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.