Pear Shaped (32 page)

‘Thursday.’

This is why James is so good at making money. If he senses the slightest opportunity, he’ll pounce.

If this goes to Round Three, he thinks he’s going to win. But I’ve finally figured out the way he plays. And I know exactly how I can win.

‘A week on Thursday,’ I say. ‘But I’m not coming to your house. I’ll text you where on the day.’

Icing

1.
noun
– a sugar preparation, the finishing touch to a cake or biscuit

2.
noun
– an unexpected bonus

I have a mountain to climb: literal not metaphorical. Or ‘una montagna,’ as the locals call it. The old lady who runs this farmhouse claims it’s merely a large hill: ‘una alta collina’. Trust me, it is
not
una alta collina. But either way, we’re not climbing it till day five, and it’s only day one.

It feels like I’ve been here a very long time already.

Boot camp.

So
not my idea of fun. And that’s exactly why I’m doing it: push myself out of the comfort zone. Get fit, get strong and get over it.

To clarify: this isn’t soft bathrobes, massages, five light meals a day. No, this is sweat. And right here’s where you start paying. In cash. Lots of cash, for 12-hours-a-day cardio, taught by two ex-SAS tough nuts: Big Tony and Grant. No fluff, no frills. Oh, and no food.

When we arrived around lunchtime we were weighed. Ten minutes later we were fed two oatcakes and half a
beaker of vegetable stock: a ‘halfway stage’ in getting our stomachs used to smaller portions. Halfway? No way.

You want
more
masochism? Okay! Did I mention we’re in Italy? Home of cannoli
and
cannelloni, focaccia, mozzarella, gelato, mascarpone. Where tomatoes actually taste like tomatoes. Not that we’re allowed tomatoes. Too much sugar, apparently. Tomatoes are ‘bad’.

Also ‘bad’: carbs (not true), caffeine (fuck right off) dairy (
), booze.

Our daily treat: a 1-inch square of dark chocolate.

Our time is cut up into neat little squares too. One hour PT. Twenty minutes press-ups. Two minutes to fill water bottles. They never tell you what’s coming up till the end of the ordeal you’re currently on. That’s intended to keep you focussed on your abs or your lats. Stay in the now! Just as well – if I knew what was going to be forced upon me with more than a minute’s notice, I’d think of forty-three different excuses why I couldn’t do it.

My fellow inmates: Jojo (Go-Go) – already a tri-athlete, feels she must tri-harder; Sephonie – Fulham’s very own Paris Hilton; Mary – overweight, kind, 48; Hildegunn – likes the outdoors.

I’m lying in bed at the end of day one. I’m sharing a room with Mary; we were the last two to book. (Along with
Ton of Fun Tom telling me to ‘Just Fucking Do It’, my tipping point was when my size 12 black cords started slicing into the top of my hips.) When I told Laura I was going to boot camp, she pointed out that I’d spent all of last year being bullied by a man about my weight, now I’m paying to have two men do the same?

After lunch, and I mean five minutes after, we were made to hike up a very steep hill, twice. It was extremely warm, and although we were barked at to ‘hydrate’, I don’t think Mary drank enough water. She’s looking peaky now.

After the hike we had twenty minutes of Swim Sprint. Hideous.

‘Count your lengths today, then we’ll do swim test on the last day and you all have to beat your scores,’ says Big Tony.

Go-Go claps with delight.

Then we had ‘dinner’ (two bites of chicken stew, seven green beans), and I had my first tantrum. I asked Big Tony for more vegetables. He explained the ‘regime’ was strictly calorie controlled. I explained that I knew more about nutrition than he did, as it’s what I do for a living, and that it was extremely bad for a body to eat so few calories while expending so many. He told me to stop arguing and drink a glass of water, and that if I really wanted, I could have a slice of lemon in it.

I’m glad he didn’t give us more food: five minutes after putting down our forks we were made to sprint up and down the netball court for an hour.

So now Mary and I are in our twin beds. I’m feeling angry that this place costs £200 a night. Mary is feeling sick.

Mary is now being sick. Mary is projectile vomiting, and I am running around like a lunatic, trying to find a bin for her to yak in, and eventually I find one but she has unfortunately puked all over my bed, her bed, our floor, her hair and my trainers.

