Christmas at Lilac Cottage - Holly Martin Page 0,114
the door with a handful of condoms and told her to have a good time. Who the hell do you think you are?’
Penny took a step back away from him, wounded by his words.
‘I wasn’t going to sleep with him,’ Daisy said. ‘I talked to Penny about it and she told me how wonderful her first time was with her second boyfriend, how special it was and how important it was that I waited until I was ready. I wanted my first time to be beautiful like that, I didn’t want to be like you that had a drunken fumble at a party which you regretted for the rest of your life.’
Daisy ran out and Henry went to follow her but Penny snagged his arm. ‘Wait a second.’
He removed his arm from his grasp, her betrayal burning in his gut. She should never have kept it secret. If he had known about this he could have had a civilised conversation with his daughter about sex. He should never have found out like this. His eyes strayed to the condoms again and the anger bubbled back to the surface. ‘Stay away from my daughter and stay away from me. I never want to see you again.’
He stormed out the hut, ignoring the devastation on Penny’s face.
* * *
It was hours later by the time Penny went home. Not wanting to face Henry, she had walked the cliffs with Bernard until hours after it had gone dark. She had also cried every tear she had. Finally, when the tears had subsided and only a numb pain remained, Penny made her way back home.
It was ridiculous to fall so hard, so quickly for Henry, it shouldn’t hurt this badly after only knowing him for a week, but even knowing how silly it was to have these feelings there was nothing she could do to stop it.
She let herself in through the back door and her eyes immediately glanced over to the connecting door. Their lights were off and the house was silent. Henry’s car was still parked outside so they hadn’t gone out or, even worse, packed up and left.
She grabbed her keys for her freezer van so she could unload the remaining smaller blocks that hadn’t been used at the workshop earlier back into her walk-in freezer. Luckily she had cut the normal-sized big blocks up into smaller pieces for the workshop so she could carry them on her own, even if they were still heavy.
She carried them into the cool room one at a time and then opened the freezer door. Weirdly, the door stuck but she gave it several big yanks and eventually it came away from the frame.
Inside, a large pool of water had frozen on the floor, creating a mini ice skating rink inside her freezer.
She stared in horror as the reality of the situation settled in. Not only had several large blocks of ice for future carvings melted away to nothing but so had a carving for a corporate party the following night, her competition piece for the Christmas Eve ball and a carving ordered by a man who was going to propose to his girlfriend on Tuesday night. She felt sick. Out of the three carvings that had gone, the proposal one was the worst because she knew her oversized diamond ring was the finale in a whole trail of romantic gestures the man had organised. She couldn’t let him down. If these had melted due to the power cut the night before, then the ice in the block maker machines would have melted too. And they would take three days to refreeze. They might be ready by Tuesday night but not in time for her to carve before the proposal.
She looked at the five smaller blocks sitting in the cool room. She could fuse three of them together to make one big block. The join lines would be quite prominent but she could still create a large ring out of it and surely the man wouldn’t mind as long the gesture was the same. She would refund him if he was upset with the quality but at least he would have the oversized diamond ring. She would have to call the organisers of the corporate party to cancel the other order.
She quickly brought the smaller blocks into the freezer, wet the ends and clamped three of them together to make one big block. It would be ready for her to carve by the next day.