The worst day of my life. This afternoon father married the wretched Flagg woman at St Margaret’s. I didn’t want to go, but they made me, and I had to sit there all through the ceremony with my odious new stepsisters, one obese monstrosity on either side of me, like book ends. Afterwards everyone was invited back to our house for a party. All my uncles and aunts and cousins kept coming up to congratulate me, but I felt so ashamed, I just wanted the earth to open up and swallow me. Father was making such a fool of himself, laughing and joking with everybody, drinking too much and dancing with the poison dwarf. What a ridiculous couple they made, father so tall and thin, her so short and fat. He couldn’t see how everybody was sniggering behind his back. He’s made us a laughing stock. How could he do such a thing?
It’s nearly midnight now and the house is quiet, except for the noise coming from the room down the hall where father’s in bed with the poison dwarf, giggles and low moans and the shrill sound of her voice, which cuts like a chain saw. It makes me cringe to think of what they’re doing together, two old people like that. It’s disgusting. If he needed that sort of thing why couldn’t he just play with himself or buy a doll like the one I saw advertised in the magazine Celia brought to school last week? Anything would be better than this.
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The poison dwarf wants me to call her mother. Never! She can’t make me and I won’t. She’s not my mother and she never will be. Father said he understood how I felt, but that if I gave them a chance with time I might grow to like my new family. I won’t. I hate all of them, and I hate father for bringing them into our lives. We used to be so happy together, just him and me. Now it’s all gone sour.
They’re moving in with us, the whole ghastly family of them. I’m to be shoved into a cubby-hole on the top floor while the poison dwarf’s two fat daughters are to have my room. Father says that it’s only fair. Eunice and Hortense are grown women and can’t be expected to share a small room while I’ve got all that space to myself, so it’s me who has to budge. It’s not fair. It’s not my fault that they’re so fat.
Trumpetville 