Page 48 of The Wedding Forecast

I wait, to see if he’ll tell me.

‘It’s not the wedding. It’s nothing to do with weddings. It was hard to come here because I haven’t been back to Australia since my mum died. Six years ago.’

‘Oh. I’m really sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘That’s a long time.’

‘I know. Trust me. My family lets me know constantly.’

‘Why haven’t you been back?’

‘Work. There’s always something with work.’

‘Right.’

‘And, I didn’t want to, I guess.’

I want to ask him so many more questions, but I can’t just go digging into his grief.

‘So how has it been, being back?’ I ask.

He doesn’t answer, for so long that I think maybe he’s fallen asleep.

‘Terrible,’ he says finally. ‘I hate it here without her.’

And after that we don’t say any more.

13

EVERYONE IS UP early the next day, fussing about breakfast and worrying about the make-up and hair people getting here on time, and dealing with the potential gas leak and a million other stresses. Bathroom time is at a premium now there are four extra people in the house, and we fall behind schedule quickly.

Other than keeping control of the family dynamics at the reception, my big job today is helping Hayley get into her wedding dress. I went with her to the final dress fitting so they could teach me how to get her into it and out of it. It’s a corset bodice that flows into a long sweeping skirt. There are forty-three buttons at the back of the corset bodice to be done up, and they are small and fiddly. The dressmaker was very clear to me that we needed to allow time for this task, that I needed to be very confident I could do it, if I didn’t think I could, then I needed to speak up now, I needed to be honest, because Hayley needed someone there on the day who could do up forty-three buttons quickly and nimbly, with absolute confidence. This terrifying speech had made me so nervous, I fumbled the first button in front of her for quite some time, and she watched, silently, coldly, staring from behind me, judgment increasing with every passing second.

I can do this, I had kept assuring her, my hands shaking. When I finally got the button in the loop, I turned to her, triumphant, expecting praise. You’ll need to do it much faster than that, the dressmaker said gravely. She will on the day, Hayley had said with a confidence I didn’t feel.

And now this job looms ahead of me. Have we left plenty of time for the buttons, I say jokingly before breakfast, during breakfast, after breakfast, but the more I say it, the more crazed I feel, and the more it becomes clear that we are running out of time. All my anxiety about the wedding, the speech, Joel and his baby, Mac, seems to be zeroing in on these buttons. I haven’t factored into the equation that I have painted nails, which will make it harder. We need more button time, but it’s taking everyone longer than planned to shower and get ready, the hair and make-up has gone overtime too. We have less button time than we started with.

Hayley and I are getting dressed in a dressing room provided at the venue, and once I’m in my dress—a dusty blue floor-length satin gown with spaghetti straps, a cowl neckline—I turn to hers.

‘Cinch my waist first,’ Hayley says and I can hear a note of doubt in her voice, she suddenly doesn’t believe I can do the buttons. Hayley, the person who always believes in me, is doubting me, and I can feel everything crumbling—I can’t do the buttons, or walk calmly down the aisle, or give the speech, or wear satin, or be around Joel, or Mac. I can’t do the rest of this day, this weekend, my whole life.

I am spiralling.

Get a grip. It’s forty-three buttons.

I take a deep breath and wipe my sweaty hands on a towel. To make things worse, Patrick has just knocked and walked in, camera ready, smiling at me in an extra smiley way. His presence calms me a little, which is surprising. Maybe he really is my soulmate. Definitely a point towards it, making up for the two points he lost last night for photographing Joel and me. I should be keeping track.

‘Should I get some shots of this?’ he asks.

Hayley’s body is in the dress and she’s holding it up at the front, so it’s not indecent, but her bra is on display at the back.

‘Yes, why not,’ she says.

The pressure of being photographed doing the buttons should break me, but it does the opposite, because I have a new determination. I need Patrick to see the best me. I cinch Hayley’s waist, and attempt the first button. It’s stiff, and hard to squeeze into the loop, but after about five tries, I get it.

‘One down, forty-two to go,’ I say.