Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan

Chapter Seventy-three

Huckle shook his head, but he was used to Reuben, having known him for a very long time, so wasn’t quite as astounded as the other parents.

‘Oh God,’ one was whispering. ‘I think the party bag is going to be worth more than the entire gift.’

Seeing as the party bags contained personalised Nintendo Switches for each child, the parent was not wrong in this assumption, but there was a certain over-the-top quality to everything; the sense that Reuben wasn’t actually competing with anyone – because who could – he was doing it for his own pleasure; a sense that money was there to be enjoyed and his generosity was so insane that nobody could possibly hope to be reciprocal. As for vulgar, well, it was fun. So there. Although several of the school mums, on seeing all the beautiful young things who’d also shown up for a party, particularly the bare-chested surfer boys, immediately shared around a lipstick somebody had brought.

‘DARLING!’ shouted Caius, breezing up to Marisa with two people in tow. Neither of them were Binky or Phillip and both were completely androgynous. One of them had a ring through their nose and the other one had a chain in their hand. Marisa wasn’t sure whether they were part of the party entertainment or not. ‘Please meet my best friends.’

He eyed her up.

‘You’re looking suspiciously healthy and well.’

She smiled. ‘Really?’

‘Really! I always knew I was doing the right thing!’

She couldn’t help smiling at him as he leaned in and gave her a big hug.

‘Tell, me, did we ever sleep together? I remember your food, but I don’t remember that.’

‘We didn’t,’ said Marisa, still smiling at him. He appeared to be wearing a toga, for some reason.

‘Well. Aren’t I the idiot,’ said Caius, waltzing off, and although he was daft as a brush, it cheered Marisa up tremendously.

As Polly had suspected, the twins were having a difficult time of it. They were used to breaking up at school and hanging out with their own particular friends; here, everyone was taller than them and completely ignoring them.

They had made several attempts to talk to Lowin after he had lazily repeated ‘nicetoseeyouthanksforcoming’ as they had arrived, but he wasn’t just not playing with them, he was COMPLETELY IGNORING THEM AS IF THEY WEREN’T THERE.

‘Lowin! Lowin!’ Avery was saying, jumping up and down in front of the boy’s eyeline. ‘Do you want to open our presents? Open our presents!’

Lowin noticed his friends behind were sniggering at the babies, ignored Avery’s entreaties and marched off in the direction of the shooting gallery where somehow miraculously everyone won a gigantic teddy bear on their very first time of trying.

Huckle would have intervened, but he was on snake watch for Daisy and was slightly confused by the long pink ribbon of an aerialist. By the time he turned around, the twins were wandering despondently towards the rides, but they had to go on with each other and Daisy desperately wanted to ride on the carousel, where you could choose whichever pink or white horse you wanted, its name written in gold. Avery sulked and refused to go as only girls were going on them, even though he too desperately wanted a shot, whereupon Daisy started to cry.

Huckle dashed up and tried to distract them with the circus performance, but the children were squirming and the clowns were just weird, until a posse of the boys, led by Lowin, made a strategic intervention just as the magician was on the brink of vanishing a DeLorean, a breed of car completely lost on the eight-year-olds but of huge interest to the parents, and staged a walkout to the sea, shedding clothes at random as they did so.

Daisy and Avery had been extremely frightened by the clowns, and were now clinging to Huckle, even though Avery was desperate to run into the sea where Lowin and his friends were body surfing. Some were even attempting to stand up and do real surfing, none of which Avery was remotely a strong enough swimmer to attempt, and he was gearing up for a tantrum while Daisy sobbed, rather more quietly, at whether or not the tightrope walker was going to fall down.

‘Okay,’ said Huckle. ‘Uh, do you want to meet . . . ?’

He consulted a lavishly printed programme. There was a huge picture of Janice the snake on page three.

Daisy’s sobs turned to howling and Huckle made a hasty exit to find Polly. By the time they rocked up to the pizza stand, Huckle had two very hot, cross children on his hands.

Unfortunately, Polly could do nothing about this as the rush was exceptional and the kids couldn’t even get through, being smaller and less shoutier than everyone else there, children and adults alike. Even beautiful models down from London (it had long been a mystery to Polly how Reuben got so many beautiful people to turn up to his parties – she assumed he simply rented them) couldn’t, it turned out, resist a slice of the best pizza north of Milan and east of Brooklyn, and they were rushed off their feet.

Huckle thought allowing the twins to choose ice cream might help cheer them up, which it did, temporarily, until they each chose three enormous and clashing flavours – liquorice, bubblegum and popcorn in Avery’s case – and, miserably hoofed them into their mouths in a bid to eat them before either the sun melted them or their mother caught them eating a frankly obscene amount of ice cream for a five-year-old. Avery managed about five minutes before being lavishly and noisily sick all over the sand.

There was – of course there was – a chill-out zone, air conditioned in a marquee, full of soft furniture and changing colour lighting. A lot of the mums were in there with younger children and babies and stashes of fizz.

The twins whined about going to the ‘babies room’ when there was so much fun to be had outside, but they were sticky and overexcited and tired and Huckle promised them they didn’t even have to go home when the other children went home, so not to worry about it, they weren’t missing anything.

In fact, they were missing the wild animal show and, for reasons no child alive could ever have fathomed, a performance by a nineties pop band (which triggered a mass exodus from the mothers, who immediately discovered their aversion to leaving the babies with people they didn’t know had suddenly evaporated). But he promised they would get back for the pirate ship Polly had texted Huckle to tell them on no account to miss.

There was a room in the chill-out zone showing the latest Disney movie on a big screen, where several other wan-looking children were sitting, contemplating their early overindulgence ruefully and regathering their strength – and Huckle reflected that if he’d wanted the children to go and watch television somewhere, there were quite a lot of parties that could handle that a little cheaper, but here they were, and it was nice to be cool.