Page 9 of The Wedding Forecast

Today Bianca is wearing a cute summery dress and is as pretty as her social-media pictures led me to believe she is, but she seems decidedly less bubbly. She looks quite pale. Joel is wearing shorts, which is the first thing I register about him. Cargo shorts. He hates shorts. He never wore shorts around me unless he was working out. Cargo shorts! He would rather die. I look up from staring at his shorts and meet his eyes. He’s noticed me noticing his shorts.

Nice pockets, I want to say. Lots of storage room. But I don’t. Because I am thirty years old and I have moved on.

‘Bianca! Hi! So nice to meet you,’ I say, stepping forward. ‘I’m Anna.’

‘Yes, this is Anna,’ Joel says, looking mildly annoyed that I have taken over before he could do the introductions.

‘It’s so nice to finally meet you,’ Bianca says. We smile at each other, and I try not to immediately fixate on the word finally in that sentence. I will not be analysing every word this woman says. Well, not until after the wedding is over and Hayley is free to analyse with me. I should keep notes in my phone so I can remember everything. No, I should not. Never leave a paper trail.

Joel makes a little throat-clearing noise which I know means he’s nervous, which makes me feel better.

‘And this is Mac,’ I say, as Mac leans across to shake her hand.

She looks between us, clearly thinking I’m introducing him as a boyfriend, and I laugh.

‘Oh we’re not—I mean, we just met,’ I say. ‘We don’t know each other.’

‘And yet you’ve already caused me bodily harm and seen me naked,’ Mac says looking at me.

I smile. An oh-isn’t-he-charming smile. Fake, obviously. I am not charmed by anyone in this room.

‘We’ll have whatever bedroom is left,’ Joel says, looking around.

He would be absolutely hating that they are the last ones here.

‘I got us lost on the way here,’ Bianca says.

I can’t help looking at Joel. His face is hard to read. Did that cause a fight for them? It would have if it had been me and Joel. But he’s in those shorts. A person who wears cargo shorts is a person unbothered by getting lost and running late.

I could commiserate and say I also got lost, or more accurately, my mother got us lost, but I am not about to offer that information. Let Joel think I was here hours before him.

Joel turns towards the queen room, and Bianca says, ‘Wait, we’re the last here, who took this room?’ pointing to the bunk beds.

‘Me,’ I say. ‘And Mac. We’re trading off.’

‘Oh no, take this room,’ Bianca says.

‘It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. There’s two of you. You need the bigger bed.’ It feels intensely weird to be discussing the size of the bed Joel needs for his new lover, but I am doing well, I am being the bigger person here.

‘She’ll be happy in there,’ Joel says, waving a hand at me and pushing Bianca into the queen-bed room ahead of him.

‘Well, I didn’t say that,’ I say. Happy implies I’m not making a sacrifice for everyone else. I want to make sure everyone knows that I’m not happy to be in this child’s room with an undersized bed on a wafer-thin mattress but that I’m the kind of generous, selfless person who will make do without complaint.

‘You like being enclosed,’ Joel says. ‘You always wanted one of those canopy beds.’

‘That is not the same thing,’ I say.

‘Oh, I had a canopy bed growing up,’ Bianca says.

Of course she did. I was always intensely jealous of the girls with canopy beds and fairy lights and dressing tables with jewellery boxes on them.

‘Hang a sheet off the top bunk to make it feel like a canopy bed,’ Joel says to me. He must know this ridiculous suggestion will annoy me. There’s no other reason to say it. His face is mild. He looks like a man who thinks he’s saying something helpful, but I know better.

‘That’s a good idea. You should hang a sheet,’ Mac says, smiling at me. ‘Make it fun.’

‘I am not hanging a sheet. It’s fine, I’m totally fine in here,’ I say.

‘See?’ Joel says to Bianca. ‘She’s fine.’