Before their world fell apart, the Pennas were just an ordinary Cornish couple, doing their best to make a living. Nick Penna worked hard as a property manager for his boss, Mr Williams, who was known as ‘Squire’ because he owned a large estate in Sennen including a portfolio of luxury holiday homes. Nick’s wife Grace held down several part-time jobs to help make ends meet and they kept their little cottage on the Williams estate neat and tidy. Things were going well for the couple, except for the unwanted attention of estate steward Mike Calcar, who was Grace’s ex-boyfriend and resented Nick’s happy marriage and loyal service to Williams. Mike was the one who started calling them the ‘Proud Pennas’, a nickname put about by gossips in the neighbourhood.
People also began to talk about the Pennas’ teenage daughter Jenni, who had never showed much promise as a child but was now turning heads at the beach with her long golden hair, athletic figure and an amazing talent for surfing. She was simply a natural in the water. Jenni was an only child and very much a ‘daddy’s girl’. Ever since she was tiny, Nick Penna spent every free moment with her down at the beach. Even after a frightening experience at Sennen Cove, when a powerful wave swept little Jenni off her feet and she’d disappeared until Nick had plunged in to save her, she showed no fear of the wild Atlantic Ocean.
After that she had soon learnt to swim like a fish, then to body-board, and the first time she managed to stand up on his longboard Nick was over the moon. Once Jenni was old enough he took her to surf competitions around the coast and now she had all the makings of a champion, although her mother complained that she’d be better off finding a Saturday job than wasting so much time and money on expensive wetsuits and boards. When the gossips joked that Nick must have rescued a different child from the sea that day, he’d just smile and say ‘she’s gifted’ but he still counted his blessings, recalling his fear and amazement when she had reappeared laughing in the foam, buoyed up as if by another’s hand.
Jenni remained blissfully unaware of any talk behind her back and on her eighteenth birthday one July, went down to the beach to try out a new surfboard. That was the summer that ‘Squire’ Williams’s nephew, George, came down from London for the holidays. He was a university student but had a generous allowance from his wealthy parents and had bought himself a Dry Robe and a massive cool-box and parked his SUV out on the damp sand, much to the local boys’ amusement for they knew the tide was coming in. It was Jenni who warned him to move it, and of course George couldn’t fail to notice her beach-babe looks. The local boys were not impressed when they saw him buying her expensive cocktails in the bar later.
However, Jenni was inexperienced in most things except surfing so it was easy for George to flatter her with his compliments and kisses. Mistaking his extravagance for generosity and his arrogance for confidence, she fell for him hook, line and sinker. Others were unimpressed with this holiday romance, ‘Those Proud Pennas – their girl thinks she’s too good for our lads,’ scoffed the gossips, which was soon picked up on by Mike Calcar who never missed an opportunity to cause trouble.
Mike befriended George, taking him riding or shooting on his uncle’s estate and afterwards drinking round all the pubs, making a point of encouraging his flirtation with Jenni, but all the while fuelling local speculation about the Penna’s social climbing. Eventually Nick Penna, who had been too tied up with work to realise something fishy was going on, overheard Mike accusing his daughter Jenni of being a gold-digger. At this point Nick’s patience finally snapped, he confronted Mike and punched him. After that everything went wrong.
Mike Calcar filed a police complaint of assault against Nick and persuaded ‘Squire’ Williams that the Penna family were scheming to entrap his rich young nephew into marrying Jenni. Williams sacked Nick Penna for his aggressive behaviour and proceeded to evict the Penna family from their home on his estate. By the time George returned to university in September, the Pennas were reduced to staying in a friend’s caravan while Nick tried to find another job.
Poor Jenni, beginning to realise the extent to which she had been used, blamed herself for their situation. She was left high and dry when George ignored all her messages and ghosted her on social media. He was gone when she discovered she was pregnant and Nick and Grace were overcome with grief when not long afterwards Jenni died due to medical complications, her life slipping away like the ebbing tide. After this final blow even the gossips relented, feeling that ‘Not so Proud now, Pennas!’ from Mike Calcar was a step too far under the circumstances.
It was after Jenni’s death that Mike’s luck ran out. He lost his job when he was caught drink driving and began to spend most of his time frequenting an abandoned house on a cliff above the beach used by petty criminals and drug-dealers.
So things had changed when George Williams eventually returned to Sennen, looking to entertain himself again after failing his final year exams. Despite his uncle’s warnings, he ended up hanging around at the house on the cliff where Mike and the other lowlifes were only too happy to exploit him and his bank-balance. One night George was reported missing, the coastguard was called out, and he was eventually found staggering about on the sands at low tide, hallucinating and raving about a strange woman he’d met there: singing about death, calling him a betrayer and making terrible threats. ‘Her face,’ George kept muttering, ‘was, and yet was not Jenni’s’. After this breakdown his family paid for a doctor and therapists but despite weeks of the most expensive treatment George remained a nervous wreck, complaining that ‘an invisible power’ was preventing him from moving on with his life. This time the gossip was superstitious, ‘That boy’s been ill-wished! Those Penna’s must have cursed him…’
On a chilly February day, George felt himself drawn to visit the beach again. He had tried to put all thoughts of Jenni out of his restless mind, but he’d learnt it was the anniversary of her death, and the words ‘died this day… died this day…’ echoed around and around in his head until he could think of nothing else. A mist covered the horizon and the sands were empty, but he splashed on through the shallows around a rocky point and there was the mysterious woman he remembered, as if she’d been waiting for him. She beckoned to George, and as he stood transfixed by her face, she raised her hands to his cheeks, drew his head down and placed a cold kiss on his forehead. When she spoke it was in the same sing-song voice as before, ‘You kissed and betrayed the girl that I saved! But the kiss of the sea-folk binds us forever… so now you are mine until death.’
George struggled back in horror but was held in place by the irresistible drag of her grasping arms as he felt icy water swirl around his ankles. He stared in disbelief as the mist darkened and rolled in from the sea, gathered into towering thunderclouds and a sudden bolt of lightning struck the house on the cliff, which burst into flames. Thunder echoed around the bay, the rising tide surged and George screamed when he felt himself carried out of his depth, his body tossed among the waves as if thrown by many hands, until his hopeless cries for forgiveness were drowned out by the ocean’s angry roar.