Henry returned to the gingerbread house and Penny looked at him hopefully as Daisy ran off to get a few more oversized sweets.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve sorted it. She won’t bother us again.’

‘Really? Because she certainly walked off with a skip in her step.’

‘I’ve sorted it,’ Henry repeated.

He threw himself into building the house, hoisting Daisy up so she could help to attach the roof and do the icing at the top, helping with the decorations and the best placement of the big foam sweets for an aesthetic appeal. Lastly, as several teams had already finished, they added the cardboard box to the front, making a short porch, and quickly added decorations and icing to that too. He barely heard the cheers from the audience as they saw what they were doing or the good-natured calls of cheating from the other teams, his mind was only on what he had to do after this was finished. It was scummy, he knew that, and he’d probably end up with no job afterwards anyway but it was the only way to stop this before it got any further.

The other teams finished and the judges walked around to make their decisions, but he was barely aware of any of it. His heart was hammering against his chest. For their ingenuity in using the cardboard box as the porch they won first place in the design stakes, something that Daisy and Penny were over the moon about, but Henry couldn’t concentrate, could barely even muster a smile as the hamper of chocolate and other goodies was handed over. They didn’t win overall because they had been one of the last teams to complete their house. Daniel and Maggie’s team won again but Henry was so distracted he even forgot to clap. He was finding it difficult to breathe now as panic slowly set in.

Edward awarded the final prizes, said a few more words to the crowd and then suddenly people were leaving.

He looked at his watch, it was already past half past five. He needed to act now.

As the last of the crowds dispersed and people shouted out their goodbyes to each other, Henry left Penny and Daisy and marched straight over to Edward. But as he got close, he noticed that Audrey, Clara’s assistant, was talking to him. Crap. He hadn’t accounted for this. What was she telling him? If she was a friend of Clara’s then she certainly wouldn’t be painting him in a very good light for what he had said to Clara in the office the other day. But whatever she was saying, he wasn’t going to turn back or change his mind.

He approached and Edward was clearly furious. Edward saw him come closer and his expression of anger only deepened.

‘Henry, is this true?’

Henry swallowed. ‘It depends what Audrey has told you. I can certainly tell you my version if you’d like to hear it.’

Edward nodded, his eyebrows slashing down into a deep frown as Henry explained everything. He had never seen Edward so angry before, and Henry tried to imagine what he would feel if someone came up to him and said these things about Anna. Henry would most likely take a swing for them and Edward looked about ready to do the same. Finally he finished. Well most of it.

‘That’s pretty much what Audrey just told me. She told Clara that if she doesn’t leave you alone she would tell me, and after seeing Clara with you today, Audrey knew it had gone too far.’

‘She threatened me with my job if I told you, but I’d rather lose it than let her get away with that,’ Audrey said, clearly as terrified about telling Edward as Henry had been.

‘I know you have no reason to believe me,’ Henry said. ‘I’ve worked for you for one day, but I have no reason to lie to you. I want this job, I moved across the country to take this job and I would never do anything to risk losing it, but I will not be blackmailed into sleeping with her so I can keep it. Sadly I can prove I’m not lying too. Right now, she is waiting in her office for me to come and sleep with her. She told me to meet her there at six or she would tell my girlfriend that we’ve been sleeping together. I agreed but knowing that I was never going to go and thought you might like to go in my place. You’ll be able to see that I’m not lying about this. Her being there should be all the proof you need.’

‘Henry, I don’t need any proof. I believe you. Sadly it’s not the first time this has happened. Although I’ve only heard rumours before and none of the men were actually brave enough to come and tell me about it. I don’t know if any of them slept with her to keep their jobs, I’d like to think they slept with her because they wanted to, not because they were forced to. Without any complaints or proof there was very little I could do to stop it other than talk to her but she always insisted she had never done anything wrong. I will go and see her now, and I will put a stop to this. You have my sincere apologies that this has happened but I assure you it will never happen again, to you or to anyone else. Please rest assured, both of you, that your jobs are safe, but I would ask that you please keep this to yourselves. The reputation of White Cliff Bay Furniture Company is a very good one and I would hate something like this to tarnish the company or get out into the local or national presses.’

Henry and Audrey nodded.

Edward said goodbye and Henry thanked Audrey for her honesty. He would have told Edward anyway, but it was easier having two of them corroborate the same story.

He walked back over to Penny, feeling like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He should have told Edward the other day rather than dragging it out like this. It could have been over so much sooner.

Daisy was nowhere to be seen as he approached. Penny was watching him carefully.

‘Daisy has gone off to see an art exhibition in town with one of her new friends – apparently Jackson Cartwright has some paintings in the town hall so she wants to see it and then they are going for pizza afterwards. I hope you don’t mind, I said it was OK. I gave her some money and Rebecca’s mum said she would drop Daisy off later and…’

She trailed off as he suddenly wrapped himself around her, holding her close to him and not caring who saw.

It was over and now everything could get back to being perfect again with this incredible, patient, beautiful woman.

Penny tried to watch Henry talking to Edward outside the lounge window without letting Daisy notice how worried she was. They had come back from dropping off a couple of ice sculptures earlier and Edward had been waiting for them, awkwardly talking with Daisy who had also returned in their absence.

Daisy was sitting next to her now, giving Bernard all the attention in the world and she clearly had no idea what was going on other than Henry was talking to his boss. Edward had obviously been very diplomatic with whatever he had talked to her about.

Whatever was going on, they both looked very serious.

She watched Edward walk off and Henry wave him goodbye before he let himself back in through the front door. He didn’t say anything but the look he gave her was one of pure relief. It really was over, and by the looks of things his job was safe too. Henry hadn’t said a lot about what had happened after the Gingerbread House Race, or what Clara had said to him, just that he had told Edward everything and he would just have to wait and see what would happen next.

‘Let’s all go out for dinner tonight,’ Henry said, smiling hugely.

‘I’ve already had enough pizza to last me a lifetime,’ Daisy said. ‘You guys go out though.’ She waggled her eyebrows mischievously.

Penny blushed. Daisy seemed dead keen on them getting together, which was quite a leap from the conversation Penny had had with her the week before.

‘You should come out with us anyway,’ Penny said. ‘You can have dessert. Don’t stay here on your own on a Saturday night.’