The Birthday That Changed Everything: Perfect summer holiday reading!. Debbie Johnson

we’re on holiday!’ she said, seeing Mrs Glum take over my face. ‘Try and forget all about your husband for a couple of weeks. Auntie Allie and her friends will look after you. You’re not the only single parent here – you’ll meet James later; he’s been coming with his son on his own for years, and they love it. Max will help your kids settle in as well. He knows the place inside out. I think this year he’s hoping to add a few more bars and clubs to his repertoire, though.’

      She grimaced slightly with the last sentence – but in a mock-rueful way that showed she wasn’t really stressed at all. I, on the other hand, was. If Lucy decided to discover the local bars, I’d have to learn the Turkish for ‘how much is the bail?’ fairly quickly.

      ‘Oh God no – tell him to leave my daughter well alone, she won’t appreciate it. She treats people who are nice like they have leprosy,’ I said. ‘I don’t even defend her any more, and I gave birth to her. For a while I hoped it was just a phase, but I suspect it may actually be her personality.’

      I could tell Allie wanted to protest, and declare her heartfelt belief that Lucy couldn’t be all that bad – but we were spared my hysterical laughter by the sound of merriment approaching from the shore.

      The noise level increased tenfold, as a miniature fleet of bright yellow kayaks headed in and beached right in front of us. It was a gang of kids and nannies, all dressed as pirates, with painted-on moustaches and colourful headdresses made of soggy cardboard.

      An angelic-looking boy of about six or seven spotted Allie and ran over to her. He jumped on to her lap, soaking her to the skin and smudging black paint from his fake eye-patch on to her bikini top. She rubbed his halo of wild blond curls and gave him a quick kiss on the forehead.

      ‘Wassup, Jake?’ she asked, wiping some of the black goo out of his eyes with her fingertips.

      ‘That’s Pirate Captain Jake to you!’ he shouted, leaping back down on to his bare feet and jigging about.

      He looked me over with his big blue eyes.

      ‘Who is this lady and why’s she dressed so weird?’ he asked Allie, his voice slipping out of his fake pirate lingo and into his own soft Irish accent.

      ‘I’m Sally, and I’m a special pirate nurse,’ I said, raising my eyebrows in what I hoped was a roguish fashion, but might have been more tipsy pantomime dame leering at Prince Charming in his tights.

      ‘Well, the nurse at my school doesn’t dress like that,’ he answered.

      ‘But she’s not a pirate nurse. Bet she’s just a landlubber who puts plasters on your knee and checks your hair for nits, isn’t she?’

      He thought about it.

      ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘so…if you’re a pirate nurse, are you wearing those plastic clothes because they’re waterproof?’

      I nodded – it was a better explanation than the real one, that’s for sure.

      ‘And because it’s much easier to get all the blood off after a battle. It gets really messy when you have to chop off a leg or sew an ear back on. The worst is when eyeballs pop out, but at least if I’m wearing this, they just bounce straight off and I can catch them.’

      He giggled a bit at the slightly scary references to gore and guts.

      ‘That skirt is too short, though,’ he said. ‘You’d get blood on your knees. My daddy likes ladies in short skirts. He says it’s very kind of them to let other people look at their legs in the summer, especially grumpy old men like him. One time last week in the shops there was this lady wearing a skirt a bit like yours, but with pointy white shoes that made her really tall, and he pushed our trolley right into a shelf of beans and they all fell off. He was really embarrassed and we pretended we wanted all the cans of beans in the trolley, even though I don’t even like them—’

      ‘Pirate Jake!’ bellowed one of the pert blonde nannies. ‘It’s time to put away your paddle and get your ice cream!’

      He whirled round to give me and Allie a final stab with his stick sword, then galloped off.

      Hmmm. His dad was clearly an old lech, I thought, staring at hapless womenfolk in the shops. I made a mental note to avoid Jake’s dad for the entirety of the holiday – an extra dose of sex maniac was something I could live without. Sex maniacs were at the heart of all my current problems.

      His son, though, was a real cutie. It didn’t seem so long ago that Lucy and Ollie were that age, so responsive and playful. These days they’d sell me into white slavery for a £20 iTunes gift card.

      I’d been down here for over an hour, and had no idea what they were up to. I nervously did a quick check over my shoulder. The hotel looked peaceful. Its whitewashed walls were still standing. No smoke, no sirens, nobody running out of the building screaming and looking for holy water.

      They must still be in their rooms, then.

       Chapter 7

      Allie took us both off to the restaurant for lunch, steering us towards a table for four. A waiter held a bottle of water for us, opening it with as much aplomb as you would a vintage Bollinger.

      ‘That’s Adnan, the head waiter,’ said Allie, leaning forward to whisper conspiratorially as he left, ‘he’s got twelve kids…that he knows of.’

      ‘Bloody hell!’

      Our scurrilous gossip was interrupted by the arrival of an elderly lady, who stopped at our table and greeted Allie enthusiastically. She was so short and round that she could have passed as a garden gnome. A garden gnome who’d been kicked out of Gnomeland for having terrible dress sense and making the other gnomes look bad.

      Head to toe she was dressed in a shade of pink so vivid I could feel it burning holes in my retinas. Her dimpled knees were peeking out beneath the hem of her shorts, and her freakishly small feet were encased in pink socks and pink trainers.

      Little Miss Pink’s hair was short and snowy white, tightly permed around a tanned and deeply wrinkled face.

      ‘My, my, my! What an interesting outfit you have on, my dear!’ she said, in a delicate Scottish accent. Yes, well. She had a point. So much for critiquing her look.

      ‘Miss McTavish!’ exclaimed Allie. ‘Come and join us for lunch – this is Sally. She’s just arrived and she’s here with her kids.’

      ‘Och, no husband?’ she asked, as she sat down. Her plump pink derrière spilled over both sides of the chair until it was completely subsumed. It looked like she was floating unaided in front of the table, like a levitating pink blancmange.

      ‘Dressed laike that and unchaperoned? How very adventurous of you, Sally! I like your style already – you’ll have to tell me how you get on with all these fit young hunks!’

      She chuckled disturbingly as she helped herself to a breadstick, inserted it into her puckered mouth and started to suck on it. I closed my eyes for a second and hoped the image would go away one day.

      I wasn’t here for fit young hunks, or overheated body parts, or sharing sex tips with the Incredible Glowing Granny. Admittedly from the looks of things she had a better love life than I did, but that applied just as well to Trappist monks who’d taken vows of celibacy. I’d given up on men. I was going to turn into a sexless old woman who wore beige cardigans and got her kicks from walking really slowly over zebra crossings.

      ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Miss McTavish, but there won’t be any of that going on. I’ll be living like a nun for the next two weeks.’

      ‘Now then, that would be an entirely different costume, wouldn’t it? Maybe a spot of leather for that one, with a matching rosary for whipping naughty bottoms?’ she said, her blue eyes twinkling with mischief.

      Allie and I stared