Page 32 of The Wedding Forecast

‘It’s okay,’ I say.

Someone clears their throat above us, and I look up to see Mac.

‘Are you okay?’ he says, and I’m not sure which one of us he’s speaking to.

‘Not really,’ Bianca says. ‘I mean, yes, just feeling shit.’

Mac squats down. ‘My sister said pregnancy was the worst nine months of her life.’

Bianca looks up at him. ‘Really?’ she says. She sounds so hopeful.

Mac nods. ‘Yes, it was bad. She was really sick. Then she had terrible heartburn. And she got a condition that made her unbearably itchy. And something else with her back.’

‘Oh, the poor thing,’ Bianca said.

‘She said the first year of my nephew’s life was a breeze compared to pregnancy,’ he went on.

‘Oh, see, that’s what I’m hoping. If the pregnancy is really, really bad, then you get rewarded with an easy baby.’ Bianca is looking up at Mac like he’s an oracle, a god, Santa presenting her a well-behaved child and a happy life.

‘I don’t know much about kids, so I could be wrong, but I don’t think my nephew was an easy baby, and he’s definitely a total terror now he’s a toddler. It’s more that pregnancy just sucked so much and looking after him is a lot more fun,’ Mac says. ‘I don’t think this is supposed to be the fun part.’

‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘That helps.’

She continues gazing at Mac like he’s a hero. I’m the one on the ground with her, patting her damn back. Mac holds out a hand, and she takes it, letting him help her up.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, looking down at me. ‘I’m not normally like this.’

‘You’re fine,’ I say. ‘You don’t need to apologise.’

‘I do,’ she says quietly.

I shake my head and swallow hard. ‘You don’t.’ My voice is harsher than I mean it to be. But the alternative is slopping my emotions everywhere.

She straightens her dress. ‘Well, I’m going to head back to the table.’

I can see her steeling herself. She has dessert to get through. There are a lot of glasses of water on the table. Her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s parents are in the room. She’s trying to make a good impression. It will be at least an hour before she can just lie down and close her eyes. It comforts me to know this dinner isn’t easy for her either.

‘See you out there,’ I say.

She leaves us in the hallway, me still on the floor. Mac looks down at me, and I make no move to get up. Maybe I’ll stay down here all night.

‘Are you okay?’ he says.

‘Yes.’

No.

I just need a moment to get there, to get it all back under control. My therapist (a term I am using very generously, as I only saw her for five sessions) would say, now is the right time to go for a long walk. Now is the time to be kind to yourself. Now is the time to do the breathing she showed me—breathe in like you’re smelling a flower, breathe out like you’re blowing out a candle.

A while ago, I watched a video of a woman who broke up with her long-time partner in her mid-thirties and she said she was so confident that she was going to find someone else and fall in love, have a family, all that jazz, that it never even occurred to her it wouldn’t happen. But it didn’t. She was happy, in her fifties, and she’d travelled and had a great and interesting life, but the undercurrent of it stuck with me. This thing you think will happen, this certainty you have for the life you’re going to lead, the person you want to be, the way you think your life will go, it might not happen. You might not get it. Whatever it is, I’m not sure anymore.

‘Come on, they’re serving dessert,’ Mac says. He holds out his hand.

‘Is it chocolate?’ I say. I really need chocolate.

‘Yes. Chocolate mousse.’

‘Okay.’ I’ll get up for chocolate mousse.