Running in Heels (18 page)

(This opinion, I confess, is borrowed from Tony, who once sparked a debate at Black Moon Records on the topic, Which Serial Killer? Head of A&R said he'd like to be murdered in a relatively quick and painless fashion, preferably injected with morphine by a mad doctor. My brother was keen to be gorily dispatched by a more flamboyant psychopath: “I want to be clogging up drains, I want double-page investigations in Sunday newspapers…” It wasn't a tasteful discussion, but the gist was, if you're going, go out with a bang.)

“Who the bleedinell is Andy?” says Chris.

“He's Babs's brother. It's purely a business decision,” I bleat, quaking inwardly. “He's only staying for a couple of months. Until
his
lodgers move out,” I add. “He's got a flat in Pimlico. He's all right, just a bit dull. Thing is, I need the money, and I—I owed Babs a favor.”

“Right,” says Chris tonelessly. He shoves away his bowl, and sparks up a cigarette. He doesn't offer me the packet, so, fumblingly, I light one of my own.

“So what's this geezer do?”

“I'm not sure. He used to be in finance.”

Chris snorts. His subtext is easily legible as “capitalist pig.”

“You…we…we went to his birthday party at that Mexican place, the karaoke, remember?”

Chris expels a disdainful jet of smoke.

I tap my ash into my silver Takashimaya ashtray and consider reneging on my offer to Andy. I don't want to upset Chris, but nor do I want to offend Babs. I am about to apologize for my thoughtlessness, when Chris rises from his chair and declares, “Gotta go.”

“You're
going
?”

“Your point?” he says in a tone that would wither a forest.

“No, no,” I stammer, “nothing.”

“Know this, princess,” he snaps, on his way out, “I won't be messed with.
Capisce?
”

No one has ever said “
capisce
” to me before, and in a silly middle-class way I feel quite glamorous. Which isn't to say that I don't sit at the table and mope at my clunky tactlessness and wasted cooking and pointless effort and the certain gloom of a barren Valentine's Day and my inability to do anything right and my knack of upsetting people and being shouted at and walked out on.

But when, at ten past midnight, I stop grizzling, it occurs to me that this is the first time a nongeek has ever accused me of “messing” with him. And, soggy as I am, I can't help taking a little pride in that.

I SET MY ALARM EARLY FOR VALENTINE'S DAY, BUT
when it starts shrieking at seven I'm already awake. I couldn't sleep after Kimberli Ann called, at 1:10
A.M.
, to discuss my issues.

Kimberli Ann is actually intelligent, but she is interested only in herself and how the world relates to her, and that makes her stupid. She imagines she has empathy but can only see things
her
way. She won't help you because she cares about you, but because she wants to spread the word of Kimberli Ann. (She certainly converted my father.) She will get what she wants eventually—a film deal—because that's all she cares about. She isn't brilliant but she's good enough.

Anyhow, I lay in bed, limp and puffy-eyed, and we had an interesting chat. Though, I suspect, not quite the chat my father had envisaged. Kimberli Ann was blown away to hear about my weight loss, but from what “Vinny”
(gik!)
said, my situation was “subclinical,” more a “lifestyle disorder,” like, I was this tall and so many pounds, so in point of fact I was a “cheeseball anorexic,” I wasn't thin enough to be rushed to hospital and force-fed a calorific dinner by experts.

Right? Er, right. So if I wanted to shape up, Kimberli Ann had the skinny on how. I shouldn't fast. That's way unhealthy, she informed me. The body loves to store fat when it's fasting. It's like you're stranded on a desert island so like, your metabolism slows and you gain fat. Had I heard of fat blockers? Like, they block the absorption of dietary fat. Pop one of these babies and I could eat candy, cookies, I could sin all day. Okay, I might need the bathroom without warning, I might experience gas with discharge, oily spotting, fatty stools with an orange coloration, and an inability to control my bowels but hell, I sure wouldn't have to control my sugar budget!

Having relieved herself of this wisdom (and heaven knows what else) she tells me to get a good night's sleep, as lack of sleep is considered to be a factor in the current obesity epidemic in the United States.

I
think
this is a joke, but the eerie possibility that it might be true keeps me bolt awake till morning. Despite feeling like molten lead has been poured in my ear during the night, when the alarm shrills, I'm pleased to get up. I conclude it's good to
have options—isn't that what democracy is all about—but that fat blockers are for people devoid of willpower. I have enough challenges, I don't wish to welcome orange pooh to the fray.

Besides. Today I keep my promise to Babs. I will eat enough to keep my hair on. Hence the alarm call. I faff around getting dressed, delaying the point at which I have to sit down at the table. I set out my plate, my Caffeine Queen mug, and remove a slice of bread from the freezer.

