While I wasn’t Abby’s wedding planner, since birth (I’m two years younger) I’d willingly served as her designated gown consultant. I’m not saying that having my G.I. Joe tell Barbie, “I hate leg-of-mutton sleeves—you look like a linebacker” had made me gay, I’m just saying the research hasn’t been done. Abby and I would watch rom-coms together and howl at the stars to wear a decent corset. We’d both use shower curtains as practice trains. It got so that, when we’d attend actual weddings together, only a fraction of a glance would convey “The strapless yanking-it-up mistake,” “Flesh-colored mesh inserts never flatter anyone” or “Your veil shouldn’t make you look like a piece of patio furniture being weatherproofed over a long winter.”

Abby had one other all-consuming addiction: celebrities. She had alerts on her phone for hundreds of models, pop stars, Bachelorettes, Real Housewives and the occasional female criminal, especially if she’d killed more than one husband. We can gossip for hours about famous people we’ll never meet because, as Abby once explained, “They’re more interesting than us, they can afford to make themselves more attractive than us, they have sex with other famous people, but we don’t have to really worry about them. I spend all day making sure kids with terrible diseases get every chance they can, so when I get home I like to think about Kim Kardashian’s new line of shapewear.”

Whenever my job took me anywhere near a star, Abby would pummel me: “Was Sandra Bullock genuinely nice, or I-want-everybody-to-like-me nice? Has she had her eyes done? How tall? After that last marriage can she ever trust any guy ever again?”

As for royals, of course we’d scrutinised and ranked them, but Abby was intimidated: “They’re the purest form of celebrity, because they’re born into it. They don’t have to pretend to be anything except famous. They’re the only reality stars who don’t end up doing laxative ads and reunion specials. If Queen Catherine ever looked at me I’d turn into a little pile of incredibly overeducated dirt.”

When Abby made her bridal entrance, the congregation swiveled from staring at Edgar to adoring Abby. She was preceded by four flower girls, who were tossing magenta and powder blue rose petals. Abby was beyond gorgeous, glowing with the assurance that after decades of cross-referencing every available ensemble, she’d made the indisputably right choice. Her gown was elaborate but classic, sleeveless but high-necked, a cascade of white satin subtly worked with shivers of gold scrollwork and the tiniest pearls. As Abby had triumphantly concluded during her final fitting: “Yes. Audrey Hepburn if she liked dessert.”