When I could not procrastinate any longer, I gave up the idea of using a machine and began to hand-sew the dress. It was a slow business, very slow indeed. I was not schooled in the art of invisible stitching, only the rough tacks I used to hold the pattern pieces together, and I practised on the calico and then on cuttings from the broderie anglaise before I trusted myself to touch the dress itself. I did this in the hour before and after work, because of the light, and because my mother was generally occupied at those moments, asleep or making dinner. The more time I spent with the fabric, the more enamoured I became of my choice. It was a pale, almost an unnoticeable blue, light as winter sky, the sort of colour that did not declare itself but which would make any off-whites or creams placed beside it look like old dentures in a water glass. The delicate cutwork, scatterings of eyelets lined with satiny buttonhole stitch, receded at distance to no more than a texture, which meant I would not have to worry about the pattern matching up; but closer in it reminded me of bubbles, or birds’ prints in snow, and underneath my fingertips it leapt and swirled.

Although I could often avoid Candice when she came round, there was no avoiding the hen party, which took place a week before the wedding. Candice’s maid of honour, an old school friend called Katie, had arranged for us to stay the night at a good hotel in town – our own town, that is, not anywhere else. This seemed to me absurd, and I made the mistake of saying so in the early planning stages, threatening to take a cab home at the end of the night, which set Katie and myself at odds with one another for the rest of the affair. Katie, in fact, was the darling of the party, not Candice; she decked Candice out in a polyester veil and tiara, with a plastic penis on a chain around her neck, then steered her through the streets of the city, one bar to the next, using the dazzle of Candice’s appearance to reflect attention on to herself. I was reminded of a queen and her adviser: men bantered with Candice as a formality, while Katie sat quietly behind her, waiting to receive her own, more valuable tributes.

At two in the morning, in the hotel bar, I finally spoke to Candice.

‘Are you scared?’ I asked.

‘Of what? Getting married?’ Her make-up had slid, her tiara was crooked, and since the shots in Walkabout she had been unable to focus. ‘Fuck yeah. But I love him. I love him, you know? And being in love – it’s scary.’

Drink had made her honest; for a moment I luxuriated in the false warmth of her confidence, and felt a small flicker of pity, of cousinly love.