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1
Six months earlier
‘Penny?’ Simon Canter shouted from the bottom of the vicarage stairs, his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, a sheen of sweat on his brow.
‘Penny.’ He shouted a little louder.
He had been emptying and clearing his office for the last three hours and it had not put him in the happiest of moods. ‘Penny!’
‘What?’ Her voice from upstairs was irritated. ‘I’m sorting the bloody books in Jenna’s room.’
‘Where are the bin liners?’
‘Under the sink, where they usually are.’
‘I’ve looked and they are not.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ she muttered to herself, then shouted, more loudly, ‘Have you looked in the box by the back door?’
‘No.’
‘Well, look!’
Penny was not quite as busy as she was pretending. In truth she had been lying on her daughter’s bed for most of the morning, surrounded by packing cases and constantly being distracted by long-forgotten possessions. She had been flicking through her own old copy of Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes. She had won it at her boarding school. Her headmistress’s inscription still gave her a tiny thrill of pride.
Awarded to Penelope Leighton
For continued improvement in English Literature.
Congratulations
Miss Elsie Bird
Penny had had a difficult childhood. Her father had died when she was young and later she had discovered the woman she had been told was her mother was not. It had destroyed her sense of self-worth and left her with a need for praise and approval wherever she could find it. Even now, reading Miss Bird’s dedication to her more than thirty years later, she felt the pleasure of having done well.
It wasn’t until she’d met Simon, in her early forties, that she’d found the wonder of loving and being loved in return. And she, a woman who worked in the febrile, emotionally incontinent, ego-driven world of television, had found all that in a vicar! Now Simon shouted again from downstairs, ‘They are not there!’
‘What aren’t where?’
‘The bin liners.’
Penny huffily put the book down and went to go downstairs and find the bloody bin bags herself when she spotted them. They were where she had put them, at the top of the stairs.
‘Oh, here they are,’ she called cheerfully, covering her guilt.
Simon was grumping up the stairs.
‘Sorry, darling,’ she said with a hint of accusation as she met him midway. ‘Someone must have left them upstairs.’
Simon looked tired. His normally clear, tanned face and chocolate eyes were dulled with worry. ‘We have less than a week.’
She stroked his balding head and kissed his brow. ‘I know. We’ll be ready. I promise.’
‘I’ve still got the garage to tackle. What am I going to do with all those tins of old paint?’
Penny placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘The new people might want them to touch up any scuffs.’ She wiped a string of cobweb from his eyebrow. ‘I think you need some elevenses. Everything will look better after a coffee and a digestive or two. Come on.’ Taking his hand, she pulled him towards the kitchen.
Outside early spring was dawning on the little patio that Simon had built last summer, with the help of the village gardener, known to all as Simple Tony. The flagstones were warming and a robin was busily building a nest in the early clematis that clambered around the kitchen window.
Penny carried the coffee tray outside and balanced it on top of the lichened birdbath. Pulling up two tatty wicker chairs, she took the edge of her cardigan and swept away the dried winter leaves and crumbly bird poo from the seats.
Setting the chairs side by side, she plonked herself down with a sigh as Simon followed her out with a packet of ginger nuts.
Penny pulled her shoulders back and tipped her face to the sun. ‘The sea smells good today.’ She inhaled noisily, filling her lungs.
Simon sat down and opened the biscuits. ‘Ginger nut?’
She exhaled, shaking her head. ‘I’d prefer a digestive.’
‘There aren’t any.’
She looked at Simon, weighing up whether it was worth the risk of contradicting him by getting up and getting the digestives from the larder where she had put them, or just saying nothing. She chose the latter.
‘Not to worry,’ she said, and took another lungful of air with closed eyes.
Simon fiddled with the ginger nut wrapper, running his thumb around to find the elusive tape to pull and, while he did so, looked around at his beloved garden, recalling all the hours that he and Penny had poured into it.
The cherry blossom tree marking Jenna’s baptism.
The Wendy house under it.
The drift of daffodils, just budding now, planted several autumns before.
Eventually he found the Cellophane string and pulled.
Six ginger nuts sprang out and hit the ground.
Penny opened one eye. ‘Bugger,’ she said.
He sighed. ‘Are we doing the right thing?’ He picked up a biscuit and shook the grit off before dipping it in his coffee.
Penny exhaled impatiently. ‘Yes!’
