She jiggled up and down beside me, dancing even more enthusiastically than the youngsters at the foot of the stage.

Zach, typically, was doing little more than shuffling from foot to foot between Ceci and Willow, edged by other girls, including Lola, whose mother Jan I’d been introduced to properly earlier.

Sporting an expensive peasant-type dress, she’d banged on drunkenly about us not buying organic, fair-trade wine for the bar: the type they made on her husband’s family’s estate in South Africa. Eventually I’d excused myself, biting my tongue from asking if her dress had been made by happy worker elves, or in an Asian sweatshop. Melissa was rubbing off on me.

Ish had moved away from Lena, I noticed, Heathcliff now on his shoulders, bobbing up and down, Lena standing slightly apart.

In front of the stage, the girls all kept up a sinuous kind of sway, but Rocky was now pogo-ing with huge enthusiasm, until that lass Lola shoved him so hard, he went flying. He banged into a shocked Pav, who looked for a moment like he might thump his mate, turning now to see who the source of attack had been.

Lola stuck her tongue out at the good-natured lad, who grinned, and pogo-ed cheerfully back to Pav’s other side.

Ah, the innocence of teenage flirting! I felt nostalgic for a moment.

Cecilia, hair still in the koala-ear twists, seemed oblivious to all of this, bouncing along beside my son like Tigger, her moves resembling those of her stepmother. Zach was filming, Willow on his other side, very close.

It was a relief that Zach could be friendly with both Ces and Willow.

‘Love you, Ruby!’ Melissa suddenly yelled in my ear, planting a huge kiss on my cheek. ‘I’m really sorry about earlier.’

‘Forget it.’ I hugged her back, glad of the warmth and the apology. ‘It’s just nice to see you. It’s been too long.’

The end of Huff-B’s set heralded the firework finale.

Phew, I thought, by now desperate for a pee; even more desperate to sit down. Or lie down, in fact. My bed was definitely calling me; the day had been long and arduous.

But nothing happened for so long that an irritated muttering began to ripple through the crowd.

Marcus was out of view, and now I noticed Nella detach herself and move off, presumably to put a metaphorical rocket under someone.

The system to ignite the fireworks was still faulty, it seemed, but the crowd’s irritation was quickly supplanted by some David Guetta on the sound system, and, for a moment, it looked like the whole event would turn into a giant rave as the older folk began to grumble at the edges about the cold, and money misspent.

Then ABBA replaced the rave music, and the kids began to pull faces at one another, until the official photographer began to take photos of them at the front – the girls already expert at pulling pouts, the lads gurning stupidly or being hip-hop cool.