Everyone loves a winter wedding, right? The bride's mother, the bride's friends, the groom and his work colleagues, all of them eagerly anticipating a massive party. The bride herself...?

She's ambiguous about it.

"Do you want me to zip you up?" Shayla's voice broke through my thoughts. We were stood in front of the free-standing, full-length mirror in the hotel bedroom—only one of us visible in it. I tugged at my bra, hoicking the straps up so that my boobs fitted properly.

"Do I remind you of an overstuffed sausage?" I asked. The dress was on loan from a company that knew photos of this wedding would be all over the internet and guarantee them amazing publicity.

"Nothing like an overstuffed sausage," Shayla said, shaking her head at me. I felt rather than saw the movement.

Easy for Ms Rake-thin to say. As she zipped me up, the boning in the bodice dug into my ribs, my flesh spilling over the dresses' arms. A good job the fur stole would cover the fat up. In my head, I'd imagined the dress transforming me into an old-fashioned siren of the silver screen—my hair fashioned in thick rolls snaking over my shoulders, the mermaid shaped silk dress hugging my breasts, waists and bottom and making me hourglass shaped.

Not this—the breasts exploding out of the top of the dress, my stomach all too prominent and my bottom big enough to rest a tray on. I should have gone for the black version—the company offered this style in black and cream—but everyone around me exclaimed that you couldn't wear black to a wedding when I said it.

The door behind us opened. "Maya, love, I think he wants fed."

Sharon, her beloved grandson in her arms, came in followed by my sister, dressed as a flower girl and thoroughly overexcited. I'd threaded flowers through her blonde hair earlier. She looked one hundred times better than me.

"Seriously?" I asked. "Shayla's just stuffed me into this dress. If she has to do it again, I'll split the seams."

On cue, Kyle Junior, aka Mirac, yelled his head off.

"He's starving," my mum pointed out. A month ago, I'd attempted to wean Baby Dupont off breastmilk and onto bottles. Breast-feeding your kid in public is a fine and noble thing, and as the Liberal Life Party's youngest and most outspoken Members of the Assembly, I blazed a trail for women bringing their babies to work, etc.

But trailblazing takes up, what, three hundred times more energy than doing the far less public thing. If I could persuade Mirac bottle fed was best, his father could take over his care almost full time.

What a relief.

"Have you've tried him on the bottle?" I asked, and Sharon nodded. "Yes, and he's not for it, love. Wants to be all snuggled up with his mummy."

The cloying sentimentality of the words made me want to throw up. Sharon lived in hope that if she put on a silly voice while gazing in adoration at Mirac, somehow the feeling would become contagious, and I would grab the baby off her and coo at him. Like proper mothers did.

So far, the tactic hadn't worked.

"Okay," I sighed. "Let me wriggle out of this."

Next to me, Shayla shifted from foot to foot. Shayla thought along the same lines as Sharon, often using that same silly voice to talk to and about Mirac. But, and here was the world's biggest irony, Sharon hated handing Mirac over to Shayla. Minutes after he'd made his way into the world, doctors whisked him away to vaccinate him against vampires, stopping only to call over their shoulders, "Everything's fine; you've had a baby boy, he looks healthy. We'll get him back to you tomorrow, okay?"

Sharon knew this, but her residual wariness around Shayla remained. Even now, my younger sister Rosie finally vaccinated too, Sharon hovered protectively in front of her too whenever Shayla was on the scene.

"Sharon, let Shayla give Mirac a cuddle," I said, thrusting the dress down to my waist. The bra I wore wasn't a nursing one. I'd need to wriggle out of that too. Motherhood, the world's most undignified endeavour.

Sharon clung to Mirac. I sharpened my tone. "Shayla's going to be here to take care of him long after you and I are dead."

Sharon handed him over, the smile directed at Shayla not quite reaching her eyes.

I reached behind my back to unfasten my bra. Rosie jumped up and down. "Maya! What does the stuff that comes out of your tits taste like?"

We all stared at her.

"Rosie!" I said, struggling to stop myself laughing. "Who taught you that word? It's not very respectful."

"I heard Kyle say it," Rosie said, "when he was on the phone. Telling someone your tits were gigantic and how much they—"

"Rosie, that's enough!" Sharon clamped a hand over Rosie's mouth. She met my eyes—an apology in hers. What for? Rosie's repetition of something she'd heard or the idiot I was about to marry. If I didn't kill him first.

Shayla blew raspberries at Mirac, who laughed, reaching out a little hand to touch her face. He didn't care what she was. The two of them contrasted—Shayla white blonde and sheet white, Mirac black-haired and olive-skinned, just like his father. "Kiddo," I often told him, "I'm a terrible mother, but at least you've been lucky enough to take after your dad, looks-wise."

I reached out for Mirac, who latched on almost immediately. According to motherhood mythology, I was supposed to find this soothing—me and him locking eyes as he sucked. Mirac always shut his. Almost as if he could tell that what he might see in my eyes was resentment.

Luckily for both of us, today he didn't do that stop/start thing that drove me up the wall, instead sucking away until he'd drained me. I handed him back to Sharon, wiped my nipples and struggled back into the dress once more.

The seams held. Though at one point, the one under my arm made alarming noises.

"You look drop-dead gorgeous!"

Shayla rested her head on my shoulder as we stood in front of the mirror.

"No, I don't," I said to a chorus of disagreement, Sharon joining forces with Shayla. Rosie added that I looked like a Disney princess. What, the before version?

Sharon checked the time on her phone. "We better make a move."

