to quarter without a top-up. You never really know how much you’re going to be paid from one quarter to the next, so it’s hard to make plans. Were I not lucky enough to live with Leo, and were it not for the fact he has a good job, I’m not sure I’d feel financially comfortable doing this for a living.
I am just about to start typing when I hear a loud bang on the door. It’s a bit late for knock-on-the-door, just-stopping-by visitors, but not so late I’m scared to see who it is.
‘Hello, boys,’ I say, seeing my friends Rory and Iwan on the doorstep.
‘Mamma Mia,’ Rory bellows after swigging from a bottle of bourbon, passing it to Iwan before giving me a hug.
‘Hi,’ I laugh. ‘You boys seem like you’ve had a good night.’
‘We’re just heading into town now,’ Iwan slurs, his thick Welsh accent sounding even stronger thanks to all the alcohol. ‘We thought we’d see if you and Leo fancied it?’
‘Leo is working,’ I tell them. ‘So am I, to be honest.’
‘Come on, come out with us,’ Rory whines. ‘Come on.’
I can’t help but laugh at his drunk tantrum.
Rory and Iwan share a flat in the house next door. While the houses are aimed at students, they’re also marketed to young professionals as a cheaper alternative to the swanky apartments in the more favourable parts of town. They both work together at a digital agency, Rory as a project manager and Iwan as a web developer. Iwan definitely looks as you’d expect him to, with his handsome good looks, his trendy beard and his geek-chic hipster clothing. Rory, on the other hand, seems to only take style inspiration from James Bay, with his long, messy hair always covered with a wide-brimmed hat and his stick-thin legs encased in the skinniest of skinny jeans. Leo and I have been friends with Rory and Iwan for years now. In fact, it was them who let us know about this house going up for sale.
‘I really need to get this book finished,’ I tell them, ‘but then we’ll go out to celebrate – next weekend maybe?’
‘Boo,’ Rory, clearly the drunker of the two, heckles me.
‘You want a drink before we go?’ Iwan asks.
‘Just made a cuppa,’ I tell him.
I close the door and plonk myself down on the sofa, sighing deeply. I would love to go out, but I need to be responsible. Just a few more chapters and then I can send this off, and finally start having some fun.
Waking up, I feel Leo’s heavy arm draped across my body before I open my eyes and see him lying next to me. He was working most of last night, so he can’t have been asleep very long. I grab my phone from my bedside table and see that it’s 11:49 – just about midday, but it is a Sunday, after all, and I was working until pretty late. Not as late as Leo, so I climb out of bed, careful not to wake him, pulling on my dressing gown before heading downstairs to make a cup of tea.
As I try to navigate the unfinished kitchen, I grab a mug and the teabags, eyeballing the jar of instant coffee as I do so. I’ve never liked instant coffee, having always been too much of a coffee snob, but ever since I gave up drinking coffee, even my weird fantasy of eating a spoonful of granules straight from the jar feels like something I might enjoy. I don’t do it, though. I make my tea and sit on the sofa, opening my laptop once again in the hope of getting some work done.
My fingers are just about to hit the keys when there’s a knock at the door. Perhaps it’s Rory and Iwan again, on their way home from their wild night out.
‘Belle,’ I blurt, unable to hide my surprise when I open the door to see my sister standing there, hugging an armful of magazines.
‘Mia,’ she replies. ‘Can I come in? Don’t worry, I know it’s a mess.’
I physically bite my tongue to stop myself saying something in response to that.
‘Sure, come in,’ I reply. ‘Tea?’
‘Yes, please,’ Belle replies.
I leave my little sister in the living room while I go and make her a drink. As the kettle boils I riffle through one of the bags of clothes sitting on the kitchen floor, grabbing myself a bra and a sundress (this must be the bag with the summer clothes in), hurrying them on in the kitchen so my sister doesn’t get to make any remarks about my not being dressed.
‘So, I bumped into Leo last night,’ she calls from the living room.
‘You bumped into Leo last night?’ I repeat back to her. ‘Were you on fire?’
‘Har-har,’ she calls back, as I carry her tea through and place it down on the pile of boxes we’re using as a coffee table. ‘My God, look at you, you’ve lost so much weight.’
‘I haven’t really,’ I reply. ‘It’s mostly just that I’ve toned up the bits I’d let get a bit wobbly.’
‘Don’t let Gran see, she’ll go berserk,’ my sister warns.
Despite being younger than me, my sister dresses beyond her years – beyond my years too. When we were younger Belle was always one of the popular kids because she was thin, sporty and pretty. I, on the other hand, was a bit chubby and a bit weird. Belle is teetering on the edge of curvy and she looks great; she’s just a few too many steps ahead of herself, in full-blown mumsy mode with her style, and if she’d just take a little of my advice, she could look amazing.
‘Anyway…’ She gets back to the task at hand, passing me a stack of wedding magazines. ‘Leo mentioned that you hadn’t really started planning the wedding and asked if I had any old magazines I could bring you to get you started.’
So my sister just so happened to bump into my fiancé at work, who asked if she happened to have any old wedding magazines lying around from more than four years ago, and she did, so she’s just brought them over for me. I mean, if I were the cynical type, I’d think Leo messaged my sister and asked her to give me some wedding magazines in an effort to get me to start planning it, because I’m yet to start, but I’ve just been so busy with so many other things. Let’s say I buy into the idea that Belle just ran into Leo at the fire station, it still doesn’t explain why these magazines are in perfect condition and the dates show they’re the latest editions.
‘And,’ she starts, even more excitedly, ‘there’s a wedding fair in town next week.’
‘Thank you,’ I say brightly. ‘But let’s get Mike and Rosie’s wedding out of the way before we start planning another one.’
‘Get it out of the way?’ my sister shrieks. ‘Mia, you’re so unromantic. It still baffles me that you write romance for a living. It baffles me even more that you’re getting married when you clearly have no interest in weddings.’
‘I don’t have “no interest” in weddings,’ I clap back. ‘I’m getting married, aren’t I?’
‘Where?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘When?’ she continues.
