“Yeah, but…but…I felt that made us closer. Like, if anything was going to break us, it should have been that and it didn’t. So why is it going to shit now?”

Mum put a consoling arm around me. “It is hard to say without knowing what type of shit it is. There are lots of different types of shit, and they are all shit in different ways.”

“It’s sort of…” I tried to pin my thoughts down but, thematically enough, it was like trying to nail shit to the wall. “We’re arguing kind of…kind of constantly about everything? And we never used to, not like this. And this morning we had the biggest fight we’ve basically ever had, and if you put a gun to my head, I’m not sure what it was really even about and just…is that what it’s going to be like? Is that what being married will be like?”

With typical sangfroid, Mum shrugged. “Probably not. Probably that is what organising big, life-changing events with lots of guests and rules and expectations together will be like. And you don’t do that very often.”

“We did it fine for the funeral,” I pointed out.

“That was not the same. It was his father and so he had the right to be a… What was it? A steamrollery tyrant if he wanted to. But your wedding, that is for both of you.”

“Oliver doesn’t seem to have got that memo,” I told her glumly.

Mum turned to look at me. There was an interrogatey expression on her face I felt quite ambivalent about. “Are you sure you sent it to him?”

“Well, I think so.”

“Because the Luc I know, he is not the sort of boy who would get cut out of his own wedding.”

That was kind of her. The Luc I knew would get cut out of his own funeral. Except if Oliver was cutting me out in order to create the heteronormative marriage of his dreams, you’d think he’d be…happier about it? “I’m not even sure it’s that,” I said. “I’m involved, we’re both involved… It just doesn’t feel like us anymore.”

“Ah.” Mum looked sage. “Perhaps it is too many chefs. They are spoiling the sauce.”

“There’s not even that many chefs. Like, I know the wedding cliché is everybody else is trying to get you to do their thing. But normally that’s the families and my family is you, and Oliver’s family isn’t even speaking to him, so this is totally on us. We’re fucking up our own sauce.”

There was a long silence. Mum’s sage look had intensified. “Luc.” She frowned solemnly. “Why is there a wolf in a wig in this picture?”