your eyebrows, pregnant or not, Maggie Stone.’
Maggie made a zipping her lips shut gesture, but Penny could see she was trying really hard not to laugh.
‘Come on, Natalie will be waiting,’ Maggie said, nobly.
Still dying with embarrassment, Penny thought it couldn’t possibly get worse than that.
Chapter Twelve
Henry strode around the back of the house, whistling to himself. He had never looked forward to a date before as much as he was looking forward to his night with Penny. And it came with an almost guarantee of no sex, unlike his other dates which were almost always guaranteed to end there. Bizarrely, he didn’t care. He wanted to make love to Penny, he couldn’t deny that, but it wasn’t the end goal as it had been with other women. With Penny he wanted to get to know her more than anything, he wanted to spend time with her and make her laugh like she’d laughed that morning. He wanted to share himself with her, the good stuff and the bad, the small and the big. He’d bumped into an old man in town and had an interesting chat with him and Henry wanted to tell her about that too.
He peered through her back door to see if she was around and was surprised to see her pacing nervously around the kitchen. Maybe she was just nervous about the date. She had really big hair too, as if she had been in a wind tunnel but on closer inspection it appeared it had been specifically styled that way.
He opened the door and let himself in. She looked at him with a terrified expression on her face. Was she having second thoughts about their date? He decided to ignore the big hair, as he certainly didn’t want her to feel self-conscious about it, and just start a casual conversation with her to try to distract her from her nerves.
‘I had an interesting conversation with someone in town…’
Penny groaned. ‘I’m so so sorry. I don’t know how it all started. It just snowballed out of control. They all know, everyone does. Apparently it’s the most exciting thing that’s happened in White Cliff Bay for years. I was the subject of a book club meeting for Christ’s sake. There was a plan hatched. I had no idea. And then I went to buy a toothbrush and they just happened to be next to the condom section. And I did look at them, but not for us, just because I was intrigued to see there were so many different types. The next thing Suzanna comes over and she starts talking to me about them and said that you needed extra-large and that it was best to have a range for our first time. I was mortified, but she wouldn’t let me leave without taking some. Then Maggie took me to have my hair done and look at it, I look like an eighties porn star, it’s huge and all I wanted was a trim. Before I could escape, Christine from the beauty place turns up and escorted me back to the salon, I told her that I didn’t want anything but she wouldn’t listen to my rebuttals and quite frankly she scares me, the next thing she is ripping hair from almost every single part of my body, my eyebrows, my legs, my bikini line, honestly I’m as bald as a coot down there now and it’s chilly, believe me. And as I left, Monica from Silk & Lace was already waiting for me and whisked me off to her shop and persuaded me to buy some sexy lingerie. I’ve never bought sexy lingerie in my life and I now have two pairs of lacy pants with matching bras and tiny little rosebuds on them and a pair of black satin shorts that barely cover my bum embroidered with silver snowflakes and some kind of matching camisole top. Look.’
She pulled the short and top combo out of a paper bag and put it on the table.
‘It’s the tiniest, flimsiest piece of underwear I’ve ever seen, and I’d be way too embarrassed to ever wear anything like this. But it didn’t stop there, I was forced to buy a dress with a slit right up the side, ridiculous high-heel shoes, a perfume that’s supposed to bring men to their knees. I didn’t want any of that stuff, I swear, I went into town for lunch and a new toothbrush, that’s all. And now the whole town thinks