The Great Escape: The laugh-out-loud romantic comedy from the summer bestseller. Fiona Gibson

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      TWELVE

      Sadie isn’t used to attending birthday parties at 11 am on a Saturday. In fact she isn’t used to attending babies’ birthday parties at any time of day, and hopes that her present, tucked into the little wire compartment beneath the buggy, will be deemed acceptable. The whole business of toys seems terribly complex these days. Sadie grew up in Liverpool, playing with the ordinary things little girls played with back then – Barbie, Sindy, a severed doll’s head on which you could practise make-up techniques. None of the children she’s encountered on the Little Hissingham coffee-morning circuit seem to own such things. The babies have scrunchy bead-filled bags to encourage fine-motor skills, while their older siblings play with tasteful wooden construction kits and Brio train sets. It’s good to be invited, though, Sadie reminds herself, as this suggests that she’s starting to belong.

      ‘So glad you could come,’ says Monica, the hostess, beckoning her in beneath a voluptuous swathe of lilac hanging over the cottage door. ‘Isn’t Barney with you?’

      Although Monica has never met Barney, all the women around here seem adept at remembering not only everyone’s children’s names, but the names of their partners too. Sadie can’t understand how they can store so much information. ‘He’d loved to have come but he’s working today,’ Sadie fibs.

      ‘He works on Saturdays?’

      ‘Sometimes, at home,’ Sadie says, which is the truth. ‘Just to catch up, you know.’

      ‘That’s a shame,’ Monica says, looking genuinely crestfallen. ‘Anyway, come on in. Party’s in full swing already.’

      It sounds like it, too, with a blend of chattering toddlers, the odd crying baby and a dozen or so women all talking at once in Monica’s overwhelmingly floral living room. Actually, Sadie didn’t even ask Barney to come. He’d accompanied her to one parent-and-baby get-together in Hissingham church hall a couple of months ago, but it was impossible to even try to mingle when, whichever way Sadie turned, she could still see her husband, pressed to the flaking pale pink wall with terror flashing in his eyes. ‘How long does this go on for?’ he asked, grabbing her arm while she politely took a biscuit from an offered plate.

      ‘Only about sixteen hours,’ she joked, hoping he’d crack a smile and at least try to relax. But his jaw clenched even harder and she detected a faint lick of sweat on his upper lip.

      ‘Oh, your babies are so cute!’ a small, neat woman exclaims as Sadie manoeuvres the buggy containing her snoozing children to a far corner of Monica’s living room.

      ‘Thanks,’ she says with a swell of pride.

      ‘They’re just like you, aren’t they? Same colouring, face shape and that lovely dark hair …’ Dylan and Milo wake up simultaneously and Sadie smiles, relieved that she’s managed to kit them out to a reasonable standard – not too matchy-matchy, but in a vaguely coordinated selection of blues and greens which, she hopes, gives the impression she’s some kind of alpha-mother. She’s even managed to find all four soft leather shoes.

      ‘Oh,’ Sadie says, as Monica swoops past with the birthday baby in her arms, ‘this is a present for Eva.’ She snatches the present from beneath the buggy, which Monica accepts with thanks, placing it on an enormous pile on the oak dresser.

      Freeing her babies, and lifting them down onto a circular rug littered with various multicoloured wire-and-bead contraptions, Sadie scans the room for somewhere to station herself. She glimpses her reflection in a large gilt-framed mirror. Although her hair is bleating for a cut, at least she’s wearing lipstick. It’s slightly askew, but it’s on, and that’s the main thing.

      ‘So you’re the one with the twins,’ says a blonde-bobbed woman, beckoning Sadie to squish onto the rose-patterned sofa beside her.

      ‘Yes, that’s right.’ She smiles brightly, keeping a close eye to ensure that Milo and Dylan aren’t attacked by the other babies on the rug.

      ‘I’ve seen you around. You moved here a few months ago, didn’t you?’

      ‘Yes, that’s right, it’s been six months now.’

      ‘I’m Polly, and this is Justine,’ she says, introducing the redhead next to her, who offers Sadie a dazed smile over the baby clamped to her breast.

      ‘I’m Sadie …’

      ‘So you moved with new babies?’ Polly says. ‘That was brave of you.’

      ‘Well, we didn’t plan it that way,’ Sadie explains. ‘We’d been trying to sell our London flat for ages but it didn’t shift, then it finally did, and after having the babies I probably wasn’t thinking straight, so …’

      ‘You mean you don’t like it here?’ Justine asks with a small frown.