Brotherly love

Four women at the next table.

"...sitting on't balcony, looking down at all them cunts down there -- she's dobbed him and she's ditched him and she's getting fingered in the bushes, fucking fat joint, fuck, no, it's not a blokes' holiday...no, no, you're not [going home], you're coming to Galgate and getting off your face."

One of them came over to me. I couldn't remember who she was. "You remember, you were talking about Jeremy Corbyn the other day." Two of them just had their wedding ceremony at the Registry Office. One of the brides was wearing a see-through red artificial lace top over a white bra, the other, trying much less hard, a plain black top and black jeans.

Two hours in and it's all winding down in a familiar vortex in which longwinded expressions along the lines of how lovely you are and how I've never met someone that is such a kind person, no shut up I'm talking, no listen, you know what I'm saying..." are now souring into bitter, drunken, loud, life-as-soap-opera. They've been refused any more drinks. One of the brides' mothers has grabbed her jacket and stomped off. "Fucking pricks."

Me and Trina went to Middlesbrough. My mum wanted a second opinion on her clothes for my sister's wedding next month. My sister has been fretting, asking me, amongst other inanities, if I'd like her to buy me a "burgundy" tie to co-ordinate with that of the groom.

We took my mum to a cheap pub for a dinner: a bolus of reconstituted potato, and stools of extruded vegetable fat. Back at hers, she tried on a boxy navy outfit, which I said made her look like a Tory councillor. She had another idea, a white and creme combo which at least has the advantage of a kinder colour. She said "I'd prefer to turn up looking like a scruff. I've no interest in clothes whatsoever."

I am spending the least amount of time possible at this wedding, since I avoid work whenever possible. Trina is collaborating in a lie to my sister that I've got to leave early in order to get to a freelance job in Glasgow.

In fact, we're escaping to a hotel in Appleby, a town whose attraction is that it lacks anything of interest. Dribbly, somnolent afternoons in the bar are enlivened only by the arrival of the militantly healthy types dragging the rain in with them, beaming with a self-satisfaction that comes from being razored for hours by sleet.

Me and Wendy ventured up the park. She wanted to nip off into the bushes. "Hang on, I need a wee. Have you got a tissue? No, I can't use my Barclaycard statement." We came back to mine and had a bottle of Prosecco and some weed instead. We text and talk like lovers. We are not lovers. "Being with you would feel incestuous," she said a couple of weeks ago. She sees me like a brother.

I've got sex on a plate with a woman I neither love nor fancy; I cannot have a physical relationship with someone I do. It pains me. It's sad. I feel it as a loss, a waste, a waste of ignoring the natural part of the spectrum of affection that I feel for her.

When she stood up to leave, angling her head and lips away to offer me a sisterly cheek, I held her for a fraction of a second beyond the moment at which I could feel her relaxing to tell me to unclasp her; desire, time racing, the intense few seconds in which I am allowed to hold her to me, desire as strong as the horror of appearing pestering or needy.