Penny felt her mouth drop open. ‘A second secret lab in Salthaven? Leo, are you taking some kind of medication? These things simply don’t happen! What would be the point?’
‘Misdirection. My point is that a proper secret research centre really would be secret, even in busy, nosy Salthaven. I’ve been able – or more likely, been allowed – to gather information indicating that whatever is going on at the Lowdale Screw Fittings warehouse is covert. Now, much as I’d like to put that down to my considerable investigative skills, it’s too easy. I think it’s a decoy, Penny, a sacrificial ‘undercover lab’ to focus attention there and not on the real one, wherever it is. In which case, why are Lowdale Screw Fittings building an extension that they can’t possibly need?’
‘Now you’re outsmarting yourself.’ She patted his knee. ‘Still, it’s nice for a man to have a hobby.’
He got to his feet. ‘Nothing like a vote of confidence. Let’s go up to Lowdale again. It there isn’t anything there, they won’t mind us looking.’
‘I can’t. Sorry, Leo, but I’m busy for the rest of the day. I can take you tomorrow, if you want. There’s no hurry, is there? It’s not about to run away.’
He looked at her sadly. ‘No sense of adventure, that’s your trouble.’
‘But I do have sense. Shoo, I need to go home and book Lucinda and Tom a nice restaurant for her birthday. Dinner out will do them the world of good.’
That was a nuisance, but Leo allowed that Penny did have a life of her own to get on with. Full of frustrated energy, he hurried back to the newspaper office and up to the archives floor. He’d put in a couple of hours digging around on the Andrew Collins plane crash. As always, just breathing in the scent of old newsprint awakened his hunter-gatherer instincts. He loved the whole business of sleuthing through reports for clues, letting his mind expand as he read, his brain on a hair trigger for that tiny paragraph or throwaway sentence that would tug him in a different direction. And then tallying the reports with interviews – the huge, glorious mish-mash of facts which, given the right twist, would suddenly fall into place and call itself a story.
Jack Scrivener. A local man called Jack Scrivener had seen the plane crash. Leo read again the succinct few lines that had started him off on this quest, cursing the unimaginative, long-departed reporter. The man didn’t deserve the job-title. The Fifties might have been times of austerity, but surely planes falling out of the sky weren’t common enough that the local paper would make so little of this one? Why was there no follow up?
He closed his eyes, picturing the scene. It had been a dark wet autumn day, Jack hadn’t heard anything due to the crashing waves, but he’d seen the glint of a plane overhead and then felt the ground shake as it came down into the tarn in a boiling, hissing burst. Leo sat back, tapping his fingers on the desk. Something didn’t add up. Something was wrong.
He rang Penny. ‘Do you know of a Jack Scrivener?’
‘I don’t think so. The name doesn’t ring a bell. Hold on.’ A timer sounded in the background. There was a pause and the sound of clattering metal.
‘What are you cooking?’
‘Dundee cake for the Salthaven Show next week.’
‘Cake? Will it last until next week?’ said Leo, fascinated.
‘It will if I don’t tell anyone I’ve made it. Who is this Scrivener chap anyway?’
‘The witness to Andrew Collins’s plane crash.’
‘So he’d be, what, eighty or so by now? Ask at the Over-60s tomorrow. They’ll be a lot more likely to remember him.’
Tomorrow! Leo ground his teeth. He wanted to find out now.
‘Jack Scrivener?’ The name caused a tiny ripple of interest. Eyebrows were raised. Significant looks were exchanged. Leo felt a tingle of excitement in his blood – he was onto something!
‘Bit of a scoundrel, was Jack,’ said Mrs Lane. ‘Didn’t do poor Margery any favours. Been gone these thirty years or more.’
‘Passed away?’ said Leo. ‘That’s a shame.’
‘I didn’t say that, but he might have done by now for all I know. No, they emigrated. Margery had family in New Zealand to speak for them. She was a good girl, but I often wondered if her family knew what they were taking on with him.’
