Sweet Temptation (12 page)

I started to cry then, and bent over the phone. ‘I didn’t mean it like that, Charlie,’ I said, tears running through my make-up. ‘Oh, don’t! I’m sorry! Please don’t be cross with me again.’

But he’d already hung up. I walked blindly out of the building, shaking and crying. People were looking at me but I didn’t care. He was going to leave me for someone else, I knew it. I just knew it.

Chapter Seven

Jam Tart

Lauren

‘And so how have we all got on this week? Any confessions to make? Any triumphs to report?’

It was Monday evening and I was back at FatBusters, much to my surprise. To be quite frank, I’d barely thought about dieting or calories the whole week and it had taken me a few minutes to decipher the code
FB 7.30 p.m
. in my diary that morning. (If you must know, my first thought had been
Frank Bruno at half-seven?
which seemed quite a bizarre appointment, until I remembered the far more prosaic reality.) But I’d had such a dull weekend, I couldn’t bear another evening staring at my own four walls with just the cat to keep me company. So what the hell. I was here again.

The group leader, whose name I’d totally forgotten, had given us another rousing, you-can-do-it speech, and now we were all expected to fess up to the terrible crimes we’d committed against our waistlines. ‘I had a few drinks on Friday night,’ one woman said. ‘I might as well come clean now, before the scales do it for me.’ She laughed nervously. ‘It was my birthday and my friends had bought me champagne, so . . .’

‘We’ve all been there,’ the group leader – Alison, that was it – said sympathetically. ‘And a birthday is a birthday, I know. But try to stick to one small glass next time and really savour it – that should be enough of a treat. You could even pretend you have to drive somewhere if you can’t face telling people you’re on a diet, all right? Anyone else?’

A bespectacled woman with belly-rolls like the Michelin Man put up her hand. ‘Good news from me – at last,’ she said in a rich, happy voice. ‘I’ve managed to stay off the chocolate all week – first time ever!’

Alison looked delighted by this earth-shattering news. ‘Go Jocelyn!’ she whooped. ‘That deserves a round of applause, I think. Fantastic!’

We all duly clapped, then it was back to the confessions.

‘I had four biscuits on Saturday night,’ one sweet-faced girl said, her lower lip almost trembling with misery.
Dear, oh dear
, I thought to myself.
Is that what we’ve come to? Doom and gloom over a few blooming Digestives?

Alison cocked her head, her eyes concerned. ‘What was the trigger, lovey?’ she asked. ‘Bad day? Or just hungry?’

The girl – woman, rather: she was in her late twenties, I guessed – looked down at her knotted fingers in her lap. ‘A bad day,’ she said in a low voice.

‘Okay,’ Alison said kindly. ‘Well, I think everyone can relate to that. You have a crap day, you come home and put your feet up, and all you want to do is pig out on comfort food. Yes?’

‘Yes,’ we all chorused, me included, even though I hadn’t meant to.

‘No!’ she rebuked, wagging her finger. ‘No, no, no. As soon as you get that feeling – that ‘
I need a boost, I feel a bit miserable
’ feeling – you’ve got to break the habit of turning to food to make you feel better. Very important. So let’s all take a minute to think what else could . . . Jess, is it? What else could Jess have done to cheer herself up? What do you lot do instead of picking at biscuits or crisps?’

‘Watch a good film,’ an old lady suggested. ‘A funny one to make you laugh, or a really miserable one to make you count your blessings.’

‘Go for a run,’ said a smug, nearly-thin woman at the other side of the room.
Creep
, I thought to myself.

‘Have a cuddle with me missus,’ one of the blokes said bashfully, which earned him a smattering of ‘Awwwww’s from the softies.

‘Sudoku.’

‘Phone a mate for a chat.’

Alison put her hand up to stem the flow of suggestions. ‘Wonderful, wonderful,’ she said. ‘All good ideas. I particularly like the idea of phoning a friend. Having a chat with someone is great, especially if you can have a moan about whatever it is that’s put you in a bad mood. Even better – ’ she paused for dramatic effect – ‘even better if you can phone a diet buddy, someone who really understands when you feel tempted.’

An interested
Ohhh
noise broke out among the ranks at that. It was like being at the panto here sometimes.

‘I was going to talk about this later, but hey, I’m a spontaneous kinda gal,’ Alison went on, ‘so let’s do it now. The diet buddy system can be whatever you make it, really. Some days you coast along barely thinking about food, but other days it might seem difficult and, for all your best efforts, you can feel yourself craving chocolate or a piece of cheese or something you know you shouldn’t be tucking into.’

