Fionnuala announced that we were booked in for a family portrait and that we were to wear the same outfits, which I immediately railed against.

“Are you serious? That’s the picture on the wall everyone laughs at.”

She huffed for a while. I had been in her family’s houses and they all has those portraits, like something from an internet fail compilation: everyone in white t-shirts and cowboy hats, or a family of five lying on top of each other like some macabre art installation.

“Denim shirts and jeans. No hats.”

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We were shopping for the outfits and I pushed back again. “I think this is crazy, Fionnuala. We’ll look like Garth Brooks’s backing band.”

But I knew in my heart she really wanted to do this so I resigned myself to the ordeal. I actually like denim shirts and headed off to shop alone, but when I got back to the car something was wrong.........

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