Friday, May 22

9st 1lb; alcohol units: 3 (vg); cigarettes: 12 (excellent); calories: 3,425 (off food); minutes spent planning how to stop Jude and Vile Richard having doom wedding: 247; minutes spent planning own perfect-style wedding: 835.

Jude has gone completely mad. Went round her house last night to find entire place strewn with bridal magazines, lace swatches, gold-sprayed raspberries, tureen and grapefruit-knife brochures, terracotta pots with weeds in and bits of straw.

"I want a gurd," she was saying, "or is it a yurd? Moroccan instead of a marquee. It's like a nomad's tent in Afghanistan. And long-stemmed patinated oil-burners."

"What are you wearing?" I said, leafing through pictures of embroidered stick-thin models with flower arrangements on their heads and wondering whether to call an ambulance.

"I'm having it made. Abe Hamilton! Lace and lots of cleavage."

"What cleavage?" muttered Shaz, murderously.

"That's what they should call Loaded magazine," I giggled.

"I'm sorry?" said Jude, coldly.

"You know, What Cleavage?, like What Car?"

"It's not What Car?, it's Which Car?," said Shaz.

"Girls," said Jude, over-pleasantly, like a gym mistress about to make us stand in the corridor in our knickers. "Can we get on?"

Weird how "we" had crept in. Suddenly was not Jude's wedding, but our wedding, and we were having to do all these mad tasks like tying straw round 150 patinated oil burners and going away to a health farm to give Jude a shower.

"Can I just say something?" said Shaz.

"Yes," said Jude.

"Don't bloody marry Vile Richard! He's an unreliable, selfish, idle, unfaithful ----wit from Hell. If you marry him, he'll take half your money and run off with a bimbo. I know they're introducing the pre-nuptial agreements Act but..." Jude went all quiet. Suddenly realised - feeling her shoe hit my shin - that I was supposed to back Shazzie up.

"Listen to this," I said, hopefully, reading from the Bride's Wedding Guide. "Best Man: the groom should ideally choose a level-headed, responsible person..." I looked round smugly, as if to prove Shaz's point, but the response was chilly. "Also," I ploughed on, "don't you think a wedding puts too much pressure on a relationship? Like Annabel Heseltine going on in the papers about getting engaged to that knitting pattern-cover man. It's not exactly playing hard to get, is it?"

Jude breathed in deeply through her nose while we watched on tenterhooks. "Now!" she said eventually, looking up with a brave smile. "The bridesmaids' duties!"

Shaz lit a Silk Cut. "What are we wearing?"

"Well!" trilled Jude. "I think we should have them made. And look at this!" - it was an article entitled "50 Ways to Save Money on the Big Day" - " 'For bridesmaids, furnishing fabrics can work surprisingly well'!"

Was funny, really, because at same time as feeling really pissed off with Jude was simultaneously fantasising about own wedding to Mark Darcy - thinking maybe a yurd or gurd would be nice, all ethnic and rustic. But then, with chill lurch of doom, remembered about lunch last Saturday in Sugar Club garden.

Started off v. well, with me and Mark enthusing about accidental night of passion. "It was irresistible, overpowering," he was saying, running his hands through his hair desperately. "I couldn't help myself."

"I know, I know," I said, joyously. "It's bigger than..." - cannot believe said this - "both of us. We can't help it, it's just meant to be. Oh let's... let's run away. Maybe to Mexico, or the Four Seasons in Ubud."

Unfortunately this did not have quite the hoped-for response.

"Look, love," he said, squeezing my hand (hate it when he calls me "love"). "I've caused enough mess and pain. I've done all this to you and know I'm involved in this 'thing' with Rebecca. I can't make another mess so soon."

"But," I whispered, head lowered, hand shaking on wine glass, "are you happy with Rebecca?"

There was a long pause while he stared fixedly at his glass. "She's been incredibly good to me," he said. "And she's got all these things fixed up: dinner parties, holidays, it would just look so ... so indecisive and shabby."

Could not believe what was hearing. Was as if he cared not about love, but just social occasions and what everyone thought of him. Also have spent all this time trying not to be pushy and respecting him taking his pace, then it seems what really works is being manipulative and ruthless. Or maybe he just didn't love me.

"You see" - was suddenly aware of Jude pronouncing - "with the guest-list it says, don't feel you have to invite guests' new partners - but the minute I mentioned it she said: 'Oh we'd love to come'."

"Who?" I said.

"Rebecca." I looked at Jude, dumbstruck. Then tears started pricking my eyelids. She wouldn't, she wouldn't expect me to walk down the aisle in furnishing fabrics with Mark Darcy sitting with Rebecca, would she?

"And, I mean, they have asked me to go on holiday with them. Not that I can go, of course. But I think Rebecca was a bit hurt that I hadn't asked her to be a bridesmaid."

"What?" exploded Shazzer. "Have you no concept of the meaning of the word 'girlfriend'. Bridget's your best friend joint with me, and Rebecca has shamelessly stolen Mark, and instead of being tactful about it, she's trying to Hoover everyone into her revolting social web so he's so woven in and he'll never get away. And you're not taking a bloody stand. That's the trouble with the modern world - everything's forgivable. Look at Mary Bell and those nurses. Well, it makes me sick, Jude. You can stuff your patinated oil burners. If that's the sort of friend you are, you can walk down the aisle with Rebecca behind you in furnishing fabrics, and not us. And then see how you like it."

So now Shaz and I are not speaking to Jude. Seems like Rebecca is infesting and ruining every aspect of life. First Mark, then Magda, now Jude. Have got to make a plan.