'Where are my brown loafers?' Edward Barnes yelled down the stairs.
Katherine, his wife of almost nine years, flicked her eyes towards the ceiling as she tried to finish off preparing a large strawberry Pavlova dessert. Sighing quietly to herself, she walked from the large kitchen of their impressive detached house, along the hallway to the bottom of the stairs.
'Have you tried looking in the bottom of the wardrobe?' Katherine called up to him, the sharp tone of her voice almost daring him to summon her upstairs to help search for the elusive footwear.
'Found them,' came the curt reply a minute later, without thanks.
Katherine allowed herself a little shake of her head and mouthed a silent curse as she returned to the kitchen. It was only ten o'clock in the morning, but already the late June heat was starting to sit heavy in the still air.
She wished she was outside, sitting beneath the large beech tree at the bottom of their garden, with only a magazine and cup of coffee for company. Her pale complexion and shoulder length strawberry-blonde hair meant Katherine did not fare well in a strong direct sun, but nevertheless she enjoyed the combination of warmth, shade and relaxing solitude.
That would have to wait for another time, though. Today being the 26th, and therefore the nearest Saturday to the 25th, meant observing a Barnes family tradition that Katherine had been introduced to eleven years ago, just a couple of months after she had first met Edward.
Her husband's father, Charles, had been born on the 25th of June - exactly six months away from Christmas. To Charles this had seemed significant and therefore the perfect excuse to hold a celebration which, over the years, had grown to rival the more usual December festivities.
Relations, friends and even employees from the Barnes family insurance business were now obliged to attend, with the centrepiece of the day being a long, boozy buffet lunch that would usually last into early evening.
The venue was always a large marquee erected in the middle of the expansive lawn of Edward's parents' house. The only stipulation for attending was that guests were expected to prepare and bring a dish for the buffet. This year, Katherine and Edward had been allocated desserts.
Which meant that Katherine, with no assistance whatsoever from Edward, had spent the previous afternoon in the kitchen. She had been attempting to make the perfect meringue for the Pavlova, knowing that the recipe dictated it should be allowed to cool and dry out overnight.
And she wanted it to be perfect; every item presented for the buffet would be subject to intense scrutiny by the harridans of the Barnes clan. Any mistakes would merely give them ammunition for snide comments and gossip for months to come.
The finished meringue ring resembled a mini fortress of swirled white peaks. Katherine began to fill it with dollops of whipped cream, which she then topped with a generous pile of glistening, quartered strawberries.
Sieving on icing sugar as a final touch, Katherine heard heavy footsteps clomping down the hallway, approaching the kitchen.
'Are the children ready? We'll need to go soon. I don't want us to be late,' Edward said, looking at his watch.
Katherine looked back over her shoulder at him, standing in the doorway with his arms now folded. He was dressed in his usual preppy wardrobe, which today comprised a pink polo shirt tucked neatly into pale tan chinos.
She noticed the dark brown leather belt straining against a waistline that had begun its inexorable expansion a couple of years ago. The ensemble was completed by the elusive loafers and a light blue sweater draped over his shoulders.
'I told them to go upstairs and get changed, Edward,' was all Katherine said in response before turning back to her dessert, clenching her jaw.
Maybe if she could have faced one of their increasingly regular arguments, she would have asked him: Weren't you just upstairs? Why didn't you check on the kids? And who the hell still wears bloody chinos?
The answer to that last question was simple, though: most of the men attending her father-in-law's birthday party.
'Right, well I'll go and get the car ready,' Edward muttered as he turned and departed the kitchen.
Getting the car ready? What exactly did that entail, Katherine wondered to herself. Whenever she used their Range Rover - invariably with the their son and daughter in tow and carrying armfuls of whatever detritus was required for the activity they were about to embark on - it was just a case of inserting the key and starting it up.
Not much preparation required there at all, but then Edward's excuses for avoiding his parental duties had never been great.
It was not as if he was a bad father. Rather, he saw his role as a painfully traditional one, as doubtless his father and all of his ancestors had in turn done before him. Organising the children was Katherine's function, one she had given up a promising career in public relations to pursue. She still hung onto the dream that one day she would return to work but, with a seven- and a five-year-old, that remained a distant aspiration.
Sometimes, in her most private thoughts and usually after a few glasses of wine, Katherine could find herself speculating how her life would be if they had never had a family. She loved the children, of course, and would do anything for them, but witnessing the carefree existence of some of her childless friends was prone to invoke envy pangs.
Standing back from the kitchen counter, Katherine admired the completed Pavlova, a satisfied half-smile appearing at the corners of her mouth. The dessert was bigger than she had envisaged, about twelve inches in diameter and six high but she was pleased that, for once, something she had made actually resembled the picture in her cookery book.
Sure, there would be whispered comments that it was an easy recipe, but Katherine had long since learnt that universal praise at a Barnes family event was unattainable, so why bother attempting anything too complicated?
After a frantic fifteen minutes organising the children, getting changed into a cornflower blue sun dress and quickly dabbing on some make-up, Katherine was on the driveway, shepherding her offspring towards the waiting Range Rover. Edward sat motionless, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel, saying nothing.
As usual, the car radio was tuned to some dry news programme. Had she been on her own, Katherine would have switched to a pop station, but she knew Edward could not stand what he termed 'that noise'.
Sitting in the passenger seat, she reflected that that was just another symptom of their age gap: she was thirty three, while Edward was ten years older, and unfortunately old for his age, too. His attitudes would often betray that he seemed to have more in common with his parents' generation than with theirs.
With the journey only being twenty miles, it passed quickly and mostly in silence, apart from the muted chattering and occasional squabbling coming from the back seat. Involuntarily, Katherine swallowed hard as their car swept through the grand iron gates of her in-laws' house. There were already lots of cars parked there, mostly no more than a couple of years old, and mostly with a prestige badge.
Katherine recognised some of them as belonging to the advance party. This was some of Edward's siblings and assorted other relatives, all instructed to arrive early to help set out the buffet and complete any last minute preparations. The Barnes family knew when they were on display, and they liked everything to be just right.
As Katherine opened her door and stepped down onto the gravel driveway, a slightly plump woman sporting a severe dark brown bob rushed out from the house, beaming at them.
'Katherine, Edward, how are you,' she cried, before sticking her head through the open car door to greet the now excited children.