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rubbery and your fingers numb with terror? Well that’s how I feel right now.
    The fitting.
    Oh shit.
    I forgot the fitting.
    My mouth opens but for once I can’t find any words. What can I say? That while I was supposed to be being pinned and prodded and peered at in one of London’s most exclusive boutiques, I was actually out on the piss with my friend? That while I was meant to be choosing colours and silk slippers I was hooning around Sainsbury’s having trolley races with Ollie?
    ‘Um,’ I squeak, HobNobs and wine curdling nastily in my stomach, ‘I didn’t make it to the fitting. Sorry.’
    ‘Didn’t make it to the fitting!’ shrieks Cordelia, sounding just like Lady Bracknell discussing handbags. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘That I didn’t get there?’
    At this you’d have thought I’d shot her. Cordelia’s cheeks drain of colour and she practically staggers to the door.
    ‘Have you any idea what you’ve done? I’ve had to pull strings to get them to fit you. I’ve had to use my own good name and pay over the odds. That dress was going to be for a supermodel!’
    Well, no wonder it didn’t fit me then. The only thing that I have in common with Kate Moss is that we both breathe.
    ‘I’m really sorry,’ I say.
    ‘Sorry! I don’t care about sorry, you stupid, ungrateful girl!’ Cordelia’s shrieking is now on a par with the noise a 747 makes on take-off. I hear a door open and footsteps echoing on the wooden floor. Fan-bloody-tastic. Here comes James, who’ll be less than delighted that his preparation for the partnership interview has been interrupted. Once he appears, Cordelia will be all sweetness and light and I couldn’t look more like the villain of the piece if I was wearing a black cape and twirling my moustache. How she manages to pull this off I’ll never know; it must be some kind of twisted talent.
    ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this to me! I’ve never been so hurt in all my life!’ Cordelia’s voice rises by several decibels and her eyes flicker in the direction of the hallway. She can hear James drawing closer and is gearing up for an Oscar-winning performance. Her flinty eyes are working overtime to squeeze out tears and her hand flutters to her throat. Even I’m pretty impressed, and I’m a woman who sees kids turn on the tap on a daily basis.
    ‘What on earth’s going on?’ James demands. He’s wearing his glasses and his dark ringlets are tousled from where he’s been running his hands through them while he works. His eyes are red-rimmed and ringed by deep purple shadows and my heart goes out to him. He’s under so much pressure, and now I’ve gone and made things worse.
    ‘If you want to know why I’m so upset, ask Katy!’ wails Cordelia, a Niagara Fall of tears gushing down her face. ‘Ask her to tell you how she deliberately sets out to hurt me and rejects me at every turn. All I’ve ever done is try to befriend her, but she hates me!’
    My mouth hangs open on its hinges at the unfairness of this. ‘I don’t hate you! Of course I don’t!’
    She takes a big shuddering breath and her eyes brim anew. Wow. I’m amazed the RSC don’t burst in and sign her on the spot. ‘ I wish I could believe that, Katy, but whenever I try to do something nice, you fling it back at me.’
    I rack my brains to think of a time when Cordelia has ever done something nice for me, and by nice I mean genuinely nice and without a spiteful subtext, but no. Nada. I cannot think of such an occasion.
    ‘Like the time I paid for you to have a week at that spa,’ she continues, mopping her eyes with the hankie that James hands her, ‘and you refused to go.’
    I’m struck dumb by her utter nerve. It wasn’t a spa, it was a week at an army-style boot camp designed, and I quote my future mother-in-law, ‘to burn off that spare tyre, because nobody wants to look at a fat bride’. Not of course that she’d dared say this until I’d returned; Cordelia’s far too cunning