Pumpkin Pie (11 page)

Saturday morning I did this really cowardly thing: I rang Saffy and said that I wouldn’t be going to class that afternoon as I wasn’t feeling well. Saffy wailed at me.

“Jennee! You can’t miss class!”

I wasn’t brave enough to tell her that I wasn’t ever going back to classes ever again. I just mumbled that I felt sick.

“I’d only throw up over everyone.”

Saffy giggled and said that that was all right. “Just so long as you don’t do it over me!”

She did her best to make me change my mind, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t face it! Instead, I spent the day comfort eating. I had lots of snackypoos up in my room, where no one could see me. Dad has to work on a Saturday, so I snacked by myself. It wasn’t as much fun, because snacking by yourself makes you feel really guilty, but I just had this great need. Every half hour or so I’d make these little furtive dashes downstairs to raid the fridge and go galloping back up with a chunk of pizza or a cream slice hidden under my sweater.

Mum was out, showing someone round a house, and Pip was shut away in his room. He always seemed to be shut in his room these days. I tried asking him once, what he did in there. I said, “I suppose you’re playing with your computer?” He gave me this look of anguished scorn and said, “I don’t
play,
I
work.”
I said, “What, all the time?” “I have to!” said Pip. It really wasn’t natural; not for a ten year old. But what could I do? I had far too much on my mind to worry about Pip and his sad way of life.

Then there was Petal, running all about the place like a mad woman with her moby clamped to her ear, screaming at people.

“Don’t tell me! Just don’t tell me! I don’t want to know!” Followed almost immediately by, “What, what? Tell me!”

I put it down to boyfriend trouble. Everything with Petal comes back to boyfriends. No big deal. She’ll get over it.

While I’m furtively helping myself to some lemon meringue pie from the fridge, Petal suddenly appears in the doorway, pale and distraught, looking like the mask of tragedy (as opposed to the mask of comedy) and I almost say “What’s wrong?” but in the end I don’t because I have enough problems of my own without frazzling my brain over hers. In any case, what problems can you possibly have when you’re as thin and as pretty as she is? It’s sheer self-indulgence. I’m the one with problems!

We pass each other several times as Petal distractedly rushes to and fro and I creep in and out of the kitchen on my secret missions, but we never exchange any words. Petal never asks me
why
I keep racing up and down the stairs, and in and out the kitchen. I never ask her
why
she looks like the end of the world is about to come upon us. And neither of us spares a thought for our little genius brother, behind his bedroom door. We are all locked into our separate lives.

When Mum got back at lunchtime she was expecting to take me to drama classes, as usual. I couldn’t very well tell her that I was feeling sick or she’d have started fussing – well, no, actually she wouldn’t, Mum is not the sort of person to fuss. But she might have made me eat something really boring when we went up to Giorgio’s for a meal later on. Something like a boiled egg, for instance. Or just a plate of soup and nothing else. I didn’t want that! So I just said that I didn’t think I could be bothered with drama any more, and Mum said that was a pity as I’d seemed to be enjoying it, but she didn’t press me. She didn’t even point out that she and Dad had paid for a term’s classes and would have wasted their money.

But I think she was quite pleased that she didn’t have to fetch and carry because she said, “Well, if you’re sure… I might as well pop back to the office for a couple of hours. I’ve got some stuff I need to clear up. Will you be all right here by yourself?”

I told her that I would, and she went off quite happily, leaving Pip in his bedroom and me in mine and Petal still clamped to her moby. Whatever Petal’s (purely imaginary) problems were she obviously got the better of them because when I crept downstairs for my next bout of comfort eating I found her all dressed up and about to leave the house. I heard her cooing, in syrupy tones, into her moby, that she was “on her wayeee!” She would never speak like that to any of her girlfriends so I guessed she was off to make it up with her latest gorgeous guy and do whatever it was they did together. Smooch and slurp round the shopping centre, guzzle each other’s lips in the back row of the cinema. Disgusting, really. But nowhere near as disgusting as me, with all my flab and my wobbly thighs. I thought self-pityingly that I was probably just jealous, because what boy would ever want to smooch and slurp with a great fat pumpkin?

I expect by now you will be thinking to yourself, what is the matter with this girl? Why doesn’t she just stop shovelling food down her throat if it bothers her so much, being fat? All I can say is this: it is easier said than done. For starters, you don’t always notice that you’re getting fat until it’s too late. You’ve already got there! You can see these huge unsightly bulges ballooning out all over, out of your waistband, out of your sleeves, and it is so utterly depressing that the only thing to bring you any solace is… FOOD. But not just any food! Not fruit or muesli bars or sticks of raw carrot. Fruit and muesli bars and raw carrot don’t bring any solace at all. It has to be chips or crisps or slices of pizza. Cheesecake or chocolate or Black Forest gateau. So you eat because you hate yourself and then you hate yourself even more so then you have to eat even more, and you just get fatter and fatter and fatter.

Well, that is what
can
happen. It is what probably would have happened if Saffy hadn’t rang me at five o’clock that evening, when she got back from class.

