‘I was not! Don’t be silly. We’re just friends.’ I wasn’t even sure you could call it that as the longest conversation we’d ever had was about five minutes. ‘We’re neighbours.’

Jedda wriggled her dark eyebrows at me. ‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’

‘Stop it,’ I said, feeling my cheeks heat at her ridiculous insinuation. ‘You know I’m married.’

‘Uh-huh.’ She glanced down at my wedding ring. ‘But I thought that was on hiatus. If your hubby’s having a bit of fun, why shouldn’t you?’

‘I’m not having this conversation with you.’

Jedda chuckled. ‘So, if you weren’t married, you’d go there?’

‘I am married so that’s a moot point,’ I hissed. ‘If you like him so much why don’t you go there?’

‘Me?’ She snorted. ‘No way. I could never get with an Emerson, even if Dan is the best of the lot.’

She backed down after that, and by the time we bought some raffle tickets and returned to our table, the break was almost over. Thankfully, Gail had bought a cheese platter for us to share. I feared I may have imbibed too much rum and should not only eat something but drink less for the rest of the night, or I wouldn’t be any use for answering questions.

The next round of trivia was all about Aussie TV and I surprised myself by getting almost as many answers as Cassie did.

‘Who is the longest serving presenter on Play School?’ Garry asked.

‘I think that’s Benita,’ I said.

‘Who’s Benita?’ Cassie asked, too young to remember her.

There was brief discussion of other possibilities—‘What about Noni?’ Gail said—but in the end we stuck with Benita and we were right.

Although we weren’t too bad on the trivia, no one at our table won any of the raffles or the games between rounds, but I had to admit it had been a very fun night. Probably the most fun I’d had in ages.

‘All right,’ Sharon called, ‘we’re almost done but … we still have one important task. We have to crown the costume winners!’

Once the cheer died down, she said, ‘Each table nominate who you think is your best and send them up for the fashion parade.’

To my utmost dismay, everyone at our table pointed at me and Jedda.

‘But you guys have much better costumes than us,’ I argued.

Surely Gail and Jim were onto a winner and no way I wanted to get up there and parade about in front of a hall of strangers.

‘Don’t be a spoilsport,’ Jedda said, grabbing my hand and pulling me to my feet.