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a fantasy. I sat on my hands to keep from poking them. Didn’t seem like the done thing.

      ‘Sorry we kept it a surprise,’ Erin whispered in an appropriately reverential tone. ‘It was Jenny’s idea. We know you’ve been so crazy busy that you haven’t even started thinking about the wedding, so, you know, this just seemed like a good way to kick-start things.’

      I nodded slowly. This was the second time in a week someone had tried to ‘kick-start’ my wedding planning with the lure of pretty dresses. I wondered if Alex’s friends were tempting him out of the house with the promise of delicious meals only to bombard him with designer tuxedos. Probably not.

      ‘We are still having brunch though, aren’t we?’ My priorities were poker straight.

      ‘Believe me, I know how stressful wedding planning is,’ Erin said, holding up both hands to emphasize her point while Sadie listened intently. Both ignored my question. ‘And these are the fun parts. Honestly, by the day of the wedding, you’re going to wish you’d just eloped.’

      ‘I had a friend who got married. She was a model,’ Sadie added entirely unnecessarily. All of her friends who weren’t in this room were models. ‘And she cried the whole time. Everyone thought it was because she was so happy, but it wasn’t. She, like, totally freaked out. I had to talk her out of ditching him in the bathroom.’

      ‘Sounds like my first wedding,’ Erin agreed. ‘I had to watch the video afterwards to actually see what happened. I was just panicking the whole time.’

      Thanks to the massive number of mirrors in the dressing room, it wasn’t just the girls who had the pleasure of my expression. If my eyebrows could get this high this quickly, I would never need Botox.

      ‘But you’ll be fine,’ Erin said quickly. ‘That’s why we need to start planning now. Dresses first, then the venue and the catering, and then you only need to worry about the guest list. And you’ve got for ever, right? What are you thinking? Next summer? Next autumn?’

      I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Guest lists. Venues. Dresses.

      ‘Oh, you need at least eighteen months,’ Sadie declared. Unmarried, twenty-three-year-old, single Sadie. ‘At least. You won’t get any decent venue with less notice than eighteen months.’

      ‘Unless you do a Friday.’ Erin shrugged and made a face. ‘But you can’t do a Friday.’

      ‘Tacky,’ Sadie confirmed. ‘So what are you thinking?’

      And that was the first time since getting engaged that I realized I wasn’t just wearing this ring for a laugh. I was actually getting married. I was going to be a bride. I was going to put on a great big dress and mince down an aisle and make promises to Alex in front of lots of people, then eat a painstakingly selected meal that I would endeavour not to spill down one of these incredibly expensive dresses. I was getting married. To a boy. For ever and ever and ever. Gulp.

      ‘Can I get you ladies some champagne?’ Charise asked, hanging a fourth dress and glowing in our general direction.

      ‘Yes please,’ we answered in unison.

      ‘I’ll be right back,’ she replied, backing out of the room. Obviously she could tell something was wrong because instead of cooing over the dresses and having a little cry like we should be, we were sitting in stony silence.

      ‘Where is Jenny?’ I pulled out my phone and jabbed at the screen. No messages, no missed calls.

      ‘I knew I shouldn’t have left without her.’ Sadie rubbed her bare arm and frowned. ‘But she’s been OK the last couple of days and she was excited.’

      ‘And she said she was coming?’ Erin asked, dialling Jenny’s number, hanging up and dialling again. And again. And again. ‘You spoke to her?’

      ‘I knocked on her door, I told her we needed to leave, she stuck her head out.’ Sadie paused to reinforce her statement through the medium of mime. ‘And said she’d be here, like, ten minutes after us. Now can someone please, for the love of Wang, start trying on dresses?’

      ‘I can’t try them on without Jenny here,’ I said, reaching out to touch a puff of organza. I prodded it lightly with a fingernail in case it popped and disappeared. ‘I can’t.’

      There was silence in the room while Sadie vibrated with impatience.

      ‘I’ll go and get her,’ Erin said after a long, lustful look at an ivory satin bodice. ‘You get started on the dresses and I’ll go and get her.’

      ‘No, don’t be stupid.’ I jumped to my feet. ‘You’re the size of seven hippos. I’ll go.’

      ‘But you have to try on dresses!’ Sadie actually stamped her foot. It was like having a six-foot-two three-year-old in the room throwing a tantrum. ‘Someone has to try on a dress.’

      ‘So you try one on for me,’ I said, tossing my satchel over my shoulder and heading out of the door. ‘I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Twenty tops. Don’t drink all the champagne.’

      Before Erin could heave herself out of her chair I was up and on my way out of the door, and I didn’t breathe again until I felt the sun on my skin. I breathed in and out as deeply as I could as I stuck my arm out for a cab. The bridal salon had a soft, powdery perfume that had started to make me feel sick. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to try on the dresses. I was only a girl, after all, and what girl could resist wedding dresses? And these weren’t just any wedding dresses, they were Wang. These were hardcore, triple-X bridal crack, enough to go to any girl’s head. But it was the surprise element that was too much for me. A girl needed to build up to something like this; you couldn’t just go in cold on Wang, for God’s sake. I needed an hour or so with some magazines, a visit to the Bloomingdale’s bridal floor, enough notice to make sure my underwear matched, that kind of thing.

      I could still see each of the four dresses Charise had picked out dancing around in my head when I jumped into a taxi and gave them Jenny’s address. There was the ivory one with the black ribbon waist that flowed down to the ground like a pile of very elegant used tissues. Maybe not for me. And then the one with the sparkly embroidered bodice that whispered Kim Kardashian a little too loudly for my liking. I didn’t really want to celebrate my special day looking like someone whose last marriage lasted a whole seventy-two days. The whitest one looked a little bit like a very beautifully draped towel, and then there was the prettiest dress I had ever seen. Not the most mind-blowing, not the biggest, brightest or boldest, nothing that would change the world, but definitely the prettiest. I closed my eyes, wound down the window and took a moment to imagine myself waltzing around a candlelit ballroom wearing the delicately peach-hued mermaid dress, roses of tulle floating around my feet, wisps of silk brushing against my skin. It was beautiful and I could see it. But it just didn’t feel like me. And it definitely didn’t feel like Alex. I pressed my fingers against my forehead and nibbled on a thumbnail. It struck me this whole wedding malarkey was going to be harder than I’d thought, now I realized I hadn’t really thought about it at all.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      ‘Jenny?’

      I had decided against ringing the buzzer and let myself straight into the apartment with the key I had never bothered to give back − I wasn’t about to stand on the pavement like a spare part if she had just decided she didn’t fancy company. It was about time we got this intervention-slash-arse-kicking on the road.

      Things had changed since I’d lived on the corner of 39th and Lex. Every surface in the apartment was now bright white, courtesy of Sadie and her Mariah Carey addiction to blinding surfaces. Unfortunately, that addiction didn’t run as far as actual cleaning or hiring a housekeeper. If possible, their flat was a worse shit-hole than mine. Used-up cartons of coconut water (Sadie’s) and empty pyramids of Coronas (Jenny’s) lined the kitchenette, and the living room was artfully decorated with more clothes than you could find in your average Help the Aged. A cashmere sweater here, an

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