id="u3f1af546-2b7f-51ba-b8ec-5d9ea0626619">
The Trials of Tiffany Trott
Isabel Wolff
For my parents.
And in memory of my brother
Simon Paul Wolff.
The funniest person I ever knew.
Table of Contents
OK. Champagne – tick; Cheesy Wotsits – tick; flowers – tick; balloons – tick; streamers – tick; cake – tick; candles – tick – oh God, oh God, where are the candleholders? Blast – I haven’t got thirty-seven, I’ve only got, um … eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Blast. Blast. Where’s that list gone? Oh here it is. Right. Where was I? Oh yes … candleholders … Twiglets – tick; Hula Hoops – tick; assorted mixed nuts – tick; nosh – tick. Oh gosh. Nosh. Rather a lot of that. I mean, how are we going to get through 150 prawn toasts, 200 devils-on-horseback, 350 cocktail sausages glazed with honey and tarragon, 180 oak-smoked salmon appetizers and 223 spinach and cheese miniroulades? How exactly are six people expected to eat all that? Plus the ninety-five chocolate éclairs? Just six of us. Half a dozen. Or precisely twelve per cent of the original invitation list. Bit of a disappointment, and I’d had such high hopes for this evening. I’d had the sitting-room decorated specially. Terribly pretty Osborne and Little wallpaper and a hand-gilded chandelier. But then I felt like pushing the boat out a bit this year. Going the whole hog. After all, I’ve got something to celebrate – a Very Serious Relationship with a really nice bloke. Alex. My boyfriend. My chap. So nice. Lovely in fact. Really, really lovely. And there are still quite a few people who haven’t met him, and I really wanted to have this party for him as much as for me. And now it’s going to be a bit of a damp squib. But that’s the really annoying thing about entertaining, isn’t it? The way people cancel at the last minute, when you’ve already done all the shopping. Unfortunately I’ve had quite a lot of cancellations – forty-four actually – which means my big bash for fifty is now going to be rather a discreet little affair. This means it is most unlikely to make the society pages of the Highbury and Islington Express. Blast. But then all my friends are having crises with their babysitters, or their nannies have resigned,
