It was my partner who spied it first...

At last, I have come up with a story worthy of ms macs first line. It's about sex, money and shopping. Just joking.

It was my partner who spied it first; the crumpled white and blue of the plastic bag, hidden on the embankment at the train station.
“Thank God” I whispered, the tight knots in my neck muscles suddenly unravelling for the first time all day.

When you’re a member of the police force, having a hens night is never just a Chinese meal followed by a pub crawl. Some idiot always decides to do something mean and nasty, like shave all the bride-to-be’s hair off or arrange for the words “Carpet Muncher” to be inexpertly tattooed on her biceps while she’s comatose in the ladies’ toilets.

In fact, if I really think about, fear of my anticipated hens night was probably one of the reasons it took me so long to agree to marry Frank. Frank would have you believe it’s because I’m a free spirit, hard to pin down and even harder to stop from flirting with every fireman from here to New York. Well, okay there’s a grain of truth in that. Who could resist a hot-blooded fireman? I’m only human, after all.

But really, I love the guy – Frank, that is – and ever since that evening he made me the most amazing lasagne I’ve ever tasted, I’ve known he was the one for me. He’s no muscle-bound silver-jacketed superhero, but he can cook like a god. And give a helluva good backrub. Like I said, the only reason I didn’t marry the guy two years ago was because I was shit-scared of walking down the aisle looking like early Sinead O’Connor.

And I suppose I did get off lightly, because when I march down the aisle tomorrow it’ll be as a brunette and not a baldy. But those cows stole my wedding dress somehow, and hid it in a shopping bag in a disused railway station.

And that’s not the worst of it.

When I opened up that plastic bag, I got an eyeful of orange silk. Orange silk.

Now I’m going to be indistinguishable from the bridesmaids.