‘Not one of the world’s grafters, then?’
‘Ha! He’d have anything off you if it was free and he didn’t have to work too hard for it. Mind you, he could charm the trout from the stream and the rabbit out of its hole. They didn’t go hungry.’
In other words, Jack was just the sort to be loafing around on the fells ready to witness a plane crash. Leo gave his most winning smile and set about finding out more.
Penny cleared her regular Tuesday morning chores and then turned her attention to where to book dinner for Lucinda and Tom on Friday. She hoped she hadn’t left it too late. She’d told Leo she was going to do it yesterday, but had got cold feet and had a flurry of baking instead. She wasn’t used to this – her eldest daughter never had problems. Lucinda had always looked coolly and dispassionately at life and been one step ahead of it. Even puberty hadn’t caught her unprepared. She’d provided Penny with a shopping list of ‘women’s things’ at the age of eleven and simply ticked the milestone off when the day came.
Penny was not an interfering mother, but she knew something wasn’t right with Lucinda’s marriage and it was more than she could do to stand idly by without making a push at a remedy. Her mind boggled at the thought of sitting down with her daughter for a cosy chat about affairs of the heart – the way she would with Frances, for instance – so subterfuge was the only answer.
She rang up their favourite restaurant without ado and – ducking out of a personal conversation – emailed Lucinda letting her know of her surprise present.
Twenty minutes later she had a reply saying thank you and they really appreciated it, but Tom wanted a quiet evening at home that day so Lucinda had changed the booking to the following week if that was all right with her.
Penny sat back, dumbstruck and thwarted. How on earth was she to get the pair of them in a mellow mood together? Then she had a truly brilliant idea. She’d go to the Dun Cow and buy a range of their fabulous small ice cream tubs. Lucinda adored ice cream. Penny would hand-deliver them along with a nice bottle of wine on her daughter’s birthday morning. Nobody could claim that was interfering!
Leo reviewed his notes as he sat on the wall outside the library waiting for Penny. He was nearly onto something, he knew he was. Maybe this return to Lowdale would crystallise it. They could start with the Enterprise Park, then work slowly outwards.
‘Morning, Leo,’ called the waitress from the riverside pub near his boat as she hurried past. She had a copy of today’s Salthaven Messenger sticking out of her tote bag. ‘When are you going to write about the Crown and Anchor, eh?’
‘Whenever my editor coughs up the expenses,’ he called back cheerfully.
Other people smiled or waved to him. He realised he was becoming known here. Settling down. It felt strange, gave him a tug of pleasure. It also gave him a sense of all the time he’d wasted in London, when his job had been all important. He hadn’t lost this sense of belonging somewhere when his former life had crumpled – it had never been there in the first place.
‘Leo!’ Penny was parked precariously half in and half out of the crowded layby. ‘Hurry up.’
He strode across the pavement.
‘Anything useful?’ she asked as he folded himself into the car.
‘Bits and pieces. Jack Scrivener was a right rascal. When are you going to get a car with a sensibly sized front seat?’
‘When are you going to start driving yourself?’
He grinned and took out his map, telling her what he’d found out. After a while he fell silent, looking at the coastline. When he’d visited his great uncle as a boy, he’d taken the scenery for granted – now he looked with new eyes. Below him on his left as Penny drove along the coast road was a low-lying stretch of grey-green land between the cliff and the sea, perhaps a mile wide, ribboned with silvery streaks of water. On their right rose a gentle roll of hills, a promise of the heights to come further inland. ‘Do you still see it?’ he asked Penny. ‘Do you still see the beauty?’
She flashed him a quick smile. ‘I do when I’m with you. Other times I know it’s there, but I don’t always appreciate it.’
Just for a moment Leo felt oddly warmed.
‘By the way,’ she added. ‘You will have noticed that rain cloud, I assume?’
He waved the weather away as an irrelevancy, continuing to gaze around. ‘I still don’t see how anyone, even a devil-may-care test-pilot, could crash into somewhere he must have visited a thousand times.’
