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“Gerroff!” said Bella.
Behind them, the wailing slowed down and eventually stopped.
The Second Assistant Fairy Princess Bridesmaid, now with short hair and no eyebrows, grabbed the towel and flung it across the floor. “I give up,” she said, bursting into tears. “Take my place! I can’t win. You are a bridesmaid MONSTER.”
With that, she ran off to the changing rooms.
The door to the shower room opened once more. Nat felt the glares of Tiffannee’s remaining fairy princesses boring into her back like hot fairy knives.
The rest of the spa day was just as horrid. Nat tried to talk to the other bridesmaids and tell them she wasn’t ACTUALLY trying to nobble them all, but they refused to listen. In fact, they all kept their distance, jumping a mile every time she tried to say anything. They looked at her the way very tasty gazelles look at very hungry lions.
The only reason Nat didn’t get more upset about the horrid bridesmaids was that she was kept too busy to think much about them. The rest of the day wasn’t so much a relaxing pampering spa experience – with warm fluffy towels and hot oils and foot rubs and gentle eyebrow-shaping – as a terrifying boot camp of pain.
Instead of glittery toenail painting she got the EXTREME ZUMBA POWER HOUR which made every muscle ache. And instead of a gentle massage she got OLGA THE PUMMELER who found those muscles and pounded them into weeping submission. Then there was a JOG AND SWEAT DETOX session in a big damp plastic suit and finally she had to drink a huge glass of HEALTHY HELGA’S CLEAN IT OUT NOW! JUICE. And all under the silent evil glare of the other fairy princesses, who weren’t QUITE pummelled and sweaty and detoxed enough to forget to glare.
It was miserable. She was glad when it was all over and the minibus dropped her home again.
“I thought you’d gone to get de-stressed,” said Dad as she barged through the door and up to her room, “you look ten times worse!”
(#u31daf0c4-3b1d-56b9-85f7-b8b42d89c217)
In school the next day, Nat told Penny Posnitch her latest troubles, recounting the spa story in full gory detail.
“That’s funny,” chuckled Penny, not very helpfully.
“That’s not helpful.”
“I suppose those bridesmaids do sound horrible, but I don’t see what your problem with fairies is,” said Penny.
“That’s because you LIKE fairies,” said Nat. “What did you hand in last week instead of your history homework?”
“Pictures of fairies,” said Penny, “but that’s better than Darius, who drew a picture of his—”
“I know exactly what he drew a picture of,” snapped Nat, “that’s why he’s been sitting in the corridor for every history lesson since.”
Nat sighed a big sigh. “How do I get out of this wedding?”
“My dad says there’s only one way to get out of a wedding,” said Penny.
“What is it, what is it?” said Nat, hope flaring briefly, like a flame in the darkness of her soul.
“If you were already invited to someone else’s wedding,” said Penny.
Nat sighed again. The tiny flame of hope had turned out to be a mega meteorite of doom.
What a daft thing to say, Nat thought. What are the chances of getting invited to someone else’s wedding on the same weekend at such short notice?
Suddenly, she smelt something damp and earthy. Then she felt a wriggling beside her and noticed Darius was sitting next to her, picking his nose and eating it.
“Were you doing sneaky listening, chimpy?” said Nat.
Darius just shrugged.
Nat thought he had that strange look on his face that meant one of two things. One, he could be thinking deeply. Or two, he was going to burp the alphabet. Both always ended badly.
She took a gamble and hoped that he was thinking the slightly less disgusting option.
“Get me out of this wedding,” she said. “I know you can. I’m the only person in the world who knows you’re actually a tiny evil genius and not just a chimp.”
“What do I get?” said Darius, looking across the school playground. The sky had darkened.
“I’ll owe you a favour,” said Nat, feeling like she was doing the sort of deal people warn you never to do.
“What sort of favour?” There was a clap of thunder and rainclouds gathered overhead.
“I dunno, whatever you want,” said Nat.
Lightning hit a church steeple over in the distance.
“Deal,” said Darius, spitting on his hands.
Nat took a deep breath and took his disgusting, squishy hand.
They shook on the deal.
Darius smiled an evil smile.
“So, what do I do?” asked Nat.
“OK, the first thing you have to do is pretend you REALLY wanna be a bridesmaid. Agree to anything the stupid bride wants you to do.”
“That’s bonkers.”
“Nah, it just means she won’t suspect anything when you DO get out of it.”
“Sneaky,” said Nat.
“I’ll also have to meet this Tiffannee,” said Darius, “see how tricky it’s gonna be.”
“Sure,” said Nat, “come round on Saturday.”
Darius smiled and offered her some earwax.
“I get bored with just bogeys,” he said.
Not for the first time, Nat wondered if Darius was a genius who pretended to be a chimp, or if it was the other way round.
Nat’s Saturday morning lie-in was broken by the sounds of clanging and banging and shouting from downstairs. She wandered crossly down to the kitchen to find Mum telling Dad off (the shouting) and Darius hunting for food in the pantry (all the other noises).
“There’s only three weeks to go to this wedding and you haven’t even ordered Tiffannee’s centrepieces,” said Mum. “You’re meant to be helping me, remember?!” Dad was looking at a list Mum had written for him with TO DO – URGENT on it. NOTHING was ticked off.
Except Mum. Mum was really ticked off.
