promised.
‘I made you and Daisy spaghetti bolognese, but it’s probably all dried out now,’ Penny said, moving towards the oven.
‘I was going to cook for you, I’m sorry, something came up,’ Henry said, catching her arm. She didn’t shrug his hand off her but she distinctly moved out of his reach. Her stomach suddenly gurgled hungrily and he felt another wave of guilt. ‘Have you not eaten?’
‘No, pathetically, I thought I’d wait for you.’
‘Where’s Daisy?’
‘She went out, about two minutes after you left.’
‘What?’ Henry looked outside into the inky black night, rain coming down in curtains as it ripped across the cliffs. ‘And you let her go out in this?’
Penny stared at him incredulously. ‘I was out walking Bernard when I saw you both leave. And I certainly don’t have any authority over her.’
Suddenly the kitchen door banged open and Daisy came in with a huge grin on her face. She was soaking wet, and little stalks of grass were stuck to the legs of her jeans. Her trainers were covered in mud.
‘Hey Daddio,’ she sang, sitting down at Penny’s table as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
‘Where have you been?’ Henry tried and failed to keep the angry concerned tone from his voice.
‘Nowhere. I was in the shed chatting to Melissa.’
‘You got that wet running from the shed to the house?’
‘I slipped over on the grass.’
She was lying and he didn’t know why.
‘Penny said she saw you go out.’
Daisy stared at Penny for a moment. ‘I was… trying to get a signal down the drive but then it started to rain hard and I remembered that Penny said I could get a good signal in her shed so I came back a few minutes later. Penny must not have seen me. Is dinner ready?’
‘The dinner I asked you to start for me,’ Henry said.
Daisy shrugged, still unable to wipe the huge grin from her face. ‘The phone call took a bit longer than I thought.’
‘It’s fine, I made dinner,’ Penny said, deliberately stepping between them with a huge dish of bolognese.
He sat down and watched as she dished it up onto three plates and then sat down at the opposite end of the table to him. This was not how he had planned his evening at all. Outside the storm raged on, thunder rolling across the night sky, lit up periodically with spectacular forks of lightning. But inside the tension between the three of them was almost as tangible as the storm outside.
Henry sat staring at his spaghetti bolognese with as much concentration as he could muster for a plate full of meat and pasta. He glanced over to Penny who was focussing on the art of wrapping a string of spaghetti round her fork as if it was the hardest job in the world.
Daisy looked between the two of them in confusion. She knew something was going on even if she had no idea what that something was.
‘Did you guys have a row or something?’ Daisy said.
‘No, sorry honey, it’s just been a weird day,’ Penny said.
Henry cast around for a suitable topic of conversation. It was ridiculous to sit in silence when conversation had flowed so easily whenever they’d been together before.
‘Hey Dad, did you tell Penny about the huge penis we saw in town?’
Penny choked on her drink
That certainly wasn’t a suitable topic of conversation, especially after what had gone on between them the night before. But Daisy wasn’t to be deterred.
‘It was hilarious, some woman dressed in this huge seven-foot costume chasing men down the streets and hugging them. White Cliff Bay is a little weird, eh? I bet it’s a right little den of sin, people sleeping with their neighbours or having orgies.’
‘Hey,’ Henry reprimanded.
Daisy laughed. ‘Orgy isn’t a swear word.’
‘It’s not exactly an appropriate subject for the dinner table though, is it?’
Penny stifled a giggle and he sensed the mood between them was on the verge of passing. ‘I’ve seen people do stuff like that before, I think it’s to raise awareness or money for cancer. So don’t judge our little town too harshly just yet.’
Henry needed to change the subject away from people having sex with their neighbours. He latched on to something Edward had said to him on Monday.
‘Oh, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Edward said there was some Gingerbread House competition on Saturday, he asked if I wanted to come with my family and form a team. I don’t really know what