“Even one piece of toast is better than crispbread,” Babs said yesterday. “Crispbread is bulked-up air, there's nothing to it.”

Funnily enough, this didn't put me off it. But “whole-grain bread is busting with hair vitamins” encouraged me to make the leap. A scrape of butter. A scrape of Marmite. I eat as slowly as a snail with its jaw wired, but I eat.

My heart bops all the while and I feel my stomach recoil at the assault. Chew. Chew. Chew. Chew. Swallow. The toast sticks dryly in my throat, and scratches on the way down. I sip water but the pain remains. My weak, useless hair. Other women lose weight and
their
hair doesn't fall out. Typical. I even fail at dieting. My eyes start to prickle and I feel heavy, like a sodden wash-cloth. I stare into the mud of my thick black coffee. The cheat's laxative. I drink it, and a wispy blond hair falls onto the table's white surface. I've got nowhere to go today, why did I even get up? Suddenly I am pulling yanking tearing at my hair, panting, vicious, ouch, impotence.

I unclench my fists and inspect them, listlessly. Eleven hairs. Oh genius, Natalie. The kitchen scissors are in the drawer, why not hack off the rest? I speed to the bathroom mirror to inspect the damage, carefully lifting and parting sections of my hair, like a chimpanzee hunting for nits. I blur my vision to avoid sight of my blotchy face so, not surprisingly, I don't spot any bald patches.

“You gibbon,” I tell myself. Then I step on the scales. Exactly the same. I try not to smile, but the satisfaction ripples through me. I smooth my jumper, splash my burning cheeks with cool
water, destroy all evidence of my bizzarre autotussle—I must have looked like a woman with a bee in her ear—and walk to the news agent. Before the postman can disappoint me.

Hair, hair, glorious hair, I think, squeezing my knuckles. I am still breathing hard, like a claustrophobic spelunker. At least I don't have to suffer the tube—all those other women, bouncing glossy shampoo ads the lot of them, all grinning like death masks in smug expectation of the fat bouquets that await them at the office. (Rigorously trained men
always
send their bouquets to the office, there's no point otherwise.) I need to speak to Babs, I need to be reassured. She'll be home from her shift at 9:30-ish. The toast sits inside me like a lump of metal. I feel dragged forward by it, my belly—ugh, vile
swelly
word—has become a bowling ball. To accommodate its bulk I need to walk with a stoop.

I buy
The Telegraph
—Julietta smiles mournfully from the front page—and a new pen. I wander aimlessly up and down Primrose Hill High Street for an hour, trying to enjoy the freedom of fecklessness, then slouch home again. That heartless postman hasn't delivered my mail. I'm wondering whether to call the sorting office, when my phone rings.

“Natalie? Frannie.”

I jump and hold the phone like a rotting banana, between a finger and thumb, a safe distance from my ear.

“Frannie,” I croak, “how are things? How did you know—”

“They said you no longer worked at the GL Ballet. I presume you left of your own accord?”

“Of course!”

“I'm stunned. I didn't think you had it in you.”

I am tempted to bang my head against the wall in case I'm dreaming. Backhanded, yes, barbed, undoubtedly, but was that…a
compliment
?

“So, Natalie. What are you wearing for Babs and Si's dinner party tomorrow?”

What?
That burst of humanity was brief. First, what I wear has as much relevance to Frannie as it does to an Albanian refugee. Second, Frannie regards appearance queries as demeaning to both parties (in the same way that she objects to women who claim a dependency on chocolate: “Men like it as much and eat more of it than women, they just don't make such a big deal of it!”). And third, Frannie would join the
Baywatch
fan club before asking my advice on, say, any subject in the universe.

Babs and Simon are having a party and I am not invited! The thoughts stampede. Did Frannie ask who else was coming? Or did Babs tell Frannie to keep it secret? Did Babs forget to ask me? Did Simon ask her not to? Was it because Babs objects to Chris? And why am I left out when I bit the frigging bullet and asked her big smug brother to stay in my flat? Is
he
invited? Did I offend her yesterday? How can I answer Frannie's question without conceding match point?

“I'm, I'm busy tomorrow night unfortunately, so I won't be going,” I mumble.

“Oh! Weren't you invited then?”

I grit my teeth. Frannie's sort are incredible: if you have a weakness, they'll tweak it.

“Natalie,” she adds, “you do
know
why you weren't invited?”

“N-n-no.”

“Because you wouldn't eat anything.”

My lips gum together in shock. Babs…Babs wouldn't tell Frannie about yesterday…would she?

