How to Get the Body You Want by Peony Pinker

by Jenny Alexander

  Jess told us her five facts and then we got to talking about the best picnics we’d ever been on. Jess and me realised we’d only ever had picnics in the summertime, and usually on the beach.

  ‘My best one was on Hawk’s Tor with hailstones as big as marbles bouncing off the rocks,’ said Toby.

  ‘But what about the time we rowed out to that little island?’ Leah said.

  ‘Or when we cycled across the fens and saw all those swans,’ said their dad.

  ‘I’ve never done anything like that,’ said Jess.

  Toby’s mum said they were going up Snowdon in the Easter holidays. It was the highest mountain in England and Wales.

  ‘Why don’t you two come too?’

  ‘We’re going to get a tepee tent,’ said Leah. ‘There’ll be lots of room.’

  Jess looked surprised, but then she doesn’t know Toby’s family very well.

  ‘You’re camping – at Easter? Won’t you freeze to death?’

  ‘No, our tepee’s going to have a fire in the middle. It’s going to have a hole for the smoke to go through!’ said Leah.

  I was like a cat with a kipper for the rest of the day. I was soooo excited about going up a mountain and camping in a tepee.

  But when I got home it was like someone snatched that kipper clean away. Mum and Primrose were in the kitchen having a massive row about Primrose refusing to eat her dinner.

  ‘I can hardly do my dress up,’ Primrose yelled. ‘And it’s all your fault!’

  ‘Well, pardon me for slaving over a hot stove day in day out to give you a healthy diet!’ yelled Mum. ‘You’re being stupid! Starving yourself is not the way!’

  Dad appeared, looking for chips and dips. I could hear football commentary from the TV upstairs. It must be half-time.

  ‘Save yourself,’ he muttered to me, as he grabbed his snacks and hot-footed it back up to the living-room.

  I glanced around for Dennis but he must have been hiding somewhere, and anyway I suddenly realised I was too tired to look for him. I hauled myself upstairs and pitched onto the sofa next to Dad.

  I managed one chip before I fell asleep. I dreamt I was walking up a high mountain with Toby and Jess. I was wearing shorts with gazillions of pockets and all those pockets were full of stones. I could hardly lift my feet to put one in front of the other.

  When I woke up I felt more tired than ever. My body seemed to have sunk into the sofa and got stuck. I actually couldn’t move.

  That’s when it came to me – my New Year’s resolution. I had to get a whole lot fitter before Easter. It would be just too terrible if Toby’s mum and dad had to make a stretcher out of their sweatshirts and carry me back down the mountain because I collapsed in a heap half-way to the top and couldn’t get up again!

  Chapter 3

  The family organiser and the four-week plan

  ‘It’s not like you to sleep so late,’ Mum said the next morning, when I got downstairs.

  She and Dad were sticking up the new family organiser on the kitchen wall. Other families have a calendar with pictures of scenery and stuff, and you turn to a new page every month. In our house, we have all the months printed off the web without any pictures, spread out over half a wall.

  Dad says it’s better that way because we can see the whole year at a glance, plus it covers up all the pinholes and cracks, so he doesn’t have to decorate. Mum says it saves arguments because if she gets a nice calendar with gardens, someone (naming no names) is bound to say it isn’t fair and why can’t we have one with Hollyoaks instead?

  They stood back to admire their work. January, February and March were way high because October, November and December had to be out of Dennis’s reach or he would eat them. You can house-train your rabbit to use a litter tray for his pees and poos, but there’s no way you can stop him munching up absolutely anything munchable he can get to.

  ‘What colour smileys would you like this year?’ Mum said.

  I picked gold. We always put our own colour sticker next to the things we’re doing. I put one on my birthday, then pushed a chair up so that I could get to March.

  ‘Ouch!’ I cried, trying to step up onto it. ‘My legs hurt. There must be something wrong with them.’

  Mum laughed.

  ‘You’re just stiff from your walk yesterday.’

  ‘It’ll soon wear off,’ said Dad.

  It didn’t feel as if it would wear off. It felt as if my legs were seizing up and soon I wouldn’t be able to walk at all.

