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crime not to want chil- dren.”
    “It’s not.” But she couldn’t understand it. Since hitting thirty, her urge to have children seemed as natural and unavoidable as the urge to breathe.
    “Not having that biological clock thing going on is an advan- tage.” Lara pulled her cashmere shrug tight around her shoulders. “It means I’m not going to compromise. What’s the incentive? For me, dating and mating are unrelated. I’m hardly going to sit around waiting for my prince with my legs crossed.”
    A soft breeze blew into the living room through the open garden doors, shaking the long green curtains, carrying happy spring
    scents. It made Stevie feel more wretched. This wasn’t the time for maudlin introspection. She was upsetting the happy finale of her own story: all the best ones ended in marriage, like a Shakespearean comedy, order restored, a new spring promised. What the hell was she doing?
    “I’m like one of those Daily Mail scare stories about predatory thirtysomething women,” continued Lara, trying to lighten the mood. “You know, last month I slept with three different men in eight days.” She started a little at how this sounded, spoken out loud. “Everyone tells me that I’ll never meet a man in New York. The single scene is worse than London. And I probably have a bet- ter chance of becoming Anna Wintour than I do of getting mar- ried.” Lara looked up and grinned impishly. “But I wake up in the morning with a smile on my face. I am doing what I want to do. And you must do the same.”
    “I know.” Stevie nodded, feeling that the crucial issue—whether to cancel the wedding and lose the only man who’d ever loved her enough to marry her—was getting lost here. She wasn’t making a lifestyle choice. This was a matter of love and soul mates . . . or it should be, and perhaps that was the problem.
    “My mother was stuck in a small, terraced house washing out dirty nappies from the age of twenty-one. Can you imagine ? I count myself extremely bloody lucky.”
    “Hmmm.” Stevie wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t so sure that choices made things simpler. “So what are you saying?”
    “Don’t get married for the wrong reasons.” Lara squeezed Ste- vie’s hand. “But then again, if you decide to sashay up the aisle, we’ll forget we ever had this conversation. It’s your call.” She reached for the plate of pastries on the floor. “Croissant?”
    “No thanks.” Stevie got up from the sofa and paced her parents’
    living room, stepping over the familiar landscape of her childhood, large African bowls and piles of her father’s dog-eared books on the floor. “I feel so guilty already. Hugely guilty. Apart from wrecking Jez’s life, humiliating him so publicly, I’ll ruin everything for everyone.” Stevie leaned against the wall, the plaster cold on her back, her head screaming with irreconcilable thoughts.
    “Stevie!” hollered her mother from the kitchen. “Casanova’s on the phone.”
    Stevie and Lara exchanged horrified glances at the normalcy of Jez calling. It suddenly seemed fantastical that Stevie could think such a thing as canceling the wedding when the arrangements had been made and her fiancé was on the phone beckoning her back to her safe, mostly happy relationship.
    “What the fuck do I . . .” hissed Stevie desperately, freezing to the spot.
    “Get him down here. Talk things through, hon. Go on . . .” Lara gave Stevie a hug, then a little prod, and set her in motion toward the kitchen, where Patti was sitting on a chair, knees drawn to her chest, telephone cradled between her cheek and shoulder.
    “Don’t worry, I’ve organized the music. The band rocks!” (Patti had recently borrowed this expression off Neil, thus rendering it unusable overnight.) “You’ll love them . . . here she is.” Patti passed the phone over to her daughter and mouthed, “In a very funny mood.” She turned Joan Baez down on her ancient cassette recorder and sat down at