AS IT TURNED OUT, I didn’t only miss sticky miso peppers, I also missed asparagus and lemon spaghetti with peas, stuffed butternut squash with maple syrup and freekeh, and spicy aubergine with Szechuan sauce. And Oliver didn’t make a big deal out of it—what with being a lawyer he wasn’t exactly a stranger to things coming up at the last minute—but I felt bad anyway. Yes, we were in a good place, a good enough place that adapting to each other’s lives was just a part of being together that we both accepted and were cool with. Except I was beginning to worry I wasn’t so much adapting as bailing. It had been nearly a week of staggering home after another evening of intense wedding planning to find Oliver already in bed—and not in bed in a sexy “I’ve been waiting for you, tiger” way. More in an “I’ve put on my pyjamas and read my book” way.

And it was temporary. I knew it was temporary and Oliver, I’m sure, knew it was temporary too. Or at least I hoped he did because if he didn’t, then he was being worryingly calm about being in a relationship where we were never conscious in the same room. It didn’t help that since the wedding was in Surrey now, Bridge and all her bridesmaids were going to be spending the night before in Judy’s enormous stately home for a kind of non-gendered-person’s night, which I assumed would involve braiding each other’s hair, drinking champagne, and talking about boys.

Which, honestly, I’d normally have been up for. Only my personal boy would be at home without me, where he’d been every night that week. Still, best-friend code. Maid-of-honour code. And, unless something went catastrophically wrong, I would never have to do this again.

My plan for the evening involved calling a cab to take me to my flat where I’d stashed my suit, then to Oliver’s house where I’d somehow managed to stash nearly everything else I owned, and finally back to Bridge’s so we could bundle into a hastily rented limousine and get the party started. And, maybe, somewhere in the middle of all this, close my eyes for, like, ten seconds so I wouldn’t show up in all the wedding photos looking like Bridget’s stoner cousin.

I was just waiting for the cab and definitely had not closed my eyes for any length of time when Bridge sidled over to me with an apologetic look on her face.

“Oh God,” I said. “What’s happened now?”

She winced. “Nothing. But…” She broke off for a moment. “You know I love you, Luc?”

“You bloody well better after this week.”

“And I do. But I was wondering…would you be hurt if I said I wanted this evening to just be the girls?”