‘He might not have visited it a thousand times by air,’ pointed out Penny. She frowned. ‘Or maybe he had. Was he actually on a job or had he just borrowed the plane? Was he treating it as a sort of company car to come home in for the weekend?’
Leo was jolted out of his musings. ‘That’s an interesting thought.’
‘I was watching an air force documentary last night. Did you see it? It seems they often used to do that kind of thing. If Andrew Collins was originally a WW2 pilot, the habit might have stuck.’
Leo felt that stirring of instinct again. ‘Except this time, instead of a tried and trusted workhorse, he was flying an overbred, hair-trigger stallion. You might have something there.’
‘Can you find out if he was on a job? Did they keep records?’
‘The company went bust. All the interesting bits were sold to one of their rivals, which in turn was swallowed up by a bigger player again.’ It wouldn’t stop him trying to find out though. He’d just have to dig a little deeper. He jotted bullet points down on his pad, possible lines of enquiry, places he could ask.
Penny said, ‘It’s going to be a lot of work. Is it worth it? A sixty-year-old story for a small regional newspaper.’
He sat bolt upright. ‘Are you mad, woman? What sort of fully paid-up member of the puzzlers’ guild are you? It’s always worth it. You can’t just leave a story.’
‘I’m not saying I don’t want to know,’ said Penny. ‘But when does the effort taken become too great for the result?’
Inside him, something twisted. ‘Never. The story is always king. Besides, what else have I got to do with my time?’ He looked to his left again, at the coastline, at the long strip of beach that the outgoing tide had uncovered. His son would love it here if Kayleigh ever allowed him to come. Leo pictured the pair of them, exploring it together, Daniel digging in the sucking wet sand as he had once done himself – and experiencing the shivery awe of seeing the hole he’d made fill up with seeping water from below. Oh, Daniel. Leo ached with the sense of loss.
‘And of course,’ said Penny, breaking into his thoughts, ‘if people think you’re an amiable loony with nothing better to do than ferret around about the old days, they won’t notice that you’re searching out the big stories at the same time.’
‘Ha!’ Leo’s mood lifted, just like that. He glanced fondly at Penny’s profile as she slowed down for the turning to the disused road just before the Enterprise Park. He really would have to do something nice for her one of these days.
‘Right,’ he said once they were parked in the lane, leaning against the bonnet of her car, eating the filled rolls she’d brought with her, and drinking thermos tea. ‘What can we see?’
‘The sea,’ said Penny. ‘Also that dark cloud getting bigger and closer.’
‘And forklifts trundling innocuously between the Screw Fittings warehouses with varying numbers of pallets. And a dumper truck that went into the furthest one ten minutes ago and hasn’t come out again.’
‘Probably sheltering from the rain,’ murmured Penny, pulling up the hood of her coat.
Leo ate his roll without tasting a single bite. Every sense was telling him he was right. The plane crash story from the Fifties was temporarily forgotten. This was present day and bang up to date. Desultory activity was going on all around the Lowdale Screw Fittings building as a digger levelled the site for the new extension, but an empty yellow dumper truck had definitely gone into that far building and hadn’t come out, and a blue one had come out that hadn’t gone in. The blue one was obscured by a lorry now, but Leo was sure he’d seen a flash of lifting steel as it emptied its contents on the ground. ‘It wasn’t raining ten minutes ago,’ he said, arguing her point about the yellow dumper truck.
‘It is now. And there’s the lightning.’
Out at sea a vivid jag of pure white froze the scene. Beside him, Penny counted, ‘One mile away, two miles away, three …’
Just before the thunder rumbled around them, Leo felt the ground vibrate beneath his feet.
‘That does it,’ said Penny. ‘I’m getting into the car until it blows over.’
