The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl (25 page)

Unlike last time, I had no tears when he departed, because I was too busy cackling at the sight of that Asda Bag for Life. But I do wonder what will become of the intercontinental star-crossed lovers? There’s only seven months until my visa expires. I’m still bemused and baffled that I even have a boyfriend, let alone thinking about the authoritarian cloud of the Home Office looming over us.

One of my colleagues has lost a hefty slab of weight this year. Grant used to have a sprawling beer belly and quite the collection of chins, but now they’ve melted away.

I’d observed how he’d stopped buying hot chips and greasy curries from the staff canteen. Instead he’d just have soup and oatcakes, chased by a few pieces of fruit. Even more shockingly, he stopped partaking in the Cakes.

We have a lot of cakes at the House of Sport. It’s like the public service morning teas back home, but here you only need the flimsiest excuse—a birthday, the anniversary of your start date in the company, a particularly sunny day—and someone will head to the shops then e-mail the invitation, “Cakes at 3:00
P.M.!”

“Cake” is the umbrella term for anything sweet and gooey—we’ve had doughnuts, cookies, muffins, éclairs, Bakewell tarts and brownies. Sometimes I’m strong but sometimes I’ll get stuck in, if I’m tired or rebellious or just want to feel like one of the boys. Especially when there’s Marks and Spencer’s Caramel Shortcake, which gives Nanny’s recipe a run for the money. But they always go down far too quickly and leave me full of remorse.

Now that Grant’s all svelte, he allows himself a cake now and then. Why do blokes make it seem so simple? During today’s session he undid his belt and paraded around, showing the lads how baggy his trousers had become. I felt a stab of jealousy as I chomped on my shortcake. I wanted my trousers to be falling off! Well, maybe not in front of my colleagues.

I miss the golden days of being a weight loss superhero. I don’t get the double takes and shocked gasps now that my loss is practically nonexistent. Not that my UK friends would ever notice a startling difference, since they never saw me at my heftiest.

At least my Aussie pals are good for my pathetic ego. I got an e-mail from Jenny today—I’d sent her some photos from Russia and she claimed she wouldn’t recognize me in the street now. That sounded a bit optimistic, but I gobbled up the compliment anyway.

I’m such an attention whore lately! I suppose after all those years of hiding behind jokes and baggy clothes, I’m tired of being invisible. I wouldn’t mind getting the occasional once-over. I like to imagine Gareth and I having a night out on the town when a handsome stranger saunters by.

“That bloke is checking you out!” Gareth would say.

“Damn right, buddy!” I’d reply.

There’s a multiple-choice ending:

(a) Gareth punches the guy in the face and says, “Step off pal,
she’s mine!
” But since Gareth is a pacifist who catches spiders in jars instead of mashing them with shoes (maybe that’s just an Australian thing?), the more likely conclusion is:

(b) I suggest Gareth takes me home immediately for hot lovin’ before the handsome devil steals me away.

I have dozens of similar fantasies, but my point is, I want to feel foxier. And I want to be a fat-fighting superhero again! I must remember that the next time the Cakes come out.

Gareth called me on Sunday night from a pay phone near a vineyard somewhere in Beaujolais.

“I just ate coq au vin for dinner,” he confessed. “I’m the world’s most rubbish vegetarian!”

I melted at the sound of his voice. “So are you having fun?” “Shit, yeah! We rode around the Monaco Grand Prix track the other day. I thought I was going so fast but I got overtaken by a chick on a moped!”

“Hee-hee. Is the wine good?”

“Oh aye. You should see this place, Shauna, it’s beautiful. I’ll have to bring you back sometime.”

“How about next summer?” I said boldly. I might as well get the ball rolling vis-à-vis the Future.

“Next summer?” I swear I could hear his smile. “So do you want to stay in Scotland?”

“Of course I do!” My heart was hammering. “Do you want me to stay?”

“Of course I do.” He paused. “But I thought maybe you’d be missing the food back in Australia too much or something.”

“Very funny.”

“Anyway,” he chuckled, “I was calling to see if you want to go out for dinner on Friday. How about Italian?”

A date! Due to budget constraints, we don’t do that kind of thing too often. I spent the week in a frenzy of room cleaning, brow plucking, and nail painting. I even deforested my legs.

