Running in Heels (17 page)

But I don't want to be fat.

“Nat,” says Babs, shuffling in her seat, “I've been doing my homework. And, this is just a gobbet of information that I'm going to toss into the air. And the gobbet is, it takes thirty-five hundred extra calories more than normal for a person to put on a pound. That's twenty Mars Bars! A squiddly little pound! There's fourteen of them in a stone!”

“Actually,” I reply, “that's not even twelve Mars Bars. But”—I smile to let her know I appreciate it—“thank you for the tip.”

To the casual observer, I am sitting on the sofa, arms and legs neatly crossed, but in my head I am trapped in a plush private all-you-can-eat hell, screaming, “Get me out of here!”

I want to snatch back my offer to Andy, sod the intrigue, I don't want him here, prying, spying for Babs. Three thousand five hundred calories? Is that all? I glance at her safe, solid frame perched on my sofa, so full of hearty honest concern, and wish away the irritation that creeps across my face like a crab. I force the mug to my lips as if it's brimful of arsenic, and take a minute sip. I swallow, and my mouth feels tacky, the milkiness clings like
napalm. I swallow again, but it's still there, coating my insides in a white smelly film.
Milk
. It's revolting.

“Are you okay?” asks Babs.

I shake my head.

“Nat,” she says gently. “You are not going to swell into a sumo. But eating more
will
stop your hair from falling out. You need to support your body. Work with it, and, er, keep your hair on.”

Babs grips the sofa to stop herself giggling. (She often laughs at inappropriate moments and had to walk out of her grandmother's funeral so as not to offend the priest.) So I don't take it personally. Apart from anything else, I
want
to keep my hair on. How can I succeed in the world without it? Fat and hairy, or thin and bald? The choice is not encouraging. I feel like a spinster being tried for sorcery. If I float I'm burned at the stake as a witch, if I drown I'm just a middle-aged woman who never married—oops, sorry, our mistake.

I fantasize about washing my hair and not shedding like a cat.

“I've got to get it together,” I say, more to myself than Babs.

She nods, slowly, and reaches out, slowly. I feel like a mental patient who might lash out with a fork.

“It's okay, Babs. I will try to eat more, and to be well. I absolutely will.”

“Nat!” cries Babs, beaming. “That is fan-bloody-tastic!”

She smashes her coffee cup down on my glass table again and crushes me in a hug. I try—think of a raisin in a nutcracker—to return it. As my arms are pinioned to my sides I feebly pat the side of her hip, the farthest I can reach. And my chin is being tickled to death by that sadist of a red scarf. It's hardly comfortable, and yet, out of nowhere, I feel more peaceful than I have in a while. But the wonder is that when I promised Babs I'd try to eat more, I think I meant it.

 

A
truth. You don't get many of those to a pound.

A GOOD INTENTION IS A WONDERFUL THING. IT
allows you to bask in the warm anticipatory glow of your own merit without shifting off the sofa. It's the Joining a Gym=Exercise factor. So when Babs leaves I am floating on a blissful pink cloud of resolutions.

I'll find the perfect new job, I'll be the perfect daughter (second helpings—just say yes), the perfect sister, the perfect girlfriend, the perfect
ex
-girlfriend (it's about time I apologized to Saul), the perfect friend, the perfect landlady (no rebuking lodgers for rucking up the carpet or leaving tea bags in the sink). I'll eat just enough to stop molting, I'll be what everyone wants and I'll be happy.

First on the grovel list is my mother. I dial with the fervor of a convert. “Doctor's office,” declares a bored voice. “Hello?”

“Mum, it's me,” I say. “I just wanted to tell you not to worry, because everything's going to be okay. Andy's going to be my lodger—the brother of the bride!—so that will help pay the mortgage, and I'm going to start looking for a new job straightaway. I'm not, not quite sure what, what I want to do, what I could do, but at least now you don't have to worry so much.”

“That's wonderful, but you will charge Andy the going rate, won't you, dear?” replies my mother anxiously. “I know he's a friend of sorts, but now you've lost your job you need the money. I don't know what people charge for a double room in an upmarket area of London these days. Fifty pounds a month? Sixty?”

“Something like that,” I say, refusing to sag. “It's nice, though, isn't it, it's one problem solved, isn't it?”

“Sixty pounds! I suppose it's one less thing to worry about. It's good to have a man in the house, it makes burglars think twice. A man or a Peke—the smaller they are, the bigger the
racket. As for a new job, you've hit the nail on the head, Natalie. What
can
you do? That's my biggest worry.”

My
biggest worry is whether the polar ice cap will melt and drown the whole world, but I suppose the possibility of me spending the rest of my days watching
Wheel of Fortune
and calling it “educational” is an equally legitimate concern. “I thought I might—”

“There's nothing here, so I spoke to my colleague Susan, and as luck would have it her husband, Martin, owns a dry-cleaning firm, you know Martin, big jolly man, known locally as something of a raconteur, he's looking for a junior to help out behind the till. It might not sound much but it's a fairly responsible position, and there are prospects of promotion. They're based in Borehamwood, so it wouldn't be too far to travel, and you could start next week. I know it's not ideal, dear, but beggars can't be choosers, and you might enjoy it.”

