My hand fishes surreptitiously through my bag for my phone while a string quartet plays Albinoni’s “Adagio” and reduces everyone around me to tears. My throat is aching from the stress. I try to wring moisture out of dry eyes, judgment burning from all corners of the Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Waverley, and I fight the urge to escape.

I simply cannot be here.

Shouldn’t be here.

I don’t know these people. Not my mother-in-law, Gwendolyn, dabbing her eyes beside me in that careful way that prioritizes the integrity of your mascara over letting go of any real emotion. Not her husband, who hasn’t said a kind word to me since I woke up in the hospital a week ago. Not the Gucci suits fidgeting in the pews behind us, glancing at watches and mourning the passing of billable six-minute increments.

And not Oliver Roche. Gloriously good-looking, wildly successful commercial lawyer. Property investor. Philanthropist and taker of extravagant skiing holidays and European shopping trips, according to the “celebration of life” slideshow in which I am currently costarring on the big screen.

Love of my life, apparently.

Romantic evidence is blaring in polished, cinematic glory. There I am, growing up at warp speed beside him in the PowerPoint. He’s at his shiny best, all through school and university, on sports fields, at work, socially. I can’t help wondering what it would be like if the accident had claimed my life too, and these same people had to scramble together some sort of highlight reel about me.

A large teardrop diamond flashes on my left ring finger. Gwendolyn, urging me to wear it, frowning as though she couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t want to, said it wasn’t safe to leave the rings lying around at home. I try to feel grateful for it. For all of this. This luxurious life that Oliver and his family brought me into, even though I can’t imagine the steps I must have taken to get tangled up in it.