‘I’m with you,’ one woman nearby muttered, nodding sagely.

Alison gave her a brief smile of sympathy and went on. ‘Well, if you’re having one of
those
days, I strongly suggest you pick up the phone and tell your diet buddy. Not a full-on whinge-fest or anything dramatic. Just fess up, say how you’re feeling, and have a chat about it. It’s then up to the diet buddy to talk you round, to remind you what this is all about, to support you. To say, “Hey, we all have those days, but food is not the answer. How about doing something else instead?” Does that sound okay? If you like the idea of buddying up to provide some mutual dieting support during the week, raise your hand.’

A forest of hands shot up. Everyone’s, in fact, except mine.

‘Excellent,’ Alison said, not seeming to notice that I was the only tree not joining the forest. ‘Split yourselves up into pairs or small groups – say three or four – and, if everyone’s willing, you can swap phone numbers and agree some ground rules. For instance, some of you might work shifts and won’t appreciate a call at certain times of the day when you’re asleep. Sort it out between you, anyway – see what works for your group.’

There was a squawk of chairs as people started rushing to pal up with one another. I was reminded, dismally, of picking teams in PE at school. Nobody had ever wanted me on their team – lanky Lauren who couldn’t catch a ball to save her life.

‘Hi, do you want to make up a threesome?’ came a voice just then.

Daniel Craig and George Clooney were smiling beguilingly at me and— Oh, okay. Just my little daydream. A friendly-faced blonde Bessie Bunter and the tearful biscuit-eater were hovering nearby. (She wasn’t even that fat, the biscuit-eater. What was she doing here with the rest of us blobs? I wondered.)

‘What with us three being the newbies and all,’ blonde Bessie said, when I didn’t immediately reply. ‘Is that all right?’

I must say, I didn’t relish the thought of the biscuit-eater phoning me up in tears to say she’d nibbled a crisp or something equally catastrophic, but I couldn’t really say no. ‘Sure,’ I said, shrugging. ‘Why not?’

‘Great,’ the blonde woman said, heaving her arse down next to me. ‘I’m Maddie, and this is Jess. So . . .’ She spread her hands. ‘How shall we do this? What do we all want to get out of it?’

There was a pause and then Jess spoke, her voice small and timid. ‘A bit of moral support would be good,’ she said. ‘I’m not exactly getting much of that at home.’

‘Nor me,’ Maddie said, rolling her eyes. ‘My husband keeps going on about ice cream and takeaways all the time. It’s driving me nuts.’

Jess nodded. ‘And my fiancé—’ she began, but then went bright red and clammed up without saying anything else.
Aha
, I thought.
Bust-up on Saturday night then
. Maybe I’d have a new client by the end of the evening, if nothing else.

‘Well, I live with the fattest, greediest cat in Birmingham, who’s not exactly a role model either,’ I said, to fill the silence.

‘Sounds like we all could do with some back-up,’ Maddie said. ‘So we could swap numbers or . . .’ She glanced around to check Alison’s whereabouts, then lowered her voice. ‘Maybe we should just go to the pub after this for a chat?’

A woman after my own heart. ‘I’m in,’ I said at once. Another surprise. This day was turning out to be full of them.

And so it was that the three of us trooped into The Hat and Feathers later that evening, each feeling a tad self-conscious, I think. Maddie took the lead. ‘What are we all having, then?’ she asked us at the bar. ‘Let’s go
wild
on the diet drinks.’

I laughed at the sarcastic look on her face. ‘I’m going to push the boat out and have a Diet Coke,’ I said.

‘Slimline tonic for me,’ Jess chirped.

Maddie squinted over the bar. ‘Oh God, this is depressing, isn’t it?’ she sighed. ‘What I’d give for a large glass of chilled white wine . . .’

‘115 calories,’ Jess put in at once, then looked apologetic. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve been swotting up.’

‘Lucky one of us has,’ Maddie said. ‘I’ll just have a lime and soda, I think. Here, I’ll get these since it was my idea. You two sit down.’

Jess and I found a quiet corner and settled on the red velour banquette – I’m never comfortable on a bar stool, always conscious that half my bum is hanging over the edge of it.

‘So,’ I said, fiddling with a beer mat. Then I couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘How did you get on this week with the weigh-in?’ Jess asked after a moment.

I wrinkled my nose. ‘I put on a pound,’ I told her. ‘I kept forgetting about the diet. And I’ve lost my calorie book already. How about you?’

