My Mother’s Wedding: A Short Story from the collection, Reader, I Married Him. Tessa Hadley

might happen, and there was opportunity for plenty of pouring out their hearts to one another and dancing and pairing up in the wrong pairs, while the dope and the drink and the mushroom-brew kept everything lubricated and crazy. Meanwhile, the ragged gang of their kids would be running wild around the place in the dark, wilder even than their parents dreamed, stealing Fen’s disgusting mead and spying on what they never should have seen – and one of them would almost inevitably break an arm, or set fire to a tent, or nearly drown. (Once, at a different party, one of the children really did drown, but that’s another story.)