“Hey! Jen!” she cried. “Guess what?”

I said, “What?” Thinking rather meanly to myself that if it was something nice for Saffy then I didn’t want to hear about it. I was that low.

“Are you sitting down?” said Saffy.

“No,” I said. “I’m standing up. Why?”

“‘Cos I don’t want you throwing a wobbly! Just make sure you’re holding on to something… D’you remember that person that came in? That publishing person? Last term?”

I said, “Mm.”

“D’you remember she was looking for faces? For this book they were doing?”

I said, “Mm,” thinking
please don’t say they’ve chosen Saffy! PLEASE!
I know it was horrid of me, but that is the way it gets you when you are depressed.

“Well.” Saffy paused. (Dramatic effect. We’d practised it on Friday.) “She wants
you!”

I said, “M-me?”

“Yes! You!”

I said, “W-what for?”

“To be this girl on the cover of the book! It’s called
Here Comes Ellen
and you’re going to be Ellen!”

I gulped. I couldn’t believe it! I just couldn’t believe that anyone would want
me.

“H-how do you know?” I said.

“‘Cos Mrs Ambrose asked me where you were. She wanted to tell you… they want to take your photo! She’s going to ring,” said Saffy, “and talk to your mum.” She added that the Terrible Two had gone “green as gooseberries” when they heard.

“They really thought it was going to be one of them!”

I’d have thought so, too. Anyone would have thought so! Who’d want me rather than Twinkle or Zoë?

“Your face will be all over,” said Saffy. “You’ll be famous!”

I zoomed up out of my depression so fast it was like a space rocket taking off. One minute I was practically grovelling on the ground, the next it was like zing, zap, pow! Up to the ceiling!

I told Mum about it as soon as she got in. I told Petal and Pip. I told Dad when we went up to Giorgio’s. Dad told Giorgio and Giorgio made this big announcement in the middle of the restaurant! Lots of the customers were regulars, who knew us. They all wrote down the name of the book and promised to buy it when it was published.

Next day, Dad rang up both my grans and told them, and then he told my aunties and uncles, and then he rushed round to tell the next-door neighbours. He was so proud! I think he told almost the whole road. Even Mum was excited. She said she was going to tell everyone at the office.

“I’ll get them all to buy copies!”

Everyone
was going to buy copies. Even people at school. I wouldn’t have said anything to people at school as it would have sounded too much like boasting, but Saffy insisted. She said, “Jen, you’re a
star.
You’re going tobe famous!”

She told Dani Morris and Sophie Sutton. She told Ro Sullivan. She even told our class teacher, Mrs Carlisle, who said, “Oh! We’ll have to make sure we get copies for the school library.” Soon it seemed that everybody knew. I was a celeb!

On Friday when I went back to class – I didn’t care so much now about being plump. Not now that I’d been chosen for a book jacket! – a photographer came to take pictures of me. The lady from the publishers was with him. She told me that Ellen was “very lovable and cuddly and
pretty.
You’re exactly right!”

I knew I mustn’t let it go to my head, because I really despise people who gloat and smirk and think they’re better than anyone else, but it was hard not to be just a little bit exultant as I was led away to have my photo taken. The look on Zoë’s face! You could tell that she was thinking, “Why her? Why not me?”

And it wasn’t just honour and glory! They were going to
pay
me for it. It was my first professional engagement! Saffy said that I was “on the way”. She said, “Sucks to Deirdre Dobson! Sour old bag. I told you she was talking rubbish!”

Now that I wasn’t depressed any more, I didn’t have to comfort eat. But now that I’d been chosen for a book jacket I decided that I didn’t have to go on any stupid diet, either. I wasn’t fat! I was cuddly. And
pretty.
Just like Ellen! So I stopped raiding the fridge but I went on having snackypoos with Dad and generally mopping up all the stuff that other people didn’t want, and I sort of closed my eyes to the spare tyre and the wobbly thighs. You can do this, if you really try. I mean, you don’t
have
to keep looking at yourself in the mirror. Not the whole of yourself. You can just concentrate on selected bits and forget about the rest. Which is what I learnt to do.

And then one day, a few weeks later, a padded envelope came through the letter box. It was addressed to me, and inside was an early copy of
Here Comes Ellen.
And there was my face on the front of it! Mum and Dad, and even Petal, said that it was lovely. And it was quite nice, though it wasn’t the nicest one they’d taken. It was a bit… well! A bit sort of… not very bright-looking. At least, that’s the way it seemed to me. Mum and Dad said “Nonsense!” but Petal, after studying the picture from all angles, said she could see what I meant.

“Like she’s one slice short of a sandwich.”

Mum said, “Petal! Don’t be so unkind.”

“She said it first,” said Petal. “I’m only agreeing with her!”

I raced upstairs to my bedroom and settled down to read about this girl Ellen. This girl that was so lovable and cuddly and
pretty.
I discovered that Ellen was a Fat Girl. She was also a Slow Girl. A girl with learning difficulties. A girl that’s bullied and jeered at. A figure of fun!