  I put my sticker on the Easter weekend, next to Mum’s drawing of an Easter egg. Then I wrote, ‘Snowdon’ next to it.

  ‘Snowdon?’ goes Mum. ‘What – the big mountain in Wales?’

  ‘Yes. Toby’s family are going to walk up it and they’ve invited me and Jess to go too.’

  ‘Why are they going to walk up it?’ Dad said. ‘There’s a perfectly good train that goes right the way to the top.’

  ‘And where are you going to stay?’ asked Mum. ‘It’s too far to go for a day, you know.’

  I told them Toby’s family were going to get a tepee. Dad said normal people only went camping in the summer, and Mum said we would probably catch pneumonia. I told her about the fire and chimney-hole but she said I must have got my wires crossed. You definitely didn’t get fires and chimney-holes in tents.

  ‘Ouch!’ I stepped back down off the chair. Mum said if walking to Pike’s Bluff had made my legs seize up, maybe climbing Snowdon might be a bit ambitious. Dad said there was plenty of time for me to get fit before Easter.

  ‘Peony can help me test-drive my ideas for the book,’ he said. ‘We can do it together!’

  ‘What?’ goes Primrose, appearing at the bottom of the stairs, rubbing her eyes. ‘Do what together?’

  One of her pyjama legs was ruckled up round her knee and her hair looked as if a hyperactive mouse had been nesting in it. She groaned when she saw the family organiser. She blinked hard and stepped back as if it was an alien spaceship that had burst through our kitchen wall and she couldn’t quite take it in. Talk about a drama queen.

  ‘Sit down and I’ll make you some breakfast,’ Mum said, trying to steer her towards the table.

  ‘I don’t want any breakfast.’

  Dad and me looked at each other. He raised one eyebrow.

  ‘Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,’ said Mum, in her most reasonable, teacher-type voice.

  Primrose dropped down onto a chair and rolled her eyes, as Mum went through all the usual stuff about how crash-dieting could actually make you fat. If you starved yourself, she said, your body thought, ‘Oh, no – times are tough – better lay down as much flab as possible before things get any worse!’ Then every little bit you ate went straight onto your waist.

  She said a bit of seasonal variation was normal. People were always slightly lighter in the summer months and heavier in the winter, so it wasn’t surprising that Primrose’s dress was a little bit tight at the moment.

  ‘Give it a few months and you’ll be back in that dress, no bother!’ said Mum.

  Primrose suddenly woke up like one of those monsters that sleep for hundreds of years until someone disturbs them, and then they go nuts.

  ‘I haven’t got a couple of months!’ she said.

  She jumped up, grabbed a red smiley and jabbed it onto the family organiser at the beginning of February. She snatched the pen out of my hand and wrote, ‘Six-month anniversary’ beside it.

  ‘Four weeks!’ she yelled. ‘That’s how long I’ve got!’

  ‘Well… how about just a bowl of cereal then?’ goes Mum.

  Primrose took a big breath. Dennis dived under his hutch.

  ‘Back me up, Dave,’ said Mum.

  Dad glanced round the room like a hare looking for a hole, but Mum had him in her headlights. There was no escape.

  ‘There’s no harm being a bit plump, Primrose,’ Dad said, tentatively.

  Primrose shook her mouse-nest head, opened her mouth and let out
a wail. Mum put her arms round her and glared at Dad over her head, as if he’d just said something horrible.

  ‘B-but…’ goes Dad. ‘If you did want to lose those few extra pounds, four weeks is plenty of time.’

  A light-bulb look went over his face. ‘That would be a great title for my book! “Four weeks to fitness – how to get the body you want.”’

  Dad said why didn’t Primrose join in with me and him, test-driving his ideas?

  ‘What have you got to lose?’ he said.

  ‘I’ll do it too,’ Mum offered. ‘We could do it as a family.’

  ‘We’ll be Team Pinker!’ goes Dad.

  Primrose frowned and pursed her lips. It was the nearest we were going to get to a yes.

  ‘That’s the spirit!’ said Dad. ‘Now, the first thing we need is personal goals.’

