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genuinely upset that their dad wouldn’t be there for their birthday.
    ‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said, in super-enthusiastic mode, ‘let’s go and take a look at the garage and we’ll see what we can do to make it like a really cool jungle.’
    ‘It’s this way,’ Nancy said.
    I followed her and the twins through her huge kitchen, living room and hall, and out into the dark, damp, cobweb-infested garage. I had four hours to clear it, clean it and transform it into a jungle. How the hell was I going to manage that?
    ‘Can you really make it into a jungle?’ Harry asked.
    ‘Sure, no problem. I’ll call a few friends to come and help.’
    ‘I have to go, Ava. I’ve a hair and makeup appointment and the boys are getting their hair cut, too. We’ll be back around twelve,’ Nancy said. Then, fighting back tears, she whispered, ‘Please don’t let me down. They need to have a nice time. Their arsehole of a father isn’t going to be here.’
    I put my arm around her. ‘Don’t worry about anything. I promise they’ll have a great birthday.’
    As soon as they left, I called Sally, Charlie and the girls. I needed all hands on deck. They arrived over – Sally had a boot-load of emergency equipment from the office – and we set to transforming the gloomy garage into a jungle.
    ‘It’s disgusting in here,’ Sarah complained, as she carried a bin out.
    ‘It’s not exactly a party room,’ Ali agreed, as she dragged an old carpet across the floor.
    ‘Remind me why the hell she can’t have the party in a wing of her mansion?’ Sally grumbled.
    ‘Because she’s a bit neurotic and, to be fair, twenty-five seven-year-old boys would probably trash the house.’
    ‘Well, I’ll be charging a lot extra for this,’ Sally said. ‘I had a massage booked for this morning.’
    ‘How much are we getting paid for working today?’ Sarah demanded. ‘We’ve been in school all week and it’s supposed to be our time to relax, so we should get paid double what you were thinking of giving us.’
    ‘You’ll get nothing if you don’t start working,’ I said. ‘Now, come on, we need to get a move on. The best thing to do is push all the junk to one side, cover it with a black sheet and work with the rest of the room.’
    We used blow heaters to warm it up and get rid of the damp, then set up the trestle table and covered it with a bamboo-effect cloth, leopard- and zebra-print plates and cups. We covered the walls with black sheets and stuck life-size photos of animals to them. We set up potted palm trees in each corner. We rolled out large grass mats on the floor and placed slimy plastic creepy-crawlies all around. We put huge cut-outs of lions, giraffes and zebras all around the room. Then we hung a mosquito net across the ceiling and suspended spiders, bats and snakes from it, with balloons in zebra- and leopard-print. Finally, we stuck lion paw prints all the way up the drive to the door.
    ‘Am I in Africa?’ Helen asked, coming through the doorway bearing a very large birthday cake. ‘Good job, guys, it’s very jungle-esque.’
    ‘And well done to you,’ Sally said, nodding at the cake. ‘It really does look like a crocodile. How did you do it?’
    ‘Years of practice … and buckets of green icing.’
    ‘The detail is amazing.’ Ali came over for a closer look. ‘What are the claws made of?’
    ‘The claws are liquorice, the teeth are cut-up marshmallows, the eyes are whole marshmallows with black jellybeans for pupils and when you cut the cake, raspberry coulis will flow out like blood, just as they requested.’
    ‘Little boys are freaks,’ Sally said.
    I showed Helen into the kitchen and she put the cake and chocolate animals in the fridge and left the canapés for the adults, plus the kids’ lion- and zebra-face pizzas, elephant-shaped sandwiches and sausage rolls on the counter-top. We also had doughnuts, jelly snakes, spiders and dinosaurs and a fruit platter – which the parents always