BEACH HOLIDAY

Gem knew now why her mother had always hated the beach. There were the children, whining in the sand. There were the budgie smugglers, the voluptuous bikini girls, the miscellaneous strutters. And the skinny surfer mothers dangling their beautiful babies in the breakers, trailed by glamorous mothers-in-law in bling and white muslin.

And the dads, tiny dots out to sea, diving like dolphins, bodysurfing.

Beside Gem, on a sunlounger, her husband’s friend’s wife got sand between the pages of her romance.

Another towel over, her husband’s friend’s teenage daughter exposed more of herself than her mother could comfortably stomach, evenly sunburning each side of her body.

Gem’s gritty-faced toddler kept ambling up and pulling a big white tit out of his mum’s saggy togs for another feed. She felt sand around her nipple, sunscreen and ice-cream and sticky mango against her skin. He wiggled across the soft marbly steps of her tummy. After 30 seconds or so, he’d pull away, flashing her shapelessness to the world.

Gem’s husband’s friend made plenty of money and the family liked to invite their friends on holidays that allowed this to be conspicuous.

Gem’s husband’s friend’s wife had not breastfed any of her children until they were toddlers.

Last summer was worse: the toddler, who’d been a baby then, would get distracted halfway through a feed, pull away and push down sharply on her full breast.

Last summer, Gem had accidentally spray-milked the pages of her husband’s friend’s wife’s romance.

Here were the dads, resurfacing, wandering in grinning, dawdling as they discussed the surf and perved at the surfer mothers’ flat, tea-brown backsides.

Gem’s husband gave her a cold wet kiss on the forehead, like the kiss of an enormous dead fish.

“This is great,” he said. “Let’s come here again next year.”