He's supposed to be your boyfriend. He's your ex.

The vineyard estate still smells of warm stone and rosemary when you arrive for the rehearsal dinner, and at your place is a card with your name on it — right beside a second one carrying a name you struck out of your life fourteen months ago.

Theo.

You never read the guest list. Mira didn't want to load anything else onto you these last three weeks, and you were grateful for that. Now he's standing at the far end of the terrace, in the pale blue shirt you bought him two years ago, laughing with the groom like they've known each other since school.

Maybe they have. You know so little about his life these days, forgetting has become something close to a skill.

Your mother finds you first. She has had exactly one question open since spring, and tonight, with wine in her blood and the whole family at the table, she is finally going to ask it: where is the steady boyfriend you mentioned back in March, purely to buy yourself four months of peace.

You never gave him a name. That was deliberate — so nobody could ask further questions.

"There you are," your mother says, except she isn't looking at you. She's looking past you, toward the terrace, toward the pale blue shirt. "And that must be him."

She's already half turned to go. For the next three days there is no taking back whatever comes out of your mouth next — or out of your silence.

Your mother crosses the terrace before you can even stand, and takes Theo's face in both hands as though she raised him herself.

"Finally," she says. "I was starting to think we'd never actually meet you."

Theo looks over her shoulder at you. His expression says roughly what you're thinking: that the next three seconds decide how this whole wedding goes.

"The drive was long," he says instead, very carefully, the way you finish a sentence on thin ice.

It works. Your mother nods as though that were exactly what she expected, and pulls him by the arm to the table, where your father is already rising with a hand out.

"Sit next to her," she says, meaning you. "You two must have a lot to catch up on after that drive."

Theo sits. Under the table his knee brushes yours, briefly — an accident or a question, you can't tell which.

"What is it you do again, sweetheart?" your aunt asks across the table, aimed at Theo, with the smile of someone who intends to remember the answer.

You never told your mother a job. Just one sentence, back in March: "He's serious, Mum, that's all you need." Apparently it wasn't all she needed — she has spent four months inventing an entire person, and that person is currently wearing Theo's face.

Your father taps his spoon against his glass. "Before we start," he says, "we'd love to hear from you two — since when, and how long."

The whole table turns to look at you.

You both stand up at the same moment, which already looks funny, and somebody laughs before either of you has said a word.

"You tell it," you say to Theo, and it comes out sounding rehearsed, though it isn't.

He tells a version that is true in the real places and exactly right in the invented ones: a café, a mixed-up umbrella, two years in which you — he says "found each other" — and you notice how close that lands to what actually happened, just with a different ending. Your aunt sighs audibly. Your mother reaches for your father's hand, and for a second you almost believe it yourself.

At the end somebody holds up a phone and a flash goes off before you can say no. "For the family album," says Mira, your sister, and there is something in her look that isn't pure congratulations — more a question she's saving for later.

Later, at the bar, you find Theo alone, jacket over the back of his chair, glass still half full.

"A café with a mixed-up umbrella," you say. "Seriously."

"It worked." He turns his glass. "Why didn't you say anything before your mother hugged me?"

"Why did you go along with it instead of exposing me?"

He doesn't answer right away, and in the gap Mira arrives at the bar, two room keys in hand, which she sets down on the counter between you.

"Small problem," she says. "Rooms got assigned by couple. You two are sharing the garden cottage — until Sunday."

The garden cottage has one bed, a sofa nobody could have seriously meant as one, and a window that lets the noise of the party in until well past midnight.

Theo sets his bag down by the door, not on the bed, which you notice and don't let yourself read anything into.

"I'll take the sofa," he says.

"It's barely a metre long."

"I sleep badly anyway. This changes nothing."

You sit on the edge of the bed, he takes the too-short sofa, and for a while neither of you says anything while outside the party music fades until only the bass comes through the floor.

"Why are you actually here," you ask eventually. "You and Mira were never that close."

He looks at you a moment too long before answering. "She called me six weeks ago. Not about the wedding."

"About what, then?"

He opens his mouth, and you can see a real answer coming — not one meant for your mother, not one meant for anyone but you.

Then there's a knock at the door, twice, brisk.

"Rise and shine, you two," Mira calls from outside, far too cheerful for the hour. "The photographer wants the couple's breakfast photo in ten minutes, and Mum's already asking where you are."

Theo closes his mouth again.

Outside it's getting light. Inside, an answer he almost gave you is still waiting, and so is a second day you both have to keep performing, with neither of you sure you still are.