‘The emergency is the death trap you built for me just collapsed,’ I said, falling through the door, more puddle than person. I scraped my soaking hair back from my face to see Mum peering at us from the hallway, the cordless phone up to her ear.

‘My beautiful shed,’ Dad gasped, fingertips pressing lightly against the kitchen window. ‘My poor, beautiful shed.’

‘Your poor, wet-through daughter and her nearly concussed sodden friends,’ I corrected. Sumi began filling the kettle while Adrian sat Lucy at the kitchen table. I pulled four mugs out of the cupboard and popped a teabag in each. A proper brew, the answer to all of life’s crises. ‘We could have died, Dad. The roof collapsed onto the bed.’

‘It wouldn’t have killed you,’ he said sadly, watching as my waterlogged copy of Starting Over sailed downstream towards his alpine rockery. ‘Wasn’t heavy enough. Worst-case scenario would have been a broken leg.’

‘Thank goodness for that,’ I replied loudly, glaring at the back of his head as Mum walked into the kitchen, phone pressed to her chest, knuckles white around the handset. ‘I’m sure Lucy and her unborn child are relieved.’

‘Morning, Mrs Reynolds,’ Adrian said, pulling out a chair. She sank into it wordlessly. ‘We nearly died but everything’s fine now. You look radiant this morning …’

‘Nearly died,’ Dad scoffed under his breath before narrowing his eyes at my friend. ‘Adrian, did you fiddle with the roof?’

‘That was the tennis club on the phone,’ Mum said before Adrian could reply. Her face was ashen. ‘They’re completely flooded. They say there’s no way they can have it up and running again by this afternoon.’

I bit my lip as the kettle whistled.

‘That was fast,’ Adrian commented as Sumi poured out the water.

‘It’s a fast-boil kettle,’ Mum said, breaking into heaving sobs. ‘Alan got it last month.’

‘It’s OK.’ I rushed to my mum’s side, hugging her into my damp pyjamas and looking to everyone else in the room for reassurance. ‘It’s going to be OK. We’ll fix it somehow.’

‘But the ceremony is supposed to start at one,’ she choked. ‘Your Aunt Annette and Uncle David are already checked in at the Premier Travel Lodge. They’ll be furious if they’ve had a wasted trip.’

‘And our Kevin has set off to get Mum from the home,’ Dad added darkly. ‘I’ll not convince him to do that again in a hurry.’

‘It’s fine,’ I insisted. ‘We’ll find somewhere else, you will have your ceremony. I will fix this, I promise.’

Even if I didn’t exactly have a fantastic track record of fixing things of late, I thought to myself.

‘Sumi,’ I said, firing out ideas before I could second-guess myself. ‘What about the event planners you used for Lucy’s party? Do you think they have any last-minute venues?’