Pulling a sickie is not something I'm prone to do. And, while
I'd like to say I feel sick, I don't. Not unless prewedding nerves,
last-minute jitters, and horrific amounts of stress count.

But nevertheless this morning I decided I deserved a day off ---
hell, possibly even two --- so I phoned in first thing, knowing
that as bad a liar as I am, it would be far easier to lie to Penny,
the receptionist, than to my boss.

"Oh, poor you." Penny's voice was full of sympathy. "But it's not
surprising, given the wedding. Must be all the stress. You should
just go to bed in a darkened room."

"I will," I said huskily, swiftly catching myself in the lie ---
migraine symptoms not including sore throats or fake sneezes ---
and getting off the phone as quickly as possible. I did think
vaguely about doing something delicious for myself today, something
I'd never normally do. Manicures, pedicures, facials, things like
that. But of course guilt has managed to prevail, and even though I
live nowhere near my office in trendy Soho, I still know, beyond a
shadow of a doubt, that should I venture outside on the one day I'm
pretending to be sick, someone from work will just happen to be at
the end of my street. So here I am. Watching dreadful daytime
television on a cold January morning (although I did just manage to
catch an item on "updos for weddings," which may turn out to be
incredibly useful), eating my way through a packet of custard
creams (my last chance before the wedding diet goes into full
acceleration), and wondering whether there would be any chance of
finding a masseuse --- a proper one --- to come to the house at the
last minute to soothe the knots of tension away.

I manage to waste forty-five minutes flicking through the small ads
in the local magazines, but somehow I don't think any of those
masseuses are what I'm looking for: "guaranteed discretion,"
"sensual and intimate." And then I reach the personal ads at the
back.

I smile to myself reading through. Of course I'm reading through. I
may be about to get married but I'm still interested in seeing
what's out there, not that, I have to admit, I've ever actually
gone down the personal-ad route. But I know a friend who has.
Honestly. And a wave of warmth, and yes, I'll admit it, smugness,
comes over me. I don't ever have to tell anyone that I have a good
sense of humor or that I look a bit like Renée Zellweger ---
but only if I pout and squint my eyes up very, very small --- or
that I love the requisite walks in the country and curling up by a
log fire.

Not that any of that is not true, but how lovely, how lucky am I,
that I don't have to explain myself, or describe myself, or pretend
to be someone other than myself ever again.

Thank God for Dan. Thank you, God, for Dan. I slide my feet into
huge fluffy slippers, scrape my hair back into a ponytail, and wrap
Dan's huge, voluminous towelling robe around me as I skate my way
down the hallway to the kitchen.

Dan and Ellie. Ellie and Dan. Mrs. Dan Cooper. Mrs. Ellie Cooper.
Ellie Cooper. I trill the words out, thrilling at how unfamiliar
they sound, how they will be true in just over a month, how I got
to have a fairy-tale ending after all.

And, despite the cloudy sky, the drizzle that seems to be
omnipresent throughout this winter, I feel myself light up, as if
the sun suddenly appeared at the living-room window specifically to
shine its warmth upon me.

The problem with feeling guilty about pulling sickies, as I now
discover, is that you end up too terrified to leave the house, and
therefore waste the entire day. And of course the less you do, the
less you want to do, so by two o'clock I'm bored, listless, and
sleepy. Rather than taking the easy option and going back to bed, I
decide to wake myself up with strong coffee, have a shower, and
finally get dressed.

The cappuccino machine --- an early wedding present from my chief
executive --- shouts a shiny hello from its corner on the kitchen
worktop, by far the most glamorous and high- tech object in the
kitchen, if not the entire flat. Were it not for Dan, I'd never use
the bloody thing, and that is despite a passion for strong, milky
cappuccinos. Technology and I have never got on particularly well.
The only technological area in which I excel is computers, but even
then, now that all my junior colleagues are messing around with
iPods and MPEGs and God knows what else, I'm beginning to be left
behind there too. My basic problem is not so much technology as
paper: instruction manuals, to be specific. I just haven't got the
patience to read through them, and almost everything in my flat
works eventually if I push a few buttons and hope for the best.
Admittedly, my video recorder has never actually recorded anything,
but I only ever bought the machine to play rented videos on, not to
record, so as far as I'm concerned it has fulfilled its purpose
admirably.

Actually, come to think of it, not quite everything has worked that
perfectly: The freezer has spent the last year filled with ice and
icicles, although I think that somewhere behind the ice may be a
year-old carton of Ben & Jerry's. And my Hoover still has the
same dust bag it's had since I bought it three years ago because I
haven't quite figured out how to change it --- I cut a hole in it
when it was full one time and hand-pulled all the dust out, then
sealed it back up with tape and that seems to do the job
wonderfully. If anything, just think how much money I've saved
myself on Hoover bags.

Ah yes, there is also the superswish and superexpensive CD player
that can take four hundred discs at a time, but has in fact only
ever held one at a time.

So things may not work the way they're supposed to, or in the way
the manufacturers intended, but they work for me, and now I have
Dan, Dan who will not lay a finger on any new purchase until he has
read the instruction manual cover to cover, until he has ingested
even the smallest of the small print, until he can recite the
manual from memory alone.

And so Dan --- bless him --- now reads the manuals, and gives me
demonstrations on how things like Hoovers, tumble dryers, and
cappuccino machines work. The only saving grace to this, other than
now being able to work the cappuccino machine, is that Dan has
learned to fine-tune his demonstrations so they last no longer than
one minute, by which time I'll have completely tuned out and will
be thinking either about new presentations at work, or possibly
dreaming about floating on a desert island during our honeymoon.
But the cappuccino machine, I have to say, is brilliant, and God,
am I happy I actually paid attention when Dan was showing me how it
worked. It arrived three days ago, and thus far I've used it nine
times. Two cups in the morning before leaving for work, one cup
when I get home, and one, or two, in the evening after dinner,
although after 8:00 p.m. we both switch to decaf.

And as I'm tapping the coffee grains into the spoon to start making
the coffee, I find myself thinking about spending the rest of my
life with only one person.

I should feel scared. Apprehensive at the very least. But all I
feel is pure, unadulterated joy.

Any doubts I may have about this wedding, about getting married,
about spending the rest of my life with Dan have nothing whatsoever
to do with Dan.

And everything to do with his mother.

Excerpted from THE OTHER WOMAN © Copyright 2011 by Jane
Green. Reprinted with permission by Viking, an imprint of Penguin
Group (USA). All rights reserved.