Kitchen Sink Drama: Quality time

They hadn't spent any meaningful time together for ages and it was Deb's idea – though why did it always have to be her idea? – that the four of them go on a picnic.

Although she'd made them mark their calendars five weeks earlier, it was picnic eve when both kids announced, with theatrical lamentations, their sudden unavailability.

Deb went to bed early, crushed. In the morning, Rich announced from their echo chamber of an ensuite that he was crook in the guts. "Sorry, sweetheart, go on without me." Surprising them all, she did that and more, her Noosa postcard beating her home.