My Fake Wedding(39)

‘Oh, and look glam,’ she warns me. ‘I’ve invited quite a few other people as well. And I’m dressing up so you’re going to have to at least stick a bit of slap and a frock on. I don’t want to look as though I’ve made some sort of pathetic effort, do I? What I mean is, I want him to think I’m like that all the time.’

What she means is that she doesn’t want me showing her up.

‘Can’t I just cook it?’ I ask her. ‘And then sod off? I could even do it all here and send it round to yours in a taxi in those little foil dishes you get down the Chinky.’

Apparently I can’t. Janice won’t hear of it. After all, I’m going to be cooking the food, she reminds me. So I can bloody well sit there and eat it if it damn well chokes me.

I’m pissed off, to put it mildly. A meal like that will take hours to prepare. I’ll probably have to get going on Friday before the end of Celebrity Ready Steady Cook.

‘But you’ll do all the shopping, right?’ I ask.

‘Will I buggery,’ she snorts, spraying me with lager top. ‘I rather thought you’d be doing that, having sod all else to do except loll round the flat with your finger up your bum. I’ve got a fulltime job to hold down until I get married, remember?’

Well, that’s just great, isn’t it? I’ll probably miss most of Trisha as well if I’ve got to whip round Sainsbury’s first.

‘I will leave some wine in the fridge though,’ she says. ‘So you can crack it open when you get there and I’ll join you when I’ve finished shovelling shit for Wasp Bum. Not that I’ll be much help, I’m afraid. I’m in for a busy week. I’ll be pretty much shagged out come Friday.’

‘Right you are then.’

‘And Katie?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m really sorreee but…’

‘What?’

‘You couldn’t tidy the bathroom a bit and have a quick flick round with a duster, could you? I probably won’t be home very much between now and then and the place is a bit of a sty.’

‘Cheeky bitch,’ George snorts, when I call him to tell him I’ll have to miss our lunchtime bitching session in Café Flo because I’m going to have to plan the whole thing properly now I’m catering for loads of Jasper’s friends.

‘She’s not a cheeky bitch,’ I say.

‘Oh?’

‘She’s a cheeky fucking bitch.’

‘So she is. With knobs on.’

‘She’s so worried about showing Filthy Rich what a great executive wife she’ll make that she couldn’t give a toss about the rest of us. God knows why she’s so taken with him. He’s nearly seventy, for Christ’s sake. He’s got a face like a gnarled walnut.’

‘Ooh yes,’ George says delightedly. ‘Like a badly griddled pancake, all screwed up.’

‘All I can say is he must have a dick like a baby’s arm clutching a grapefruit.’

‘Oooh.’

‘He’s still working though. So he might not be that ancient. But I mean she doesn’t even know what he does for a living. He could be a toilet cleaner for all she knows. Or a dustbin man. Nothing very executive about that. But from the way she goes on, you’d think he was Richard bloody Branson. She’s so busy counting pound signs that she’s forgotten all about me.’

‘And she bleaches her hair.’

‘Anything could be happening in my life right now and she wouldn’t even notice. My boyfriend could be beating the shit out of me.’

‘You don’t have a boyfriend,’ George points out. ‘He dumped you months ago.’

‘I dumped him actually. And only because he preferred dirty nylon knicker girls to normal girls like me.’

‘Darling, if you’re normal, I’m the Pope.’

‘But hypothetically speaking, I could have a boyfriend, couldn’t I?’

‘I suppose you could, yes. If you did something with your hair.’

‘And he could be beating the shit out of me.’

‘He could be using your head as a dartboard,’ George says gleefully.

‘And my bum as a knife block.’

‘Stubbing fags out on your arms,’ he shouts happily.

‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘And Little Miss Biddy Bonker wouldn’t even notice. As a mate, I’m practically neglected. I could report her.’

‘You could,’ he agrees.

‘She’ll be laughing the other side of her lipliner when “luxury travel” means packing into some National Express biddy wagon for a day trip to Clacton,’ I point out.