Christmas at Lilac Cottage: (#1 White Cliff Bay) (21 page)

That’s where Daisy had gone. It was entirely possible that Daisy had gone there to meet up with her new friends Maisie and Rebecca. But that didn’t explain the two plates of cake crumbs and two glasses the night before. Her guess would be that Daisy was meeting up with Josh. Now, should she go down there and catch them in the act of doing lord knows what? Should she go and tell Henry that his daughter was currently lying in the aptly named ‘Love Shack’ with a seventeen-year-old tattooed thug, at least in his mind, or should she just pretend she knew nothing? Daisy was a sensible girl and any bridges that Penny had built with her would be destroyed if she marched straight into that hut now acting like an over-protective mum. Henry’s relationship with Daisy would be strained too if he found out and reacted in the way that Penny thought he would. And knowing Josh and his shy, sweet nature, they probably weren’t doing anything beyond holding hands. It was probably best to do nothing for now and get Daisy on her own later and maybe have a little word.

‘
C
ome on
, hurry, up, all the best trees will be gone,’ Daisy said as Penny tried to find a parking space at the tree farm that was big enough to hold her freezer van. Henry had had to help her deliver two ice carvings after dinner and it didn’t make sense to go back to the house to drop the van off. Plus as the van was so big it meant they could use it to stick the tree in the back.

‘I can’t just stick the van anywhere, plus they have hundreds of trees, I think there’ll be plenty of choice.’

‘There’ll only be little ones left.’

‘You can only really get a little one, the annexe is quite small.’

‘We always get the biggest, fattest tree we can find.’ Daisy bounced up and down in her seat like a small child. Penny loved her enthusiasm for life. ‘Will you get a tree?’

‘I’ll probably get a small one too.’

‘Noooo, you have all that space in front of the window. Or behind the sofa, you could get a massive one. I know, why don’t we get a shared one and we can all decorate it together.’

Penny parked the car and tried to dispel the huge lump of emotion that had lodged in her throat with that simple statement of togetherness from Daisy. She had accepted Penny into their little family so easily and readily.

Penny nodded. ‘OK.’

‘Yayyyy!’ Daisy bounced out the van and set off at a sprint towards the plethora of trees.

As soon as she was out of sight, Henry leaned across and kissed her sweetly.

‘She adores you,’ he whispered. ‘And I do too.’

He got out and lumbered across the grass after his daughter. Penny smiled as she watched him go. This was turning out to be the best Christmas ever.

She got out and walked across the grass. It was snowing lightly again and she looked up at the occasional star that shone through the cloud-filled sky as the soft flakes dusted her cheeks.

She caught up with Henry and had to shove her hands in her pockets so she wasn’t tempted to hold his hand.

The trees were stacked in size order and she watched as Daisy walked past the smaller ones and headed straight for the big ones at the end of the farm.

They reached the part that sold the biggest trees and, although all of these were way too big for the house, she didn’t have the heart to say anything, not when she had been inducted into their little decorating team. Daisy was going from tree to tree, feeling the needles, smelling them, looking at the labels. Penny had never bothered to look at the trees before, she had just bought the first smallest one she had seen and that was it.

‘Surely all the trees are the same,’ Penny said.

‘No, definitely not,’ Daisy said. ‘There’s three main types: a pine, a fir or a spruce. The spruce is generally rubbish. There are several different types of fir and pine trees and we want one that has a good needle retention, even without water. You want soft needles too and something that smells good. Generally we are looking for a Nordman or a Noble fir but I’d settle for a White Pine.’

Penny glanced at Henry as Daisy disappeared round the back of the tree. ‘She knows her trees?’

He nodded. ‘She takes this part very seriously, and the fact that you’ve been invited to join us shows how much she likes you.’

Penny smiled.

‘OK, this is the one,’ Daisy said, triumphantly, lovingly stroking the winning tree.

Penny looked up and up. It had to be at least twelve feet high.

‘Daisy, that’s never going to fit in my house, let alone yours.’

‘It will if we stick it under the stairs, you have that space going up to the second floor – and so what if the top sticks through the bannister a bit, or rests on the ceiling? This is going to look fab.’

Henry was already moving off to tell one of the staff which tree he wanted, clearly knowing that Daisy wasn’t to be talked out of it.

Before Penny could protest any further, the tree was bagged up into a big net and between the three of them, Henry carrying most of the weight, they just about managed to get the tree into the van, with the top three feet sticking out the back.

Henry secured the doors to make sure they weren’t going to swing open and Penny drove them home.

