Penny said with a tight throat. She found a tissue in her coat pocket and wiped her face. ‘Now then!’ She stretched her mouth into its trademark grin. ‘Let’s go and see Queenie, shall we? She might have some Christmas cards for us to buy.’
‘’Ello, me duck.’ The indomitable Queenie was sitting behind her ancient counter opening a box of springy, multicoloured tinsel. ‘’Ere, ’ave you ’eard the latest?’
‘Nope,’ said Penny. ‘It’d better be good because I’m starved of news. Jenna’s not too good a raconteur yet.’
‘Ah, she’s beautiful. Wait till she does start talkin’ – then you’ll want ’er to shut up. Give ’er ’ere. And pull up a chair. You look wiped out.’
Penny sank gratefully into one of the three tatty armchairs that had appeared recently in the shop. Queenie liked a chat and most of her customers enjoyed a sit down.
‘This chair’s very comfortable,’ sighed Penny, sinking into the feather seat.
‘Ain’t it? Simple Tony got them for me over St Eval. Someone was chucking them out.’ Queenie sat down with Jenna on her lap and Jenna reached up to pull at the rope of pink tinsel Queenie had thrown round her shoulders. ‘Real pretty that is, darling, ain’t it? When you’re a big girl you can come in ’ere and ’elp me get all this stuff out.’
Jenna crammed a thumb in her mouth and sucked it ruminatively.
Penny shut her eyes and enjoyed the peace. ‘Tell me the gossip then, Queenie.’
‘Well, you know Marguerite Cottage what’s just behind the vicarage?’
‘Oh God, yes. The builders have been making a racket for months.’
‘Well, I had the estate agent in here the other day. Come in for her fags. Silk Cut. Not proper fags at all but that’s what she wanted. Anyway, I asks her, “Oh, who’s buyin’ Marguerite, then?” and she says, “It’s been let for a year by two fellas from up country.” I says, “Well, good luck to ’em if they’re ’appy together.” And she says, “One of them is a doctor and the other an artist.” So I says, “Stands to reason. These gay boys are very arty and nice-natured.” And she says, “They’ve got dogs, too.” And I turn round and say, “Well, they always ’ave dogs.” And she turns round and says—’
Queenie stopped mid-flow and looked at Penny. ‘Oi, Penny, ’ave you fallen asleep?’
The following morning Simon crept out of bed and left Penny snoring quietly. She hadn’t been sleeping well at all since Jenna had arrived, but she always refused his offer to share the night-time feeds. He knew how tired he was with a baby in the house, so goodness knows how tired she was. Simon stood on the landing and looked through its curtainless window. From here, in the winter before the trees were in leaf, you could just see the sea at Shellsand Bay. The waning moon was low in the sky and spilling its silver stream onto the dark waves. It was so peaceful. He sent a prayer of gratitude for his wife, his daughter and his life.
Downstairs he put the kettle on and, while he waited for it to boil, he tidied up the previous day’s newspapers. Tomorrow was recycling day.
He enjoyed the order of recycling and was fastidious about doing it correctly. He opened the paper box. Someone – Penny presumably – had put a wine bottle in it. Swallowing his annoyance he picked it out, replacing it with the newspapers, then opened the box for glass. It was almost full. He counted eight wine bottles, not including the one in his hand. All were Penny’s favourite. He put the lid back on and stood up. So this was why Penny had been so moody. She was drinking.
Too much.
She had always liked a drink. When they first met she had never been without a vodka in her hand. But she’d settled, and although enjoying the odd glass of wine, he had not seen her the worse for wear since she’d been pregnant with Jenna.
Upstairs, he woke her gently. ‘Coffee’s here, darling.’
Penny opened one eye. Her wavy hair was over her face and she pushed it out of the way as she sat up. ‘Thank you.’
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
She looked at him with suspicion. ‘Fine. How are you feeling?’
‘Good. Yes. Very good.’ How was he to broach this new and tricky subject? ‘Shall I buy some more wine today? I think we’re low on your – our – favourite.’
‘Are we? We polished off a bottle with the steak last night, I suppose.’
Simon thought back to last night. She had been halfway down a bottle of red wine by the time he got home. ‘Yes,’ he said carefully.
‘Well, if you’re passing the off-licence, get some.’ She took the coffee cup he was proffering.
He took a mouthful of his own coffee. ‘We seem to have got through the last lot of wine quite quickly. And you are still breast-feeding.’
She gave a heavy sigh. ‘Oh, I see. Are you lecturing me?’
‘Heavens, no.’
‘It sounds like it.’ She put her cup down and got out of bed. ‘I need a pee – and, as it happens, an aspirin. I have a headache.’
He pushed his glasses a little further up his nose and looked at the carpet.
‘Don’t give me that attitude.’ She glared at him. ‘I have a headache, not a hangover.’
The morning followed its usual routine. Penny treated Simon with the cool indifference that had recently become second nature to her. (When had that habit started, she wondered.) And he trod round her as if on eggshells. Eventually he left the house to do God knew what and Penny saw to Jenna.
Jenna was washed and dressed, breakfasted, entertained and put down for her nap. She was overtired and it was making her silly and difficult. Penny checked her forehead. ‘Is it those naughty teeth?’ she asked. Jenna nodded her pink-cheeked face and a string of drool dribbled from her mouth. ‘Poor old Jen.’ Penny kissed her daughter’s damp head. ‘I’ll get the Calpol.’
Cuddled on Penny’s lap, Jenna suckled at Penny’s breast while keeping a sleepy eye on the picture book being read to her. She fell asleep before the end giving her mother a chance to drink in the sight, sound, and smell of her. The overwhelming love Penny had for Jenna hurt. It also filled her with a kind of panic. She had never been the maternal type and had honestly thought that she would never marry. She had had endless unsuitable affairs with glamorous and handsome men, not all of whom were single, but she hadn’t ever imagined falling in love with someone. Or someone falling in love with her. But both things had happened when she’d found Pendruggan, the ideal location for Mr Tibbs. She had been cruel to Simon when she’d first arrived, had thought him a parochial innocent, a drippy village vicar, wearing his vocation on his sleeve.
He had originally been keen on her best friend Helen, who had just moved into the village. Penny had teased him, but Cupid had shot his arrows capriciously. The oddest of odd couples fell in love and were married. That was a miracle in itself, but Simon’s God had one more surprise for them. Jenna. Penny leant her head back on the Edwardian nursing chair and looked around the nursery: soft colours and peaceful, the Noah’s Ark night-light that the parishioners had presented to them on Jenna’s birth, the cot given to her by her godparents, Helen and Piran, the photograph of Penny’s father. How he would love his granddaughter. And next to his picture, legs dangling over the shelf, was her love-worn Sniffy, the bear her father had given her when she was a baby.
Penny shut her eyes for a moment and felt the familiar stab of grief. She missed her father every day. In her unsettled childhood he had meant everything to her, until he died. She spoke to him, ‘Daddy, look how lucky I am. Jenna, Simon,