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“Of course I didn’t,” fibbed Miss Crumble.
Eventually, after much prodding and pushing and pinning and yelping, Dolly Crumble was satisfied and Nat and Dad were free to leave. Five minutes later they were sitting in the burger place opposite. Actually, Dad was sitting, Nat was hovering. Her bum was now a pincushion and it was too painful to sit.
Nat slurped her pop fiercely. So fiercely, in fact, that bubbles came out of her nose and made her even crosser. “Why have I got to be one of Tiffannee’s stupid bridesmaids anyway, I hardly know her,” she growled.
Dad sighed the sigh of a dad who has answered the same question six thousand times. Which was a bit unfair to Nat as he’d only been asked that question FIVE thousand times.
“You DO know Tiffannee. She’s a close relative when you look at our family tree from a distance,” he said.
“If you look at family trees at enough of a distance, it looks like EVERYONE’s related,” said Nat, who had done evolution at school that term. “Everyone except Darius Bagley, who was made in a lab. By mistake.”
Darius was not only the naughtiest boy in the history of schools ever, he was also Nat’s best friend for reasons so old and complicated Nat couldn’t even remember.
“But you are properly related to Tiff,” said Dad. “She’s the daughter of my cousin Raymonde. Auntie Daphne’s son.”
“Is she a proper Auntie or just one of those old women I have to call auntie even though they’re not? The ones with hairy faces and a smell of cat wee?”
“Auntie Daphne is Bad News Nan’s sister,” explained Dad, patiently, “and you know Raymonde because he lives in Texas these days and always sends you baseball caps for Christmas.”
“Oh yeah I like him,” said Nat, who liked baseball caps.
“Tiffannee’s his daughter, which makes her your, er, your, um—” Dad’s eyes glazed over, “it makes her your relation anyway. Let’s say cousin.”
“I don’t know why she can’t get married in Texas,” grumbled Nat, “we could all go there and eat cheeseburgers and get a tan and drive round in big cars.”
“Tiffannee was born here, most of her relatives are here, and she says she’s always dreamed of a perfect English wedding.”
“I flipping well know THAT,” said Nat, “it’s all I’ve heard for months, Tiffannee’s perfect wedding.”
“I was pretty honoured to be asked to organise it,” said Dad.
Nat snorted.
“I haven’t really got the time,” fibbed Dad, who always had loads of time, “but Raymonde’s stuck out there in Texas working for that big oil company and, well, you can’t say no to family.”
Nat snorted again. “Tiffannee asked MUM to help organise her wedding, not you. No one would ask you to organise anything, not even a sock drawer. You write Christmas cracker jokes for a living and you don’t even get those done in time.”
Nat stamped her feet in silent fury as Dad just chuckled and dripped tomato sauce over his shirt. “I did do something useful actually,” he said. “I got you promoted to THIRD ASSISTANT Bridesmaid. Cool, eh?”
“Brilliant, thanks,” grumbled Nat sarcastically as they clambered into Dad’s rubbish old campervan, the Atomic Dustbin. The Dog licked Nat’s face, as if to say he understood her fairy princess pain. As they drove off in the familiar cloud of black engine smoke, Nat’s brain was working overtime.
I’m not doing it, she thought. I don’t care how I get out of it, but I’m not doing it. I just need a plan…
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At home there was no escape from the wedding horror.
The kitchen table – and indeed most of the house – was covered in silly wedding magazines. They were stuffed with glossy photos of daft looking, super-skinny, soppy brides pouting smugly on beaches, or draped over park benches, like they were homeless.
“Do you think if we spoke to Tiffannee she might change her mind about fairy princesses and have a less ridiculous wedding?” asked Mum, as she sat in the kitchen, listening to Nat’s woes.
“She seems pretty set on fairies,” said Dad. “She wants a Fairytale Wedding, and so fairies are important.”
“And no one says no to a bride, apparently,” muttered Mum with half an eye on her mobile phone, “even one who demands really mad things.”
Nat snorted. “Who even likes fairy princesses? It’s like that lame school play we did last term.”
Nat had played keyboards in the school orchestra for their production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She’d thought it was totally pants and soppy and it had only been enjoyable at all because Darius had jammed the smoke machine full on and the fire brigade had had to be called out.