I am speechless. I feel as mortified as a cat in a floppy red bow. I envisage a life of scrabbling amid other people's dirty linen. A
Groundhog Day
existence of smiling patiently and pinging a button and declaiming, “That will be twenty-four pounds and fifty pence, please!” A deadly job in the suburb of Boring-wood under the gimlet-eyed supervision of Susan's husband, Martin the raconteur (an old fart who bores people professionally), who would joyfully detail my every move to his snoopy wife (who wears a green sun visor all day, every day, because she thinks it makes her look like a professional golfer) who would dutifully pass the informational baton to my mother. Cheaper, but as effective as government surveillance.

“Mum,” I bleat, “it's nice of you but…” I trail off, paralyzed by a flashback of the last time I set foot in a dry cleaner's. A thin-lipped woman nudged me and sniffed, “See that crimson velour trouser suit hanging there, that belongs to my sister-in-law. She comes in here every week. Mind you, she can afford it.” Much as I want to be perfect for my mother, I'm not saintly enough to
sacrifice myself to Martin Pipkin's Eeesy-Kleen empire. How to break it to her?

“Mum,” I chirrup, inspired, “it's a brilliant idea except for one thing.”

“Wh-at?” she says, her voice cracking with hurt.

“
Till
girl at the Borehamwood branch of Eeesy Kleen! I'd be a laughingstock for every eligible man this side of Reykjavík! No self-respecting professional snob would dream of dating me ever again.” (Not that the legal, financial, and medical fraternities have been wildly fantasizing over me in my current state of employment. And not that I'm bothered.)

There is a terrifying pause.

“I see what you mean,” she says finally. “I'll call Tony. Maybe he'll find you something.”

Not if I call him first. I speed-dial the number and wonder what I can offer him. Tony is like a B-grade celebrity in that you can't bother him on a whim, he'll want to know what's in it for him and how much you're paying. I don't have any supermarkets for him to open (though I might have access to a dry cleaner's if I play my cards wrong) but I do, for the moment, have access to Mel. Anyway, he's shunned me for a week so he should have worked off his fury by now. Tony shouts, threatens, intimidates, then—as you crawl bloodily to a corner to lick your fatal wounds—finds it in his heart to forgive you.

“Could you tell him,” I beg his PA, “that it's a matter of life and death?”

“Excite me,” says Tony. He yawns for effect.

“Well,” I say, relieved to be granted the royal pardon (implicit in not having my head bitten off), “the good news is, Mel likes you but she, er, also likes a challenge, so if I were you I wouldn't do anything ah, demonstrative for Valentine's Day—”

“What, so she'll turn down a weekend in Paris?”

“Er…” I am briefly stunned by this, as the most my brother has ever given a woman for Valentine's Day is the boot.

“Ah, what I meant was, if I were you I wouldn't do anything demonstrative for Valentine's Day except take her to Paris for the weekend.”

“Thought so.”

“And the bad news,” I shrill, before he cuts me off, “is that I've lost my job and Mum wants me to start work as a till girl for a dry cleaner's in Borehamwood.” I regale him with a pruned version of the messy tale (time is money).

Tony whistles. “Floozie,” he murmurs. “A question. We're throwing mash at Mother, we're gobbing off about classified information that isn't our business, we're getting fired by the tutu factory, and we're hanging with managers of dodgy bands. We're the faint breeze that grows into a hurricane. Are we, by any chance, losing it?”

I allow my gut retort time to dissolve. “As far as I know,” I reply eventually, “I'm sane.”

“Christ,” he exclaims.

“What?” I ask.

“In
Catch-22
terms,” he says gravely, “that means you're a psycho.”

 

M
y brother is speaking to me, I tell myself, as I look up the number of the Fairbush Gynecology Clinic. Even if what he says isn't that complimentary. Still, my resolve is weakened—I feel as if a large rat has chomped through it and all that remains is a thread—and I dial the number slowly.

“Fairbush Gynecology Clinic!” tweets a receptionist who has obviously worked on her motivation and given her all to this precious line. “How may I direct your call?” (Clear diction, gentle yet searing emphasis on the “direct,” the “call” fading to a Monroe-esque coo, well-paced, unobtrusive breathing technique, altogether very convincing.)

“Oh, hello. May I speak to Dr. Vincent Miller? It's his daughter.”

“One moment please, I'll put you through to his assistant.”

I go through the rigmarole again, but Dr. Miller is with a client.

“Could I possibly leave a short message?”

“Sure,” says his assistant sourly, obliterating—again—the myth that Americans are polite. I can't understand it. I am always obsequious to foreigners—I'm a lone ambassador, I'm representing my nation!

“If you could say—”

“Hold it!…Okay, go ahead.”

“If you could just say”—I grit my teeth—“that Kimberli Ann is welcome to call me anytime to discuss the issues.”

“Pardon me?”

“The
issues
!” I boom. “Now you say ‘Bless you!' ”

“Pardon me?”