The visibility had gone right down. Leo could barely make out the buildings now, let alone the vehicles. He slid thoughtfully into the passenger side. His earlier reflective, borderline-sentimental mood had disappeared. He made rapid shorthand notes, barely aware of Penny beside him. ‘On to the farm then,’ he said, putting his notebook away. ‘I’ll ask Grandad Fell about Jack Scrivener.’
Arriving at Fellrigg in the driving rain, the welcome was definitely less serene than it had been the week before. Rachel was pleased to see them, no doubt about that the way she ushered them quickly into the warm kitchen, got out cake, and poured tea, but there was a very twitchy air to her. ‘I need to pop back to the dairy, Grandad,’ she said as soon as they were settled. ‘You’ll be all right with your friends to talk to.’
Glancing through the window, Penny saw her hurrying across the yard looking rattled and feeling around in her pocket. That was interesting. She wondered if she could manufacture an excuse to go back out to her car for something.
‘Drat,’ said Leo. ‘I’ve left my map in the glove compartment. Could you do me a favour and fetch it, Penny? Not being a local like you, it’s easier if Mr Fell points out the places he’s telling me about.’
She looked at him, startled. How had he known what she was thinking? But he hadn’t, of course. He’d noticed Rachel hurry past the window too and was simply using Penny as an extra pair of eyes and ears, trusting her to use them without him spelling it for her.
She slipped out into the yard – and heard Rachel’s voice coming from the dairy. She was evidently talking into a mobile phone.
‘Listen, Tom, you’ll have to come over …’
Tom? Penny’s blood turned to ice. It was one thing to suspect her son-in-law of dalliance, quite another to hear confirmation with her own ears. Rachel’s voice sounded again, edging towards frustration.
‘How can I? I can’t get out until it’s time to do the school run.’
She was obviously busy in the dairy, her voice came and went, interspersed with the opening and shutting of fridge doors, bursts of mixers, and running of taps.
‘Yes, well it’s been a shock to me too! Neither of us expected this, did we? I can’t believe it’s happened so fast. It’s got to the stage where I just can’t – Oh Tom, it would be so much easier if we could tell everyone.’ There was a long pause and then her voice again, sounding defeated. ‘OK, we’ll leave it until after Friday. I’ll manage until then. Somehow. One thing’s for sure – we can’t stop now. We’re in too deep.’
Penny’s feet seemed to be rooted to the concrete strip by the outer door. She realised Rachel’s voice had stopped. She pelted for the car, grabbing the map and getting back indoors before the young woman was any the wiser.
She hardly heard any of Leo’s conversation with Grandad Fell. She couldn’t believe it was true. Rachel Fell was involved with Penny’s son-in-law. She felt numb. How on earth was she to deal with this? As soon as they got clear of the farm, she stopped the car by the side of the road and poured it all out to Leo.
He was silent for a moment. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I just don’t buy it.’ He looked at her, his eyes honestly puzzled. ‘In my line of work I’ve seen a lot of marital breakdowns, I’ve known a number of cheating men – and Tom doesn’t seem one of them. Tell me again what you heard Rachel say?’
Penny repeated it. ‘She used his name twice, Leo. And she agreed to hang on until after Friday. That’s Lucinda’s birthday. They’ve got to be having an affair.’
He shook his head. ‘He’s a better actor than I took him for.’
‘It makes it even more important for us to go to the Dun Cow. It won’t take long, just in and out. I was going to get little tubs of their ice cream to put in my freezer for Lucinda’s birthday anyway. Now they might give her a bit of comfort as her marriage falls apart.’
The Dun Cow’s car park was packed. Penny stared in amazement. ‘I’ve never seen it like this before. Never ever. What’s happening?’
Even more astonishingly, when they got inside, the restaurant was full! Had the whole of Salthaven had a taste bypass?
‘That’s fine,’ said Penny when the barman told them with morose pleasure that it would be a half-hour wait for a table. ‘We don’t want to eat here. Once was enough. I’d just like to buy some ice cream tubs to take away, please.’
