19.

I was 19 when my mother said:

“Well, you’ll have to get married then.”

We had known each other all of about 6 months.

I had left home for London in the January of 2000 and my mum’s verdict was delivered in the August of that same year having flown back with my new boyfriend to celebrate her 40th birthday.  If we were living together, we needed to get married and that was that.

I had convoluted some story about living with three nurses in a share house to avoid any confrontation but mum saw through it and asked straight up “Are you living together?”

I should have lied and saved myself the grief but I’m a shitty liar.

He asked my dad if he could marry me and apparently my dad said, “She’s over 18 now so unless you were a complete rat bag, she can make her own decisions”.

The deal was done, he wasn’t a rat bag.

The night he asked me to marry him, sitting on the second-hand floral sofa of his two up, two down just outside Reading town centre, ended with me aggressively vomiting throughout the night. I think it was a sign, one of many glaringly obvious, bright red, flashing neon signs over the preceding months leading up to this forced proposal that should have ended the whole farcical situation, but it didn’t.

My dad, with a long career in logistics and a firm believer in never carrying half a load, suggested a joint wedding with my older sister to save the expense of me flying back to Australia from London for both her and my weddings, that went down a right treat with my sister so she got married in the January and I married in the April, of 2001.

When people ask why I married him I generally leave the bit about my mum out. Far better to look like a stupid, head strong teen than a woman still toiling under the burden of a difficult childhood trying to please her parents.

Stepping back a few years, it probably tracks that I wasn’t going to have an easy time of it with men. I got off to a rocky start and whilst we probably don’t know it at the time, it all carries forward.