couldn’t move back to where he lived before. Everything was better here, the people, the area, the school. Daisy was happy and he couldn’t uproot her again. And there was his relationship with Penny to think about. He didn’t want to leave her. His throat felt raw at the thought of it.
He pulled up outside the house and rested his head against the steering wheel for a moment. What was he going to do?
He got out and walked round the back of the house, spotting Penny sitting at the kitchen table sketching out one of her designs. Without thinking he walked straight through her back door.
She looked up at him, smiling hugely but her smile quickly fell from her face as she clocked his bad mood. She stood up and he gathered her in his arms and held her tight. She immediately wrapped her arms round him, one hand cupping his head, cradling him against her.
She didn’t ask him why and he was grateful for that. He didn’t want to talk about it. Eventually he pulled away and gave her a brief, quick kiss, leaning his forehead against hers. He was going to fight this with everything he had, because leaving Penny was not something he could even begin to comprehend.
Chapter Sixteen
Henry walked round the outside of the house later, just as Penny came rushing out of her back door. He had calmed down a lot since he had seen Penny earlier; his resolve that Clara wasn’t going to win this had helped. Ice cream in town with his daughter had also helped, she never failed to cheer him up.
‘Hey, you going out for your hot date with Fabio?’ Henry said.
‘Ha, no. I’m going for dinner at my friend Maggie’s house.’
Henry frowned as he followed her round to her car. ‘As in Daniel’s wife?’
Penny nodded and he stopped her with his hand on her arm. ‘He invited me round for dinner too.’
Penny laughed. ‘They’re trying to set us up on a date.’
‘They know about our date the other night though, Maggie was the one that persuaded you to get your legs and everything else waxed.’
‘She didn’t know it was a proper date, she had just heard that we were going out when Jade told everyone in the pub. I told her we were just friends, I think she was just hopeful it would turn out well – she certainly doesn’t know how well it actually turned out for us. She’s obviously trying to push it even more. I can’t believe she invited us and deliberately didn’t tell us the other was coming.’
Henry smiled at the interference. ‘How about we have some fun with them? Get our own back for trying to set us up.’
‘What did you have in mind?’
‘We could go and pretend we hate each other.’
Penny laughed. ‘I like the sound of that. We could still share a car though, their front door is round the side, so they wouldn’t know.’
‘OK, let’s go in mine, you can direct me in case I get lost,’ Henry suggested.
Henry got in the car and Penny got in too. They drove down the hill, through the town and pulled up on the drive at a large smart whitewashed house that had round windows and garish lights everywhere. Snowmen, Santas and several reindeer were lit up on the lawn and a ‘Merry Christmas’ sign flashed in one of the downstairs windows.
He told Penny to go ahead of him and as she knocked the door he got out the car and slowly walked up the drive. He saw Maggie answer the door – well, he saw her huge belly first and then Maggie appeared. Maggie greeted Penny warmly and then smiled in greeting at Henry.
‘Hello, I’m Maggie. It’s lovely to finally meet you properly.’ She reached up to kiss him on the cheek. ‘It’s such a funny coincidence that you’re both here tonight. I had no idea Daniel had invited you round until about half hour ago and I invited Penny and I forgot to mention it to Daniel. But what a happy happenstance.’
Henry had to stop himself from laughing at the lie and instead he deliberately forced a small smile onto his face and flashed Penny the briefest of glares. Penny quickly looked away so Maggie wouldn’t see her smile. She clearly wasn’t very good at acting, though Maggie had already seen the glare from him and her smile fell from her face.
Daniel appeared in the hall as Henry and Penny stepped in and