The Group Chat

The Romero family had been split across two hemispheres for six years, ever since Lucia married an Australian called Mick and moved to Sydney, and her parents, unable to bear being so far from their grandchildren, eventually followed. Her brother Pablo had stayed in Seville, along with Aunt Rocio, two cousins and a parrot that only spoke when nobody wanted it to. The group chat that held them all together was called "Romeros Worldwide", and because Mick was in it, everybody wrote in English, more or less.

In March, Lucia had an idea. Her parents' fortieth wedding anniversary was coming up in May, and they had never had a proper party. "Surprise party in Sydney," she wrote, having first removed Mom and Dad from the chat. "Pablo, you're flying over anyway, right?" "Planning to," Pablo replied. "If work lets me." "And Aunt Rocio?" "Wouldn't miss it," wrote Aunt Rocio, followed by eleven emojis of increasingly unclear meaning.

Over the next few weeks the chat filled up with lists, photos and voice notes that nobody listened to all the way through. Lucia took charge of the guests. Pablo, who had a gift for spreadsheets and a terrible memory, offered to handle the budget. Mick, as usual, did what he was told and occasionally sent a thumbs-up.

Then, at half past eleven one night Sydney time, which was half past three in the afternoon in Seville, Lucia sent the message that started all the trouble. "OK, news. I've put a hold on the function room at Mick's bowls club for the 14th, and I've ordered the cake, the one shaped like the Giralda. Mick reckons it's way too expensive, though. Can you sort it, Pablo? I'm flat out at work this week."

Pablo read it on the bus home. The Giralda cake, he thought, was obviously the problem: a three-tier sponge in the shape of a cathedral tower was exactly the kind of thing only his sister would order. He spent the evening searching Sydney bakeries and found a perfectly respectable chocolate cake for a third of the price. "Sorted," he wrote. "Found a much cheaper one. Don't worry about it any more."

Lucia read the message the following morning, between two meetings, and felt enormously relieved. Her brother, she assumed, had found a cheaper venue. She called the bowls club and released the hold on the room. "Legend," she typed. "Can you send me the address?" Pablo, who thought she meant the bakery, sent it. Lucia, who thought it was a restaurant, did not look closely. Nobody, in fairness, had ever looked closely at anything Pablo sent.

It was Mick who discovered the problem, nine days before the party, when two separate confirmation emails arrived for two separate cakes and none at all for a room. He posted a screenshot to the chat without comment. For a long moment nobody typed. Then Aunt Rocio wrote, "So no party?" and the chat exploded.

"You said it was too expensive!" Pablo wrote. "The ROOM was too expensive," Lucia replied. "Mick said so!" "You never said the room. You said it. The last thing you mentioned was the cake!" "Why would anyone think a cake was too expensive?" "Have you SEEN that cake?" Mick, wisely, sent nothing at all.

In the end, the party was held in Lucia's back garden, under fairy lights that Mick borrowed from three different neighbors. There was no function room and no dance floor, but there were two cakes, one of them shaped like a cathedral, and forty guests who agreed that this was exactly as it should be. When Lucia's father finally heard the whole story, he laughed until he had to sit down. "Forty years of marriage," he said, "and the secret has always been the same. Never trust the word it."