Most of life’s defining moments happen unexpectedly; sometimes they slide past you completely unnoticed until afterward, if at all. The last time your child is small enough to carry on your hip. An eye roll exchanged with a stranger who becomes your life-long best friend. The summer job you apply for on impulse and stay at for the next twenty years. Those kinds of things. So I’m completely unaware that one of my defining moments is passing me by when my mobile rings at 6:47 p.m. on March 14, 2018; instead I curse under my breath because I’ve got a Velcro roller stuck in my hair and I’m already running late.

“Hello?”

I can’t help it; I smile as I tap on speakerphone and Freddie half shouts his greeting over the background road noise.

“I’m here,” I say, loudly, bobby pins gripped between my teeth.

“Listen, Lyds, Jonah’s got car trouble so I’m going to swing round and pick him up on the way back. It won’t make much difference; ten minutes, max.”

I’m glad he isn’t here to see the look on my face. Was it Princess Diana who famously said that there were three people in her marriage? I get that, because there are three people in mine too. Not that we’re married yet; very nearly though. Freddie Hunter and I are engaged, and I’m officially almost the happiest girl in the world. I refer you back to my earlier statement to explain why I say “almost” the happiest, because there’s me, there’s Freddie, and there’s Jonah bloody Jones.

I get it. I don’t go a day without speaking to my sister, but Elle isn’t always here on our sofa drinking our tea and demanding my attention. Not that Freddie’s best friend is demanding, exactly; Jonah’s so laid back he’s almost horizontal most of the time, and it’s not as if I don’t like him—I’d just like him a whole lot more if I didn’t see so much of him, you know? Tonight, for instance. Freddie asked Jonah to the dinner without thinking to check with me first, even though it’s my birthday.