They struggled to get the tree in as Bernard, showing the most life she’d ever seen from him, ran around barking at them as they brought the invader into his home.

They stuck it in the corner so the top of the tree protruded up somewhere on the second floor at the top of the stairs.

There were never going to be enough decorations in the world to fill this thing. Penny guessed they’d have to go for a minimalist look.

‘I’ll get the decorations,’ Daisy said, running off to the shed where lots of their boxes were stored.

‘We should probably just stick to one colour, I have lots of silver baubles upstairs, we could have a silver theme…’ She trailed off as Henry was looking at her incredulously.

‘A silver theme? Erm, our decorations are an eclectic mix, there certainly isn’t a theme to them.’

‘But it will look really busy.’

He grinned. ‘We like busy. Why don’t you put some Christmas music on and heat up some of your wonderful mince pies and I’ll go and help Daisy with the decorations.’

She frowned slightly as she watched him go. She couldn’t pick holes in their tradition, not after she had been accepted so easily into the inner sanctum of the tree decorating team. A multi-coloured tree certainly wouldn’t go with her rather tasteful green and white light garlands and decorations but she would just have to let it go.

She built a fire in the fireplace, put on some Christmas songs and went to sort out the mince pies just as Daisy came back, weighed down by three large boxes.

She glanced down to the shed where Henry was still rooting around trying to find the right boxes.

‘Daisy.’

Daisy dumped the boxes on the table, grinning from ear to ear. ‘Yep?’

‘Are you seeing Josh?’

‘Yes. Don’t tell Dad.’

Penny’s eyes bulged, wishing she’d never asked. ‘Are you hanging out at the Love Shack?’

Daisy laughed. ‘The what?’

‘The birdwatchers’ hut at the end of the drive. That’s what we called it when we were teenagers. All the kids used to hang out there and kiss and…’ She was not going to talk to her about sex again.

‘Yes, but we just talk and stuff, it’s no big deal. Just don’t tell Dad because he’ll freak out. How are things between you two anyway?’

Penny noted how quickly the tables had turned. She wasn’t going to lie to Daisy, even if she couldn’t be completely honest. ‘Good. I really like him.’

Daisy studied her for a moment and then smiled. ‘He likes you too.’

Penny bit her lip. Did she know something was going on between them? She was a smart girl, she had probably worked it out by now, but was she OK with it?

There was no time to discuss either topic because Henry burst through the back door, juggling five large boxes. Daisy picked up her own boxes and scurried through to the lounge.

By the time Penny came back in with the plates of mince pies, several of the decorations had made it from the box to the tree and Henry and Daisy were jive dancing with each other to ‘
Rocking Around
t
he Christmas Tree’.

She watched them with a smile, they were so close and she just hoped that she could fit into that somehow.

She put the plates down and Henry grabbed her for a rock and roll style dance, twirling her round as Daisy laughed at them and resumed her decorating. Penny laughed as she was spun out and twirled back and she clung to Henry feeling dizzy and giddy with it all. Finally the song ended and something much slower came on, which didn’t seem appropriate to dance to with Daisy in the room, so Henry released her awkwardly.

Penny looked through the boxes of decorations and the ones that were slowly filling the tree. There was a colourful mix of decorations, some that Daisy had clearly made as a child with tiny handprint Christmas trees, covered in glitter, snowmen made from lots of cotton wool, and toilet roll tube Santas. There were some rather eccentric shop-bought decorations ranging from neon-coloured candy canes, ceramic Santa-clad teddy bears and angels dressed in leather biker gear. There were also some beautiful wooden ones that had clearly been handcarved by Henry and Daisy. This tree was a huge cacophony of colour celebrating their rich vibrant history together. Penny loved every single piece of it, even the mooning Santa that Daisy hung pride of place right in the middle of the tree. But it did make her a bit sad that there wasn’t a part of her on this tree.

‘Why don’t you get some of your decorations down?’ Henry said softly, clearly reading her mind as he had a knack for doing.

She shook her head. Her tree decorations were boring round baubles that held no special meaning or significance to her and it would seem odd to dilute their decorations with her dull ones. She would be a part of the tree by helping to decorate it.

She picked up a gold-painted fir cone covered in glitter with a scarlet ribbon tied at the top and hung it from one of the branches, feeling the smile grow on her face as slowly every branch began to sparkle with colour and glitter. Daisy moved upstairs to lean over the bannister and decorate the top branches as Henry started wrapping lights around every part of the tree.

