Sunshine on a Rainy Day: A funny, feel-good romantic comedy. Bryony Fraser

the realisation that she barely knew Jack from a broom in the corner, and she was wondering just how deep they were digging by sitting here and letting his parents think they was something stable and long term, when he was still listed in her phone as ‘Hot Barman’.

      ‘Well, you know how it is, Zoe, it’s a long way to travel when we’re all the way out east—’

      ‘In … Asia?’

      Linda looked baffled. ‘No, dear, in Norwich. It’s quite a way for us to come to visit Jack here at university, and Graham doesn’t really like the journey. Do you, Graham?’ She looked over at her husband, who was staring into his glass, rattling the ice cubes. She gave a tiny sigh. ‘And whereabouts are your parents? Are they … Do they live in this country?’ Despite having spoken with her for the last hour, Linda’s voice suddenly became fractionally louder and over-pronounced for this final part of the question.

      Zoe beamed at her. ‘Yes, they’re up in Leytonstone. North-east London.’

      ‘Right. Right.’ Linda looked confused again, unsure how to navigate a question which surely had been misunderstood. ‘Well, speaking of your Auntie Chrissie, her dentist told her that his sister has just been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia.’ She looked at Zoe, questioningly. ‘Not like … your … people—’

      ‘Mum, look, the mains are here!’

      Zoe met Graham’s eye and wondered if he’d heard a word, he looked so disengaged; when his lamb was put in front of him he just gave the waiter a grateful smile and tucked in, eyes down.

      Zoe looked at the bowl in front of her – brown beans mixed in with some green unknowables and some sad lettuce leaves – looked at Jack’s identical portion, then up at Jack. They both laughed.

      ‘Anything wrong, you two?’ Linda asked, a forkful of salmon en croute halfway to her mouth.

      ‘No, Mum,’ Jack said, scooping up some mystery salad. ‘Everything’s just fine.’ He nudged Zoe’s knee with his own under the table, and Zoe felt his body relax a little beside hers.

      ‘I suppose it’s nice to have a degree where you know what you’ll do with it afterwards,’ Linda said.

      ‘I should hope so – I’ll have spent long enough on it. Although sometimes people do change their minds and go into engineering, manufacture, even completely different subjects.’ Zoe nudged her three-bean salad around the dish. ‘I suppose sometimes you need to try things before you know if they’re right for you or not.’

      ‘I know, I know, I say this to Jack all the time! I mean his friend Iffy’s doing medicine, so he’ll be fine, but Jack! He can do this little art course, though God knows what it’s costing us—’

      ‘Mum, I pay for the course myself.’

      ‘But eventually the time will come when he has to decide how he’s going to make his living. If he wants to settle down and have a wife and a family, he needs to think about how he’s going to support them all, and stop lying around living this student lifestyle, waiting for hand-outs from the state—’

      ‘What are you talking about, Mum? I don’t get any state benefits.’

      ‘Not for want of trying, I’ll bet,’ she chuckled ruefully.

      ‘I … don’t …’ Jack looked at Zoe, wide eyed. She tried not to laugh.

      ‘I mean it though, Jack, you have to think about life after college. Don’t you think, Graham?’ Jack’s father was pushing his vegetables around his plate with great concentration.

      ‘I literally think about it every day, Mum. My whole course is geared around making us skilled and employable in our chosen fields.’

      ‘No, I mean, this is a nice hobby, maybe something you can take up again when you’re retired. But really now – shoe-making? Everything’s made in China, now, isn’t it? What are you going to do, ship some of their little elves over for your workshop?’

      Her laughter was interrupted by Graham abruptly getting up and mumbling something about finding the toilets. Linda was obviously put out by having what felt like one of her favourite jokes interrupted.

      Zoe sat a little closer to the table. ‘Do you get to go away much? On holiday, I mean? I think I quite fancy visiting China one day.’

      ‘Oh no, love, Graham couldn’t stomach somewhere like China. The food would just go straight through him. No, when we go away we tend to stick to what we like – a narrow boat around the Broads in April and a Greek island in September.’

      Zoe could just picture them: Graham shadowing Linda silently as she, with bumbag and sunglasses on a neck strap, spoke loudly about pickpockets and Proper Cups of Tea as she crushed millennia-old religious sites under her comfortable walking sandals.

      ‘That sounds lovely. I’ve always wanted to go to Greece. What’s it like?’

      ‘Well …’ She thought for a moment. ‘The key is finding the right places to eat, I think. Once we’ve found a nice café with English owners, I can relax and enjoy my holiday. No offence, but I’m not sure I’d trust those Greeks to wash the dishes properly, if you know what I mean.’ She looked at Zoe meaningfully.

      ‘Thanks Mum, we’ll get on with digging out your hidden subtext.’ He looked at Zoe. ‘Would you really like to go to Greece?’

      ‘Yeah, I think so. I don’t know if there’s anywhere I wouldn’t like to go, to be fair. As long as it wasn’t on a Foreign Office blacklist, obviously.’

      ‘No erupting volcanoes then.’

      ‘Or actual war zones.’

      ‘Or will.i.am gigs?’

      ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Zoe giggled. ‘It’s something for the Christmas newsletter, isn’t it?’

      Linda perked up suddenly. ‘Oh, does your family do one of those too? Well, that is integration, isn’t it? I absolutely love doing them – I start drafting it in September, although Jack and Graham both rib me terribly. But I always say to them, if I don’t do it, it wouldn’t get done.’

      ‘And wouldn’t that be a shame,’ Jack said.

      ‘See what I mean, Zoe? People like it, Jack, even if you don’t. They want to know what’s happening with their friends’ children and spouses.’

      ‘Only so they can feel better about their own lives.’

      Linda tutted at Zoe. ‘They never want to know about dinner parties and Christmas cards until there are no women around to organise it all for them.’

      ‘Mum, maybe we just don’t care about those things in the exact same way you do.’

      ‘Of course you don’t, Jack. But maybe you will. Maybe you’ll care when you’re seventy-two and haven’t seen another human being for a month because your wife has died and your children don’t call and you’ve never bothered to write a Christmas card or invite someone over for a coffee. Maybe you’ll understand then how important “those things” actually are to living in a society.’

      There was a silence as Zoe looked more carefully at Linda, who was panting slightly with her strength of feeling.

      Jack picked his napkin up from the floor. ‘That escalated quickly. I was only talking about those show-off Christmas letters, Mum. I didn’t mean we should all die alone.’

      Linda picked at some imaginary fluff on one jumper sleeve. ‘Well. Maybe you don’t understand that the line between the two isn’t as black and white as you think. Maybe you don’t know everything quite yet, Jack.’

      Zoe gently touched Linda’s hand on the table. Linda jumped. Zoe said, ‘We’re all the same, aren’t we, students? Think we know everything because we’ve been to a few lectures. My mum despairs of me.’

      Linda