“Never mind,” I mumble, wondering why I continue to humiliate myself by turning out jokes a Christmas cracker would be ashamed of. “Thank you so much, 'bye.”

I have no intention of paying the slightest heed to any New Age nonsense that Kimberli Ann cares to garble, but the gesture is all and my father will be delighted. I slump in my chair and decide that blissful pink cloud or no blissful pink cloud, good intentions are an ordeal and I don't have the strength—mental or physical—to call Saul. I picture his cheery face. I miss him, a little. He's a gentleman. A gentleman that
comfort-eats
—his phrase!—like a middle-aged housewife. No. I don't miss him at all. I ring Chris instead.

“Is there, um, any chance you're free tonight?”

“I might be,” he replies. “Why? Slaphead blown you out?”

I titter wearily. “You know Robbie's just a friend. Not even a friend! An acquaintance. Anyway, I thought, seeing as it's Valentine's Eve, I could cook you dinner.”

“Dinner?” says Chris.

I know he isn't a great foodie—he's skin and bone and I rarely see him eat—but he sounds positively
insulted
.

“Er, yes,” I say, hoping I haven't unwittingly said something terrible in rhyming slang.

“Valentine's
Eve
?” he says, his tone confirming the worst.

“It was a joke,” I gabble, realizing too late that I have committed a heinous sin—I have dared suggest that tomorrow, February 14, is a special occasion. I have wielded the ax of fake romance over his innocent head and our defenseless relationship, I've put G-force pressure on him to translate his feelings into garish bouquets and slushy cards and soppy gifts, I'm forcing him into an (expensive) public display of how much he rates me—a display that can and will be measured against other displays, that will be judged and criticized by colleagues and friends, that will make him resent me, despise me, and dump me the following day.

“What I meant was,” I add in a rush, “it's Valentine's Day tomorrow, so don't bother doing anything.”

I just about manage not to choke on the words.

“If you insist,” drawls Chris. “I'll be round at eight.”

“Yes,” I mutter. “Great.”

Blast.

 

I
am charging around the supermarket like a bull with a drawing pin in its butt, when my mobile rings.

“Hello?” I say, screeching to a halt by the endless rows of cream, double cream, single cream, extra thick single cream, clotted cream, whipping cream, sour cream…

“Natalie!” cries a voice, distinct from the majority in being friendly not furious.

“Yes?” I say, warily.

“It's Andy. Babs told me! So I'm forgiven for whatever it was I did? Ah, Natalie, you star! One more week at my parents' and I'd have turned into a bloke who wears a patterned sweater stained with egg and stalks the hairdressers off
Coronation Street
.”

“You'd have racked up a fortune in train fares,” I suggest.
“You'd have spent your whole life rushing from London to Manchester.”

“You saved me,” he replies, “but I tell you—it was close! So, ah, when do you want me?”

I'll say one thing about Barbara's family. They're not backward in coming forward. If
I
had been offered a room by me,
I'd
ask if I was sure it was still okay—as a courtesy if nothing else. To blithely assume that people mean what they say! It's like swearing undying friendship with the couple you meet in the Algarve, enduring the necessary charade of exchanging addresses, promising to visit them in Huddersfield, and then, a month later when your tan has faded and you've forgotten they existed, receiving an insolent and overfamiliar call from two strangers, inviting themselves to stay at your home for the weekend!

“Sunday?”

“Good for me,” replies Andy. “Any particular time?”

“Oh, gosh, I don't know, uh, you say.”

“Three?”

“Yes, that sounds fine.”

“Great. And you can tell me what I'm paying and run through the house rules—no five-in-a-bed orgies, class-A drugs only, curfew eight-thirty?”

“Curfew, eight-
fifteen
,” I say sternly, “and strictly no more than four in a bed.”

When I hang up, I'm smiling.

 

C
hris is not smiling. I have spent the last three hours preparing an elaborate meal: guacamole with paprika-toasted potato skins (from Nigella Lawson's
How to Eat
), cod wrapped in ham, with sage and onion lentils (Nigella again—the woman's a genius), and seven-minute steamed chocolate pudding (ditto, if it ain't broke don't fix it), the fresh coriander and lime infusing my kitchen with a glorious burst of sharp-scented sunniness, the
hot crispiness of the potato jackets, so crackly and satisfying, the thick creamy green avocado pulp, the cool slippery white fish, the sweet pearly pinkness of the ham, the shiny brown lentils, such pretty colors, a delicious piece of modern art, the overpowering smell of the warm rich oozy chocolate clinging to my senses like a vampire to a neck. I have chopped and scooped and mashed and peeled and stoned and pulped and sliced and baked and watched Chris juicily devour every bite. I'm not that hungry, so I just sip a little white wine.

But Chris is not smiling because as he scratches the last scrape of brown gluey pudding from its smooth china bowl, I tell him that Andy is moving in on Sunday. The timing isn't wonderful but, after my discussion with Babs, I feel a little braver. Also, I now know I'm getting nothing for Valentine's Day—and if I'm going down, I might as well go all the way.