Nathalia Buttface and the Totally Embarrassing Bridesmaid Disaster

“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.