‘I lost a pound,’ she said with a little flush of pleasure. Bless her.

‘Even after those biscuits!’ I teased, then felt a bit mean as her face fell. ‘I’m only joking,’ I said quickly. ‘Well done – that’s great.’

Maddie came over with the drinks and put them on the table. ‘That is the saddest, cheapest round I’ve ever seen in my life,’ she announced, plonking herself down next to me. ‘Hey ho, it’ll all be worth it when we’re skinny bitches, though.’ She pulled a funny face. ‘And actually, I know this is kind of tragic, but when Alison said I’d lost two pounds, I felt like kissing her in relief.’

‘Two pounds!’ Jess squeaked. ‘That’s brilliant!’

‘That
is
good,’ I added, because Maddie was looking so damn chuffed with herself. ‘What’s your secret?’

‘Lettuce,’ she said, and did this silly buck-teeth rabbit impression that had us all laughing like morons.

It’s funny, isn’t it – you look at someone and so often you make a snap judgment about them instantly.
Nah
, you think.
Not my kind of person
.
Nothing in common except that we’re fellow
members of the human race
(although sometimes even
that
was questionable when it came to Love Hearts’ romance-seekers). In my job, first impressions were everything – and yes, I prided myself on having a good instinct about people. And yet that evening in The Hat and Feathers showed me just how wrong I could be.

Take Jess, for instance. Without wanting to sound like a total bitch, I’d written her off as a wimpish crybaby after the biscuit chin-wobble. And Maddie I’d pegged as a bit bossy and square, a frumpish middle-aged mum who’d let herself go. Neither of them the sort of person I’d usually be seen dead with down the pub.

But as we sat there, drinking our dismal, low-cal drinks and swapping stories, I realized I’d misjudged them both. Maddie was cracking us up within minutes with stories about her evil boss, and, before long, Jess had perked up and we were all nattering away like old friends.

‘Where is it you work, Maddie?’ I asked when Jess went to the bar. It’s always good to network when you’re self-employed, after all.

Maddie hesitated as if wondering whether or not to tell me – interesting! – then replied. ‘Brum FM,’ she said in a slightly lower voice, glancing around furtively as if she was worried about eavesdroppers. ‘My boss is one of the DJs – Collette McMahon. She does the lunchtime show.’

‘Are you
kidding
? I always listen to her,’ I said – then the penny dropped. ‘Oh my God. You’re not involved in this Make Birmingham Beautiful campaign, are you? I thought I heard her mention FatBusters the other day . . .’ My mouth swung open. ‘Is that you?’

She blushed scarlet. ‘Me and my big gob,’ she sighed. ‘Yeah, that’s me, lamb to the slaughter. And the horrible woman has only decided we’ve all got to report on our progress live on air this week. Can you imagine?’

Jess was putting another round of drinks in front of us and looked aghast. ‘Oh no!’ she said, overhearing. ‘That’s awful. Do you have to do it?’

Maddie shrugged. ‘If I still want a job there, yeah, I reckon I do,’ she said. ‘I’m dreading it.’ She exhaled. ‘The stupid thing is, I always thought I’d like to be a DJ and have my own show, but now that I’m actually faced with a microphone, the thought of talking on air and the whole city listening to me wittering on makes me feel like wetting my pants with fear.’

I patted her arm comfortingly. ‘Well,
I
won’t listen if it makes you feel better,’ I told her.

‘And I—’ said Jess, but then her phone started ringing. She’d been smiling, a little pink in the cheeks, but as soon as she saw the caller display on her phone, she blanched. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to us, and turned away to take the call. ‘Hi!’ she said in this fake bright voice. ‘Everything all r—?’

I didn’t want to eavesdrop, but even a total idiot could tell someone was having a go at her down the line. ‘I just—’ she tried to say. ‘I thought—’ Her shoulders slumped. ‘Okay,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll be right back.’

She clicked off the call and Maddie and I had to pretend we hadn’t heard the ear-bashing coming from her phone. She smiled at us, but it was a brittle, not-very-convincing smile. ‘That was Charlie, my fiancé,’ she said. ‘Just checking up on me.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Gosh, is that the time?’ she said. ‘I’d better go.’

The phone call had broken the spell of us fatties having a nice chinwag together. Ah yes. Back to the real world. Jess was like Cinderella hearing the midnight chimes, scuttling away on her glass slippers – or rather her black ballet pumps. And Maddie was suddenly talking about having kids’ school uniform to iron, and needing to check in on her mum.