I don’t know why girls marry footballers, because once they set eyes on the ball some kind of primal instinct takes over and everything else flies right out of their heads.

      Personally, I don’t ever want to be second best to a few bits of sewn leather and a lot of air.

      I tried telling that to my friend Laura when she was planning her wedding, but she just laughed and said, ‘Only on the pitch. Harry spends the rest of the time thinking about me. I don’t know what you’ve got against footballers anyway, Kate.’

      ‘Have you forgotten the Shapcott reception, where they wanted individual mini-football cakes for each guest?’ I asked in amazement, because I certainly hadn’t! Making bespoke celebration cakes was what I did for a living, but by the time I’d baked two hundred tiny footballs, I never wanted to see another one again. And after that wedding, I never wanted to see another footballer again either …

      ‘Of course I haven’t forgotten it!’ she said. ‘It was only because I helped you deliver the cakes, and then we got invited to stay on for the reception buffet, that I met Harry – and you seemed to be getting on like a house on fire with Wes Rufford, too.’

      ‘Yes, I did,’ I agreed, remembering the way my eyes had met his dark, bright gaze across the crowded room and how he’d come straight over to talk to me. ‘Right up to the point where the guests started pelting each other with my mini sponge cakes, and I realised just what footballers were really like!’

      ‘One of the younger ones started it,’ Laura said defensively.

      ‘Yes, but then all the rest of the team, including Harry and Wes, joined in!’

      ‘It was quite funny though,’ she suggested, grinning.

      ‘Yes, that’s what Wes said when he phoned me up to apologise afterwards and ask me out, and I expect it was funny, if you hadn’t spent days making the cakes. He didn’t seem to understand why I was cross and even accused me of not having a sense of humour.’

      ‘So you turned him down flat,’ Laura said, ‘and later when I suggested we make a foursome, which I think was just cutting off your nose to spite your face, because you did like him, admit it!’

      ‘I did before I realised what he was really like,’ I said firmly, though actually I had been tempted, even though I knew we were poles apart. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t like the double date was his idea, was it? You were just trying to match-make.’

      She stared at me, astonished. ‘But it was his idea, Kate – didn’t I say?’

      ‘No, you didn’t.’ I wondered if I would have gone, had I known, and if so, how things might have turned out …

      ‘Oh well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?’ I said, shrugging.

      ‘Maybe not, but since Wes’s going to be Harry’s best man and I want you to be my beautiful bridesmaid, you should get to know each other a bit better. Why don’t we try that dinner date again, the four of us?’

      ‘I don’t think so,’ I said firmly.

      ‘You’ll have to talk to him at the wedding and the reception,’ she pointed out.

      ‘I expect I will and I’ll be perfectly polite. But don’t get your hopes up about anything else developing between us, Laura, because he really isn’t my cup of tea. I’m sure you and Harry will be very happy together, but you couldn’t possibly describe me as ideal WAG material, could you? I know nothing about football, or fashion, and my idea of fun isn’t nightclubbing, but going for a long country walk, preferably with a dog.’

      I’m also small and generously curved, with dark auburn hair, whereas Laura is a tall, willowy blonde. She’s about my opposite in every way, but we’ve been friends since infant school.

      ‘I’m not your typical WAG either!’ she protested indignantly.

      ‘Oh, no? Who was it who spent a month’s wages on a pair of Manolos? Which of us has the handbag obsession and a mobile phone that expired from sheer exhaustion? I can still hear its poor, pathetic little bleeps as it slowly died.’

      ‘Oh, don’t – you’re making me feel guilty!’ she said, giggling. ‘And perhaps I am a bit more of a party animal than you, but I do work hard, so I