My most romantic moment: My bachelorette party was a real surprise - I thought I was going to get fired

We were about to get married, and second marriages are weird. Sorry, weird isn't the right word. What I mean is skint: I had no money, because I had just divorced. So a lot of the things you associate with marriage — photographers, flowers, sit-down meals, bridesmaids, bridesmaids, really anything but booze — have been dropped. Also, I was a bit older than the first time, so I didn't miss any of it, let alone the photographer. A hen night hadn't even crossed my mind.

It was 2018, five days before the event, which was on a Wednesday, to take advantage of the Southwark Council Midweek Register- Special Office. It turned out that Mr. Z was only pretending to have a romantic candlelight dinner, to mark one of our last nights living in sin. My friend called me and asked if he could see me at the pub, quick, because he had something urgent to discuss. Awks, because there was dinner to eat, but of course I said yes and rushed out of the house to the sound of, "If you're not back in an hour, everything will be messed up, messed up!” – not understanding how weird that was.

The friend in question, who I've worked with all my life professional, never has anything urgent to discuss. I'll call him if there's a funny smell near my toaster; he'll call me if his mom accidentally pulls out two eyelashes at once. The idea that something big could happen, without 17 steps of warning, was absurd.

So there were only two possible scenarios in my head: Either he had a terminal illness, or I was going to get fired. I walked to the pub, with the dog, thinking: this would be a really bad time to get fired, but also I would definitely prefer that my very dear friend don't be sick.

When we walked in, the dog went crazy, which with a regular dog would have alerted me to the strange crowd: 20 people, all wearing Theresa May masks. The dog still goes crazy, though, because he loves commercials, so I was frantically looking around, thinking, where the hell is my friend with his terrible, terrible news?

One ​​of the Theresa Mays wore a coat like my sister's . Another had the same hair as another friend. A neighbor sat at the bar and said quietly, "Do you think you might know all those Theresa Mays?" Suddenly I realized that they were all looking at me and had an expectant mood. Yes, they were my 20 dearest associates, and it only took one fold of cardboard for me not to recognize any of them. The dog, of course, could spot them all by scent, probably from about 200 yards away.

Someone useless filmed my face at that moment accurate ; it didn't look good. I was still thinking, "It's a sweet coincidence that they're all here, but I really don't have time for this - I only have 47 minutes to find Tim, h...