an awkward atmosphere in the car. I can just tell my sister is mentally planning the speech she’s going to give me if Dan’s back is anything less than one hundred percent on their wedding day. I decide to try and quash the awkwardness by making small talk – and if there’s one thing Belle loves talking about, it’s Belle.
‘So have all the guests arrived?’ I ask.
‘Would you believe you aren’t the last person to arrive,’ Belle says brightly, like that’s supposed to make me feel like Sister of the Year. ‘Dan’s friend Leo and his mum aren’t here yet because he’s got work. He’s a fireman.’
‘That’s hot,’ I joke.
‘Mia, no,’ my sister says firmly.
‘Oi, it was a joke,’ I insist. Well, it was. Fire, hot, get it? My sense of humour is wasted on this audience. ‘I’m a writer, I’m supposed to make crap jokes.’
‘Anyway,’ she continues, shrugging off my attempt at humour, ‘our lot are here – Mum, Dad, Gran, Granddad, Auntie June, Uncle Steve, Hannah, Meg and Josh.’
Hannah, Meg and Josh are my cousins. They like me because they think I’m cool – much to their mother’s disgust. I haven’t seen them in a while, but I know that Hannah will be fifteen now, Meg is thirteen and Josh is ten.
‘Are your family here, Dan?’ I ask to keep the conversation going.
Dan opens his mouth to talk but my sister gets in there first.
‘Of course they are,’ she snaps. ‘We’ve got Dan’s mum and dad, his grandparents, his brother, his auntie, cousins and so on. Then we have our friends: Beth, Nancy, Jason, Heather.’
Belle says these names like they’re supposed to mean something to me but I have no idea who her friends are. Apart from Nancy, who has been my sister’s BFF since she started school. I know her well because she spent a lot of time at our house, and because she relentlessly bullied me, despite being five years my junior. Belle wasn’t always horrible to me, but when she was, you could guarantee she was doing it because Nancy was there. I played the role of fat, boring, nerdy older sister well – not that that’s an excuse for bullying.
As wedding parties go, it isn’t massive, but Belle has been planning this wedding/mini holiday for everyone for a long time now. I wasn’t doing the maths, but that sounds like an awful lot of people to be staying in one beach house.
‘Where is everyone going to sleep?’ I ask, curiosity getting the better of me.
‘Oh, well, not everyone is staying at the house – only close family and important wedding people – and anyway, the house is massive,’ Belle insists.
‘Massive enough to sleep so many people?’ I ask.
‘See for yourself,’ Dan says as he pulls into the driveway.
As I take in the stunning contemporary beach house that will not only be my home throughout my stay, but also the venue for my sister’s wedding, my jaw literally drops. Not only is the house right on the beach, but it is massive. It looks like a hotel! This isn’t any old beach house – you just know that one day an architect with endless money had this brilliant vision and the massive, brilliant white, funky-shaped property in front of us was what came of it. I have to admit, I’m impressed.
I am no sooner out of the car before my parents rush out of the front door to greet me.
‘Hi Mum, hi Dad,’ I say with a half-hearted wave. I must have used up the last of my enthusiasm at the train station.
‘You’re so thin!’ my mum exclaims as soon as she gets a proper look at me. ‘Don’t let your gran see.’
Judith Harrison isn’t your typical overbearing mother, in fact she is quite the opposite with me. Both of my parents make a lovely fuss over Belle but when it comes to me, it’s like they can’t quite be bothered. Sure, my mum will comment on how inappropriate my dresses are or how a combination of peroxide and LA sunshine will see me bald by the time I am forty, but they’re not too bothered with how I live my life. It’s not that they’ve given up trying now that they know I am a lost cause, I don’t think they’ve ever had high hopes for me.
‘Mia,’ my dad says. That’s his way of acknowledging my existence. The Harrison women may be noisy and bossy but my dad, Ted – the only Harrison man in our house – is very much the opposite, although that probably has something to do with living in a house with three noisy women for so long.
A middle class couple in their late fifties, my parents are exactly as you would expect them to be: a little bit dull and a lot uptight – and I have no doubt that my sister is heading for a similar fate. In old photos of my parents in their twenties, my mum looks almost exactly like Belle does now – with the exception of the big hair, which I’m assured was the height of fashion back then. So unfortunately for my little sis, she will almost certainly grow up to look like our mum. My mum has her grey hair in, as I like to call it, a Nurse Ratched bob, and her personality is very much like that of the One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest character. I have always found my mum to be on the cold side. She always has to be in control, which makes her actions often seem mechanical, and she can be cruel sometimes – something I think she inherited from her mum. My dad is everything you’d expect of a fifty-nine year old henpecked husband. My mum would look young for her age if she were willing to colour her hair (she won’t because she is dead against it for some reason), but there is no hope for my dad. He is almost entirely bald apart from a few tufts of white hair around the sides and back of his head, and he is embracing his impending old age by wearing trousers that are pulled far too high up. Try and imagine a version of Victor Meldrew that isn’t quite so grumpy and that’s my dad: an indifferent Victor Meldrew.
‘This is a nice place,’ I say to no one in particular.
‘I know, right?’ my sister squeaks excitedly. ‘There’s a swimming pool, cable TV, wi-fi, there’s, like, a billion bedrooms, a games room… it’s going to be so much fun.’
‘Sounds expensive,’ I can’t help but say out loud.
‘Nothing is too good for my little girl,’ my dad says.
‘We’re just lucky you are the way you are, Mia,’ my mum explains. ‘We had saved up a wedding fund for two daughters, but with you, you know, not being the marrying kind, it made sense to use it all for your sister’s wedding, make it really special for her.’
Everyone smiles like that is the sweetest thing in the world, but I’m upset.
‘So you’re using the money you had saved for my wedding to pay for Annabelle’s?’ I ask.
‘Well, you’re not getting married, are you,’ my mum reasons.
‘Yeah, but that’s not the point,’ I insist.
‘Why can’t you just be happy for me?’ my sister asks me.
I massage my temples for a moment. Luckily I don’t have any plans to get married, and even if I did I have plenty of money to pay for it myself, but that really isn’t the issue here.
‘I could do with a nap, could you show me to my room, please?’ I ask.
‘Of course,’ Belle replies. ‘Just let me introduce
