Excerpt for Confetti Hearts

I come awake with a start from a dream about having to tap dance under the sea. It takes me a few seconds to realise that my phone is ringing. I fumble for it on my bedside table, jettisoning my diary, a box of tissues, my spare inhaler, and a packet of chocolate dragees onto the floor.

“Shit,” I mumble, and my fingers finally find my phone. “’Lo,” I say thickly into it.

Sounds of wild sobbing come through the airwaves. “Oh, Joe. Oh my god, it’s so awful.”

What? Who the fuck is this?

I raise the phone close to my eyes and squint at the display. Ah. Sally—one of my brides. It’s a good job I’m a wedding planner because that last sentence came across as far too much like Bluebeard for me to be comfortable.

“What’s the problem?” I say slowly, feeling like my tongue has been stapled to the inside of a dog’s basket. Fuck those last shots of tequila at the club last night. They’re looking like a very bad idea right now.

“It’s the cake.”

“The cake?”

What possible fucking cake emergency can there be at this time of the night?

“It’s the wrong shape.”

Ah. That emergency.

I rack my brain and memory dawns. “You had the five-tier, espresso-infused butter cake with Kahlua butter cream and chocolate ganache, didn’t you? That was a lovely choice.”

“You think so?” she says hesitantly.

“Of course,” I say in a confident tone that doesn’t let on that my favourite cake is actually a Mr Kipling’s Country Slice. The prices these people are paying, it wouldn’t go down well.

“It’s all wrong,” she says in a tone of doom probably last heard from the person on the Titanic who was tasked with trying to squeeze two thousand people into fourteen lifeboats.

I punch my pillows and drag myself up into a sitting position. Spying the Panadol packet on my table put there by Past Foresighted Joe, I poke a couple out of the blister pack and swallow them with a swig of water. Now I’m ready.