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not to feel intimidated. ‘In fact, I rushed out on a designer friend of mine, just so—’

      ‘But you’re a model,’ Ivan the T interrupted her. ‘It’s hardly life or death stuff we were interrupting, now was it? What were you doing anyway, strutting down a catwalk or something?’

      ‘As a matter of fact, no, I was—’

      ‘I’m afraid Mr King can only spare us a few moments,’ the solicitor interrupted, ‘before he has to leave for the airport again. His time is very precious and we must all respect that.’

      And my time isn’t precious? Kate thought crossly, but stayed tight lipped.

      ‘So Miss Lee,’ the solicitor went on, ‘if you’d just be kind enough to turn your attention to the document in front of you, then we can proceed.’

      ‘Oh now, you needn’t look so worried,’ said Ivan the T, waving his hand as if to dismiss Kate’s concerns. ‘This is absolutely nothing to concern you. All perfectly standard. We just need your signature on the dotted line, that’s all. Then we can all get out of here.’

      Kate began to read the document, but scanning down through it wasn’t much help to her. It all seemed to be written in the most over-complicated legalese, littered with phrases like, ‘the third party pertaining to the first part,’ and ‘hitherto forth and dated this third day of July, should the marriage come to be terminated …’

      This is a pre-nup, she thought, horrified. So that’s why she’d been summoned here, with Damien safely out of the country: to sign a bloody pre-nup. Without her own lawyer present, without any warning or notice. She was about to become Damien’s wife and now the King family just landed this on her and wanted her to sign her rights away?

      Well, if they thought that she could just be bullied into putting pen to paper, then they had another thing coming. She had to talk this over with Damien, she just had to. Though instinctively she knew he’d probably laugh and tell her to rip the whole thing up, then fling it in the bin, where it rightly belonged.

      ‘I’m so sorry to waste your valuable time, Mr King,’ Kate said, standing up to her full height and pointedly shoving the document as far away from her as possible. ‘But there’s absolutely no way I’d dream of putting pen to paper on something like this. What you have to understand is that Damien and I love each other very much. We intend to spend the rest of our lives together and over my dead body would I ever consider discussing divorce before we’re even married. And I’m afraid to tell you, nor would Damien.’

      Later on that evening, Damien came back from Brussels and immediately called Kate. They’d been due to attend a movie premiere that night, a new release called Gladiator that was hotly tipped for Oscars, but as soon as Kate told him what had happened, he cancelled. Instead, he whisked her off for a cosy dinner, just the two of them, in l’Ecrivain, a Michelin-starred restaurant in the heart of town where he was a regular.

      Still shaky from the whole experience, Kate told him everything and was beside herself with relief when he was just as dismissive of the whole thing as she knew he’d be.

      ‘Oh, forget about it, I’m sure it’s nothing,’ he’d said, topping up their glasses with a bottle of Cristal Champagne that he’d insisted on ordering. Kate never drank, it was her one and only golden rule, but she was still so shaken after that morning that she made an exception.

      ‘Just the old man trying to protect family capital, that’s all,’ he went on. ‘In fact he faxed me over the pre-nup this morning too. I’ve got it here in my briefcase. Never even glanced at the thing. Hadn’t the time yet.’

      ‘Damien! And you didn’t think to call me? Just to give me a bit of warning that this was in the pipeline?’

      ‘It’s nothing! Trust me, this is just the way my dad is. Practically insists on a blood sample before he’ll even hire a new employee, so you can imagine what he’s like with a prospective daughter-in-law.’

      ‘It was so scary in there today,’ Kate said, allowing herself a tiny sip of champagne. ‘I was caught completely off-guard, so I had no idea what else to do.’

      ‘Sweetheart, by walking away from it you did the right thing. Besides, it’s grotesque imagining you and I ever at each other’s throats and screaming for a divorce. As if!’

      Kate laughed and drank a tiny bit more.

      An hour later, Damien was trying to convince her that this mightn’t be such a bad idea after all and that the pre-nup meant so little, she might as well sign it.

      ‘After all, sweetheart,’ he said, reaching across the table to take her hands, ‘you and I are never going to divorce anyway, are we? You’re my perfect girl. Why would I ever want to divorce my perfect girl?’

      ‘And I’d never divorce you in a million years,’ she smiled back at him, randomly marvelling at just how handsome he looked in the candlelight.

      ‘Well you know something?’ Damien went on. ‘Then what possible difference can this make? It’s just a signature on a piece of paper, that’s all. It means absolutely nothing to me.’

      Three glasses of champagne later when dessert was being cleared, he’d got her thinking it was actually all in her own best interests really. And Damien could be so persuasive when he wanted to be.

      ‘Look at it this way,’ he’d said, eyes glinting in the dim light. ‘If you do sign, then in one fell stroke it proves two things to the old man: firstly, that you’ve absolutely no interest in the King family fortune and never had, and secondly, that you’re marrying for love and nothing else. Plus it would certainly get you off on the right foot with the in-laws, wouldn’t it?’

      And by the time they called his driver around to take them home, light-headed from the champagne, Kate had already borrowed a biro from a passing waiter and signed on the dotted line.

       TESS

       The present

      ‘I look like the Irish flag,’ says Gracie, my baby sister and bridesmaid, shoehorning herself into the slinky little bottle green shift dress that she picked out for the big day months ago.

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous, you’re gorgeous!’ I say brightly, sticking my head around the fitting room door, so I can get a good look at her parading up and down in front of the mirrors outside.

      ‘And it’s too tight. Either I’ve put on weight or else it just doesn’t bloody well fit properly.’

      ‘You’re as thin as a pin and it looks like a perfect fit to me.’

      ‘Is it too late to get something else instead?’ she whines, staring in the giant mirror ahead of her and fidgeting with the sleeves of the dress, almost as though they’re itching her.

      ‘You know right well it is,’ I tell her firmly, going back into my fitting room. ‘Besides, can I remind you that you’re the one who insisted on wearing that dress in the first place? So in fairness, it’s a little bit late to back out now.’

      ‘I know, but what in the name of arse was I thinking?’ Gracie insists. ‘A bottle green dress against my head of carroty-red hair and freckly skin? By the time you throw in the white posy, I’ll look like something off a St Paddy’s Day float. You should have held me back, you should have ripped the bloody thing off my back when there was still time.’

      ‘You’re absolutely stunning, Gracie, love,’ my mother coos over from a plush white armchair at a dressing table in front of a mirror, where she’s sipping Prosecco – at half three in the afternoon by the way – while trying on fascinators and having an absolute ball for herself. ‘A good spray tan will sort you out and wait till you see. You won’t know yourself.’

      ‘I

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