Page 115 of The Wedding Forecast

‘Hey.’

‘Tell me about the new book,’ she says, looking at my laptop, where I have quickly closed the work documents and brought up my draft.

‘Well it has time travel.’

‘Oh you’re keeping that part?’

An utterly terrible, devastating thing to say to an author midway through their first draft, but I try not to hold this against her.

‘Yes, I’m keeping it. I can’t just cut it out, once you put time travel in your book, it’s kind of the backbone of the whole thing.’

‘Right, right. I know. How does it work?’

‘Well, it’s one of the kinds where it just happens and you don’t get bogged down in questions of how it works.’

‘Luke won’t like that.’

‘I know. He already told me.’

‘You know he always wants to argue about time travel.’

‘I am not engaging with him on this. He’s already sent me links to an article on the metaphysical reality of time travel through wormholes.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I don’t want wormholes in my book.’

She nudges me with her foot.

‘Are you going to accept the manager position?’

I look at her.

‘How do you know about that?’

‘Mum told me.’

‘I don’t know,’ I say.

‘Why not?’

‘Well, it’s a big commitment.’

‘You love the shop. You love working there.’

It annoys me the way she says this with such authority, even though she’s right.

‘I do love working there. But…’

We lie in silence for a moment.

‘Is it…?’ Hayley trails off and looks at me with the expression she always has before she’s going to say something that will irritate me.

‘Is it?’ I prompt her.

‘Look, I have to ask. Is it about Mac?’ she says.

‘No. It has nothing to do with Mac.’