A horrible thought struck Nat and she gasped.
“You took pictures of that play,” she said, “and you sent them to all the family! OMG, Dad, it’s YOUR FAULT. You’ve given Tiffannee the stupid idea to have a stupid fairy wedding. Which makes you – stupid.”
Mum crossed her arms and looked at Dad, a small smile playing around her mouth. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, “your father is a buffoon sometimes.”
Dad looked guilty. Nat wanted to strangle him.
“Still, I suppose we should be grateful Dad didn’t send her pictures of The Wizard of Oz,” said Mum, “or she’d be making the bridesmaids into munchkins.”
“And Dad would be the scarecrow,” said Nat, “the one without a brain.”
“Cooee! Only me,” said Bad News Nan, bustling into the kitchen with two enormous carrier bags. “Ooh, I’m starving. My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.”
Mum slipped quietly out of the kitchen as Bad News Nan plonked herself down and took a packet of biscuits out of a bag.
“I’ll have to have them dry as no one’s offered me a cup of tea yet,” she said, taking her false teeth from her pocket and popping them in her mouth.
“Nan, can you help me get out of being a stupid Perfect Fairy Princess Bridesmaid?” said Nat, making tea.
“Certainly not,” said Bad News Nan, “you can’t back out of being a bridesmaid, oooh the very thought. If your auntie Daphne was dead she’d turn in her grave.”
Nat thought she heard Mum giggling in the living room.
“We’d never hear the end of it, you letting the family down. Your uncle Cuthbert let the family down and it killed him.”
“Mum, Uncle Cuthbert lived to be a hundred and six,” said Dad, “he was the oldest Bumole in history.”
“And the wrinkliest,” shouted Mum from the living room.
“I tell you it killed him stone dead,” said Bad News Nan, living up to her nickname. “He promised to save that big tinned Christmas pudding for everyone – but he couldn’t wait, could he? Boiled it up on Christmas Eve, forgot to put a hole in the tin and BOOM! Only person ever to be killed by a flying plum pud.”
“Yeah, since you put it that way, you’ve got a point, Nan,” sniggered Nat squeakily.
For some reason, even though Bad News Nan only ever knew horrible, miserable, doom-laden, awful news, she always cheered Nat up. Maybe it was because her nan enjoyed the bad news so much.
“Plus another thing,” Bad News Nan droned on, “your auntie Daphne won’t stop talking about what a big shot Raymonde is, over in America. Multi-billionaire she says he is, just cause he bought her a caravan at Camber Sands. So you, young lady, are not going to show us up.”
Nat sighed.
“Besides,” Nan continued, from behind a shower of biscuit crumbs, “you should think yourself lucky you’re going to a wedding at all. All I ever get invited to is funerals.”
“You like funerals,” said Dad. “You even go to funerals of people you’ve never met.”
“I like to keep up,” said BNN, “they give me ideas for mine. And there’s always a good spread afterwards. There was half a side of ham left over at Doreen Wilmore’s wake last week. It just fit in my shopping bag. Kept me in sandwiches for days,” she added, smacking her lips.
Mum popped her head around the door. “Gotta dash,” she said. “I promised to run Tiffannee to the Castle where she’s having the reception. There’s some kind of issue over the buffet. It might even be a crisis.”
“Castle?” said BNN. “Castle, oooh that is posh. Ideas above her station, people will say. Not me, of course. But it is a bit flash.”
“It’s the Castle Court Hotel and Country Golf Club,” said Dad patiently. “You know this, you’ve got an invite. After the church, we’re going there to have lunch, and then there’s a band and disco.”
“And fairy princesses,” growled Nat. “Let’s not forget the fairy princesses.”
“I got my wedding outfit from the charity shop today,” said Bad News Nan, taking a huge, bright green dress out of a shopper. She stood up and pulled it on over her clothes.
“What do you think?” she said. “As it’s supposed to be a fairytale wedding, I was going for a ‘Queen of the May’ look.”
Queen of the Swamp, more like, thought Nat. Bad News Nan looked like a massive lump of snot, wrapped in pond slime.