“Two things in my defence,” said Dad, taking a nervous gulp of tea. “One is that I was a bit late on finishing off those Christmas cracker jokes, and had to do those first, and two…” he paused, “I don’t actually know what centrepieces ARE.”
Mum told Dad EXACTLY what they were in great detail and with some rude words chucked in too. Nat chuckled and jabbed Darius in the backside with a fork.
“Stop that,” she snapped, “you’re supposed to be working on a great plan to get me out of this. If your great plan is just to come round and stuff your fat face then our deal is off.”
He retreated out of the pantry with a loaf of bread and a pot of jam.
“Wedding bells, ding dong!” trilled Tiffannee, at the door.
She rushed into the kitchen, air-kissed Nat and then noticed grubby, twitchy Darius. He put his face out for an air kiss. Jammy splodges dripped off it. Tiffannee stepped back in alarm.
“You must be Darius. I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said backing away. Nat thought her face seemed to say: Enough to keep well out of your way.
“He’s a bit sticky, but he’s generally harmless,” said Nat. She thought for a moment. “Well, he’s nowhere near as bad as everyone says.”
Then Tiffannee told them all – in full dull detail – about a row she’d had with her aunt. She was staying with Auntie Daphne until the wedding, but she was quite moany about her.
“She insists on bringing me TEA in bed every morning,” complained Tiffannee, “and I’ve told her, we drink COFFEE in Texas.”
Mum looked a bit disapproving.
“Of course then I realised I was being silly,” said Tiffannee.
Mum smiled.
“I mean, I CAN’T drink coffee, my teeth need to be super-white for my wedding,” the bride-to-be went on.
Mum frowned again. “Tiffannee,” she said, “I know you want things to be perfect, but you’re going to drive yourself doo-lally.”
Along with the rest of us, thought Nat.
Tiffannee looked at a big gold watch on her wrist and squealed: “OMG, we have to go. Hiram’s meeting us in town. Said he wants to see where I grew up.”
“I’m not sure she HAS grown up,” said Mum once Tiffannee had dashed off.
“Come on, Darius, get out of the pantry,” said Nat as they all trooped off, adding wickedly, “oh and please make sure you sit next to lovely Tiffannee in the car.”
Mum waved them all off at the door. She said that unfortunately she was “too busy with work” to come. But Nat caught a sneaky peek at her laptop, and there was definitely a movie on it, not a spreadsheet.
The lucky groom who was marrying their English rose was a Mr Hiram J Wartburger III. He was waiting for them in a busy café just off the shopping centre.
The Texan oilman was big and rectangular like an oak wardrobe. He had an enormous square chin and a bald spot bigger than Dad’s. He was wearing a bright, candy-stripe suit, which made him look like an oversized stick of rock.
He stood up when they came into the café and in a huge booming voice said: “Hey! Over here! Over here! Can you see me?”
“We can’t really miss you in that suit,” said Dad.
“Mighty pleased to meet you all,” said the man as they sat down. “Hiram’s my name, hire ’em and fire ’em, that’s mah game.”
He said that very loudly and very proudly.
“Sorry?” said Dad.
“What ah mean is, ah say I hire people, and then if they get uppity, ah fire them, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Now what do you think of that?”
“What do you mean by ‘uppity’?” asked Dad, scanning the plastic menu.
“Like asking too many questions,” said Hiram looking at Dad, then breaking into a huge grin which showed his enormous, bright white teeth, “that’s uppity. Like that one you just asked. You would now be fired! Yes, sir.”
Tiffannee giggled.
“Take no notice of the big lunk,” she said, “he’s all talk, he’s a total pussycat really.”
“Ah confess ah’m as nervous as a fire-eater on an oil rig, that’s for sure,” said Hiram, “I mean, meeting you folks and all, I want to make a good impression on mah new family.”
By now, customers in the café were turning round to see what the noise was. One elderly woman with blue hair tutted and her husband briefly looked up from his meat pie and said, “It’s all right, dear, I think he’s American.”
He said the word American in a kind of whisper, as if he was naming an embarrassing medical problem, like a bumrash that might be catching.
“Oooh, that explains it,” said the blue-haired old lady, “poor thing. I suppose they have to shout because their country is so big. Hard to hear each other, maybe.”
Nat felt herself growing more and more uncomfortable as Hiram told them how EVERYTHING was bigger, faster and better in Texas than anywhere in the world, especially “little old England”.
Tiffannee gave him peck after peck on the cheek – aaargh thought Nat, public display of affection urgh.
“Isn’t he AMAZING?” whispered Tiffannee to Nat eventually. “Isn’t he just the bee’s knees and the cat’s pyjamas rolled into one?”
“He certainly thinks so,” muttered Darius. Nat hid a giggle.
The waitress came over with a bacon sandwich for Hiram, who looked at it, and seemed confused. “Excuse me, miss,” he said loudly to the waitress, who was young and spotty and bored.
“Yeah, what?” she said.
“What do you… ah, say, what do you call this?”
“I call it a bacon sandwich. What do you call it, fish and chips?” said the waitress, who didn’t care for being shouted at.
Hiram raised his voice over the café’s steamy coffee machine to about the level of a jumbo jet engine and said: “Then may ah POLITELY ask, where is the bacon?”
The waitress lifted a bit of bread. “There,” she said, “it’s the stuff between this bit of bread and this bit of bread.”
She walked off to get his coffee.
I hope you haven’t ordered a frothy coffee, thought Nat, it might be a bit frothier than you would like.
