Page 3 of The Wedding Forecast

‘Good. You should be.’

Why does this sound so patronising?

‘I know. And I am.’ I never sound less happy than when I am insisting I am happy.

Mum starts rifling in her bag again, and I glance over, scared of what she might pull out next. I catch sight of something green.

‘Mum. Is that what I think it is.’

‘I’m just putting in my eye drops,’ she says, brandishing the bottle.

‘I mean, the book in your bag.’

‘What book?’

‘You know what book.’

‘Oh, your book?’ She gives me a suspiciously innocent look.

‘Yes. Why do you have’—I pause and strain my neck, taking another quick look into her tote—‘five copies of it in there?’

‘My daughter wrote a book. Obviously I want to show it off.’

‘This is Hayley’s wedding. It’s not an appropriate time to be doing that.’

‘Anna, calm down. Bobbi has some family who will want to see it, that’s all. And Jean’s best friend from high school is coming, and she still needs to buy a copy. And Luke’s family—they don’t strike me as readers, but you never know.’

‘Sorry. Did you say buy a copy?’

‘Not buy buy. She’ll give me cash and I’ll give her a copy.’

‘That is traditionally what it means to buy something. Mum, you can’t sell my book at a wedding!’

‘You are overreacting. I just know some of the people here haven’t had the chance to read it yet. I’ve got five copies, just in case. That’s all. When I talk about the book, honey, people always say “that sounds fantastic, I’d love to buy it” and this way, I can just offer them a copy on the spot.’

My headache has instantly deepened.

Is it nice to have a mother who is so proud of you she travels with a box of your books at all times? Yes, it is. Of course it is. I am very grateful. I have a grateful headache.

The book in question is The Hike: my debut novel, released six weeks ago, a darkly comic psychological thriller about two couples who go on a hike in New Zealand and accidentally kill someone, and then the stress of how to handle the situation leads to other secrets and tensions between them all unravelling.

This is not the best pitch. I’m still very bad at that part. But talking about your own book is an entirely different prospect from recommending someone else’s book. You can’t say, ‘It’s brilliant, trust me’, or ‘It’s like Sally Rooney, but funnier’ or ‘It’s a bit Ann Patchett with a touch of Curtis Sittenfeld’, which are the kinds of things I say about other people’s books. I can’t use any adjectives about mine without sounding arrogant. A simple ‘what’s your book about?’ question and my mind spins. My mouth starts moving and words flow out in the most disjointed way. I’ll get halfway through describing the plot (‘they accidentally kill this guy’) and backtrack to explain the main character (‘she’s unlikeable but in a good way’) and then circle around to a random part of the book that doesn’t really matter (‘oh, there’s a scene in these caves, have you ever been to New Zealand?’). I’ll start talking about themes (‘it’s about, like, what it means to love someone’). I’ll reference it being similar to a show they’ve never heard of (‘Do you know Search Party?’). And then I’ll just end by saying something like ‘It’s better than it sounds!’ and laugh weakly.

Mum has no problem with the pitch. ‘There are secrets, lies and dead bodies,’ she’ll say. ‘You’ll love it.’ Sometimes she says, ‘What’s your favourite TV show?’ and no matter what answer they give, she replies, ‘Anna’s book is like that but better.’ She has sold copies to her hairdresser, her neighbours on both sides, her dog groomer, six different people from the dog park, the barista at her local cafe and three strangers in line at the post office in the first two days of release. Her hustle is unmatched. Hayley’s mother Bobbi owns a bookshop and even she can’t match Mum’s sales tactics.

The Hike is dedicated to Mum and Dad, which in hindsight was a mistake, because I think it gave Mum too much stake in its success. She’ll flip to the dedication page at the front and say (often to a total stranger), ‘Look at this, will you,’ with her hand over her heart.

But at least I didn’t dedicate it to Joel, which I was considering at one point. It’s bad enough there are two whole sentences mentioning him in the acknowledgments. We had broken up not long before I sat down to write them, and it was very hard to know what to do. I had four sentences about him that I deleted, then reinstated, then cut down to two, because even though we were technically broken up, I couldn’t be sure we wouldn’t get back together—we’d been a couple for eight years, he still loved me (I assumed) and that felt like it mattered. Imagine if we got back together and he wasn’t mentioned at all.

In the final paragraph it says: Thank you to Joel, for supporting me, encouraging me, and taking me on adventures. This book would not exist without you.

At the time I thought it was quite restrained. I thought it was mature. Now it just makes me feel a bit sick. Adventures? The man never took me anywhere he wasn’t already travelling for work.

2

I DROP MUM at the Airbnb she’s staying in with Dad, Hayley’s mother Bobbi, and Bobbi’s wife Jean. Mum has a lot of bags, and a mysterious box that I am really hoping does not contain more copies of my book. That’s better than Dad at least, who insisted on bringing their giant coffee machine from home, even though the rental house comes with one and they are only away for two nights. ‘It will be one of those pod coffee machines, and I am morally against them,’ Dad told me. He takes a moral stance against a lot of appliances. I have stopped asking why.

Mum leans into the car to kiss my cheek and I start to put my window back up but she stops me.