‘Cool,’ I reply, a little too unenthusiastically for my sister’s liking. Belle pulls a face.
‘I’ve put you two in your old room, the one you shared back when you met,’ she beams. ‘My gosh, doesn’t it feel like a long time ago?’
‘It does and it doesn’t,’ Leo replies with a smile. ‘I mean, sometimes it feels like we met just yesterday, but I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.’
As I watch my sister visibly melt, I wonder how I’ll clean her off the floor. To be fair, even though I’m not really a mushy person, even I thought that was pretty sweet. Leo is always saying cute little things, reminding me how much he loves me – it’s nice.
‘Right, dinner,’ Belle says with a clap of her hands. ‘This way.’
The dining room is just as we left it, right down to the large, carbohydrate-heavy meal on the table. The only difference this time is that there are fewer of us, so I don’t have to sit at the kids’ table.
‘Hello, Mia,’ my mum says. Her words aren’t delivered with the kind of warmth you’d expect from a mother speaking to her firstborn. It feels more like they’re uttered out of a combination of obligation and manners. ‘Hello, Leo.’
A nice, frosty Harrison family reception, just as I expected. When I made the decision to give up life in LA and move back to Kent, it felt like an opportunity to reconnect with the family I’d spent four years avoiding. Instead, I still avoid them, only now it’s much harder because I only live down the road. Leo and I stop by for Sunday dinner every now and then, and then there are obligatory family gatherings like this one. Leo lives for family life so he loves visiting our families, but for me it’s something I endure as best I can. Today, being back here at this beach house where so much went on is really going to test my endurance.
We all exchange pleasantries before Leo and I take our seats at the table.
‘So, what are we having?’ Leo asks excitedly, rubbing his hands.
‘Pasta with meatballs,’ Belle announces – probably an attempt to appeal to Leo’s Italian side and it works. He sits down and grabs a plate, serving himself a generous portion.
I take a seat and serve myself a smaller helping. Mia from four years ago wouldn’t have touched a dish so high in carbs, but Mia from four years ago had abs you could crack a tooth on – things change.
‘We were just talking about how quickly these four years have gone by,’ my mum says, filling us in.
‘Yeah, I suppose they have,’ I reply. Sometimes it feels like much longer, though.
‘It was a great wedding,’ Mike, Dan’s brother, pipes up. ‘It’s a shame you missed it,’ he tells his fiancée, Rosie, who smiles sweetly.
‘It’s a miracle it even happened at all,’ Belle says.
‘How so?’ Rosie asks curiously.
‘Oh, just, you know, wedding stuff,’ Belle backtracks. Well, we did say we’d never talk about it again.
It’s fair to say that, even though Belle’s wedding turned out great in the end, things were a little bit disastrous. I feel like she still holds me responsible for a lot of what happened, which is probably why my relationship with my sister isn’t great.
In fact, it would be fair to say that my relationship with my entire family isn’t great. Moving back here was the best decision I’ve ever made, because I have Leo now, but I still feel like an outcast sometimes. Perhaps it’s because I lived away from them for so many years, but as hard as I try to fit in, they still make me feel like a bit of an imposter sometimes. They don’t treat me like a black sheep, they treat me like a wolf.
My mum and dad, a middle-class couple in their early sixties, are exactly the kind of people you’d expect them to be. They’re so serious and stuffy – just like my grandparents before them, so I have no doubt my sister will end up a similar way. I’ve always tried so hard to be like anything but the kind of people who raised me, because, for such a tight-knit family, I feel like there’s a real emotional disconnect among us.
I’ve always struggled to remember life before my sister, Annabelle, came along. Beautiful, bouncing baby Belle, who burst onto the scene and immediately became the centre of attention. My only real memory of life before Belle was the night she was born. It was New Year’s Eve and we were all at a party when my mum’s waters broke sometime during the run-up to midnight. Belle was not only born quickly and relatively easily, but she was the first baby born after midnight, which saw her and my mum’s pictures plastered all over the local newspaper. I, on the other hand, came into the world after putting my mum through a gruelling three days of labour, so my mum rarely talks fondly about the day I was born, whereas she has a framed photo of her newspaper front cover with baby Belle on the wall in her living room.
I was five years old when Belle was born, so I don’t really remember being anything but second best. I feel like I was the starter child my parents practised on before Belle came along.
I think my mum gets her coldness from my gran – my Auntie June, my mum’s sister, is similar – so I can’t really blame her if that’s the kind of women she’s grown up around. My granddad, on the other hand, is a wonderful man who absolutely worships me. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m in the right or the wrong, he is always on my side, always ready with a funny comment to cheer me up or a piece of helpful advice to help me sort my problems out. I actually really missed him while I was living in LA so I make sure to spend lots of time with him now.
‘It won’t be long before you two tie the knot, will it?’ Belle says to Mike and Rosie excitedly. I’ve never understood people’s hype for other people’s weddings, although I suspect she’s just trying to change the subject.
‘Just a few months to go,’ Rosie replies.
I first met Mike, Dan’s brother, four years ago in the run-up to the wedding. We had a lot in common back then; Mike was 30, with no interest in marriage, and had a job his family didn’t approve of. He was the Mia of his family, the let-down, the child who never quite lived up to his parents’ expectations. Sure, he was happy working in a video-game shop, just like I was happy writing movies in LA, but our parents didn’t think we should be doing what we loved. They thought we should be getting married and starting families. It’s interesting to see how we’ve both changed. Maybe everyone does eventually.
‘Are you excited?’ Belle asks.
‘So excited,’ Rosie replies. ‘All the plans are in place now, it’s just a matter of waiting. And the stag and hen parties are next week!’
Rosie squeals with excitement for a few seconds but then stops suddenly – I imagine it’s because she’s just remembered she hasn’t invited me.
‘Sorry for not inviting you,’ she says to me. ‘It’s just with your work and stuff, I didn’t think you’d be able to make it.’
‘You know I work from home, right?’ I reply.
‘Well, yeah, but I figured that meant you’re, like, always busy, busy, busy,’ she babbles with an awkward laugh.
I don’t care, to be honest. It’s not like we’re close and I can’t think of anything worse than going on a hen party with a bunch of sickly wedding types.
‘We’ll take you lots of pictures,’ my mum says kindly. I love that she’s invited my mum but not me.
‘Thanks,’ I reply.
‘Yeah and, er, Leo, buddy…’ Mike starts.
‘I’m working,’ Leo replies quickly.
‘You don’t even know when it is, mate,’ Dan replies.
Leo and Mike have never really liked each other. It’s a family wedding, so there was never