The Big Little Wedding in Carlton Square: A gorgeously heartwarming romance and one of the top summer holiday reads for women

I was all set to pretend to like her, so no one was more surprised than me when I actually did.

‘Daniel says you’ve been summoned to the great Godfather’s for the next supper,’ she says.

‘Should I be worried?’

‘Yah, no, Harold is richer than Croesus, but he’s not too big a bore. Besides, you’re with Daniel and Daniel can do no wrong. He’s the golden boy.’

‘What would you like, Em?’ Daniel asks. ‘It’s my round. Cressida?’

‘Here, try this first,’ she suggests, grabbing a bottle of pink wine from a sweating ice bucket to pour me a glass. ‘We got them to stock it and it’s finally warm enough to drink.’ She means the weather, not the wine. ‘Maybe your uncle would like it for his pub.’

‘Mmm, that’s good!’ I say, trying to imagine Uncle Colin serving rosé to the Cock and Crown regulars. He won’t even have Chardonnay. ‘This is fine, Daniel, thanks.’

I slide into his spot beside Cressida as he goes to the bar.

Even if Daniel hadn’t so obviously loved her – and platonic or not, love is love – I’d have obsessed over Cressida, especially since I suppose I’ve let my mum’s opinions about the la-di-das, as she calls them, cloud my view. They speak differently and have double-barrelled surnames and all come from the same schools.

But Cressida has been nothing but kind to me and I really, truly was happy when Daniel asked if she could be one of our bridesmaids.

‘We drank cases of it last summer when we were in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, remember, Jacob?’ she says. ‘It’s such a shame you couldn’t come with us, Emma, you’d have loved it there! Nothing to do for two weeks but drink wine by the pool. It was divine. Which reminds me. What if we did something similar for your hen do? Or even hire the same place. I’m sure we could get the villa again, and you can have all your friends and family there under the same roof! It’ll easily sleep twenty and it’s so much more personal than having hotel rooms on some city break. I think your Auntie Rose would love it. There are a few steps down to the pool, but we could always help her up and down.’

Her deep brown eyes dance with delight at the idea. She’s never met Auntie Rose and thinks she’s a genteel East London Miss Marple.

‘Well, I did only know Daniel a few weeks when you went away,’ I say. ‘It was a bit early to crash his holidays.’

‘We’d have loved having you there,’ she says. ‘You’re such a breath of fresh air for us.’

She’s always saying things like this and they sound like compliments, but I could also be the cut-price flavour of the month. I never feel like I know for sure.

There’s no doubt we’re different, a fact that she’s either hyper-aware of or seems to completely forget.

Take my hen do. She’s got completely bonkers ideas about where to go. I’m not sure whether staying in a French villa would be more or less pricey than the long weekend at the spa in Baden-Baden she suggested last week, or going to see the Bolshoi Ballet in St Petersburg. That’s St Petersburg, Russia, not some theatre in Kent, in case you wondered.