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queuing in front of her for the check-in. A prize porker, that’s what she looked like. The washed-out pallid back end of a full-grown, overfed Middle White pig, if she remembered rightly from the primary school trip to the Urban Farm. No cute curly tail, of course, but, Jeez, those trousers were so tight you could see individual clods of fat, bagged up like the vacuum-packed meatballs her mum had once (and only once) inflicted on them.
    â€˜Delilah? Can you get up please? I need to get this lot moved on a bit.’
    Dad and his precision moves. Six inches max, that’s all there was space for and what was the point of that? No-one was going anywhere. Checking in was taking for ever. No wonder they said to allow three hours – it was nothing to do with security but all about not enough staff. And no wonder that stroppy teacher-type voice kept coming over the PA with, ‘This is the
last
and
final
call for flight whatever. Would
all
remaining passengers
please
. . . etc. They were probably still in the long line-up for the X-ray thingy and had been in the building since dawn.
    Delilah turned her head and gave her father a look.He grinned at her, trying to jolly her along into a good holiday mood. She wasn’t joining in, not yet, not ’til some serious sun thawed her out.
    â€˜Moved to . . . er . . . where? Exactly?’ she challenged. If they moved the trolley any further forward she’d have her nose between the woman’s tree-trunk legs. The trolley twitched a warning and Delilah leapt off, aimed a smart kick at the Middle White’s left trotter and took swift refuge behind her mother. The pig, awakened from queuing stupor by the kick, turned round and burst into squeals.
    Delilah then heard her mother doing a piercing party-screech at the pig and watched her clasp the stout lady to her own comparatively insubstantial front. ‘Lesley!’
    â€˜Beth!’
    â€˜How
are
you?’
    â€˜And
Ned
! Oooh giveusakissdarlin’!’ The pink piggy wrapped herself round Delilah’s dad and planted a shiny slick of Barbie-bright lipstick across his mouth. He didn’t, Delilah was staggered to note, seem to mind at all. He was, in fact, hugging this creature and laughing. He so
wasn’t
that sort of person. Her mum was now being squashed by a big thing in a sheepskin jacket the colour of Nutella. So far, a pig and a sheep: a farmyard theme was creeping in here. Was this what it was like in the place they were going to? All these people her mad parentals knew, were they teaming up every year for a fortnight with human livestock? Did they have fancy-dress nights where you kitted yourself out as animal of your choice and won prizes? If she’d known she’d have packed some bunny ears and a fluffy tail, like poor Bridget Jones making a tit of herself at the party where no-one had told her it wasn’t fancy dress.
    â€˜And this must be Delilah!’ The Lesley person clutched her hand, crushing her skinny ribcage. The sticky lips collided with Delilah’s cheek and she inhaled a whole cosmetic counter’s worth of perfume samples. ‘Welcome to the party, darling – you’ll have a lovely time with us, we have a great laugh, don’t we Beth? Hope you’ve mugged up on your Kinks’ classics – did your mum tell you? It’s this year’s karaoke theme!’
    â€˜Er . . . Who?’
Karaoke?
Her
parents
? Should she make a run for the Gatwick Express and head home
right now
?
    â€˜Youth of today, eh? What do they know?’ Lesley laughed and nudged her sheep-man hard in his middle, then turned back to Delilah. ‘Now Delilah my love,
this
is my other half – Len. He’ll be after you for the water volleyball. He could do with a bit of young blood on the team!’
    He didn’t look too dreadful, Delilah conceded, for a sheep. He was chunky and smiley and round-tummied and wearing a zingingly white linen shirt