‘What do you reckon?’ he’d said, smirking, his naked torso stretched out as he lay on his side. All I’d done in reply was scream, slipping it on immediately. I’d never thought it was possible to want to faint from happiness until that point, but wearing it made me more delighted, more ecstatic, more everything than I’d ever been in my life. ‘I’m guessing that’s a yes?’ he’d said, and I promptly burst into tears, nodding and making so much noise his mum had knocked on the bedroom door of the shared Christmas cottage we were in to see if everything was alright.

The wedding planner unlocked her iPhone and pulled up a text thread. My hand was shaking as I took it. My mouth was dry. I willed myself to focus.

Chantelle, you’ve been amazing in sorting out today but I’m not coming. I can’t do it. Please tell Annie I’m sorry, and I hope she doesn’t hate me. I’ll be sure to settle your invoice in full by the end of next week. Thanks for everything. I trust you can handle the guests. Alexander.

People reckon that they feel like they’ve been slapped when they find out something shocking and it’s such an overused, cliched saying. But as I read the text again, and a third time, a fourth – desperate to find the hidden meaning in it, the bit Chantelle had misinterpreted or gotten wrong – a shock spread across my face like spilt milk oozing across the countertop. I was hot, and nauseous. His face flashed in my mind. Alexander’s grinning, handsome face. How could he do this to me? What the hell had happened since I’d seen him yesterday afternoon? Was there somebody else? Was it a joke? My brain couldn’t do the complicated math to understand it. The text was so short, so brief. I read it again: it was like I was an afterthought, my name appearing in between a compliment and a financial promise to a woman we’d known eight months. Alexander has known me ten years. Since the last year of uni. None of this made any sense.