‘It’s Jenna I worry about most,’ Simon said, looking at the vegetable patch that he really ought to have dug over by now. ‘Taking her away from this. Her home. Her garden. Her friends. The life she has known.’
Penny abandoned her deep breathing and gave him a sharp look. ‘How many times are we going to go over this?’ She snatched up a ginger nut before the beady-eyed, nest-building robin got it, and bit into it noisily. ‘We are going to Brazil,’ she said. ‘It’s your dream and we’re going to go for it!’
He ran his hand over his head. ‘Am I being selfish? What about you and your work?’
Before he could take another bleat, Penny was on him. ‘Stop being so sodding negative. I do believe Brazil has running water and electricity and phone lines and the internet! I can run my office from there easily. In fact, it may be better than being here. And Jenna is seven going on twenty-one and bursting for an adventure.’
‘She takes after you.’ Simon gloomily drank his coffee.
Penny sat up and looked him square in the eye. ‘Do you know what she told me last night?’
‘No.’
‘She told me that her friends at school were collecting things for the children you will be working with.’
‘What things?’
‘Hairbands, football shirts, pens, notepads, balls, make-up. Stuff that street kids have never had. She’s even set up a website with her form teacher, Miss Lumley, so that she can keep them up to date with her blogging and vlogging.’
‘Really?’ Simon’s eyes were shining with emotion.
‘Yes, but keep it under your hat and act surprised because I wasn’t supposed to tell you.’
He turned his gaze back to the garden and Jenna’s cherry tree. ‘It is going to be all right, isn’t it?’
‘It’s going to be bloody amazing!’ Penny stretched out to take his hand. ‘I know I’m not always the greatest vicar’s wife in the world, but the important thing is that I am your wife and the only one you have. Even the bishop has started to afford me some respect. He managed to look me in the eye rather than my cleavage last time I saw him … a huge step for mankind.’
‘He doesn’t understand strong successful women.’
‘Well, he’s going to have to. There are a hell of a lot of us about.’
‘Supposing the accommodation is even more basic than we’ve been led to believe? You might hate it.’
‘You forget I have spent most of my working life on film locations with a chemical toilet and cold showers. I never get the luxury Winnebago, believe me. Brazil will be sunny, hot, sexy, all the things that you and I could do with.’ She smiled at him. ‘It’s going to be fun.’
He smiled at her wearily. ‘Dear God, I hope so.’
Somewhere in the house the phone began to ring. ‘Ah, that’ll be God now, telling you to buck up,’ said Penny. ‘I shall say you’re out.’
Penny headed for the phone in the hall, dodging round a pile of boots and coats ready for the charity shop, and reached for the receiver.
‘Holy Trinity Church, Pendruggan. Good morning.’
‘Penny, is that you?’ asked the querulous voice of the bishop. ‘You were a long time answering.’
‘Maybe because we still have the old-fashioned telephone plugged into the wall.’
‘You must ask my office to sort you out a modern cordless one.’
Penny gritted her teeth. ‘Yes. We were turned down.’
‘Have I caught you in the middle of something?’
‘Not at all. We are only packing our lives up for Brazil.’
‘Of course. Brazil. Simon will be marvellous. He’s exactly the sort of man for the job. I must say when I did my ministry in Sudan, many moons ago now …’
Penny closed her eyes, preparing to hear another of the pompous old fart’s dreary tales of self-aggrandisement.
‘The Sudan!’ she said. ‘How … interesting.’
‘Oh my word, it certainly was. The people took to me immediately and the more I worked with them in their villages, taking the good news of the gospels with me, the more they truly loved me. I remember a day when a young woman with a small child on her back came to me and asked, in all humility, “Are you Jesus?”’
‘Well I never,’ said Penny, rolling her eyes at her husband, who was stepping over the coats and coming towards her. ‘How charming! You must tell Simon. He’s right here.’
‘Who is it?’ mouthed Simon.
‘God,’ she mouthed back.
Simon took the receiver from her and shooed her away. ‘William. How kind of you to call.’
Penny collected her coffee from the garden, tucking a couple of ginger nuts into her cardigan pocket, and returned to Jenna’s room. She was faced again with the scattered detritus of moving her life halfway across the world. There had been tears and fierce negotiations about what could go to Brazil and what would have to stay behind and go into storage.
‘But...
