The tinkling of crystal and the tedium of small talk drifted in on the early evening breeze through the wide-open French doors. The summer would not die – it kept going on for what felt like forever and ever. The sky had taken on a lilac tinge against the tangerine of the coming sunset; the bristling lavender peeking through from the garden seemed to have permeated the light. Harriet, the newly engaged hostess, had with a deft hand plastered her recently landscaped garden with tasteful cloth bunting, the drinks were served in vintage cocktail glasses, and miniature pastel-coloured cakes from a fashionable patisserie in Fulham were elegantly arranged on china stands. The bunting had been handmade by a woman whose name Harriet was guarding like a national secret, the glasses had been bought en masse from an antiques dealer who was known to overcharge, and the cake stands had been purchased in bulk from an overpriced boutique on Hill Rise. These accoutrements were destined to be neglected after that afternoon, banished forever to cardboard boxes in the attic. Cards, flowers (none of which were from a supermarket) and good wishes were piled up on a table in the entrance hall.

Callie was wearing a sleeveless, buttermilk-coloured linen sundress that fell to the floor with a tight waist and a balcony bust – a revelation compared to the other female guests’ aggressively ditzy floral prints – and a broad-brimmed straw hat with silk flowers pinned to the band. She was standing at the marble island in the middle of the kitchen slicing up mint, cucumber and strawberries. Fresh offerings to the god of English garden parties. Callie was being careful not to get any strawberry juice on her dress. Harriet, who was Callie’s best friend from childhood, had severely underestimated the amount of Pimm’s her guests would desire, and yet she was not the one in the kitchen remedying the oversight, dutiful Callie was. Callie was trying to be helpful, to be the best maid of honour possible. She could smell the mint on her fingers. Callie tipped the offending herb, cucumber slices and strawberry quarters into a couple of waiting jugs and chucked in satisfying glugs of neat Pimm’s. She rooted around the freezer for ice cubes and threw a tray in after the booze.

‘I bought four bottles from the corner shop,’ said Inigo, Harriet’s fiancé, as he barrelled through the door carrying bottles of cheap lemonade in flimsy blue plastic bags. ‘Do you think it’s enough? This was all they had. They’re warm.’

‘Yeah, that’s plenty,’ Callie said, taking a bottle from him, removing the cap and pouring some into the jugs. ‘I’ve put a lot of ice in and everyone’s already half-cut so they won’t notice.’

‘Do you like what Harriet’s done with the house? You’ve not been since the renovations were completed.’

‘It’s so lovely,’ Callie said, looking around at the maximalist interior.

Inigo worked in private equity. He made obscene money but couldn’t really explain how. Something about how as a fund manager he was paid a fixed-rate fee on the assets they managed. It was just sounds to Callie, but it meant that he’d bought a beautiful Georgian house in Richmond for Harriet to play dolls in. Although Callie did wonder if the Bank of Harriet’s Mum and Dad was actually responsible.

‘Harriet has done such a lovely job decorating. I love the wallpaper in the living room. One of her designs, I take it? She’s always had such good taste,’ Callie said.

‘Unlike you,’ Inigo said, giving Callie a friendly knock on the arm. Years ago Inigo had asked her out – this was before he’d asked Harriet – and she’d turned him down for a sexy but quite dreadful man who she had since blocked on all social media channels. Inigo liked to joke about it every now and then, and Callie liked to pretend she hadn’t heard him. She did not regret turning him down.

‘Ha, well. Yes,’ Callie said. While Harriet’s material comfort was enviable, Callie could think of nothing worse than waking up next to such a boring man every day. He only ever wore grey or blue. She could never be in a relationship with someone with such a limited colour palette.

‘God, that was rude. I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s all right. I’ve got to start finding it funny at some point too.’ Callie picked up a jug in each hand and turned to go back to the party.

Inigo grabbed her arm to stop her without thinking. Pimm’s sloshed onto the floor. ‘I was just joking.’ He realised he was tightly holding her arm and let her go as he began feeling ashamed. ‘I meant nothing by it.’

‘No harm, no foul,’ Callie said, before looking to see if her dress had been spared. It had. ‘You might want to mop that up before someone slips.’

‘Darling, there you are,’ Harriet said, coming into the kitchen. ‘Everyone’s been asking for you.’

‘Callie was just saying how much she likes the wallpaper in the living room,’ Inigo said.

‘Yes, it’s lovely. So lovely,’ Callie said.

‘Isn’t it just?’ Harriet said, turning to face Inigo squarely. ‘I think you should make a little speech to our guests, darling. It’s only polite. Some of them have even trekked all the way over from St Reatham.’

‘Oh, if I have to,’ Inigo said, strolling out of the kitchen. ‘You know I love an audience.’

Harriet turned to Callie but couldn’t quite look her in the eye. Harriet let her gaze wander for a moment, flitting between Callie’s right ear and her chin, before settling on the spilled Pimm’s on the floor. Trust Callie to make a mess. She knew she should have hired caterers like Mummy had suggested rather than have a more ‘pared down’ party with a homemade, cutesy feel.

Harriet remembered herself and started speaking far too quickly, as if the words leaping from her tongue were themselves desperate to put Callie in her place. ‘I’ve asked my cousin Emily to be my maid of honour. I know you thought it would be you, we’ve known each other for so long, but I … Well, family, eh … It’s a tradition on my mother’s side …’

Harriet’s voice tailed off. She hadn’t actually asked Emily yet, but she had seen Inigo’s face when he looked at Callie just now, and she’d seen the last moments of his grip on her arm. Her mother, a subtle woman (although she had demanded that after her marriage to Harriet’s father they not so subtly double-barrel their names) and a master of the dark art of the back-handed compliment, had seeded the idea not long after Harriet’s engagement. She’d been flicking through a copy of Tatler and pointed out a picture of such-and-such’s wedding and said, ‘What a shame that no one warns these brides not to give too prominent a position to their prettier friends. They’ll regret that bitterly when they are my age and looking over the photos. This poor girl has a rather buxom friend who is terribly distracting.’ Harriet knew she had nothing to worry about. If anything, Inigo was merely flexing his ageing muscles and Callie was far too loyal, but still. Harriet had a ridiculous engagement ring that she was slightly afraid to wear in public. Harriet was going to marry him. Harriet was going to be happy, and if that meant that her plain cousin Emily was going to be maid of honour, then so be it. Harriet was choosing fucking happiness.

‘Hey, you’re the bride.’ Callie smiled, gripping the jugs tightly. ‘Whatever you say goes.’

‘You’re still a bridesmaid, of course you are. How could you not be. And I’m desperate for you to make me a headpiece to wear.’ Harriet felt it keenly that there was no family tiara and that the Simpson-Bamber fortune had been made much too recently to have neither acquired the historic material trappings of grandeur nor totally lost the stink of lower middle-/upper working-class mannerisms.

‘Of course, Hat. For you, anything.’

‘Goody.’ Harriet relaxed and started speaking at a normal pace. ‘I’ve started a Pinterest board especially. It’s going to be my “something new”.’

‘Send me a link and I’ll knock up a sketch or two.’

Harriet opened the freezer, took out a solitary ice cube and started chewing on it. She was hungry, but she also had to drop a size before she even started trying on dresses. ‘Do you remember Henry Chadwell?’

‘Name rings a bell.’

‘The headmistress of St Ursula’s son.’

‘Oh, just about. Gave me a Yorkie bar once and tried to be funny about me being a girl.’

‘He’s here. He works with Inigo now. It’s so funny, we all had such crushes on him when we were fourteen, he was so much older and cooler. Remember how we used to obsess over his...