The Postcard: Escape to Cornwall with the perfect summer holiday read

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, success.’ She felt her throat tighten. ‘Why aren’t I happy, Daddy? Can you help me to feel happy? Help me to be nicer to Simon? A good wife?’

Once Jenna was tucked into her cot, Penny felt drained; if the pile of laundry on the landing hadn’t been winking at her she’d have gone back to bed. The aspirin was working on her hangover but not her spirits. She heard the sound of raking from the garden and closed Jenna’s door. Looking out of the landing window she saw Simon, returned from wherever he’d been, raking leaves on the back lawn. His breath was steaming in the chill air. He looked happy creating neat piles. He stopped for a moment, aware of her gaze. He waved up at her. She waved back and debated whether to take him out a cup of tea as a peace offering.

She took the tea out to him and gave him a kiss.

‘What have I done to deserve this?’ he asked, pulling off his warm gloves.

‘It’s a thank you,’ she said. ‘And an apology. I am so sorry I’m being a cow to live with. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

He put an arm around her waist and hugged her. ‘You’re just a bit tired. We both are. Babies do that, apparently. You’ll be fine.’

‘Will I?’

‘Absolutely. By Christmas you’ll be as right as rain.’

Penny nuzzled into the comfort of Simon’s old gardening jumper. ‘I don’t want to hear the C word.’

Simon kissed the top of her head. ‘Well, there’s a few weeks to go yet and Jenna is old enough to sit up and enjoy it this year. You’ll bring her to the Nativity service, won’t you?’

‘Only if I can put her in the manger and leave her there.’ She looked at Simon to check his reaction. ‘Only joking. Of course I’ll bring her. She’ll enjoy seeing her daddy at work.’

Penny had commandeered the vicarage’s old dining room as her office. Her desk sat under the big Victorian sash window through which the December sun shone weakly. She swung on her new office chair, watching the dust motes that sallied in the air. An estate agent might call this a ‘handsome room with tall ceilings, wood panelling, and magnificent large fireplace’. Which was true. But it was also very cold. She thought about lighting the fire but couldn’t muster the energy to find newspaper and kindling.

She opened her laptop and plugged in the charger, then fished her phone from the drawer where she’d chucked it yesterday.

There was a text from her best friend, Helen.

Hiya. Piran and I wondered if you and Simon would like to go into Trevay one night this week for a bite to eat. We’ll go early so that Jenna can come too. I need a cuddle with my goddaughter! H xx

Penny read the message twice. Helen had been Penny’s friend for almost twenty-five years. They’d worked together as young secretaries at the BBC and Helen had married a handsome womanizer with whom she had two children. Finally, tired of the repeated humiliation of finding the lipstick and earrings of other women in his car, she divorced him, left Chiswick, and found her paradise in Pendruggan, in a little cottage called Gull’s Cry, just across the green from the vicarage. She was now happy with the handsome but difficult Piran.

Penny’s eyes filled with tears again at the thoughtfulness of her friend. ‘We’ll go early so that Jenna can come too.’ Helen knew how hard Penny found it to leave Jenna with a baby-sitter, the anxiety she felt about being apart from her little girl.

Helen understood Penny’s determination to be a better mother to Jenna than her own had been to her.

She replied. ‘Darling, how lovely. I’ll talk to S. xxxx’

She put the phone back in the drawer – ringer off – and checked her emails. She scanned to see if there was one from Mavis. There wasn’t. What did that mean? Had Mavis read the email or not? A cold sweat of anxiety swept over Penny again. Oh God! If she didn’t get Mavis to write more scripts she’d have to find a writer who could do them in a similar style. And quickly. And if that didn’t work there would be no more Mr Tibbs, no more work with Channel 7, and she’d be a laughing stock in the industry, all her old foes sniggering and toasting her downfall. She shivered as a ghost walked over her grave. She remembered something Helen had once said to her, ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean to say people aren’t out to get you.’

She pulled herself together and replied to all the easy emails, deleted the rubbish ones, and left the others for later.

She heard the back door swing open and Simon’s voice. ‘Darling?’ he called. ‘Any chance of another cuppa?’

She dropped her head into her hands and took a deep breath. She forced a smile onto her face and called back, ‘Perfect timing. I’m just finished here.’

As it was almost lunchtime, the cuppa turned into scrambled eggs on toast. Jenna was still sleeping and both husband and wife were greatly appreciating the unexpected peace.

‘By the way,’ said Penny, ‘I had a text from Helen. She’d like us to go to dinner in Trevay with her and Piran. Early, so that Jenna can come too.’

‘That sounds good.’ Simon put his knife and fork together, wiping the last toast crumbs from the corner of his mouth.

Simon sensed that Penny was in a better mood and felt confident enough to bring up a tricky subject. ‘Penny, I really do think a nanny to help you with Jenna is a good idea.’

Penny looked at him wearily. ‘No thank you.’

‘But it would be such a help for you. You could concentrate on your work, go for lunch with Helen, have your hair done. The other day you were saying how you dreamt of spending the day at a spa. Massages and all that stuff.’

‘I can do that when she’s older but not while she needs me.’

‘She’ll always need you. You are her mum and a very good mum. But I worry about you and—’

‘And you worry about how much I drink?’

Simon pulled an expression of regret. ‘Well, yes, if I’m truthful.’

Penny carefully put her knife and fork together and folded her hands in her lap and said as calmly as she could muster, ‘Maybe a little more help from you would be good. Once Jenna has gone to bed for the night, where are you?’

Simon bridled. ‘We’ve been through all this before. I have to work.’

‘I’ll tell you, shall I? Monday, confirmation class. Tuesday, bible study. Wednesday, the parish council. Thursday, sermon-writing night. Friday, the bloody under 16s disco night … Shall I go on?’

‘No.’

‘And now it’s almost bloody Christmas with all that entails! So which night is Penny night? Hm? Tell me.’

‘Well, that’s what I’m saying. We get countless offers from ladies in the parish to mind Jenna and I know you don’t want that. But if we had a nanny, someone you can trust, you could get out more. See Helen. It makes sense.’

Penny put her hands to her temples and squeezed hard. What Simon said made some kind of sense, but why couldn’t he see that she loved Jenna so much that no one could look after her like she did?

There was a loud knock at the front door. ‘I’ll get it,’ said Simon, relieved by the timely interruption, and left the kitchen to walk down the hall to answer.