Gareth looked so tanned and handsome when he arrived tonight that I went all quiet and bashful. But then he confessed he’d forgotten to make a reservation. The Edinburgh Festivals were in full swing, so when we finally phoned they were booked up!

I’m ashamed to admit that I sulked. I wanted romance! I wanted cheese and garlic! I wanted him to be more bloody organized! I hadn’t seen him for two weeks and then I was away tomorrow for two more and my visa expires in less than seven months, so we should be having romance while it’s still legal.

“So what do you want to do instead?” he asked.

“I dunno,” I said airily. “What do you want to do?”

“I dunno.”

“Well neither do I!”

This went on for half an hour.

He produced two cookies from his backpack. “I bought you these from France; they’re a bit squished up from being in the Bag for Life.” He put them behind his back. “Pick a hand. Brown wrapper is for the dodgy pizza joint, white wrapper for the Indian up the road.”

He looked so ridiculous I couldn’t help laughing. I picked his left hand. Indian.

We walked up the hill to Himalaya. Well, he walked and I stomped.

“You don’t want Indian, do you?” he said.

“I don’t care!”

He smiled.

OK, I was being a brat. I was just so relieved he’d made it back on that motorcycle in one piece, and that meant more to me than a posh dinner.

We had a terrible seat in the restaurant, right next to the coffee machine. Our conversation was punctuated by the constant
ssccchhh
of frothing milk. But my sag aloo was great, the room was cozy, and I loved how happy Gareth looked as he told me about his trip. It felt strange to feel so happy for someone else, to realize how much his happiness meant to me.

I know none of this has anything to do with losing weight. It’s just about realizing what’s really important. Losing weight is quite important to me, but naan bread and a lovely Scotsman rate pretty highly too.

We’re back from the Baltics! Rhiannon and I spent two weeks wandering through beautiful Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. We soaked up unforgettable sights like the Hill of Crosses and Tallinn’s crumbling Old Town, but I must say it was equally magnificent to discover that all three Baltic countries stocked Finnish chocolate. Mmm, Geisha bars.

Since our return we’ve been embroiled in various schemes to stay in Britain. That’s the problem with traveling: the more you do it, the more you want to do it again! I only used to feel this way about chocolate cake, and similarly my eyes have become bigger than my stomach.

But as of next Sunday there’s only six months left on our visas before I can no longer live and work in the UK. And we haven’t even been to Italy! Or Portugal or Turkey or Morocco or Luxembourg.

Rhiannon and I spent four hours poring over the Home Office website. There’s no option to extend our Working Holiday visa, our jobs are too menial to qualify for the Highly Skilled Migrant visa, and we have no British grandparents to get a British Ancestry visa.

“Bloody hell!” screamed Rhiannon. “Why must our ancestors be convict scum?”

I even tried worming my way into a work permit by applying for permanent jobs at both my workplaces, but both attempts were disastrous. It seems work permits are reserved for the likes of brain surgeons and engineers. To get a work permit the employer has to prove that there were no suitable British candidates. Unfortunately, there are British secretaries and phone answerers in abundance. I was naive to believe I was so spectacular that either employer would wade into an expensive pool of red tape just to keep little old me.

Rhiannon is contemplating applying for jobs in London in her old field of Extremely Posh Hotels, as they are more receptive to work permits. But since my career had barely started when I left Oz, I’ve got to be more realistic. My options boil down to:

1. Go back to Australia.

2. Quickie wedding.

Both of these options make me weep.

Number one obviously sucks because I don’t want to go home! I’m not done by a long shot. I’ve still got to eat olives in Spain and frites in Belgium. And above all I don’t want to leave Gareth.

Which brings us to number two. We’ve only just said the L word, how can we be ready for the M word? I know they’re alphabet neighbors, but matrimony is a crazy leap when we haven’t even clocked up a year together. I think back to our bumbling courtship, and it’s quite hilarious to think two lazy, daydreaming bums like us would progress to the next level so soon. Gareth is an easygoing type who likes to let things unfold at their own pace, and I just don’t like anything involving change!

