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“Please.” Alice shakes her head. “You never come to work events, never mind a wedding of complete strangers. If you don’t have a suit, I’ll buy you one.”

“You will not,” I stress, hoping she’ll adhere to this.

“Absolutely, I will. I’m not having you buy a suit for this gig that’s only to save my ass.”

“It’s been a while since I bought a suit, so it’s about time I got a new one, and I can assure you, I won’t just be wearing it to the wedding. I’m sure there’ll be other events,” I say, even though I doubt it.

I’d probably be overdressed if I wore it to Smithy’s for tea on a Thursday evening.

Alice lowers her fork and adds, “Like when Sydney and Drew have a baby and I get invited to the christening and you have to come with me, because of course we’re still together, as we’ll have made such a cute couple at their wedding and it would upset Sydney if we’d broken up. And I wouldn’t want to upset her, not with all the baby hormones and stuff, so yeah, you could probably get another wear out of the suit.”

She pauses as I check my watch.

“You need to go,” she tells me. “Let’s make this quick. Which is easier, matching a suit to a dress or a dress to a suit?”

I open my mouth to answer, but she does it for me.

“Or is it easier to go shopping together?”

Shopping.

First a wedding, now shopping.

“I hate shopping,” I admit.

“Of course you do,” Alice laughs.

I glance at her quickly, surprised by her intuitiveness. She must pick up on my shock because she says, “There are people, and the shops are busy, and it’s noisy, and the last place I see you is in some monstrous shopping centre where you can’t find the exit and there are no windows. Why don’t we go to Meridian Square?”

I wonder how it’s possible, in the short time she’s known me, that she can have got it so right.

Most of my shopping I do online because Alice is correct. I hate shops, I hate people, and I hate the two things together. But there are some things I have to go shopping for, and a suit is one of them.

I need to try it on, to see the colour in a true light, to feel the texture of the material, and to feel how it fits my body if I’m going to be trussed up in it for a full day. So, when the need arises and I have to visit an actual shop, I go to Meridian Square, as it’s a retail park on the outskirts of Kingsgate where all the shops are outside. In the middle is also the most beautiful garden with a small fountain, red photinias, yellow euonymus, and purple heathers. It’s one of the most relaxing places to go shopping, if any shopping trip can be described as relaxing.

“Sounds grand.”

“Great.” Alice beams.

I stand, knowing I’m going to have to jog up the stairs to get back to my office on time, even though there’s no one checking up on me. I could return ten minutes late from my break and no one would bat an eyelid, but I would know, and I hate being late or breaking the rules.

“I’m working this Saturday, so are you free Sunday?” she asks.

“I can be.” The words roll out of their own accord, my inability to lie throwing me to the proverbial wolves of a shopping trip.

“Great. Do you have your phone?”

I slip my phone from my pocket, wondering how we’ve gone from clothes to shopping to exchanging numbers in a couple of minutes.

“Here’s my number.” She recites the digits quickly, and I type them into my phone. “Call me, and then I’ll have yours. We can text to arrange a time. You’d better go,” she tells me.

Taking the stairs two at a time, I speed back to my office. I needn’t have stressed about getting her number, but now I have shopping to worry about. Although, shopping with Alice doesn’t fill me with dread like a normal retail outing does.

And that right there should have alarm bells ringing.

I’ve been here before. Had these feelings before. And it didn’t end well.

But this is fake.