  ‘Does this mean I’ve got to eat?’ said Primrose.

  ‘A sensible diet and healthy exercise,’ Dad said. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll organise everything.’

  Primrose grunted and sat down. Mum poured her some cereal. Dad got back to his goals. Considering one of his favourite mottoes is ‘Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow,’ he seemed surprisingly keen to get started.

  He stuck a gold smiley on the space at the top of the family organiser and asked me what my goal was.

  ‘Well, I want to be super-fit like Toby,’ I said.

  Dad wrote,

  I will be super-fit like Toby

  next to my smiley.

  He stuck a red smiley underneath my gold one and wrote,

  I will fit into that dress

  Next to his own sticker he wrote,

  I will lose one stone

  Mum asked him why he wanted to lose a stone and he said his coach on the Thursday League football team had been on at him before Christmas to lose the paunch or he’d be on the bench.

  He stuck one of Mum’s green stickers under the others.

  ‘I will… join in?’ suggested Mum.

  Once all our personal goals were on the Family Organiser, Dad said he and Primrose should have a weigh-in, so they could see how much they had lost by the end of the four weeks. Mum and me didn’t want to lose weight, but we weighed in too, to keep them company.

  Dad wrote our weights on the family organiser beside our goals. Of course, we all knew it was a game really. Stickers and goals and weigh-ins were easy. There was no way Dad was ever going to follow through with the difficult bit and actually work out a fitness-plan.

  As he likes to say, ‘When the going gets tough, there’s always TV!’

  Chapter 4

  Who are you and what have you done with my dad?

  That afternoon, Dad had to go to a football match, it being Sunday and everything, and when he got home he had to write his report.

  The next day he was at the office. Everyone at the Three Towns Gazette goes in on Mondays because the paper goes to press first thing on Tuesday. It looked as if Dad’s book about getting fit in four weeks was going the way his plans always went: that is, nowhere fast.

  Mum was bored because she didn’t have any gardening jobs to do.

  ‘Sitting around here is as exciting watching slugs hibernate,’ she said.

  Do slugs hibernate? Jess would know. If they do, they couldn’t choose a more peaceful spot than Polgotherick in the winter. Half the shops are closed up, the holiday homes are empty and all the visitors have gone.

  Primrose was in a state because Matt said he couldn’t come over. He told her he had some kind of family thing on, but she was convinced that was just an excuse. The truth was he must have noticed she was turning into a lardy lump and he didn’t want to go out with her any more.

  ‘If he wants to break off with me, he should have the guts to say so!’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure if he did want to break off with you, he would,’ said Mum. ‘Now, why don’t we three girls have a lovely day out?’

  Mum’s idea of a lovely day out is a drive over to the massive garden centre at Crewham Cross to look at the plants. This is actually not quite as bad as it sounds. For a start, there’s a cafe with the best ever apple pie and ice cream, and then there’s the pets’ corner, where you can pick up the rabbits and guinea pigs.

  Primrose isn’t interested in apple pie and guinea pigs but she does like boys, and there always seem to be quite a few of them at Crewham Cross, shifting bags of compost and helping people load up their cars.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ she said. ‘Why not? It isn’t as if there’s anything else to do.’

  By the time Primrose had tried on everything in her wardrobe, done her hair and got made up like a model, Mum and me had had our lunch. Primrose didn’t want any lunch, which meant she got a lecture all the way up the zig-zag path. There aren’t any roads in this part of Polgotherick because the houses were built before cars were invented. You have to park on the top road and walk down.

  ‘Nobody really looks like those models in magazines,’ Mum said. ‘The pictures are digitally altered. If they really had legs that long and thin they wouldn’t be able to stand up on them!’

  ‘Whatever,’ muttered Primrose.

  You can’t let Primrose being a pain and Mum trying to be super-reasonable stop you having a nice time, because if you did you’d be as miserable as a duck in the desert, so I put my earphones in and turned up my iPod till we got there, and then I made straight for the pets’ corner.

  Mum said we should meet in the cafe for tea at four o’clock, which we did, but then Primrose didn’t want any apple pie and Mum had another go, so to be honest by the time we got home, all that trying to have a nice time had worn me down.