“It’s different,” said Dad, stuffing a hanky in his mouth for some reason.
“Oh please, Daddy, is there any way I can get out of being a Perfect Fairy Princess Bridesmaid?” pleaded Nat in her best – in other words, most pathetic – voice.
“Well,” said soft Dad, wilting like Superman in a Kryptonite onesie, “not really, love. Oh stop making that face.”
“It’s Tiffannee’s big day,” said Bad News Nan, “and brides get what they want. Not like funerals. You’re at the mercy of the living. I’ve asked for six black horses and a Viking longboat but your dad won’t organise it, I know.”
Sniff, went Nat.
“If you didn’t do it, it would be bad luck and might cause family upsets for years to come,” said Dad, trying not to look at her.
Sniff, went Nat. Big fake tears plopped on to her jeans as she fixed her doleful eyes on Dad, who hid behind Nan.
“People get written out of wills,” said Dad.
“You might get an oil well one day,” said Bad News Nan, “his mum got a caravan, remember?”
“You’d like an oil well, wouldn’t you?” said Dad.
“Don’t care, not worth it,” wailed Nat, plonking herself down in misery and chucking six copies of PERFECT BRIDE MAGAZINE on the floor.
Nat was sure Dad was weakening when her dramatics were rudely interrupted by the doorbell, followed by a young woman’s voice shouting shrilly, “Ding dong wedding bells!”
It was blushing bride-to-be Tiffannee, with her usual – and annoying – greeting.
“Do you remember, before she moved to Texas and decided to become American, how she used to be called Rosie?” Nat whispered to Bad News Nan.
“Course,” said Bad News Nan, “Rosie Lee Jones. She was a pudgy little thing with brown frizzy hair and teeth like wonky tombstones.”
“She was also a lot nicer though,” said Nat, quietly.
The woman that now greeted them was NOTHING like the old Rosie.
Tiffannee was stick-thin and nut-brown, with bright blonde hair and bright blue eyes and a perfect, dazzling, super-white smile. Her pastel yellow summer dress was short and stylish and wrinkle-free. She rushed to hug Nat but stopped just as she got there.
“Don’t want to wrinkle the dress!” she said. “Air kiss, air kiss!”
She smoothed her dress out, just in case the air had wrinkled it.
“It’s one of Diana De Milano’s,” she said proudly.
“Have you borrowed it off her?” said Nat.
“She’s a very famous designer,” said Tiffannee, laughing. “She’s doing my fairytale wedding gown too, don’t you remember?”
Nat didn’t remember, because she didn’t care.
While Tiffannee went off to talk to Mum, Nat turned angrily to Dad. “I’m telling her I’m not doing it and you can’t stop me. I’m not gonna be in a bazillion family photos dressed like a ridiculous fairy princess with MASSIVE butterfly wings and a spangly tiara. I look like something even hobbits would make fun of.
Suddenly Mum dashed back in. “I just need my purse then we’re off,” she said. Nat stood up.
“This bridesmaid thing—” began Nat, summoning up her courage to say she wasn’t going to do it, no way no how, no ifs or buts.
“Oh yes, I forgot to tell you, good news – Tiffannee’s arranged for all her bridesmaids to go to a spa tomorrow!” said Mum.
“Spa?” said Nat.
“Yes,” said Tiffannee, coming back in, “that really a-maze-balls one that was in the paper. I want you all to get pampered and massaged and made-up and everything. The works, treat yourselves. It’s my little thank you to my fairy princesses.”
Nat paused.
“I’m so jealous,” said Mum. “It’s supposed to be a wonderful spa.”
Nat paused a bit more.
“Now, what were you saying about the bridesmaids?” said Dad.
“Nothing important,” said Nat.
“I think it was,” said Dad, helpfully.
“Shuddup, Dad,” said Nat firmly, “it definitely wasn’t important.”
I’ll get out of being a bridesmaid tomorrow, thought Evil Nat, who was always lurking somewhere in a grubby corner of Nathalia’s brain. AFTER the a-maze-balls spa…
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The next day was a lovely spring day, sunny and warm. Nat hopped cheerily on to the minibus that was to take her and Tiffannee’s five other bridesmaids to the FABULOUS YOU! spa.
