Free Dear Fatty by Dawn French Page A

moment. Every perfect moment. I wasn’t going to forget you though, you were definitely part of the deal, although of course you weren’t actually part of the family and had never actually met Joan, but somehow, through sheer righteous force of the plan’s perfectness, I would surely persuade her that you were to be included.
    The day of their visit came and after a seemingly endless lunch at our house, where no one even mentioned the wedding, Joan asked if we could go for a walk together. Oh my holy God. This was it. We had never ‘gone for a walk’ before. We circumnavigated Buntingsdale Lake while I politely answered well-intentioned questions about school and life and school. I wanted to yell ‘Just ask me! Don’t delay another second! I’m going to say yes! Ask me soon! Ask me now! Ask me!!’ Eventually, after a marathon amount of walking, we finally sat down and I nearly wet myself with anticipation, I even had my ‘No really, me? I’m so shocked! Of course, I’d be honoured’ face prepared just below the skin ready to pop up and be seemingly aghast at the surprise of the moment. Yes, yes, she started to talk about the wedding and all their plans … ‘Yes! I will of course be your bridesmaid – look no further for a devoted handmaiden, you lucky bride, you,’ I was thinking, but she hadn’t actually asked yet, so I suppressed my excitement and cocked my head and tried desperately to appear to be listening. ‘Hurry, hurry, I might faint if you don’t get to it. You know you need me. Just ask! Oh, and by the way, my friend Sarah and I are sort of joined at the hip, could she be one too?’ I thought. Hang on, now she was telling me about her family and all the little girls in it who would make suitable bridesmaids. ‘Yes, yes, there will be a bevy of us and we will resemble a bower of delicate flower fairies as we follow you up the aisle holding your gossamer train aloft with our wands,’ I thought. Oops, careful, floated off into my own head a bit too long there, and now her expression has changed to a sort of pitying frown while I have mistakenly retained my listening rictus. Oops, quickly change it to match hers. Yes, now we are both frowning and looking sad. Why are we looking sad? Tune in, Dawn, what is she actually saying? Something about too many nieces, odd numbers, how I will apparently have lots of other opportunities and for me not to be too upset, and am I OK? What is she telling me? My tear ducts seem to get wind of the devastating rejection before I do, and start to do impulse crying. Why am I crying? Auntie Joan has her arm around me and is apologising. Why? – OH – MY – ACTUAL – GOD! She has told me I’m not one. I haven’t passed. I’m not in. Not can bridesmaid be. Me no bridesmaid. No. Not. No. Out. Go. Begone. Not. No floatiness. No wings. No Sarah. No. None. No … No!! My single solitary reason to live, second to puppy-nuzzling of course, and third to Peter Tork worship, snatched away in a flea’s heartbeat. It was quicksilver. It was there. Then it wasn’t. I was a bridesmaid. Then I wasn’t. Of course Joan had never said that I would be, but that’s not the point. I wasn’t going to be.
    I managed to reassure her that despite my silly tears, I really didn’t mind. After all, she wasn’t being malicious, just honest. Yeah, sure I didn’t mind. The rabid injustice of it all sputtered inside me until it grew into a full howling tornado of hurt and anger which made me want to spear all bridesmaids everywhere immediately with my red-hot sharpened rods of spite. The only reason I didn’t is because I am execrably polite and monstrously mindful of others. Otherwise I would have joyfully taken lives, I would have happily abandoned myself to a bridesmaid killing spree of behemoth proportions and willingly languished in jail for ever to have that sweet taste of revenge on my lips for only a nanosecond. I wanted bridesmaid blood.
    As it was, we returned home and through