“I…I don't know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do,” cries Frannie, “you know full well!”

I can't stop myself. “W-what did Babs tell you?” I stammer.

“That's not for me to say,” replies Frannie.
Thags nok for me to say
. I want to rip her self-righteous head off. Hers and Barbara's. The traitor.

“I am fine,” I say in a small voice. “I do eat.”

“Well, if you do, the news hasn't reached your hips. If you ask
me, it's high time you pulled yourself together—it's criminal, behaving like that when people in Africa and parts of Manchester are starving!”

“I—”

“You know the other reason you weren't invited?”

“No.”

“Your resentment of Simon is palpable and embarrassing. The trouble with you is, someone always has to be number one. You've got to learn, Natalie, not everyone is a threat to your position. You've also got to learn that sulking is for children.”

The receiver wobbles in my hand. I'd like to snap back with such verbal wit and ferocity that Frannie would be tongue-tied and mortified until her dying day. Sadly, my creative mind is a desert, its heat-parched earth cracking with creeping desperate weeds and the odd shiny beetle. In other words, the old witch puts the phone down on me before I've thought of anything.

“THE VAGINA,” SAID MY FATHER ONCE, “IS LIKE
an old sock. The heel goes and you darn it, but that doesn't stop something going wrong with the toe. The vagina can be defective in many different areas. You repair one thing, something else develops.”

I feel the same way about friendship. Babs and I struggle to mend our differences, and then she thrusts a secret dinner party into the equation, ripping a large hole in it. I feel the urge to get out of the flat again. Anyhow, I need to buy a book on downsizing. I march along the road, and fantasize about dropping in on the night in question—“Hello, Babs, I was just passing, thought I'd say hello, oh! Fee fi fo fum, I see you've got company, I'll go
then, shall I, no, no, don't worry about me, I've got a nice lumpy bowl of gruel, some delicious tap water, and the dog to talk to”—I'll hire Paws, okay?—“I'll be fine…”

That would be acceptable, wouldn't it? It's only sulking if you don't talk! Oh god, I've been branded a sulker! And everyone knows I resent Simon. But then Frannie is hardly impartial. Reassuring me that no one is a threat to my position, when she's diligently threatened my position for the last sixteen years! As for complaining that someone always has to be number one with me—I don't deny it! Someone
does
have to be number one, and I want it to be me! What's the point in being second best? That's failure.

Hang on, I've just lost my job.
That's
failure. I browse along the bookshelves, and pounce on
Downshifting: The Guide to Happier, Simpler Living
. Probably the first copy ever sold around here. I reject
Easy Ways to Make Money
as I don't wish to look too desperate in front of the sales staff, who are worryingly friendly. I waste twenty-five pounds on house porn,
100 Luxury Interiors
, to put them off the scent. It might impress Andy—he's my lodger, as of Sunday! This cheers me enough to admit that I do
half
understand why I'm not first on Babs' dinner party guest list. I haven't exactly welcomed Simon to my bosom (it hardly seems appropriate). And the last time they invited me round, didn't I sit there toying with my food like a petulant child?

This puts me in a mood again. I can't get away from the feeling that everyone is trying to make me fat. I do my best to deflect it—I'm always urging other people to eat. Once I fed Paws a whole pack of chocolate digestives, purely for the pleasure of abstaining while another creature put on weight. (Although he was subsequently sick in the GL Ballet lift.) My other gripe is that Chris hasn't rung. February 14 and not a sausage! Not that I
want
a sausage—it's hardly a romantic gift—but he might have sent a card. But perhaps this is his way of showing he likes me? If only I was better at deciphering the code.

I unlock the front door, plod into the kitchen, and stare.
There on the white table, stunning the room's quiet color scheme, is a small terra-cotta pot of passionate purple blooms. I unpick the envelope stapled to the cellophane and open it. A trip to Paris? The message reads, “Dear, at least give the Pipkins a call! I've put some food in your fridge for the weekend—shop bought, forgive me, it's been crazy at the office this week—you'll have to tell me what Andy likes! I'm at bridge tonight, but I'll call you tomorrow. Mum.”

I slump, and—it would be childish not to—tenderly water the flowers. Then I about-face and yank open the fridge. The squash of produce makes me giddy. Tuna and sweet corn, salmon and cream cheese in dinky pots, smoked salmon, crab pâté, sushi—good lord, the sea must be an empty tank!—pasta filled with asparagus, spaghetti, four-cheese pasta, ricotta and spinach pasta, cheese and sun-dried tomato pasta—wheat allergy, anyone?—a pineapple, two mangoes, green pesto, red pesto, fresh tomato sauce, cottage cheese, mushrooms, onions, minced beef, pepperoni pizza, and four squat cans of M&S lager—oh my goodness, Man Food!

