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

       Chapter 9

      After they’d gone, I settled back down to enjoy the sun.

      I felt some of the tension ease away once I was alone again. Facing all those people at once had been scary. Even without Nurse Nancy’s assistance, I would have found it daunting. I wasn’t sure I liked me very much any more; I was so pathetic – whatever confidence I once had was nowhere to be seen these days. Getting dumped for a woman half your age will do that to you.

      Now, I was just a scaredy-cat single parent to two alien beings who wouldn’t even notice my dead body unless it was blocking the fridge door. Meanwhile Simon was romping his way through his midlife crisis and overdosing on presumably world-rocking sex.

      Our sex life had been nowhere near world-rocking. In fact, woolly mammoths roamed the earth the last time my world so much as budged an inch. When he stopped even trying (because he was getting it elsewhere, I now realised), it had been a relief.

      I could stop pretending to be asleep when he came to bed, and enjoy a rest on the wifely duties front. Now I was more than resting, I was facing eternal celibacy – which suited me just fine. At least that’s what I kept telling myself – apart from in those moments at three a.m., when I was lying alone awake in bed and wishing my missing husband was there with me.

      I’d noticed as I sat there baking and pondering my lack of sex life that a few more children were starting to appear in and around the pool – some escorted by nannies; some in chattering packs of their own.

      Pirate Jake, my friend from earlier, was licking the very last yum of ice cream from a cone and balancing on his left leg like a stork.

      I was considering whether to call him over when I heard the sound of running footsteps pounding behind me. A man dashed straight through the gap between my sun lounger and the one next door, moving so quickly he was a blur of fast-moving arms, legs and, luckily I supposed, swimming trunks.

      The whirling dervish continued to the pool’s edge, where he scooped up Jake in both arms and tucked him into his tummy, yelling ‘Geronimo!’ His momentum carried them both a couple of feet up into the air before gravity plunged them down into the water, the cone flying out of Jake’s hand.

      I watched the whirlpool they’d created when they went in, waiting for them to emerge again. After a couple of seconds they both bobbed back up, shaking their heads like wet dogs and screeching with laughter. Jake was holding on to his father’s neck tightly enough to asphyxiate him.

      They carried on playing for a while longer, splashing along to the other end of the pool Nemo-style, like father-and-son fishes.

      After a lively ten minutes or so, they caroused their way back down to my end and climbed out – not even using the steps. I’m always jealous of people who can get out of pools without using the steps. When I try I look like a whale humping the side wall.

      Jake grabbed his dad’s hand and started walking him over to the bar, jumping up and down with excitement. He spotted me as they approached the sun loungers, and veered over, tugging his dad behind.

      ‘Ahoy there, shipmate!’ I said, saluting him sailor-style. ‘How goes it?’

      ‘I’m not a pirate any more, silly!’ he said, as though I was the dumbest person who ever walked the earth. He must have been conferring with Lucy.

      ‘Dad! This is that lady I told you about – the one with the really short dress made out of raincoats!’

      Oh good. More humiliation – and doled out by a tiddler, at that. I put my game face on and smiled up at superdad, getting my first proper look at him.

      He was about six foot tall, maybe a shade under. His hair was slick with water, but I thought he’d dry out to be blond. Striking blue eyes, the same shade as the cloudless Turkish sky. A strong jawline. A nose that looked as if it might have been involved in a rugby match or two when it was younger.

      He was my age, possibly older, but had obviously looked after himself a lot better than I had. Broad, powerful-looking shoulders, with a perfectly defined musculature. Not an ounce of fat on a torso that wasn’t quite at superhuman six-pack level, but was way better than anything I’d ever seen in real life before.

      His arms looked strong enough to pick a woman up, throw her over his shoulder, and take her back to his cave for a quickie without breaking a sweat. Even if the woman in question had been intimately involved with a box of Ferrero Rocher for the last month.

      I reminded myself that this was the latest in a long list of sex maniacs in my life, and that I was to avoid him at all costs. Allie had described him as a single dad – which probably meant he’d left Jake’s mum for a younger model at some point, like they all seem to do. I mentally painted a skull and crossbones over his perfect chest. Beware. Toxic.

      ‘Hi,’ he said, returning my smile, ‘I’m James Carver. Jake was just telling me about you. Sorry if he went on about me liking short skirts a lot – I must have sounded like a dirty old man…’

      He had the same trace of Dublin in his voice as Jake. But on him, it was so sexy; he should have had his own late-night radio show for sad, lonely women to listen to.

      It made me feel a bit wriggly. Which in turn made me feel a bit annoyed with myself.

      ‘I’m sure you’re not,’ I replied, thinking exactly the opposite. He was looking at me a bit too closely for comfort, which was fair enough under the circumstances. I resisted the urge to cover myself up with my hands.

      ‘I’m Sally,’ I added belatedly. I was too well trained to be outwardly rude.

      ‘Nice to meet you, Sally,’ he said, as Jake started to tug on his hand to pull him away again, bored by the grown-ups’ strange social etiquette.

      ‘Come on now, Dad!’ he said. ‘You can talk to her later. You need to get me a juice right now or I am going to shrivel up and die like a salty slug!’

      ‘Okay, okay, I’m coming…’ James said, following him. He turned back as he was leaving, and gave me a killer grin. Good Lord, the man was perfect – it was against all the rules of nature. Where were the missing teeth or turned eyes that usually evened these things out?

      ‘Looks like my presence is required elsewhere – let me buy you a drink later. Love the outfit, by the way,’ he said.

      Ha. I bet he did. I was living out every juvenile male fantasy on the planet, with the help of Mr and Mrs Smith from Solihull.

      Despite