The thumping and rustling from the other end of the line suggested she was already getting dressed. “I’ll still be married when I get back. You’ve been my best friend for years. I’m not letting you down now.”

“You wouldn’t be letting me down,” I told her. “You just wouldn’t be letting me drag you out of bed at three in the morning when we’re both getting up in four hours.”

“Well, there you are. I’m rising early, that’s all. It’s healthy. It’s healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Checking the cabinet had taken it out of me, so I lay back down on the floor and tried to enjoy the cool of the tiles. Unfortunately, I couldn’t enjoy anything right now. “I’ll be fine. It probably is just nerves.” My stomach churned uneasily. Oh God. Was this the universe punishing me for wishing Miles would shit himself on the way down the aisle? “Besides,” I went on, “I think I might need to get some air.”

“I’ll get some air with you,” cried Bridge, far too enthusiastically. “We can get air together.”

“Why? Do you think I’ll need help carrying it?”

Bridge gave a kind of vindicated squeak. “See, you’re being sarcastic. That means you’re feeling better. Which means I’m helping.”

I shouldn’t have called her. There was no way she was going to let me spend the few hours before my wedding puking alone into a toilet. Not if I could spend them puking with her. But I’d panicked. Because I was getting married in the morning. And instead of feeling excited or giddy or a little bit anxious, I was feeling like an informer from a seventies mob movie being slowly drowned in cement. And there was no point pretending now that I hadn’t known all along that she’d drop everything and come for me.

Married or not she was, after all, my best friend.

“I’m calling a cab,” said Bridge from the other end of the phone. “Where shall I meet you?”

I groaned and ground my face against the bathroom floor. “Anywhere but here. The walls are closing in and everything smells of vomit.”

In hindsight, anywhere but here hadn’t been a helpful thing to say. Something that became only more apparent as I half climbed, half fell out of my own taxi and made my way to our agreed rendezvous point in the middle of the Millennium Bridge.

“Why?” I asked as soon as I was in earshot. “Is this because your name is Bridge? So you thought of a bridge?”

Her ash-blond hair was whipping slightly in the wind. “Maybe? I had just woken up. Although also the nice thing about being on a bridge is that if you’re sick, you can go over the side.”