I shut the door and back away. Normally at this point, I take a large rubbish bag from the second left-hand drawer and, methodically, throw every morsel into the bin. I want to scrub the fridge clean, I itch to get the food out of the flat, away from me. I can't see it but its malign presence infests me like the smell of a decaying corpse. I squeeze my hands into fists, digging my nails hard into my palms until the pain relocates.
I'll
get out of the flat. For the third time this morning. I walk to the video shop, puff puff puff, choose three films suitable for today's theme, and walk home again.

Now I have a plan.

I imprison all the food in the freezer except for the fruit, the spaghetti, and the fresh tomato sauce, which I place in an orderly line on the side. Then I vacuum Andy's room, boil some water in my Porsche kettle for a peppermint tea, sit on my
Heals suede sofa, put
The Nutcracker Suite
on my Nakamichi Soundspace 8 stereo, light a Diptyque scented candle, and read
Downshifting: The Guide to Happier, Simpler Living
. It's very informative. I
could
save money on salon facials by staying at home and rubbing my face vigorously with a warm flannel. As for approaching the council to register my interest in an allotment—Primrose Hill is a big park: they could easily afford to cordon off a small plot.

I jot down the address of Original Organics Ltd., in case things get really desperate and I need to buy a wormery. Then I stick the first part of my Valentine's entertainment in the video.
Full Metal Jacket
.

I take a half-hour break for dinner—a half bowl of spaghetti cooked with no oil, with a tablespoon of fresh tomato sauce on the side to add in. I slice the pasta into a neat crisscross of cubes, and slowly, grimly force it down. Four hundred calories, approx. Another hundred for the mango. The numbers reassure me, but the process bores me. I don't like eating. It's so dull. Nothing even
tastes
. It's a chore. I want to do a Joan Collins—divide the food on the plate in two and leave half—but each concession to abstinence sees a hair loosening its grip on my scalp. Babs better be grateful.

I squeeze down the last slither of spaghetti—hoping each strand makes its way directly to a head follicle—and wash the bowl and saucepan until they shine. Then I spend the dying hours of the day watching
Thin Red Line
and the full extended director's cut of
Das Boot
.

 

I
wake up purged by gunfire and go straight to the gym. London is subdued at eight on a Saturday and I pelt along the roads feeling superior to its slothful population. I bounce into the gym, beeline for the running machine, and soon the bliss of emotional stasis descends. Thump thump. Will Alex be here? Thump thump. Are there Pilates classes on the weekend?
Thump thump. It would be nice to see her again. Thump thump. But you don't know her that well. Thump. Inappropriate desire to access other people's lives. Thump. Not receiving you, over.

I shower at home—in communal changing rooms women gawk at me and I feel like Gretel being sized up for the pot. And I've stopped taking baths because I hate the sight of all that floating hair. I'd heave myself out of the water and strands would coat me like a web, their sly insect tickle telling the repellent truth. In the shower, they fall, are washed away, and I wallow in ignorance. I pump the dregs of conditioner from its bottle and console myself that if Chris and I are over, at least I'll save on grooming products. I leave my hair to dry naturally—I don't want my remaining locks burned off by the hair dryer. My elaborate precautions let me believe that hardly a hair has been lost.

I've run long enough to eat breakfast. Brown toast. Marmite. Coffee. The same as yesterday. My new regime and I won't deviate. I don't like surprises. As I work on the toast I add and subtract—calories gained, calories spent, eating it on, running it off—the sabotage is involuntary. I should gain weight but as Liz Hurley once said, if I was as fat as Marilyn Monroe I'd kill myself. What do people do, who don't think of food? Their lives must be gaping holes, chasms of nothingness punctuated by random meals. What would I think about, if I didn't think of food? I'd think the unthinkable. So food is what I think of. I gnaw the toast and do my sums. I leave a square, I need to. I pick a crumb off the floor and catch myself. If Chris saw me doing that! I throw the crumb back on the floor and put my plate and cup in the sink and think of Babs. Just once leave the fucking washing up! Well, I will. I'll leave it until tomorrow. Or until this evening (no need to go mad). I feel this breakthrough gives me a valid reason to ring Babs. Anyway, I was thinking of asking her to come round while Andy moves in. I can't help it if
she feels guilty at my hospitality in the face of her nonhospitality, can I?

“Party on,” murmurs Babs, when I tell her about the washing up, making me feel foolish.