I know we both want to stay together, but I also know we both like things the way they are right now. My visa situation means we could be forced to speed things up because of circumstances beyond our control. The idea of a rushed proposal and a quickie wedding seems so tacky. I just want to talk about music and holidays and what to have for dinner, not about how we’ll divide household chores or whether to put plastic people on top of a wedding cake.

But I guess the most important thing is to have faith that we’ll find the best way to handle this. There’s still six months to decide. And I need to look after myself and get back to the gym after my Baltic break. I can’t think clearly when my jeans are so tight.

I have to tell you the sad and sorry tale of the Nutella. You may recall the brown stuff was one of my favorite binge foods, but I’ve been clean for eight long years.

Unfortunately there was a moment of weakness in Germany. You must understand we’d been eating those vile Russian sausages for a week! Our mouths were full of ulcers and our gums hurt. So when we arrived at the Berlin Youth Hostel and found that not only were their bread rolls not stale, but they provided those darling foil packs of Nutella to spread upon them, I was powerless to resist.

A few weeks later at Chez Gareth I spied a familiar jar in the back of his pantry.

“Is that Nutella?”

“Yep. Do you want some?”

“Oh no. I have a problem with Nutella.”

“How can anyone have a problem with Nutella?”

“Trust me,” I muttered darkly. “It can happen.”

A whole month passed and I was at Chez Gareth again, chatting on the couch with a cup of tea.

“Sooo,” he began, “I went to make a Nutella piece today.”

Piece, I’ve discovered, is a Scots word for sandwich.

“Yeah?” I searched for an innocent tone.

“Yeah. I took the Nutella jar from the shelf and it looked like a normal jar of Nutella; about three-quarters full. But then I opened the lid!”

“Oh?”

“Much to my surprise the jar was nearly empty! Except for a very thin layer of Nutella right around the edges and bottom. Like someone had very carefully excavated the contents, spoon by spoon. They took great pains to make it appear full from the outside, when in fact the lot had been scranned!”

“How ridiculous!”

“I know!” he laughed. “Can you believe that?”

“Maybe you have mice. Some very precise mice!”

“That’s one theory!”

“Yeah! Well!” I bristled. “You shouldn’t eat that stuff anyway. It contains partially hydrogenated oil, don’t you know; and that’s very bad for you. Very very bad.”

I assuaged my guilt by buying him a fresh jar. But another month has gone by and he hasn’t even opened it!

We were watching a movie last night when I finally exploded.

“How come you haven’t opened that Nutella yet?”

“What? Oh, I totally forgot it was there.”

“How could you forget Nutella?”

“Well I dunno. I just did.”

“But haven’t you been thinking about it? Hasn’t it been taunting you?”

“Has it been taunting you?”

“I’m just amazed that it’s still there. Don’t you just crave it?”

“Well, I tend to crave things like chips or cheese. I’m more a savory guy; you’re the sweet tooth in this relationship.”

“Oh, I have a sweet tooth and a savory tooth,” I said. “I’ve got many teeth.”

I don’t know what came over me, tiptoeing into the kitchen while he was in the bath or on the phone and helping myself to a spoonful, week after week, over and over again until it was gone.

I can feel the Old and New Shaunas at war again. The Old Shauna feels the sting of shame and disgust, and annoyance for getting caught. Back in my sneaky prime I’d have replaced the jar before he had a chance to notice!

But the New Shauna looked into that neatly emptied jar and joined in the laughter. Gareth was completely sweet about it, by no means accusing or angry like my parents used to be. Yet I still wonder why I didn’t just eat it in front of him? What am I afraid of?

I had a crisis coffee with Jane and Rory tonight. I’m desperate to talk to Gareth about my doubts re: the Future. But he’s busy preparing for his viva, the torturous ritual in which a panel of academics will grill him about his Ph.D. thesis for hours. So I thought I’d bend my poor friends’ ears instead.

“All I know is that I don’t want this to end,” I said. “We’re SHAG. We’re an acronym! You can’t break up an acronym!”

“Why would you have to break up?” asked Jane.

“Because! I’m going to get deported!”

“There’s no need for that. Why don’t you just get married?” asked Rory.

“Married?” I snorted into my tea. “That’s a bit much.”