Free Dear Fatty by Dawn French

first floor as you went up the stairs? You had lots of animals, which was a major lure for me. There was a new litter of curly-haired chocolate-coloured puppies that was a source of great delight. We lay on your lawn for hours playing with them and naming them and hugging them and dressing them and not minding being bitten by their tiny sharp teeth. I recall you having a veritable menagerie of animals – cats and kittens and guinea pigs and rabbits and hamsters and even a donkey. Am I accurate about all this, OR have I had a rosy false memory where I have supplanted you with Dr Dolittle?! Whatever , I know how lovely it was to be in your orbit and how loving your family were towards me.
    I do clearly remember when we decided to do a little double-act turn for a talent contest at our school. Was Mr Kitching the headmaster of the school, and was it next to a graveyard which meant I had to hold my breath ALL DAY so that bad spirits couldn’t get in me, which meant that sports activities outside were a potentially fatal pastime, since one usually needs to breathe during sports, I find, especially if you’re a bit fat, when you need to breathe a lot . We performed Esther and Abi Ofarim’s extraordinary hit ‘Cinderella Rockefella’. A call-and-response classic … I wore a leather jacket and took on the male role and you were the pretty one in the dress. We mimed, I freely admit that, but we went down a storm and, best of all, people LAUGHED! I can’t remember whether we anticipated that response. I rather think we imagined they would be astounded by our accurate impersonations. So, two big lessons were learned by me on that day: 1. ham it up and give the audience permission to find you hilarious, and 2. it doesn’t matter if your impressions are pants so long as they’re funny. Oh, and 3. try to get the other one to wear the leather jacket and be the Boy as often as poss to avoid cumbersome costume and stubble rash. Thanks for being the first of several successful partnerships I’ve had on and off stage!
    When you and I weren’t at school or petting animals, or just petting, we did a lot of dreaming didn’t we? Mainly about being bridesmaids. I loved those conversations about how our dresses would be, how our tresses would be, how very like princesses we would be … If only somebody, ANYBODY, would ask us! I thought it would be quite good to offer ourselves as a pair, a brace of bridesmaids. We were, after all, a splendid match, similar height, same taste, which conveniently avoids any thundering bridesmaid-dress-choosing tantrums. We were friends, which surely helps to sidestep ugly bridesmaid rivalrous wars that inevitably end in tears and a certain amount of hair damage or, worse, hairpiece damage. We were prepared to practise bridesmaid tandem walking for hours so’s we could be perfectly harmoniously in step like a couple of highly trained pantomime-Cinderella-goes-to-the-ball-carriage-pulling white miniature ponies. Elegant, light and breezy with a perky symmetry, if a bit chunky. Clippety-clop, clippety-clop. Bliss. If we could, what flowers would we choose? What headpieces, what shoes? Heel or flat? Would there be gloves? Would we be permitted the tiny tremulous first step of a relationship with the forbidden love – make-up? Just a smattering of mascara perhaps or the lightest brushing of a mum’s shimmery coral lipstick? Oh, we could only dream.
    Then, one blessed day, it happened. My mum told me that my beloved Uncle Owen and his lovely fiancée, the irrepressible Joan, were coming to visit and that the bride-to-be wanted to have a chat with me. They were due to be married and I could only hope that this was the conversation I’d been waiting for my whole life! At last, I was on the brink of bridesmaidhood for sure and boy was I going to enjoy it to the full, I was going to relish every crystal-slippered, lacey-gloved, teary-eyed, dew-droppy, rose-petally, acres of tuille and netty, glossy, girly