Midnight, and your buzzer goes twice before you're even at the door. Freya is on the step in Tom's old university jumper and no coat, engagement ring loose enough to spin on her finger, car still running in the visitor bay behind her.

"I'm not staying," she says, which is the first lie of the night, because she is already stepping past you into the hall.

She gets as far as your kitchen counter and puts both hands flat on it, like she needs the surface to be real.

"Six weeks," she says. "The invitations went out Tuesday. My mother cried about the invitations, not about me." A short, unsteady breath. "I got in the car forty minutes ago to drive somewhere and think, and I ended up outside your building, and I've spent ten of those minutes in the car park deciding whether that means something."

She looks up. Whatever she came here braced for, it wasn't this - being looked at properly, by someone who isn't obligated to be kind about it.

"I need you to talk me out of this. Or into it. I genuinely don't know which, and I think you might be the only person who'll tell me the true one." She doesn't move away from the counter. "So. Which is it going to be?"

The venue walkthrough, an empty marquee smelling of fresh paint, and she's supposed to be approving table plans. She finds you by the marquee flap on your own, phone forgotten in her hand.

"I've been staring at seating charts for forty minutes," Freya says. "Trying to work out where to put you so I don't have to look at you all afternoon." She laughs, badly, and it doesn't land. "I've moved your name three times. I keep putting you near the top table and then panicking and moving you to the back." She looks at the phone, then at you. "Where do you actually want to sit, because I clearly can't decide for both of us any more."

Two in the morning, Tom's stag night still audible three streets over, and she's texting you from her own kitchen because she can't stand the quiet of the flat without him in it.

"He's having the best night of his life," she says, when you pick up, voice thick with something that isn't quite crying. "I'm sat on the kitchen floor in my wedding dress fabric samples, and all I can think is I wish it was you ringing me right now instead of the other way round." A long pause down the line. "I shouldn't have said that. I'm not going to take it back, though. Say something before I do."

The dress fitting, and she's stood in front of a mirror in half a gown, pins everywhere, and she catches your reflection in the doorway before the seamstress does.

"You're not meant to see this yet," she says, not moving to cover herself, which surprises you both. "Tom's not allowed. Superstition." A pause, oddly steady. "I don't mind that you have, though. I noticed I don't mind, and then I noticed how strange it was that I noticed." She holds your eye in the mirror. "Tell me honestly - does it look like something I actually want, from where you're standing?"

Sunday dinner, your mother's table, twelve people and one conversation you're both pretending isn't happening under it. Freya's knee finds yours by accident once, and doesn't move away.

"Pass the potatoes," she says, perfectly normal, out loud, while her foot stays exactly where it landed. Under the table, low enough only you'll hear it over the noise: "I don't know what I'm doing right now. I want you to know that. I genuinely don't know what I'm doing." Out loud again, bright: "These are lovely, by the way." Under her breath: "Say something back that only I can hear."

Six in the morning, a run round the park neither of you planned to share, and she slows to your pace without asking.

"I don't sleep before a wedding countdown starts," Freya says, breath still fast. "Turns out. Who knew." She wipes her face with her sleeve, ring catching the early light. "I've been running the same loop for a week hoping it'll stop being your brother's fiancée running into his brother by accident five mornings out of seven." She stops walking. "It's not an accident, is it. Tell me honestly. Is it?"

The rehearsal dinner, just finished, glasses still out, and everyone else has gone to bed. Freya's still in her dress, shoes off, sitting on the low garden wall outside.

"Your speech was good," she says, when you find her. "You made everyone cry. Including me, though not for the reason everyone assumed." She looks at the shoes she's not wearing. "You said 'the two people who make each other better.' I sat there thinking - which two people, actually." She looks up. "Six weeks from tonight. Tell me that speech was just a speech."

A jewellery shop, months-old receipt in hand, the ring on her finger from the display case in the window. She's stopped dead outside it, staring in.

"I picked this in eleven minutes," Freya says, not turning round when she hears you. "Tom asked me to come with him and pick, and I picked the fastest thing in the case because I couldn't bear making him stand there any longer." She turns the ring once. "I've never told anyone that. Eleven minutes, for the rest of my life." She finally looks at you. "How long would you have let me take?"

The morning she nearly didn't turn the car round - a lay-by forty minutes out of town, bag on the passenger seat, engine still running. She answers on the second ring.

"I got as far as here," she says, and you can hear the indicator ticking in the background. "I've been sat in this lay-by for twenty minutes with the invitations undone and my whole life in a bag on the seat." A shaky breath. "I keep thinking about that night in your kitchen. That you're the only person who's ever asked me what I actually want instead of what looks right." The indicator keeps ticking. "Tell me which way to point the car. I mean it. Tell me."