How Not to be a Bride. Portia MacIntosh

one dressed as a sanitary towel (you’d be surprised how popular that one is among men, and my inner feminist isn’t sure whether it’s empowering or just insulting), and the girls are all just random things (a cavewoman, a cat, a nurse) that don’t involve much clothing, which is unfathomable to me because it’s freezing out there. It suddenly occurs to me that I’m 14 years older than these kids and I feel like an old lady, spending my Saturday night in my pyjamas.

      When I think about my life back in LA, it feels like something that happened in a dream a long time ago. I might have got myself back into a shape I’m happy with, but Mia from four years ago wouldn’t have been caught dead in a onesie – least of all a tea-stained one – spending a Saturday night at home while everyone else was out having fun. I would’ve been out having cocktails, bumping into Margot Robbie, begging her to introduce to me Leonardo DiCaprio so I could be his latest blonde squeeze, not here, putting off doing my work by watching a Minion with a traffic cone for a dick.

      I head into the still-unfinished kitchen and put the kettle on. We haven’t got much done with the house over the past three months. Leo has been working a lot and I’ve been working on my book. Leo has been taking all the overtime he can get because it turned out the house had some major electrical problems that needed fixing before we could get on with anything. Now that’s done and finally all of the rooms are painted white, ready for us to make each one our own. I am hoping and praying we start with the kitchen because it’s really hard to keep up the healthy eating when it’s almost impossible to cook in there. I’m sure it will feel easier to eat healthier when this book is done too, because it’s too easy to just keep writing and eat an entire tube of Pringles for dinner, rather than cooking, only pausing momentarily to wonder if Pringles tubes are getting smaller or your hands are getting bigger. Well, that’s what I’d have been doing this time last year, anyway. These days I have to waste time I don’t really have making healthy snacks I don’t really want.

      Armed with my cup of tea I sit back down on the sofa, grab my laptop and try to get back on with my work. The sooner I get this book done, the sooner I can send it off and get to work on the next one. It’s hard to function as an adult when you write books for a living because you have no real guaranteed income. By the time your publishers and your agent take their cut you are left with what you’re left with, and you have to survive from quarter 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.

Chapter Six

      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