Chapter Twenty-Four

 

They rolled out of bed at eleven the next day. An achievement considering, they hadn’t gotten home until the early hours of the morning. The toasts and repetitive chant of “Promitto Memorari” still seemed to echo in their ears. There were many goodbyes to endure before they were allowed to leave. They had a weak night sleep. But Elizabeth had plans.

Elizabeth had been messaging Simon to find out if it was safe to bring Summer to the Diner for breakfast or if the preparations had already begun. Sadly, it was too late to take her to the Diner without her plans being discovered so she made breakfast.

It took a bit of persuasion to get Summer up and dressed. Thankfully Elizabeth found Summer too tired to argue too much. That started to change the more she woke up, the tea and breakfast had perked her up. Elizabeth told her to get her things, they were going to the Diner.

At the door, Elizabeth insisted Summer had to be blindfolded. Summer was reluctant, she felt stupid being pulled along slowly by Elizabeth. Who stopped just after stepping up onto a curb. Elizabeth undid the blindfold.

It took a moment for Summer’s eyes to adjust, the whole town was in the square, it was a huge party. Simon and a few chefs from the Ivy Rose Inn were working on a barbeque. Watching for a moment as Simon began to lose his temper as rubs, marinades and sauces were being pushed on his barbeque as the chefs took over everything he kept getting involved in.

Summer saw the pair of bouncy castles both with a sign dictating “shoes off”. One castle was designated for kids, the other, adults. Sure enough the children were jumping on a bouncy castle sporting primary colours. The grown-ups had purple, red and blue panels on theirs.

The village strangeling, Kingston kept yelling about his champion jumping. Much to Summer’s surprise both Matthew and Stuart were jumping on the castle trying to wind Kingston up by trying to do tricks.

Standing on the grass in front of the castle Thomas was yelling at them for jumping in the wrong way. Everyone continued to ignore Thomas. His face went red, then purpled before he stormed off.

Summer and Elizabeth were enjoying that magic moment. they looked around to find a paddling pool in the town gazebo with the mysterious flying candy overhead (which was a clever use of netting) with children running with butterfly nets trying to catch the candy.

The decorate your own cupcake stand was busy. The magician nearby kept making the cakes disappear. There was a small stage and sound system being set up in another corner. The other side had a movie being projected onto a large sheet.

There was a three legged race and bobbing for candy, but it wasn’t water that they had to contend with, it was jelly, and lots of it.

With the open bar providing the drinks. Summer and Elizabeth took a bottle of water and walked around looking at the silly competitions, games of pass the parcel which was interesting. An adults and child version. Summer would have loved to have swapped the parcels around.

Summer took a moment to realise what Elizabeth had done, again. She threw her arms around Elizabeth, it was perfect.

Summer dragged Elizabeth to the bouncy castle and began to try trick jumps just to annoy Thomas. They only paused to take a break to watch Simon explode from frustration at the barbeque station. He had a yelling fit before storming off to the bouncy castle that was empty. He struggled to climb up and balance for a few minutes finding his feet. He began bouncing like a mad man until his expression broke and fell into fits of laughter.

Elizabeth felt a surge of childish energy and took the opportunity to run at Simon and tackle him. Before long they had broken out into a game of chase on the bouncy castle that infuriated Thomas as it spread through the party.

Even as the sun went down the party continued. Although the children had disappeared and it became exclusively adults who had split into teams occupying corners of the party with buckets full of water balloons at their disposal before a session of karaoke before they began to call it a night and go to bed.

(Skip waiting for me to post and order the book here )