Just then Linda Forbes, the owner of the bakery, came over with her little six-year-old granddaughter, Tilly, who had the biggest toothiest grin and a mop of messy ginger curls. Penny was glad of the distraction, though she could still see Henry passing her little glances over Linda’s shoulder.

‘Tilly wants to know if you’d like to try our newest recipe, these are marshmallow snowmen biscuits.’

‘Thank you,’ Maggie signed with her hands at Tilly, before taking one and devouring it in seconds.

Penny smiled at Tilly and carefully signed. ‘Did you make these?’

Tilly’s face lit up and her hands flew into action as she signed her reply. Penny had to concentrate really hard to see what she was saying. ‘I helped with putting the marshmallows on the icing and Nanny put the eyes and nose and mouth on. I decorated some myself but Nanny said that we could eat those rather than putting them in the shop for people to buy.’

Penny signed back. ‘I want to see the ones that you made, I bet they’re beautiful.’

Tilly grinned and turned and ran into the back of the shop, no doubt to retrieve her artfully made biscuits.

Linda smiled warmly at Penny. ‘You’re so good with her, when are you going to have children of your own? You would make such a wonderful mum.’

Penny felt the familiar pain in her chest at the thought of having her own family and even Maggie gave her a sympathetic smile as she wolfed down the last of her biscuit.

‘All the girls in your year at school have kids now,’ Linda said. ‘In fact, you’re the only one over the age of twenty-five not to have any children—’

‘That’s not true,’ Maggie interrupted. ‘Jade was in our class, she doesn’t have any children, neither do Beth or Chelsea or any of the Blonde Bimbo Brigade.’

‘And we all give thanks for that. What kind of mums would they make, going out and getting drunk and ending up in a different man’s bed every night? But Penny here would make a fantastic mum.’ Linda turned her attention back on Penny. ‘How old are you now, twenty-nine, thirty? You don’t want to leave it too late. Your biological clock is ticking. You don’t even need a man these days, you can be artificially inseminated. You surely don’t want to be alone for the rest of your life?’

Penny stared at her in horror. This wasn’t the first time the people in the town had thought it was their business to talk about Penny’s lack of children but it was the first time it had been put so bluntly. To her embarrassment, she knew Henry was listening to every word too.

‘I don’t really want children,’ Penny said, quietly, even though it was a lie.

Linda stared at her as if she was some kind of monster. ‘Why wouldn’t you want children?’

‘Excuse me.’ Henry suddenly loomed over them all. ‘Can I buy some cakes? I’m in a bit of a rush so…’

‘Of course, sorry to keep you waiting.’ Linda quickly moved back behind the counter and Henry flashed Penny a look of concern before he turned away.

He had stepped in to save her.

Tilly came running over to Penny carrying a plate of misshapen biscuits. Tilly’s snowmen either looked drunk or as if they were based on Picasso paintings, with wonky eyes and manic grins.

‘They’re beautiful, I love them,’ Penny signed and Tilly grinned, handing her one to eat. ‘Oh no, I couldn’t, these are yours.’

But Tilly insisted and Penny took a big bite. ‘Delicious.’

Tilly skipped off behind the counter again, taking her creations with her.

Maggie leaned over the table. ‘Ignore the nosy old bat. Having children is no fun, they poo and cry all the time, you never get any sleep, you spend your whole life driving them around as they have far more of a social life than you, every penny you earn gets spent on them. You really are better off without them.’

‘And this is your third child?’ Penny laughed.

Maggie’s face lit up as she smiled adoringly at her belly. ‘I know, I never seem to learn my lesson.’

Penny stood up. ‘I better go, I have a carving to finish before tonight.’ She placed a kiss on Maggie’s cheek. ‘I’ll see you later.’

Maggie waved at her as she was eyeing some of the other cakes that were on sale behind the glass counter.

Penny reached the door the same time as Henry did and he opened it for her and let her go out ahead of him, hoisting Bea up onto his hip as he followed her out.

He walked up the street with her, but he didn’t say anything.

‘Thanks for, erm…’ Penny gestured vaguely back towards the bakery.

‘No problem. Is everyone in the town as rude as that?’

‘She wasn’t being rude, it’s just people don’t really mind their own business around here.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that. Where I come from, no one pokes their nose into what anyone else does with their life.’

‘People care, they look out for each other. It might come across as nosy but it comes from people genuinely wanting the best for everyone. I like to pretend that I don’t want my own children or family but in reality I do and the people of the town know that.’

Henry stared at her and she winced.

‘I hate that I’m so brutally honest with you. There’s something about you that brings all my secrets to the fore. I wish I could blame the mulled wine, but I can’t even do that today.’

‘What were you doing with your hands in there?’ blurted out Bea from the safety of Henry’s arms. Henry stared at Bea in confusion.

‘The little girl in the bakery, Tilly, she’s hearing impaired, which means she can’t hear anything…’

‘She can’t hear anything?’ Bea’s eyes were wide with surprise.

‘No, so when people talk to her she can’t hear what they say. So she communicates with her hands. It’s called sign language and she makes different movements with her hands to say different words.’

Bea nodded solemnly, with all the seriousness of a four year old taking the weight of the world on her tiny shoulders.

‘Shall I teach you how to sign your name and the next time you see Tilly you could introduce yourself?’

Bea nodded keenly and Penny showed her the three simple gestures for the letters B, E and A, acutely aware that Henry was staring at her the whole time. What was it about this man? He wasn’t watching her hands and what she was doing, he was just staring at her. She glanced up briefly from Bea into his eyes and was thrown by the sheer hunger there. He looked away first, clearly embarrassed by being caught staring.

He cleared his throat. ‘So you learned sign language so you can communicate with Tilly?’

Penny smiled. ‘The whole town did. When Tilly’s mum, Polly, found out she was hearing impaired she came to the town meeting and said she was going to arrange sign language lessons at her house and asked if anyone wanted to attend so they could communicate with her daughter when she was older. Almost everybody in the town turned up. They had to move the lessons from her house to the town hall to accommodate everybody. Some only learned the basics, but most people can converse quite fluently now. Tilly is such a confident little girl because of it, she can talk to anyone in the town now and not feel excluded. People care here, and I know they don’t always go about it in the right way – and they gossip and stick their noses in where they’re not wanted – but they genuinely do care.’

Henry nodded, thoughtfully. ‘I can see that it has—’

Just then Beth, second in command of the Blonde Bimbo Brigade, came striding over. She sidestepped Penny and managed to slide in between her and Henry with the practised art of someone who had done it a thousand times before. Beth was beautiful and had a much softer way about her than her friend, Jade; most men were putty in her hands.

‘Henry, I’m Beth…’

Henry stopped dead in the street. Penny wasn’t surprised, Beth seemed to have that effect on all men.

Penny paused awkwardly for a moment, before realising that her and Henry’s conversation was now over – he only had eyes for Beth.