Bettina and Oszkar couldn’t have sent just this, could they? Not that she was into presents but it was so small, and even ... insulting?
‘The food is gorgeous, Lou!’ said a couple passing by.
‘Delicious!’
‘Have you seen Tommy?’ Siobhan, Lou’s sister-in-law, had her eyes narrowed as she scanned the room.
‘No,’ said Lou truthfully.
She told herself to stop worrying about Lillian or her bouquet and ate some food with Emily, Simone and the lovely Evan, who was keen to impress upon Lou that he respected her daughter fully.
‘Evan, she knows that,’ said Simone, laughing.
Emily found her father in the corner of the bar with her uncle and dragged the pair of them over to her mother.
‘I’ll get them to play music you like, Mum,’ she said, ‘and you can dance. Siobhan was looking for you, Tommy.’
Tommy looked alarmed and headed back to the bar.
‘I’m not sure I can dance,’ said Ned, a bit unsteadily.
‘You can, Dad,’ said Emily.
‘No really. You know me, not much of a dancer.’
‘It’s Mum’s party,’ Emily said, and Lou watched as her daughter almost pushed Ned onto the dance floor.
‘It’s the Eurythmics,’ said Lou hopefully to her husband.
‘Ah, sorry! You know I’m not a dancer,’ said Ned, apology in his voice, and he sloped off towards the bar.
Lou stared after him. Couldn’t he have made a bit of an effort?
‘Mum,’ said Emily in cheering tones, ‘we can dance even if Dad isn’t in the mood.’
They danced for fifteen hot minutes until Lou was fanning herself with a cocktail menu and they tried to leave, hand in hand, in the middle of ‘Dancing Queen’.
‘Lou, no!’ yelled Simone. ‘You can’t leave now!’
Someone pushed a glass of water into her hand, she downed it and, beaming, joined the gang to shake her thing to a medley of Abba.
Toni arrived, holding a cocktail made up of something pink and fizzy, drank it and then began dancing, too.
‘I love you,’ shouted Lou.
‘Love you too,’ shouted Toni over ‘Money, Money, Money’. Lou stopped caring that Ned was being Mr No-Fun and stopped caring whether her mother was having fun or not. Tonight was about celebrating.
Over the next hour, the party moved up a gear as people abandoned seats to dance.
Lou sent love and smiles up to darling Mim in heaven on her sparkly unicorn, and said thanks to the universe thatshewas around to celebrate her fiftieth.
‘Thank you,’ she yelled at Emily at one point.
‘For what?’ said her daughter.
‘For being you,’ yelled Lou, hugging Emily, feeling the heat from both their bodies after such glorious dancing.
In the background, the buffet was being cleared away and the cake Emily had ordered was coming out. The Barn could supply simple cakes with sugar flowers, white icing and pretty sparkly things on top, and Emily had said a lilac cake with rich amethyst flowers, a colour which suited her mother, would be perfect. Everyone ooh-ed and aah-ed as it was carried to a small table beside the buffet.
