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hours of prancing about in front of the mirror practising her poses. To make up for her disappointment, he’d bought her a Swiss chalet-style playhouse for the garden, which immediately led to ructions from Jensen and Eliza about him always spoiling Daisy.
    He knew that his partiality bothered Mia, but he reckoned he wasn’t the first parent who had a special bond with a favourite child. It was hardly a crime, was it?
    His beer finished, he reluctantly raised himself off the bed. Time to go downstairs and join the party.

Chapter Six
    So far so good, Jensen thought as he snatched a look at Tattie. But then this was the easy part of the evening – his father had yet to make his appearance.
    He had agreed to this dinner, knowing that Mum wanted to arrange it for all the right reasons. One of them being that she was concerned that he and his sisters didn’t see enough of each other, despite he and Eliza both living in London. By no means was she a meddling or a possessive mother, quite the contrary; she was a great mother, the best in his eyes. She never made demands of anyone and rarely did she lose her temper or behave irrationally. Sometimes he wished that she would, that she would let rip and lose control and go a bit crazy. But when it came down to it, they had all, with the exception of their father, become adept at hiding their feelings. It was a defence mechanism, a way to keep Dad at a manageable distance.
    Jensen had regularly spoken to Tattie of his mother and his sisters, but as to his father, he’d kept a lid on that one. She wasn’t stupid, though, the omission inevitably alerted her to something being amiss. ‘You never speak of your dad,’ she’d said. ‘It’s as if he doesn’t exist.’
    ‘Oh, he exists all right,’ he’d replied. ‘He’s what you call a larger-than-life character.’
    He’s certainly that, Jensen thought now as he watched his father throwing the spotlight on himself as he made his entrance into the sitting room where they’d congregated and where Phase I of Operation Scrutinize Tattie was under way by his mother and sisters.
    ‘Ah, I see everyone’s arrived,’ he said.
    Tattie along with Daisy and Eliza and Mum turned round from where they had been standing at the French windows. Tattie had earlier let out a whoop of delight at the sight of a peacock on the lawn. ‘Oh my God, is that thing for real?’ she’d cried, rushing to the window. Her American accent was always more pronounced when she was excited. Or angry. Thankfully the latter didn’t happen too much. Mum had then explained to her that the peacock was called Putin and had free rein of the village, where he roamed at will. When he wasn’t wandering the neighbourhood gardens he was holding court on the village green and waking the inhabitants of Little Pelham obscenely early with his screeching. ‘You’re winding me up,’ Tattie had said. When they’d all confirmed that it was true, she’d shaken her head and puffed out her cheeks. ‘Well, fancy that.’
    ‘This is Tattie,’ Jensen said now and registered with satisfaction his father’s expression – never would he have expected his loser of a son to attract a girl as spectacular as Tattie. ‘Tattie, this is my dad.’
    Tattie offered her hand. ‘Hi, Mr Channing. We were just admiring Putin in the garden. He’s quite something, isn’t he? I thought it was a set-up, you know, put on a show of Englishness to educate the dumb-ass Yank.’ She beamed him one of her dazzling killer smiles. ‘But take it from me, sir, I’m all educated up now.’ Jensen suppressed a smile of his own. When it came to making first impressions, Tattie was in a class of her own.
    ‘Err . . . yes, well, it’s a pleasure to meet you. And please, call me Jeff. Now then, what can I get you to drink? You look like a glass of champagne kind of girl.’
    Tattie laughed. She had the best laugh Jensen had ever heard. Sparky and irrepressible, it was one of the things that had