‘How could you puke up so much food? We only ate three mouthfuls,’ I say after I’ve put her in the shower and helped her clean herself up.

‘I’m so so sorry,’ she says.

‘Don’t apologise. They should moderate the course based on people’s fitness.’

I call Big Tony and ask him to arrange for our bedroom to be cleaned, but of course the maid only comes in the morning, so Mary and I sleep in the lounge on two lumpy old sofas. ‘You pushed her too hard,’ I say to Big Tony.

‘It’s the body’s natural reaction to a jump start, she’ll be fine in the morning.’

Day 2. Boot camp. Fall In.

Mary has been taken to the local hospital, suffering from severe dehydration. According to Big Tony, Mary’s ‘incident’ has nothing whatsoever to do with the exercise she did, nor the food she did or did not eat – she was just a bit hot in the sun. If she’s gone, can I have her chocolate rations, please?

‘Girls, dehydration is a very serious problem,’ says Big Tony. ‘Make sure you keep your water bottles filled. Signs of dehydration include dry lips, headache, dark urine, the inability to produce tears.’

Inability to produce tears: I want me some of that.

And then there were four. Four makes ‘falling in’ easier. Before each session, Big Tony screams ‘Fall in’, and we have to race to stand in front of him in two rows of two, like trained dogs at the world’s most boring dog show.

We were meant to fall in at 6.30am today, but Sephonie shows up late in her D&G tracksuit, and Big Tony makes us all do twenty press-ups to underline the importance of punctuality. We’re a team. If one person fucks up, we all pay.

Then we do an hour of cardio, then we climb another bloody big hill, and now it’s netball!

I was never sporty at school. In games class, Gaby Adler and I tried to out-gross each other in our excuses to Mr Harcourt, gym teacher, and later convicted paedo. We moved through ‘lady problems’ to ‘irritating itches’ to ‘severe seepage’. After Gaby claimed a full-on fistula, he hung his head in defeat and told us not to bother showing up again. Instead we spent Wednesday afternoons tarring our 14-year-old lungs with Silk Cut in McDonalds. Happy days.

But within a few minutes of playing netball I get in to it.
Team games are fun! You have to use your brain a bit, you almost forget you’re doing exercise! I’m paired with Hildegunn and we’re doing pretty well until Go-Go throws Sephonie the ball, I leap to intercept, and Sephonie pushes me over, hard.

I pick myself up from the gravel and laugh it off. But my left knee is throbbing and swollen, and my right knee is grazed quite deeply.

‘Sit this one out,’ says Grant, but I think: this is £50 of my money, so unless you’re offering me a cash refund, I’m still playing.

After netball we have a lecture on ‘Nutrition’. Diane, a 19-year-old with a qualification from the inside of a sugar-coated cereal packet tips up to educate us.

‘Who here knows how many calories are in 100 grams of chicken?’ says Diane.

‘Skin on, roast – 171 per 100g, skin off, grilled – 116,’ says Go-Go.

Go home now, Diane, you are out of your league.

‘Ladies! You know your calories pretty well! That’s great,’ says Diane.

Is it great, Diane? Or is it tragic, that a room full of supposedly bright women with decent jobs are so brainwashed that they focus so much attention on this crap? I think back to my first boss, fifty-two and a size 8, who was married to a controlling partner at Deutsche Bank. Beautiful five-storey house in Notting Hill, off-street parking and everything. She treated herself to one chocolate
digestive biscuit every Friday at 4pm; I never saw her laugh once.

‘I’m not at all hungry,’ says Go-Go, as we sit down to ‘lunch’: two oatcakes, one small pot of guacamole.

‘My appetite’s already shrunk,’ says Sephonie.

‘I can’t even finish mine,’ says Hildegunn.

You are all mad, I think. I haven’t stopped obsessing about food since we arrived.

I take Hildegunn up on her kind donation of half an oatcake.

