‘He’s fine. His mum is spoiling him rotten and he’s enjoying the attention. He’ll be completely fine in a few weeks.’

Henry drove down the bumpy drive but, instead of turning left to go towards the town, he turned right to take them away from White Cliff Bay. He caught her questioning gaze.

‘I thought our first date should be just the two of us, not half of White Cliff Bay watching us like animals in the zoo.’

‘Oh thank god, it would have been unbearable if we had gone into town but, you know, everyone will be very disappointed that we are a no-show.’

‘They’ll probably just think that we’re decided to stay in and have hot, passionate sex instead.’

Penny laughed. ‘What are we going to do if Daisy hears all these rumours?’

‘I don’t know, laugh it off, deny all knowledge. She knows we are going out tonight so we can just tell her the town have jumped to the wrong conclusion. As much as the town like to poke their noses in, I can’t see anyone going up to a sixteen-year-old girl and saying, “Hey, did your dad get laid last night? Did you hear the bed squeaking? Do you know if he used the extra-large condoms or not?” I’d hope they’d have a bit more discretion than that.’

‘I hope so too. I don’t want to do anything to upset her. I really like her and she adores you.’

‘Ha, she tolerates me.’

‘You’re her entire world.’

‘I’m insanely over-protective and it drives her mad. Of course, I let her go out on her own, but it doesn’t stop me worrying until she gets back home.’

‘That’s understandable. I don’t suppose that feeling will ever go away. So you had her from when she was three months old? I know you said that her mum’s parents wanted to put her up for adoption.’

‘They did, but I begged them not to. They didn’t really know what to do with her when she was born – they didn’t want to raise her themselves and I think they hoped that Tina would fall in love with her and raise her properly, but she couldn’t have cared less. I think they felt guilty about putting her up for adoption and my parents fought against it too. They brought her to stay with me quite frequently and one weekend they conveniently forgot to pick her back up again. I fell in love with her so quickly, so hard, that there was never a question of sending her somewhere else. My parents helped a lot and so did Anna – she absolutely adored Daisy too, we all did – but the night feeds, the dirty nappies, that was all down to me.’

‘I admire you so much for that, so many sixteen-year-old boys would never have made that choice.’

‘It was hard work, of course it was, but there was never a choice, she was my daughter.’

Penny watched him negotiate the roads and felt her heart fill with love for him.

‘It must have affected your life though, the things that you wanted to do – travel, go to university – they would have been unattainable.’

‘I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life at the age of sixteen, there were no plans that she got in the way of. I just wanted to provide for her and give her the best life possible. I lived with my parents until I was twenty-four, which gave me a tiny bit of freedom. I was always good with my hands, always enjoyed making things, so I would have probably got a job doing that anyway. I don’t regret having her, not for one second. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.’

‘So you’ve always been a carpenter?’

‘Yes, making furniture, chairs, tables, chests. I worked in a small furniture shop for a while. I love the process, something that starts out as a little sketch on a piece of paper and with care and hard work it turns into a beautiful chest or a chair. How you finish the piece is crucial as well, whether the piece looks like faded driftwood or polished oak, the handles and hinges, the curves of the furniture. I loved it so much I started making my own stuff. I had a website and sold it online. I did well out of it. The White Cliff Bay Furniture Company approached me.’

‘Wow, they must have been very impressed with what they saw.’

Henry nodded. ‘Edward has one of my chests in his office. I saw it there the other day and I wonder if that was the thing that flagged me up to them. I’m going to keep making some of my own furniture as a little side line. If the job falls flat, I’ll still have my own stuff to fall back on. The thing that worries me working at White Cliff Bay is not having the freedom to be able to design the pieces I want. But maybe I’ll have to forgo that for financial job security.’

Henry turned down a little side road that led to a tiny cove. Penny frowned in confusion. There was nothing down here apart from the cove; there were no shops, toilets and especially not anywhere to eat.

‘I think you might have taken a wrong turn,’ Penny said.

‘What’s this, the outsider knows something the local doesn’t?’ Henry said.

He parked the car along the road near the path that led down to the beach. Surprisingly there were lots of other cars there too.

He got out and took her hand, leading her to the steps that curled down to the sand. It was well lit, with little lanterns sending puddles of light down the stairs and across a small wooden path that led across the beach towards the caves. She carefully picked her way down the stairs in her stupid high heels and onto the wooden path. The tide was in but it didn’t reach all the way to the back of the beach, leaving a good twenty metres of sand untouched.

‘I used to play here when I was a child, in the caves, but I haven’t been down here for years,’ Penny said, still wondering where they were going.

Henry helped her up a few stone steps into the cave and she followed him down a well-lit tunnel, but as she rounded the corner into what had been a large cavern, she stopped in shock. There was a tiny lake in the middle of the cavern and dotted around the edges were about twenty tables lit up by lanterns and candles, the lights sparkling off the water like fireflies.

‘Henry, it’s beautiful, how long has this been here?’

‘About two weeks, according to Anna. She and Steve came here last week.’

One of the waiters came over and Henry gave them his name and they ushered him to a table.

Penny looked around. In the darkness of the cave, the lights looked like orbs of gold, shimmering over the water. There were tall plants dotted between the tables along with outdoor heaters, lending a certain amount of privacy to the diners and giving it a slight Mediterranean feel, too.

‘The menu is limited, a lot of it is barbequed or they have a large pizza oven, but apparently the food is amazing.’

Penny reached across the table and took his hand. ‘Thank you for bringing me here, it’s just wonderful.’

‘I wanted something special for our first date and then I remembered Anna talking about this place.’

Penny smiled at the trouble he had taken to do something nice for her. ‘It feels so secret, like no one knows it’s here.’

‘Secret place, secret meetings, I bet everyone here is having an affair.’

She laughed and looked around. At the next table was a young man in a very expensive suit sitting opposite a blonde with a very short skirt.

‘I think he is a CEO of a big corporate company and that’s his assistant that he is shagging behind his wife’s back,’ Penny said.

Henry glanced over and nodded. ‘And look at that couple, she’s old enough to be his mum. I bet she’s sleeping with her daughter’s husband.’

Penny looked over and laughed. ‘That’s Mary Buttercoombe and her son, Simon. So probably not sleeping together. White Cliff Bay may seem like an odd little town but I don’t think incest is on our list of hobbies.’

‘Ah, OK, what about those two?’

Penny glanced over at a slightly round man, dressed in leather with a long ginger beard and a bald head, sitting opposite a woman in a sweet flowery dress. ‘They met online and this is their first date.’