Not All Bad News Then… (Five Sentence Fiction, May 2011)

This week’s prompt was ‘Sombrero’.

The bustle of the arrivals area was punctuated by shouts of  “Hola! Hola!” and Phyllida turned to regard the elderly couple waving wildly as they trundled out of baggage reclaim behind a trolley piled high with glossy baby-pink suitcases.

Dressed in a turquoise and silver shell suit, complete with a bright orange sombrero hanging down his back, a straw donkey under one arm and a similarly shell-suited blonde woman on the other, her father cut a truly spectacular figure for a former bank manager.

“I told you all about Chardonnay here, “said her father, pushing his giggling escort forward to envelop his daughter in a suffocating micro-climate of heady perfume, tempered with duty-free gin, “and have we got a surprise for you, my dear.”

“Oh God no, they’ve got married,” thought Phyllida, who had imagined her father gliding gently into old age beneath temperate Spanish skies, armed with nothing more challenging than a good book and an annual subscription to the local bowling club.

“Chardonnay and I are setting up home together,” announced her father proudly, “but not only that, she’s just heard she’s been awarded her doctorate in Geriatric Medicine.”