In the afternoon we head off on a four-hour hike. I love this part of boot camp. I get to see the countryside and not have to listen to inane witterings about broccoli being bad for you. I fall behind the group and think about one of the things my shrink said: a trauma such as a break-up can bring to the surface other unresolved issues that can snowball into a depression. I think about my day job. Fletchers was a decent enough place in which to have a complete meltdown, but Fletchers under Devron’s rule is not a world I want to live in. I’ve forgotten that I’m good at my job; there are other, better companies I could work for.

We are at the summit and it’s time for our inch of chocolate. I take the silver-foiled square out of my
rucksack, and nibble away like I have milk teeth. I make one tiny square last twenty minutes – Charlie Bucket, eat your heart out. But this is not self-control. Self-control involves having a choice. If I had the whole bar in front of me, would I be able to stop myself eating it? Fat chance.

On the way back down we pass a river and Big Tony says, ‘Right girls, jump in.’

‘I haven’t got my swimsuit,’ I say.

‘Do it in what you’re wearing,’ he says.

‘It’s freezing in there, and then I’ll be freezing on the walk home,’ I say.

Hildegunn is already splashing about in the water in just her knickers, and shouting ‘it’s vunderful!’

Go-Go never needs to be asked twice, and she’s in too.

‘This is Stella McCartney for Adidas, dry clean only,’ says Sephonie.

I take my shorts and t-shirt off and wade in. It is freezing, but after a minute you sort of get used to it, and the icy water on my swollen knee feels kind of vunderful.

This is so not me, and I feel a tiny bit proud of myself.

We head to dinner, exhausted.

‘Something smells good,’ says Hildegunn.

‘Something smells small,’ I say – and it is: two bites of lamb casserole, 14 borlotti beans, one floret of broccoli.

After dinner – a treat! Half an orange. One thing I will
say about this place: you learn very quickly to be grateful for the small things in life; this half orange tastes like the sweetest thing on earth. It practically makes me cry with delight.

My bedroom still smells so I sleep on the sofa again and dream of eating a simple sandwich – cheap white bread, butter, ham, a tiny bit of mustard.

Day 3. Boot camp. Fall in.

Sephonie tips up late again, iPod on, sporting fuschia Juicy Couture.

‘Twenty minutes late,’ says Big Tony. ‘Everyone, 40 push-ups.’

Go-Go couldn’t be happier, and I count her doing 45. Hildegunn and I exchange a look, and I say to Sephonie, ‘Do you want to borrow my alarm clock?’

‘I’ve got an alarm on my iPhone. I just like to do my own thing.’

‘So you’ve been sitting in your room fannying about?’

She shrugs. That shrug reminds me of James.

We’ve been warned that on Day 3, we might feel ‘a bit emotional’. Welcome to my year.

Breakfast is porridge made with watered-down water, and even though I find it unpalatable, the tininess of the portion enrages me.

Meanwhile my knee is throbbing and swollen. Grant tells me to put an ice pack on and rest. This means missing dodge-ball – my chance to get Sephonie back – but Grant insists.

I sit on the terrace listening to the grunts from the netball court. If I have to live for the rest of my life never eating a baguette after a curry, then that’s what I’ll do. I don’t want to ever come to a place like this again. It’s not worth it, it’s too boring, it’s too hard. Balance is the key. The middle ground. Learn to live in it.

My ice pack has started to melt so I go into the kitchen to fetch another from the freezer. We are not allowed in the kitchen, for obvious reasons. It even has a lock on the door. But this is a medical emergency, and Grant has left me the key.

I open the lock and it makes a pleasing click.

Mo-ther-fuck-ers! It is piled high with crisps, Kit Kats, fresh crusty bread, tomatoes! I open the fridge and see a giant pot of chicken stew, cheese, butter, cream, Parma ham, parmesan, cold beers.

I could do it. I could eat something and they’d never know. Even if they did find out, what are they going to do? Sit on me and make me have my stomach pumped? I could make myself that ham sandwich, have a beautiful cold beer … That is what I want. That is what I want.

Instead, I go to the freezer and get another ice pack, Velcro it round my knee and head back out.

After lunch – and truly, I can’t even now bear to recall day three’s pitiful offering – it is ‘Ultra-ultra circuits’. Did I mention I’m not the sporty type? Did I say I hate gyms? I hate hate hate circuits. Hard, boring, repetitive.