Vee is just getting into the car when Barry rounds the corner of the street. Even though it’s three months since she called off their engagement, her body doesn’t always remember, and she feels a little lurch of familiarity when she sees him, followed by another, of regret. Not that she wants him back. It’s just that she’s sorry.

Barry hadn’t taken it well.

Vee had assumed he would have seen it coming. She’d been putting off setting a date for the wedding for two years. Her excuses were getting thinner and thinner, even to her own ears. First, she had said she wanted to wait until she got her business established. Her friends used her for their weddings, but couples she didn’t know often seemed puzzled by her – ‘So, who actually takes the photos?’ – as she showed her portfolio. ‘I do,’ she would reply, and she would smile and hope for the work, and think of how Leonie would tell her off for reinforcing old ideas about women. ‘What would Leonie think?’ has become a guiding principle of her life, in the two and a half years since they met.

Building her business bought her some time. Then Barry was promoted, and she said she didn’t want him to be worrying about helping her with planning a wedding while he was getting on with his new job. He’d looked puzzled, said he’d assumed she would do most of the planning, and then quickly added that he knew she was all for women’s lib so actually he would like to be involved. She’d felt terrible.

In March, when he had brought it up again, she had almost said that she had changed her mind. But she hadn’t changed it enough to be sure, and she was always sure that she did love Barry. Maybe not enough; maybe not in the right way. But she wasn’t certain enough to say she didn’t want to marry him. She’d got used to wearing her engagement ring, too; it kept a lot of pests away when she was working on her own. There was a tender circlet of white skin at the base of her finger when she took it off at night.

After another summer of watching brides and grooms, the looks on their faces and their steadfast conviction that they had chosen right for their whole lives, Vee was sure that she wasn’t going to marry Barry. She wasn’t sure how she would tell him, or tell her dad, who called Barry ‘son’ and had bought him a season ticket for the football. She was going to have to choose her moment.

But then the moment chose itself.