Page 30 of The Wedding Forecast

I can see it, the path I am going down, big flashing neon sign that says don’t enter, don’t come this way, but I am going anyway.

‘The baby wasn’t planned,’ he says.

‘But you want it.’ I am trying to sound flat and emotionless, but my voice cracks.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re happy, you’re excited, you’re ready to be a father?’ I sound like I’m about to cry, but I’m not. I can still hold it all in.

‘Yes,’ Joel said. And I can hear it. He is.

‘So what changed?’

‘I don’t know,’ Joel says, and he looks at me almost with tenderness.

‘Something must have changed,’ I say.

‘Honestly?’ Joel looks at me.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Tell me, honestly.’

‘I didn’t want that life when we were together. I couldn’t imagine it with us, I don’t think parenthood would have worked with us,’ he said finally.

‘You didn’t want it with me.’

‘I said, with us. Our relationship.’

‘But you mean me. You just didn’t want to have a baby with me.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Yes you did.’

‘Fine. Yes then. I didn’t want it with you. Is that what you want me to say?’

‘Yes.’ And it is. It’s satisfying in a sick way. I wanted the dagger in my heart and I could almost get it there myself but I needed him to push it all the way in and twist it, and he has. Now I can really feel sorry for myself, now I have made it more painful than it needed to be. I am not someone worthy of having a child with, I am not worthy of building a future with. I’m not worthy of any of it. That’s what I needed to hear.

‘Look. I’m sorry. I didn’t plan this,’ he says. ‘All being together at the wedding like this.’

‘I know.’

‘Anna—’

‘I’m going to the bathroom,’ I say.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are we okay?’

He thinks it’s a fair trade. That I wrote a few paragraphs in a book that he feels weird about, and he’s having a baby with someone else.

‘We’re great,’ I say, pushing into the bathroom before he can read the lie on my face.

8

I WALK INTO the bathroom, hands shaking, heart racing, and there’s Bianca. She’s leaning over the sink and splashing water onto her face with a total disregard for what it’s doing to her make-up.