I reapplied lipstick, smudging over the cupid's bow to make my pout appear bigger. Mirac had dropped off to sleep as Sharon coo-ed nonsense at him.

"Rosie!" I called, and she ran to my side, taking my hand.

"What do I have to do?"

We'd had this conversation endless times over the past few days—the duties of a flower girl. "Nothing!" I'd said, "just walk ahead of me carrying flowers and smiling at people."

That was nowhere near enough information for Rosie, who insisted we practise, the two of us gliding up and down the cleared space in the living room super slowly.

"What if I drop the flowers?" Rosie asked, not in the least bit reassured when I said no-one would care. To be on the safe side, though, I'd attached the flowers to one of her wrists with a gold chain. Fool-proof.

"You walk ahead of me," I said now, "not too fast, and smile your head off. Okay?"

She nodded. Sharon met my eyes over her head, beaming. If you skipped the minor issue of me not 100 percent loving motherhood, she was as pleased as punch about the way her two daughters had turned out.

A head peeked round the door. "Maya? Are you ready?"

No. Yes.

Gregor Firth stepped into the room. He wore a tux, tailor-made by the look of it, and yet ruffled enough to give him that rough edge. Loosened bow tie, dark blonde stubbled jaw and hair that needed brushing. In the room, four women swooned. Mirac might have done it in his sleep too. Gregor had that kind of effect on everyone.

Kyle had insisted on a good old-fashioned wedding where a man walked up the aisle to hand a woman over to another man. When I protested Sharon could do the job perfectly, she spoiled my objection by saying she didn't want everyone staring at her. Gregor stepped in.

Sharon and Shayla hurried off to find their places among the assembled guests in the ballroom. The decorators had festooned the hallway we stood in with pink and silver balloons and bunting, interweaved with the red and black Argist Academy logos.

Gregor took my arm. "Shall we?"

Rosie slipped her hand in mine. We stepped outside.

The decorators had also threaded flowers through the rails of the spiral staircase—jasmine, sweet-pea and lily of the valley, their scents competing to dominate the air. The sun hit the atrium, rays of golden light hitting the floor below in circles of warmth and light.

Gregor didn't seem in a hurry. He stopped at the bannister, resting his forearms there. Rosie pressed her face through the railings. Two or three groups of people, all dressed up to the nines, hurried across the floor below us, heading for the function room.

"Are you sure, Maya?" Gregor asked, turning to look at me. Hundreds of years of Firth DNA concentrated itself in his eyeballs—those blue, blue orbs that fixed on a face, asked a question and compelled you to honesty. He could read minds but promised me he didn't do it that often. Claimed it was exhausting and tedious most of the time. ("Honestly, Maya, it is! Most people's thoughts are deadly dull.")

"It's not ideal," he continued, studing the floor, "to ditch a guy at the altar, but far, far better to do it now than six months down the line."

"Maya used to love a vampire."

My sister. Super-helpful of her to remember that now. Kyle, determined to be magnanimous, had suggested we invite Justin to the wedding. Magnanimous or to rub Justin's face in it... You decide. I said no, but when Justin had sent an elaborate wedding cake to the hotel the day before, I said nothing to Kyle.

"Used to," I said, "being the operative phrase. Now I love Kyle."

Often, I said the words out loud, perhaps to make them more convincing, but some weeks ago, my oldest friend Safi had sat down and thrust a notebook at me.

"Right," she said, "the pros and cons of marrying Kyle. You know I think it's the stupidest idea ever, and that marriage is a patriarchal structure designed to oppress women. But what I think is not nearly as important as what you think. Go on, list the good and the bad."

In the end, the good far outdid the bad.

1. Adored me? Tick.

2. Did his fair share (much more) of childcare. Tick.

3. Shared my political views. Tick.

4. Knew his way around my body and how to make my legs tremble. Tick.

5. The kind of man other women would envy you for. Tick.

The latter might make me shallow, but hey ho. The points I listed as cons seemed wishy-washy by comparison, apart from the one I didn't jot down.

NOT JUSTIN.

"I'm sure," I said to Gregor. "Are you trying to put me off because as Dunrovia's biggest heart-breaker, commitment scares the crap out of you, and you can't understand why anyone would do it?"

He smiled, white teeth flashing. Last year, two of his teeth had been knocked in a fight. He'd chosen a gold cap for one of the two that replaced them. Piratical, possibly naff, but if anyone could get away with gold caps, it was Gregor.

"Ah well," he said, "I better tell Amelie to reassess the odds she has on you and Kyle splitting after a year."

"What? You're not seriously telling me the Argists have put a bloody bet on how long our marriage will last?"

The smile became a grin. He kissed my cheek. "Maya, you are and always have been criminally easy to wind up. No, Amelie hasn't."

He threaded his arm through mine. "Come on, then. It's traditional for the bride-to-be to tarry, but you don't want to frighten the poor boy too much."

"Rosie, are you ready?" I asked, and she drew back from the bannister, face serious. As we made our way down the stairs, she walked so slowly, Gregor and I had to keep stopping, worried we might crash into her. I'd over-stressed that point about taking her time.

The wedding was to take place in the hotel's function room. The few people in the reception area—staff, other guests, people drinking cocktails—beamed at us. Two women sipping what looked like espresso martinis called out, "Good luck! What a stunning dress!"

I waved back. Yup, everyone loves a winter wedding.

As two members of staff pushed open the double doors to the function room, a thought struck me.

Gregor had said Amelie hadn't put a bet on how long Kyle and I's marriage would last. He'd promised nothing about his own actions.