All too soon the tree was finished and Daisy raced downstairs for the big lights switch on.

‘Five, four, three, two, one,’ Daisy yelled and flicked the switch.

The tree was suddenly lit up with over a thousand lights, all in different colours. Some twinkled discreetly, where some flashed on and off to the beat of an unheard tune.

Penny stepped back to admire their handiwork. It was garish and messy and fanciful and silly and the best Christmas tree she had ever seen.

D
aisy had long
since gone to bed, though Penny suspected it was to give them some time alone. For someone who had been so against them getting together at the beginning, she seemed to be pushing them together now. The music had changed from that of Slade and The Pogues to sweeter, softer Christmas songs and she was dancing slowly in the arms of the most wonderful man she had ever met.

She rested her head on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. She had tried to hold back, to not fall so deeply in order to guard her heart, but she had failed at every single turn.

She looked up at him, his beautiful face illuminated in the glow of a thousand fairy lights and he bent his head and kissed her softly.

She was in love with him, she couldn’t deny it any more. Completely and utterly in love with him.

He pulled back ever so slightly so that, when he spoke, his mouth was still touching her lips.

‘I really want to make love to you right now, can you be quiet?’

She smiled. ‘Can you?’

‘Let’s see.’ He took her hand and led her upstairs.

She wasn’t scared any more, this was where she was supposed to be. Everything was perfect. And Anna or Daisy or Clara wouldn’t change that. She loved him and she was pretty sure he felt the same way.

‘
T
ell
me again why I agreed to this,’ Henry said as he pulled the car into a space behind the marquee the next day.

The car park was already filling up nicely, the annual festivities obviously attracting a lot of attention. It was a good thing because, like a lot of the events leading up to the ball, it was raising a lot of money for charity. Though Penny could understand Henry’s reticence. While she had been to watch the Giant Gingerbread House Race many times over the years, she had never been on one of the teams before.

‘Because Edward asked you to do it and you didn’t want your boss to know that you are secretly an anti-social grumpy sod,’ Penny said and Daisy let out a bark of a laugh from the back seat.

‘She’s got your number, hasn’t she, Dad.’

‘More to the point, why am I doing it?’ said Penny. ‘It’s supposed to be families of staff members from White Cliff Bay Furniture Company and I don’t qualify for that.’

Daisy scrabbled out the back of the car and closed the door.

‘You will qualify soon, so stop your whingeing. Consider it practice,’ Henry said, smiling at her.

Her heart soared at the simplicity of that comment, while he clearly had no idea that he had made her entire day.

He hesitated for a moment, staring at Edward at the entrance of the marquee. He was nervous about today and she didn’t know why, but she knew it wasn’t just about doing something silly in front of an audience. Why was he so scared he would lose his job so soon after he had got it? What had happened a few days before that would make him so wary and why hadn’t he talked to her about it? He was trying to put on a brave face for her and for Daisy but Penny would rather he talk to her about his worries. She couldn’t escape the feeling that this had something to do with Clara.

After a moment, he got out and Penny followed him.

Up ahead of them Penny saw Maggie, waddling along with a boy in each hand and Daniel with his arm round her waist. Penny smiled wistfully at the proper little happy family.

She looked over at Henry and Daisy and he smiled at her over Daisy’s head. They weren’t the orthodox family of high school sweethearts like Maggie and Daniel were and they weren’t married and didn’t have children together, but Penny couldn’t be happier to be part of Henry’s family and to have Daisy as her sort of step-daughter. Maybe it was getting too far ahead of herself to imagine that after only knowing Henry for a week, but she couldn’t help it.

As one of Maggie’s boys lagged behind for a second, Maggie turned to see what had caught his attention and, spotting Penny, she waved madly. She left the boys with Daniel and waddled over.

‘You’re going down, Meadows,’ Maggie said, giving Penny a fond kiss on the cheek. ‘Our team has won for the last three years, there’s a lot riding on our title. We won’t be giving it up so easily.’

‘But you are slightly hindered this year, your little bump may get in the way of decorating and building.’

‘I’m going to be directing the boys, so we actually have the advantage as I’ll be an outsider looking in. Who’s your project director?’

‘Probably Henry, you know what I’m like with even the simplest of flat pack furniture. Quite why he picked me to be on his team I don’t know.’

Maggie linked arms with Penny and leaned in to whisper in her ear. ‘You know why.’

‘Hey, no colluding with the enemy.’ Henry came over and kissed Maggie on the cheek.