  Primrose stomped straight up to her room. I sat on the rug with Dennis. Mum opened the fridge to start making supper. She let out a shriek. All the food had gone and the fridge was crammed full of cardboard boxes.

  ‘Dave!’ she screamed up the stairs. ‘What’s all this stuff in the fridge?’

  Dad came down from his study. He looked very pleased with himself.

  ‘I managed to get to the cash-and-carry on my way home. First part of Mission Fitness accomplished – healthy food!’

  Mum pulled one of the boxes. She held it between her thumb and two fingers, as if she didn’t really want to touch it.

  ‘Eat-lite ready-meal for one,’ she read.

  ‘The rest are in the freezer,’ said Dad. ‘I’ve bought enough for everyone for the whole four weeks.’

  Mum opened her mouth to say something but nothing came out. Dad thought she was speechless with admiration. He flung open the food cupboard. It was choc-a-bloc with boxes too.

  ‘Slimsnax,’ he announced, proudly. ‘In case we get peckish between meals!’

  Mum gave me a look that said, ‘Who is this stranger in our house and what has he done with your dad?’

  I shrugged and shook my head. Search me!

  ‘I can see you’re impressed,’ said Dad. ‘None of you believed me when I said I would work out a fitness plan, but I have!’

  Dad said you had to understand how much he wanted to write his book. He had never wanted anything so much before. This was his big chance and he was not going to mess it up

  Mum finally found her voice. It came out unusually quiet.

  ‘Where is all the proper food?’

  Dad was taken aback.

  ‘This is proper food,’ he said. ‘It’s got all the nutrients you need but half the calories. I dumped the old stuff in the dustbin.’

  Mum took a slow breath.

  ‘How much did this lot set you back?’

  ‘Well, it was a bit expensive… but it’s only for four weeks, isn’t it? And it’ll be worth it when we all end up leaner and fitter.’

  I picked up Dennis and went to get a closer look. The pictures on the boxes looked a squillion times tastier than some of the meals Mum makes, and there was no sign of any of her favourite vegetables such as parsnips, cabbage and beetroot.

  ‘You just pop these in the microwave
and hey presto, perfect dinners every time,’ said Dad. ‘How about that, Jan? A whole month off from cooking.’

  ‘I like cooking,’ said Mum.

  Mum said she needed some air. She opened the back door and went outside. We could see her through the glass, walking round and round the yard like a prisoner plotting a break-out.

  By the time she came indoors again her voice had gone back to normal. She said it had just been a surprise, seeing her fridge full of ready-meals, but she was one hundred per cent behind Dad with writing his book, and she would support him in testing out his ideas.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve done a lot of research about calories and so on,’ she said, not sounding very sure at all.

  ‘Of course,’ said Dad, not sounding very convincing.

  Mum managed to stay positive even when we microwaved four fish-bake dinners and put them out on the plates. Each one was a tiny bit of fish under a thin lid of yellowish mashed potato, with three green beans and a few slices of carrot.

  On the upside, it was the first time in ages that Primrose ate all her dinner, so at least we didn’t end up with the usual huge row. On the downside, I was nearly as hungry when I finished as I had been before I sat down.

  Mr Kaminski popped in like he often does around tea-time. Usually, Mum says, ‘Come in, Mr K, there’s plenty to go round!’ This time she said, ‘We’re just about to have our Eat-lite puddings – would you like me to pop one in the microwave for you?’

  She opened the fridge door to show him all the boxes. Mr Kaminski looked perplexed. Even when Dad explained about the fitness thing, he still didn’t understand. He said you needed proper food if you wanted to get fit. He squinted at the side of the boxes, trying to read the ingredients.

  ‘Mono-diglicerides… what is? Rusk… what for you need rusk in fish bake?’

  ‘It’s only for four weeks,’ said Mum.

  Mr Kaminski shook his head in a you-must-be-crazy kind of way, but he still accepted an Eat-lite Choc Delight, which looked like a scrummy gooey chocolate pudding on the box but turned out to be a dried-up sponge in a tiny pot with no goo in the middle at all.