my deceivingly heavy suitcase.
‘–really heavy,’ I rather pointlessly finish my sentence.
I stare at poor Dan who is doubled up in pain, his face turning purple, his eyes looking like they are about to pop right out of his head and bounce onto the train tracks… but that’s nothing compared to the angry shade of red my sister is turning.
‘Prince, are you OK?’ she asks, fussing around Dan who seems to feel more pain every time she touches him.
‘It’s my back,’ he tells me. ‘I hurt it playing football when I was at school, ended my career before it started. If I overdo it, I put it out. Why is your suitcase so heavy?’
‘Just clothes and shoes and stuff. I tried to warn you,’ I reason.
‘Mia,’ my sister starts, and I just know that this is going to be all my fault, ‘if you have broken my fiancé just in time for my wedding I will never speak to you again.’
My eyes widen in response to the way my sister is overreacting.
‘First of all, he’s a man, not a toy,’ I rant. ‘Second of all, I didn’t break him. He tried to lift my case before I could warn him it was heavy, it’s not like I took a swing at him with a baseball bat.’
‘I can’t believe you’re already trying to ruin my wedding,’ my sister shouts.
‘What the fuck?’ I screech, but I don’t get to say anything else before usually mild mannered Dan interrupts us with an ever so slightly raised voice of his own.
‘Enough,’ he snaps. ‘Let’s just get in the car and head back to the house, it’s not that bad and the house isn’t far.’
‘Are you sure, prince?’ Belle asks in her most sickliest voice.
‘I’m sure, princess.’
Oh God, I’d forgotten about their pathetic pet names for one another. Excuse me while I throw up.
Belle puts her arm around Dan and they slowly head for the car park.
‘I’ll just carry my own case, shall I?’ I call after them.
‘You should have done that in the first place,’ Belle snaps back.
I drag my case to Dan’s car before lifting it up and putting it on the back seat. It’s not that heavy but I suppose if the poor bastard has a weak back there was no way it was going to end well. Belle and Dan are in the front, so I climb in the back with my case.
‘Seatbelts,’ Belle insists. ‘We don’t want any more accidents.’
As instructed, I strap myself in – like I hadn’t planned on doing it anyway. As soon as Belle has given us all the once-over she gives Dan the nod to set off.
I knew that I would end up having arguments with my little sister over the next week or so, but I hadn’t expected the first one to be within minutes of seeing her. There’s 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