‘Can’t,’ said the barman. ‘Not unless you’re customers.’
‘Then I’d like an orange juice and five tubs of ice cream,’ said Penny with gritted teeth.
‘We’ve run out.’
Leo put a calming hand on her shoulder. ‘Do they know that?’ he asked, jerking his head at the restaurant full of people.
‘Not yet,’ said the barman. ‘Oh, you going? We’re expecting a delivery.’
‘Somebody else must sell it,’ fumed Penny as they squeezed past parked cars to get to hers. ‘Weren’t you going to investigate?’
‘Yes, but I’ve been working on the plane crash … Oh, I see!’ Leo suddenly burst out laughing.
Penny was incensed. ‘What’s so funny? My daughter’s marriage is about to go into meltdown and you’re creasing up! I realise your people skills are shaky, Leo, but that’s really not the most diplomatic of moves when you are depending on me for a lift home.’
Leo wiped his eyes. ‘But it is funny. I’ve realised what’s happened. Penny, I’ve worked in the provinces and on Fleet Street. I’ve reported everything from weddings to banking scandals. But I can honestly say that this is the first time I’ve seen with my own eyes the power of my words.’
Penny stared at him. ‘What are you talking about?’ Then she noticed the newspaper on the back seat of the car next to hers. Of course! The Salthaven Messenger was out today. ‘Your restaurant review of the Dun Cow is in? What on earth did you say?’
Leo was still chuckling. ‘That the service was dreadful and the food was dire. And because my companion didn’t want them to wreak havoc on sticky toffee pudding, she’d opted for ice cream which confounded our expectations by being out-of-this-world stupendous.’
Penny huffed. ‘Well, I wish you’d told me. I’d have bought Lucinda’s tubs yesterday.’
‘See if you can find that ice-cream questionnaire,’ said Leo as Penny dropped him off at the Messenger. ‘I think I remember you putting it in your handbag.’ He hurried up the stairs in defiance of his limp, partly because he’d been sitting all morning and needed to use some energy, and partly because he didn’t have time for physio and was of the opinion – in direct contradiction of everyone’s advice – that if he used his leg as normal, it would eventually be normal all by itself.
In the office he leafed through his post while listening to the recording he’d made of Grandad Fell at the farm.
An envelope was flicked across the room to land on his desk. ‘This week’s assignment. Never say I don’t do anything for you.’
Leo looked up. Harry, his editor, was leaning against the doorframe.
Leo opened the envelope and grinned. ‘Excellent! A dinner voucher for the Castle Inn so my ‘discerning companion’ can try their version of a sticky toffee pudding. Nice one. That was quick off the mark of them. Usual thing? Present it at the end of the meal so they don’t know it’s me?’
‘I reckon.’ Harry was listening to the recording. ‘What’s this?’
‘The test-pilot story for the ‘Sons of Salthaven’ series. I’m trying to track down the crash site. This old boy knew the original eye-witness.’
Harry made an indeterminate grunt. ‘And you’re also still digging about Lowdale Screw Fittings, I see.’
Leo met his editor’s eyes, feeling resolution tense in his gut and snap into place all the way up his spine. He’d worked with the Harrys of this world before: older, world-weary, children and grandchildren to support, not looking to rock the boat. ‘Hey,’ he said lightly, ‘I just want to do a spotlight on local industry to show it’s not all farming and fishing.’
Harry’s expression said he wasn’t fooled. ‘If you can find me a farm that’s making a profit without relying on the bed and breakfast trade you’re doing well, son.’
Leo gestured towards the recorder. ‘This one manages. Seriously, Harry, no one’s told me I shouldn’t pursue the other matter. Don’t the public have a right to know?’
Harry gave another sardonic grunt. ‘You’re the hot-shot reporter. Far be it from me to dissuade a man on the scent of a story.’ He straightened up, ready to leave.
Leo eyed him. ‘You’re not going to drop me any hints at all, are you?’
‘That would suggest I knew something, wouldn’t it? Think about it, lad.’
