‘WHY, WHY, WHHYYYYYYY, De-LI-LAH!’ roared the crowd as ‘Tom’ tipped his head back for the chorus, the microphone angled above his fleshy pink lips. A medallion bounced in the rug of his chest hair with each pelvic gyration, and Robyn’s lips twitched in amusement as she saw Dave throwing a brotherly arm around John and Stephen, the three of them swaying and bellowing along together. Nearby, Eddie was stepping out of their way with a roll of his eyes, and Robyn couldn’t help feeling kinship with him. In her opinion, the world was divided into two types: those who Joined In, whether it was singing along with a song, clapping enthusiastically to music during a show or shouting out the catchphrases in a pantomime (‘He’s behind you!’); and then there were those who were just a bit too awkward and self-conscious to really let themselves go in the same way. She, unfortunately, had always been a member of the latter camp; the sort of person, in fact, who would take it upon herself to clear up a buffet table so that she didn’t inadvertently get hauled onto the dance floor. The Mortimer siblings, needless to say, were all most definitely in the former.

Still, it was good to see John looking so relaxed after a tough few weeks at work, she thought. He always found the summer term stressful – exam pressure wasn’t solely for the students – but this year there had been a suicide on campus within his department, as well as some kind of cheating scandal. It had taken its toll on his sleep recently, and he’d been distracted and withdrawn. For all that he could make eloquent speeches at parties or give interesting lectures on civil engineering to his undergraduate classes, he had never been the most communicative person when it came to the subject of his own feelings, plunging into a silent sort of gloom if things became particularly difficult. She hoped he might be coming out of this most recent episode at last.

Meanwhile there was their son Sam, eleven and awkwardly tall, hunched over his phone on the sidelines, while his older cousins gathered with their friends in a huddle elsewhere. Go and talk to them, she’d urged him earlier, but he had given her one of his As-if looks and slouched away. He seemed to have hit adolescent self-consciousness early, all elbows and lanky legs, his gaze dropping to his feet whenever anyone tried to speak to him. Conversely, Daisy, his nine-year-old sister who didn’t have a shy bone in her body, was in the thick of it near the cake table, gesticulating and bossing around a group of little ones, organizing some game or other involving balloons. Any minute now, though, Robyn suspected, Daisy would start regaling them earnestly with information about insects – her current fascination – which might be of less interest to the others. Not that that usually stopped her.