“You heard him. He’s been saving for years. Still can’t buy a house. I bet you he asks me for money. I bet you a million dollars.”

“Trish, calm down. This is crazy talk.”

“You don’t know my family,” I mutter.

“No, I don’t. You never talk about them. We’ve met your brothers once at that bizarre twenty-first that could have been mistaken for a funeral. And I’ve barely laid eyes on your mum. The few times I’ve met your dad, he’s asked a few polite questions and left.”

I cross my arms and lean my bottom against the kitchen bench.

“I don’t have a loving family like you, Em. I prefer to have as little to do with mine as possible.”

“It does seem odd that he’d just turn up like this.” Emma gets out another mug. “Have you spoken to him at all recently?”

“No.”

The last time I saw Will was at our brother’s wedding. When the invitation had arrived in the mail, I’d stared at it for ten minutes, then shoved it in the kitchen junk drawer and done my best to pretend it wasn’t there. Pete found the invite three weeks later and insisted we go. He wanted to meet my elusive family, he said. He was so excited he sent an RSVP right there and then. We’d been together for twelve months at that stage and I was still in the “do anything for this gorgeous man who loves me” phase.

I’d never met James’ fiancée, whose name, according to the invite, was Clare. I wasn’t even aware he was engaged. The sole contact I’d had with anyone in my family was the occasional businesslike email from my father enquiring how I was getting on. What was the point of those emails? When I didn’t reply, it wasn’t like he became a worried father and tried to track me down. He didn’t follow up my unanswered email with “Are you all right? I haven’t heard from you in a while”. He certainly didn’t call. He just sent another brief email six months later. A replica of the one he’d sent before.

Pete thought the wedding was hilarious, in a “is this for real?” kind of way. He said later it was like he’d walked onto the set of a British period drama. Everyone impeccably dressed, speaking politely, the men all standing to attention or, as Pete said, “with a carrot up their arse”. The women were well mannered, eager to please. It was everything I knew it would be, only worse.