‘Oi! Hands off my wife, Travis,’ Daniel called and Henry laughed, holding his hands up innocently.

‘Maggie, this is my daughter Daisy. Daisy, this is our mortal enemy, well for this afternoon at least.’

Daisy smiled at Maggie, shyly.

‘We’ll have to all go out for a girly pampering day after Christmas, before this little one arrives. We can have our nails done and our hair and make-up, what do you think, Daisy?’ Maggie said and Penny smiled with love for her friend for including Daisy like that.

‘Yeah, that’ll be great,’ Daisy grinned.

Edward was standing at the entrance to the marquee, welcoming all the White Cliff Bay employees as they came in. Penny noted he knew everyone’s names and many of the wives and children’s names too. As they approached, she could see all the spectators filing in through a different entrance.

Maggie re-joined Daniel at the entrance and Edward chatted to them briefly before they went inside.

Edward turned to them and smiled warmly.

‘Henry, I’m so pleased you agreed to be a part of this today, we have been holding this event for years and it always makes some decent money for charity. It’s good fun too so don’t feel anyone is going to judge you on your skills today. Working with icing is very different to working with our normal furniture glue.’

‘Are you taking part, sir?’

‘Edward, please. And yes, my family and I always take part every year, we never win though.’

‘Ah maybe this year.’

‘Maybe. And this must be your lovely family.’ Edward smiled at Penny and Daisy.

Penny froze, not sure what to say, whether to confirm or deny it. Were there really strict rules that meant only families were allowed to take part? Would Henry get into trouble for having someone who wasn’t his family on his team? Should she be holding hands with Henry and pretending to be the adoring wife?

‘Yes, this is Penny and Daisy,’ Henry said, without missing a beat.

Edward shook both their hands. ‘Well, I hope you both have fun today, may the best team win.’ He quickly consulted his clipboard. ‘You’re in Bay 6.’

Henry ushered them inside. As soon as they were out of hearing distance, Daisy wrapped an arm round Penny’s shoulders.

‘Hear that? You’re our family now, you’re stuck with us.’

Penny’s heart leapt with happiness. ‘I can’t think of a nicer family to be stuck with.’

Henry smiled at them as they stepped into their designated bay before turning his attention to the materials and tools.

He prodded the plastic gingerbread panels, feeling the weight of them and looked over at the oversized plastic sweets which were arranged in neat piles around the edge of their bay, some of them spilling out of a large cardboard box. He gave the icing a stir, letting the mixture fall back into the bowl as he judged its consistency.

‘How does this work then, how do we win?’ Daisy asked, obviously taking the competition as seriously as her dad.

‘Well, we get points for being the fastest to finish. First team to finish gets ten points, but then the second team to finish will get nine points and it goes down incrementally, so even if we are last to finish we still get points. The structure has to be sturdy too: if you finish first but your house collapses before the end of the competition then you can be disqualified if there is no time for you to fix it. We then get points for style, creativity and originality which are judged by Linda from the bakery and Summer from the sweet shop. They will award points out of ten for each team too. There are mini prizes awarded for the fastest team and the best team in the design stakes and then an overall winner.’

‘Surely the overall winner would be one of the mini prize winners,’ Daisy said, picking up a giant plastic Jelly Tot and playing with it in her hands.

‘Not necessarily. Getting high points for finishing first but low points in design would give you an average overall score, where getting an average score for both, say seven or eight, would give you a much higher score overall. Basically we want to work quickly but not forsake the design aspect too; we can’t afford to have it look shoddy.’

The spectators had already filled up the seats but still more were coming in, happy to pay to stand and watch.

The inside of the marquee was already decorated with tiny fairy lights, hung in looped boughs across the windows. It was all going to look magical once it was set up for the ball, which was only three days away.

‘Are there any rules?’ Henry said.

‘No, you can’t help or hinder another group and other than the fact our gingerbread house has to still be standing at the end of the race, we can do whatever we want.’

‘We need a strategy,’ Daisy said. ‘We need to do something different to everyone else.’

Henry stood up and joined their little huddle. ‘What are you suggesting?’

Daisy looked around, thoughtfully. ‘We can use everything in the bay, right?’

Penny nodded.

‘How about that cardboard box?’ Daisy asked.

Penny looked over at the huge box that was filled with some of the smaller foam and plastic sweets.

‘We could use it, what were you thinking?’

‘A porch or a dormer.’

‘A dormer would be tricky to do, but I love the idea of a porch, we can decorate it too so it doesn’t just look like a box,’ Henry said.

