They had taken the cards to the kitchen and Jeremy entered as if on cue.

‘Happy birthday, Pudge!’

‘See what I mean, Mummy?’

‘It’s just his fond nickname for you,’ said Laura.

Bessie’s face lit with hope. ‘Does that mean he loves me?’

‘Yuk!’ said Jeremy. ‘And yuk to my other sister behaving as if Kurt is Romeo and she’s Juliet.’

‘This house doesn’t have a balcony,’ Laura said with a laugh.

‘The balcony is all that’s missing!’ Jeremy opined. ‘Would you like me to cook you a special birthday breakfast, Pudge?’

‘That’s very nice of you, Jeremy, but I’m dieting.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since I found out that if I don’t, my puppy fat could stay on me till I’m sixteen. And when you make the sandwiches for my party, Mummy, please put some of the fillings on crackers, for me. I’ve made up my mind.’

Laura managed not to smile. One look at the desserts and gone would be Bessie’s resolve. ‘You can do that yourself, darling. With twenty little girls coming to tea, the whole family is going to be busy. You can start blowing up the balloons after breakfast, Jeremy. Kurt will help you when he gets here.’

‘That’ll be a change from him sitting looking in Janis’s eyes,’ said Jeremy with the disgust of a lad whom Cupid’s arrow had yet to pierce.

Janis then entered wearing the dreamy expression to which the family had become accustomed, poured herself some orange juice and went to gaze through the window.

Laura’s humorous thought on the day Janis and Kurt met had proved to be good judgement. After lunching with the girl he had mentioned, he had returned with flowers for Janis and the two had gone for a walk on the Heath. Laura could not have foreseen then what she now thought more than possible. That her young Viennese cousin might one day also be her son-in-law.

Their youthful affair – if such it could be called – had about it an aura at odds with the earthiness that characterized most such relationships nowadays. Why else had Jeremy – not known for his lyrical imagination – equated them with Romeo and Juliet? Perhaps because there was no other way to describe them.

The balcony isn’t the only thing that’s missing, Laura thought. Unlike the Montagues and the Capulets, there’s no family enmity to stand in their way. Laura and Jake had met Kurt’s parents when they had visited their son in London and had found them charming.

Jake joined his family singing, ‘Happy birthday, dear Bessie,’ and lifted the little girl high in the air, to whirl her around rumbustiously.

‘Careful, Dad, you’ll break your arms,’ said Jeremy.

‘But next year I’ll be a feather-weight, Daddy,’ Bessie said when he put her down. ‘There won’t be so much of me to love.’

‘Yuk, yuk, yuk!’