Bea should be elated: her sweet and loyal boyfriend Jake has just proposed, with the family ring, over dinner. Instead, she feels numb and distant, retreating into anthropological analysis of her new role as the bride-to-be. She soon discovers that Jake’s mother is poised to make the engaged couple a generous gift to help with wedding expenses, but it comes with an unspoken condition. Lorraine wants her pushy goddaughter Millie, Jake’s ex-girlfriend, included in the bridal party. Millie is all fake hair and barbed comments, beneath which a pulse of obsessive longing for Jake throbs audibly.

Adding to Bea’s woes, the minuscule engagement ring is cutting off circulation to her finger; her best friend and maid of honour, Joy, is decidedly sceptical about marriage in general; and Bea finally has to wrap up her archaeology Master’s after years of working on it part-time. Trapped in a boring data analyst job while recovering from a shadowy traumatic incident during her Bachelor’s, Bea has remained in a state of suspended animation, much like the ancient corpses which fascinate her. Her area of study is the ethics around displaying remains like those of the Lindow man, a startlingly well-preserved bog body which features strongly in Bea’s memories of a troubled relationship during her university days.

Caught between the predictable stupor of her present and the chance of a different but uncertain future, in which she fully commits to Jake and throws her energy into applying for a PhD, Bea chooses nostalgia instead. She starts texting her former boyfriend, pretending at first that she is merely updating him on how things have changed for her. As her physical and mental health begin to unravel, it becomes clear that something far darker and more dangerous is taking place. Ruthy Mason deploys numerous sleights of hand to keep the source of the trouble uncertain and the reader in suspense. Past and present blur uneasily together and the sinister camp of the bridezilla is used to satisfying effect.

A recent crop of dark fiction focusing on weddings and marriage suggests that British readers are still grappling with the meaning of the institution for life in the 21st century. In Death Do Us, along with Sean Gilbert’s I’ll Be the Monster and Megan Hunter’s The Harpy, the horror comes partly from the tension between individual and collective identity, forgiveness and resignation. Perhaps even more frightening than being alone with just one other person is the prospect of facing yourself.