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Sorry to cancel on you, Karen, but I have to be in the office today. Rain check? David Forrester.Penny pressed send and then deleted the message from his phone so he wouldn’t see it. Feeling guilty, she couldn’t settle back in bed and so she wandered into her little room and sat down in front of her dollhouse. Playing soothed her troubled mind and soon she had all but forgotten the text.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jack wiped the kitchentable down after the children’s breakfast. He lifted Allie’s phone out of the way; it chimed in his hand, a text. He opened his mouth to yell that Allie had a message then thought better of it. She was upstairs supervising the children’s morning wash. He opened the message. Who the fuck was David Forrester and what was he doing sending a rain check on lunch with his wife? He noted that this man had called her Karen. Allie couldn’t be having an affair, surely? He replaced the phone and rinsed the cloth, wringing it out and he placed it over the arm of the tap to dry. All the while his mind raced.
Sex had been off the scale amazing since he’d taken charge in the bedroom. He’d never felt insecure about Allie’s commitment to them before, so why was he feeling anxious now? He dismissed the idea of an affair. So what did that leave—debt, surely not? He struggled to imagine what secrets Allie could have to hide.
“Right, that’s the children sorted. What time do you have to leave?” Allie asked as she entered the kitchen and picked up her phone, scanning the screen.
“Any minute now, I have an extraction at eight-thirty. The hygienist is in this afternoon so I can be home by one. How about lunch?”
“Hmm?”
“Allie, are you listening?”
She looked up. He didn’t like the faraway look in her eye. Allie was distracted and that set alarm bells ringing. “Lunch?” he prompted.
“Sounds nice, but I have a book to finish editing today and another two queued. So I guess I’ll take a rain check, but thanks, love.”
Those same damn words.Rain check. He noted she made no mention of the text. Something was up. “In that case, I’ll stay at the surgery and catch up on paperwork,” he said decisively. Moving to the door, he dropped a kiss on her cheek, yelled a goodbye to the children, and left the house. There was something going on with Allie and he was going to get to the bottom of what that was, perhaps quite literally.
* * *
As soon as her husbandleft, Allie texted David back.Could you make the afternoon instead?she messaged.
Despite Penny’s insistence that she need not meet this David person, Allie knew she had to. Ever since their parents had passed, she’d felt responsible for her little sister. Penny had not taken the deaths of both parents from the road accident in South Africa well. Neither had Allie, but she’d had Jack and the children. Penny was all alone and it seemed to Allie that her sister was vulnerable. None of Penny’s previous dates had materialised into relationships, which seemed odd to Allie.
“Mummy, I can’t find my felt-tipped pens.” It was Lucy.
“Where did you last use them, poppet? Come along, I’ll help you look.”
* * *
David towelled himselfdry and crossed into the bedroom. Penny was gone, leaving the bed rumpled. His phone pinged. He read the new text. Karen asked to alter their meeting to the afternoon. He sent back an alternative time of two o’clock. They could still get lunch served at that time. He decided to cook breakfast for Penny and himself; that way they’d last until a two o’clock lunch. He could hear her singsong voice coming from the nursery and smiled. He loved the way she dipped in and out of her little persona. He would need to make sure she bathed, brushed her teeth, and dressed.
Whistling happily, David realised he was enjoying being Penny’s daddy. He loved her adult persona too, which reminded him, he had a gift for her, but not one to hand over while she was in little mode. It would have to wait for now.
