typed the name of the village into the search engine and watched as the screen filled with photos of a tiny fishing village tucked into the ragged edge of Cornwall’s coast. Blue skies and sunshine shone down on the harbour, bouncing off a row of adorable ice-cream-coloured cottages.
The photos reminded Lola of childhood holidays, sticky ice creams on the beach, sand between her toes, endless, perfect days.
Lola’s sixth sense twitched. Deep down she sensed Polcarrow must have been somewhere special to Ruby.
Why else would the card have appeared when Lola was searching for guidance?
Was it mad though – to drive all the way to Cornwall on a whim?
Hadn’t she done madder things? Packed up and gone travelling around Portugal at a moment’s notice, set up a mobile cocktail bar to tour the summer festivals?
Propping the postcard up against the TV, Lola decided she’d leave it there, see if she was still called to travel to Cornwall in the morning.
They’d been when she was a child, but she couldn’t remember the name of the town they’d stayed in.
Only the seagulls threatening to steal her pasty and the luminous turquoise sea.
Maybe Cornwall was worth a chance, if nothing else? Change of scene.
Three days later, Lola was trundling down a steep, cobbled road in her pink Mini.
There’d been no rooms in the pub in Polcarrow so she’d found a cheap holiday apartment in a nearby town, arriving late the previous night to black skies and sea, like a shroud across the world.
Turning off the radio, Lola allowed the squawk of the gulls to lure her towards the sea.
She made her way past picture-perfect whitewashed cottages, their doors painted in jolly, primary colours and wound her way down past the church towards the seafront.
After pulling up along the harbour, Lola got out of her car and glanced around. So this was Polcarrow.
With the sky and sea merging into a grumpy grey, it was hardly the beautiful village of her internet searches.
Lola’s heart sank as her eyes ran along the slightly dilapidated seafront.
The whole village had an air of being slightly uncared for, as if forgotten about.
However, as she took in the pastel cottages, the pub sign swinging in the sea air, the sun briefly broke through the clouds and something lifted in Lola’s heart.
On a summer’s day she imagined there would be nowhere quite like this quaint little village with the sun sparkling on the sea.
Her eyes skimmed the seafront before falling on the café across the road.
It was tired, old and had a ‘To Let’ sign above its burgundy awning and a hopeful possibility bloomed in her heart.
Studying it, she repainted the dark, flaking windows a pale grey, imagined chairs with parasols outside, the door open, sunshine streaming in and people buying cream teas to eat on the beach.
She was so engrossed in mentally redecorating the café that she didn’t hear someone draw up beside her until they spoke.
‘Be a shame to lose that—’ the old man indicated to the café ‘—Scruff and I always get a tea and a bite to eat after our morning walk, don’t we, boy, although, between you and me, the scones are usually a bit stale.
Think she buys them in.’ The old man gave her a long, considered look. ‘You interested?’
Lola turned to him. ‘Well my scones would always be home-made and never stale,’ she promised.
‘Well, if you’re serious about that place, I’ll hold you to it. Come on, boy.’ He whistled, and the fluffy sheepdog followed him.
Lola watched them amble down the harbour front and head towards the pale-yellow cottage. A smile spread across her face. Polcarrow, it seemed, was a village in need of a baker.