Penny frowned at the dozen or so handbags in the bottom of her wardrobe. Which one had she taken to the pub last week? After a couple of searches producing a library book she thought she’d returned and a very welcome ten-pound-note, Penny found the missing questionnaire. She smoothed it out, disturbed again by the sense of familiarity. She shook her head, unable to pin it down, and instead scrutinised the form for a company name that she could search for on the internet.
There wasn’t one. Not a name, address, email address, or even a phone number. Not even the name of the product. Just a polite request to fill in the boxes and return the answers to the place where she’d bought the ice cream. She’d have to go back to the wretched Dun Cow after all.
‘Mother – your recipe for Dundee cake, can I borrow it?’
How do you borrow a recipe, wondered Penny? ‘Of course you can. I’ll copy it out for you. But if you wait until after next week, you can bid for what’s left of the one I’ve made for the Salthaven Show. You might as well – it all goes towards books for the library this year, doesn’t it?’
Lucinda’s lips tightened with chagrin. ‘I was going to make Dundee cake for the show myself, but there’s no point if you’re doing it.’
Goodness, thought Penny, that was almost a compliment. ‘Really, Lucinda. If everyone thought like that no one would enter at all and the show would fold. It’s getting thin enough as it is.’
‘Oh, I probably wouldn’t have time anyway. What can I make that’s quick?’
‘Scones? You make nice scones. Much lighter than mine.’ And now Penny would have to make some too, just so Lucinda could beat her. As if she didn’t have enough to do.
‘They’re not very flamboyant, though, are they?’ Lucinda paced her clean, tidy kitchen with cloth and spray, on the lookout for a stray crumb to swoop on and whisk into the bin. She flicked through the show schedule pinned to the corkboard on the wall. ‘I know! Tom bought some cheese from Fellrigg Dairies. I could make cheese scones first thing that morning and enter them in the ‘Local Ingredients’ class while they’re still fresh.’
Penny felt her heart lurch. ‘Good idea. Where did you say he got this cheese from?’
There was a hiss as a suspect germ was sprayed out of existence. ‘Fellrigg Dairies. You remember Rachel Davies from school who married Billy Fell? They were making nothing on their milk, so she’s branching out into other dairy produce. Tom’s company was involved in the testing for their certificate. It’s very good. I’ll give you a taste.’ Lucinda’s voice turned censorious. ‘You ought to buy local and shop there too, Mother. Better than encouraging all those food miles that the supermarket racks up. Besides, it’s quite cheap doing it direct on the internet.’
Well, that explained how Tom had met Rachel, thought Penny grimly, as she drove home and turned on her computer to look up Fellrigg Dairies. But really, the cheek of him bringing her cheese home to his wife!
Penny rang Lucinda early on Friday morning to wish her a happy birthday. To her alarm, Lucinda sounded odd . ‘Are you all right, darling?’ she asked uneasily.
‘Yes, I …’ Her daughter’s voice trailed off. ‘Could you take Bobby to nursery for me, do you think?’
Penny scrambled out of bed, nearly spilling her tea. What on earth could be wrong? ‘Of course I can. I’ll be there at twenty to nine. Or do you want me earlier?’
‘No,’ said Lucinda in that strange, detached voice. ‘Twenty to nine is fine.’
In full alarm mode, Penny hung up the phone and sprang into action. She leapt in and out of the shower, bolted down her toast and tea, thrust wine and chocolate into one bag and hung the freezer bag off the door handle so she wouldn’t forget to pack the ice cream. With a ribbon of worry on replay in her head, she rejected her jeans and fleece for a pair of smart trousers and a nice coat that wouldn’t disgrace Lucinda with the nursery mafia. Then she picked up the phone and stopped, her hand suspended half way through the number.
What was she doing? A crisis in her daughter’s marriage and she was ringing Leo for reassurance instead of phoning her ex-husband. Was she really about to share her troubles with a puzzle-solving colleague, rather than Lucinda’s father?
