“Can we go find the chocolate cake now?”

I put my hand on her back, and I looked up, and I watched what her one word did to the two people in front of me.

The smug superiority was gone from Mike’s face, wiped clean, replaced by a blank, uncomprehending look, as though someone had asked him a question in a language he did not speak.

He stared at my daughter and could not make her make sense.

But Tiffany — the woman with the champagne and the message-smile — her reaction was infinitely worse, and it was the first sign I had that this evening was not going to go the way any of us had planned.