“Would you and Simon like to come round for tea tomorrow, while Andy moves in? Simon's invited too, obviously,” I add, so my generosity is not misunderstood.

“What a nice idea,” she replies. “I'll see if he's free.” There is no trace of surprise or guilt in her voice. In fact, she sounds sunny, playful, carefree. Probably she's just had sex. I want to ask, “So what are you up to tonight?” but I'm too much of a coward. Instead I say gruffly, “I've been trying to eat more, like you said.”

“Have you? I'm pleased.”

I wait for more praise but there is none. I can't believe it. It's like the love of your life announcing himself as a one-night stand the following morning. But what about our deep and meaningful talk? Me baring my soul and my underwear? All that and now this! No reassurance, no well done? I need
feedback
(my sort of nourishment). It's enough to drive me to my mother. I am cooking up a suitably cool retort, when Babs chirrups, “All right then, Nat, have a nice evening, we'll see you tomorrow,” and rings off. I stare at the receiver and consider being more spontaneous.

 

S
unday afternoon, the pinnacle of a bland weekend. I am bleaching the toilet bowl for the third time when the doorbell rings. Ten to three. Andy. He's early, which is better than late. I fret when people are late. I bare my teeth in the mirror, rip off my apron, hang it on its hook, and pull open the front door.

“Wotcha,” says Chris. He leans against the door frame, all harsh cheekbones and sharp edges. Dark eyes, red lips, sent from hell.

Oh, go away, is what I should say but my common sense short-circuits. I might as well press “defrost” and crawl into the microwave. He has the same effect on me.

“I bought you something,” he mumbles, handing me a white plastic bag. “I was busy Friday.”

A present. He bought me a present! The greatest gift of all! I open the bag. A CD. “The Offspring,” I say. “Wow,” I simper, not daring to admit I've never heard of them. “Thank you.”

Chris smiles. “They're Yanks. They're great. Blue Fiend are very, er, inspired by them.”

He trips into the living room. I watch him approach my CD player in his complicated trainers and loose jeans. Why do I find it endearing that the man has no arse?

“You know,” I say, nervously, “my lodger is moving in, in one minute.” I brace myself for fuss but Chris nods and says, “Yeah, I know, princess, you said.” He grins. I grin back, but even as I do so, I feel like a tourist smiling at a time-share salesman. Just me is not enough. What does he
want
?

“So, what have you been up to?” I say.

Chris grins again. I've never seen him smile this much. Unless a scowl is imminent, his image will soon be toast.

“This and that,” he replies, lifting my hair and licking my neck.

“Euw!” I say, breathing in the smoky scent of him, and trying not to wilt. Suddenly he hoists me over his spindly shoulder and hauls me, gasping and flapping like a fish on a line, into my bedroom.

“Chris,” I bleat, “we can't, Babs and Andy'll be here in a sec—”

He answers me with a kiss. I watch his pale slender hands travel over my gray top, under it, tracing cold patterns on my colder skin. I lie there passive. He kisses me again, his eyes wide, pupils huge and needy. And I give in. It's not so much the physical release, which feels like a dream, lifting me out of myself. I
love it but I distrust it. What I crave is to be desired. It empowers me (if only for ten minutes). As for desiring, the doing is fun, the feeling alarms me. When Andy rings the door, I'm in the throes of living dangerously.

Chris lights a cigarette, and watches me, amused, as I leap from the bed and dress in a blur. I restrain my hair in a pert ponytail, pat my face to eradicate all X-rated traces, and wipe the sin off my lips.

“How do I look?” I ask.

“Postcoital,” he replies smugly.

The doorbell shrills again.

“I'm coming!” I shout.

“Again?” drawls Chris.

I beam, rush to the bathroom, squirt a blob of toothpaste into my mouth, and bound to the door. My new lodger is standing there in jeans and a T-shirt, clutching a bag of wires.

“Hi!” I cry, blushing to the hilt. “Sorry, I was tidying up.”

Andy smiles the curt smile of someone who dislikes to be kept waiting.

“Not for me, I hope,” he says.

“Only partly,” I reply, and his smile gains warmth.

Andy glances beyond me and I turn, as Chris pads toward us, barefoot and tousle-haired. I sigh inwardly. He might as well bowl up naked with the words “Just Been Shagging” scrawled on his forehead.

“Um, Chris is here, you've met, haven't you?” I bleat.

Chris nods tersely, sucks on his cigarette, and extends an unfriendly hand.

“All right,” says Andy, and I sense the unspoken words, You wanker, fogging the air.

I am reminded of two tomcats fluffing up their tails, so it's a relief to spy Babs bounding up the stairs, two at a time.