Page 66 of The Wedding Forecast

‘I booked Hayley and me tickets to a show tonight, but she’s going out with conference people, so I have a spare ticket if you’d like to come,’ I say, in what I hope is a breezy tone.

‘Yes, that sounds fun,’ he says immediately.

‘You don’t know what kind of show I’m talking about yet.’

‘What kind of show? A musical?’

‘A magic show. Sort of.’

‘Oh.’

‘Your enthusiasm has dipped.’

‘Slightly.’

‘You don’t have to come.’

‘You can’t go to some weird magic show in a strange city by yourself.’

‘It’s not weird!’

‘You shouldn’t go to a not-weird magic show in a strange city by yourself either.’

‘Probably not,’ I say, smiling at him.

We go back to my hotel room before the show, because Mac’s apartment is too far away for him to go there between this and dinner. (We’re getting dinner now.) He offers to wait in the lobby but I said, don’t be silly, which I now regret, because our room is tiny and I was going to shower and go to the bathroom and have a moment to breathe alone and now I can’t do anything but brush my teeth and get changed.

He seems to realise it was a bad idea as well. He sits on the bed and picks up the TV remote.

‘Should I put the TV on?’ he asks.

‘Why?’

‘To give you privacy.’

‘It’s fine. I mean, put the TV on, but I don’t need privacy.’

I do. I need to at least fart quietly. But I go in the bathroom to brush my teeth and put on make-up and I leave the door open. It’s a point of pride: look, I have nothing to hide, I am a perfect human with nothing gross about me. He can’t see into the bathroom, but there is no sound barrier.

I’m looking in the mirror, contemplating what can be done with my eyebrows in five minutes, when his face appears behind me.

‘Your mum keeps trying to Facetime.’

‘Oh, ignore it. Actually, no. They’ll think we’re dead. I’ll talk to her really quickly.’

I hurry out and answer, and Mum and Bobbi’s faces appear on the iPad.

‘Anna! How is it going?’ They are holding the phone at the worst angle, as usual, letting me see basically their necks and chins and not much else.

‘Can you angle it up a bit?’

‘Yes, darling. How is it going?’ Mum says.

‘Good! I went to the Met and Central Park today.’

‘Oh send us pictures!’ Bobbi says.

‘I will.’