‘We can use the rope as some kind of snowy garland that we can drape from the roof,’ Penny said, getting into the spirit of a little bit of cheating.

‘Let’s do it,’ Henry said, that wonderful look of mischief in his eyes.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Edward called over the microphone. ‘Please will you take your seats, the Giant Gingerbread House Race is about to start.’

There were cheers and claps from the crowds and then Edward called for silence.

‘Thank you all for coming today. As most of you are aware, we do this event every year to raise money for whichever charity is being supported by the Christmas ball. This year we are raising money for Kaleidoscope, who research the causes of miscarriages, stillbirths and premature babies and offer support and counselling to those families that have been affected.’

There was a huge round of applause from the crowd and Penny felt a huge lump in her throat that they were helping a charity that was so important to her. She caught Maggie’s eye across the room and smiled at her for choosing that charity.

Edward introduced the teams briefly, again introducing Penny as part of Henry’s family, which caused a few murmurs of interest amongst the crowd. He explained the rules , pretty much echoing everything that Penny had said, and then he started a countdown.

‘We’ll leave the rope till last so people don’t copy our idea, the cardboard box too,’ Henry whispered over the countdown. ‘We’ll just build the house first.’

Penny nodded, suddenly excited about their design and little bit of rule breaking.

‘…Three, two, one, go!’ Edward shouted.

Henry and Daisy immediately grabbed two panels, one back panel and one of the sides, positioning them so they were at a right angle to each other. They were a perfect team, each knowing what the other was going to do before they did it. Penny realised if everything went according to plan with her and Henry’s relationship, she would be joining their little team soon too.

She quickly started spooning the icing mixture into the piping bag as Henry got the two panels perfectly lined up.

Penny started squeezing the icing down the join, hopefully cementing the two panels together. As Henry held it firm whilst it dried a bit, Penny ran round and piped the icing down the other side of his panel.

‘It’s setting really quickly, what is this stuff?’ Henry said, tentatively letting go of the panel.

‘I don’t know, it’s not like any icing I’ve ever seen before. If I were you, I wouldn’t eat it,’ Penny said as she hauled over the front panel with a space for the door. Daisy quickly ran round to grab the end of Penny’s panel.

Suddenly Penny saw Henry glance across the marquee as if he had spotted something, and whatever he saw wasn’t good. She looked over to see what the other teams were doing, convinced they had also decided to use the cardboard box too, and saw Clara, striding between the teams. A look of panic crossed his face, which deepened when he saw that Penny had seen it too, before he quickly returned his attention to the house.

Henry had told Clara that he had a girlfriend. That surely should be the end of it. So what would cause Henry to be so worried?

H
enry focussed
on securing the front panel to the side they had already used, ignoring the questioning gaze from Penny as she piped the icing into the join.

This was not going to end well for him. Clara was an incredibly proud and arrogant person. The rejection and then the embarrassment in front of her assistant was going to be the final nail in his coffin.

But surely Clara wouldn’t make a scene here today, not in front of Daisy and Penny and certainly not in front of all these people.

He glanced over again. Clara was deliberately stopping to talk to each of the teams. On the surface, the audience watching would think that one of the managing directors of the company was just being sociable, cheering the teams on, but the look of surprise from the employees she was interacting with and even from Edward showed she had never done anything like that before. Henry knew why too, it was completely tactical. If she was seen talking to every team then when she came over to talk to him, which she undoubtedly would, no one would be suspicious.

He looked over at Penny who was watching him carefully. Shit, he should have told her. Now it looked even more suspicious when nothing had actually happened.

‘Grab the other bit, Daisy,’ Henry said and Daisy ran off to grab the panel.

Henry moved to the back on the pretence of checking the join and Penny followed.

‘She’s blackmailing me to sleep with her,’ he whispered then continued, ‘if I don’t, I lose my job. If I do I’ll probably lose my job, so it’s a win-win situation all round.’

She stared at him in shock.

‘Daisy, can you hold that side panel against the front?’ Henry called over, directing her to the furthest corner away from them.

‘Have you told Edward?’ Penny said.

He shook his head.

‘If you don’t tell him then I will. I’m not letting her get away with that.’

‘Shit, Penny, that’s not how I want to resolve this situation. He isn’t going to believe me over his sister. If I go to him to complain about Clara I’ll likely get the sack from him.’

‘Then how did you plan to resolve it?’

‘I told her I’d slap a sexual harassment suit on her if she tries to blackmail me again.’