Oh, get on with it, she snapped to herself. Time enough later to think the implications through.
At twenty to nine precisely, Penny rang her daughter’s bell. Lucinda opened the door, still in her nightdress and dressing gown and with a dreamy look on her face. Penny’s eyes widened. ‘Darling, you’re not well! Why didn’t you say? What’s the matter with you?’
‘Mother, I’m fine. Bobby’s all ready. He’s got his packed lunch, so if you could pick him up at two …’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Penny, following her through to the kitchen. ‘Oh, dear, on your birthday too. Shall I come back and –’ She stopped in shock. ‘Tom! What are you doing home? Are you ill too?’ Good heavens, the world was falling apart! Tom not at work on a Friday. Neither of them dressed. The kitchen table covered in … covered in …
Oh no. Oh my. Oh lord.
Penny sat down on an unoccupied chair, everything falling into place. Oh dear, what a complete and utter fool she’d been.
‘Tom’s given me the most marvellous present,’ said Lucinda, waving a hand at the table. ‘Look, ice cream! Especially for me. He developed it with Fellrigg Dairies – using the very best natural ingredients – and they’re going to market it and we get ten percent of everything sold. Mother, you simply have to taste it.’
Penny stared at the five enormous tubs of ice cream on the table. ‘I think I already have,’ she said faintly. It was all coming back to her now. No wonder she’d recognised the questionnaire. It was exactly the same font and layout as the pregnancy timetable Tom had designed for his wife when she was expecting Bobby. She looked accusingly at her son-in-law, but he had his chin propped on his hands with eyes only for Lucinda, gazing at her as if she was the most splendid creature in the world.
Penny fumbled for a tissue and blew her nose hard. ‘Tell you what, I’ll take Bobby out after nursery and give him his tea today, shall I? It’ll save you cooking. I’ll bring him back about five. Here, have this wine and chocolate as an extra present and, um, enjoy your birthday.’
As they walked down the path, Bobby looked with interest at the small freezer bag that Penny was still clutching. ‘Have you got a packed lunch too, Gran?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m going to Leo’s boat. We’re going to feed the ducks.’
‘I like feeding ducks,’ said Bobby hopefully.
‘I expect we can call in after nursery,’ said Penny. She glanced back at the house, still experiencing a sense of profound shock. ‘Somehow, I don’t think Mummy and Daddy will mind what we do today.’
Penny flopped down on Leo’s saloon couch after putting the tubs in his cold box. She was reeling from the experiences of the morning and it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. ‘I need tea,’ she said, and told him all about it. After he’d finished roaring with laughter, she said, ‘So that was it all along. Tom was testing ingredients for some other company in the normal course of his work, made the thoroughly astonishing discovery that real, local, natural milk made the best-tasting desserts. So he came up with the idea of designing ice cream with Rachel, purely for Lucinda because she loves it so! It’s probably the single most romantic thing he’s ever done – or will ever do – in his whole life.’
Leo quirked an eyebrow at her. ‘Ten percent of the profits? He’s a romantic with an accountant’s heart, I’d say. It’s going to make a lovely story for the paper. Presumably they won’t be averse to the publicity?’
Penny took the mug of tea he handed her, beginning to feel more like herself. She chuckled. ‘Before you run it, you’d better check with Rachel when she’s likely to have production up to speed. At least she can take on extra help now that Lucinda has had her lovely surprise and it’s all out in the open. No wonder the poor girl was so flustered the day the Dun Cow review came out. They’d only been testing the ice cream on a small scale up until then, but she wasn’t about to turn down potential sales! Oh, Leo, I am so relieved, I can’t tell you.’
He grinned, but she could see sympathy veiled behind the humour and was touched by it. She would have said more, but –
‘I’m just glad we’ve cleared the mystery out of the way,’ he said, and flexed his hands. ‘It was distracting you something rotten. Now we can concentrate on the real story.’