Her cheeks wobbled with each energetic jolt and her breasts were hoisted up and down with each step as she lunged down and up in laborious repetitions until she could cope no longer. The sweat rolled from her forehead, trickling down her temples and Roni wiped it away with a starched white towel leaving traces of foundation smeared against it.
She stepped down from the high-tech piece of equipment to be met with wall-to-wall mirrors which spanned the entire circumference of the room. She hadn’t noticed them during her workout, the large built-in monitor was as much as she could see in front of her and it suited her perfectly. She loved watching Jeremy Kyle and today’s story had her hooked as three teenagers sat waiting for the DNA results to come through in order to determine which one of them was the father to baby Rhianna.
The sprung, grey floor was decked with an impressive collection of hand-weights which rested against thick wooden skirting boards and a huge red gym ball stood next to them. A line of padded floormats separated the cardio equipment from the muscle-toning aids and hand-weights and Roni stepped across them, entering into a whole new world of exercising. One that she much preferred – lying down.
As her feeble body crashed on to the mat, Roni dared herself to look in the direction of the mirror. She couldn’t look too bad – she was lying down sucking her abdominals in hard, a move which Kath taught her called the vacuum. The first thing she saw was her double chin. She flinched and turned away fast. Roni dared herself to take a second glance, her eyes creeping down towards her thick waist – if you could call it a waist – her midriff was expansive and lacked definition. She stopped at her generous thighs which almost looked swollen from the knees up. She felt repulsed.
Roni pushed herself to her feet and stood sideways. Perhaps she preferred her figure this way, she was certainly more narrow side on than she was head on, but still she felt as though she was six months pregnant. Was it any wonder that they gawped at Helena in her swimsuit yet gasped after she herself removed her robe. Of course, she knew that they were gasping at the identical clothing herself and Helena wore, but Roni suddenly imagined that her body had also made them feel ill, so soon after eating. It made her feel ill just looking at herself.
She ran through the gym into the massive hallway which led to all the major rooms downstairs. She practically launched herself at the Sheraton sideboard, grabbing the telephone desperately.
“Come on!” she shrieked as yet another mirror captured her reflection, throwing back her identical twin and one that was no thinner than she.
“Answer!”
The hall was awash with flowers from friends and neighbours and the scent of freesias floated in the air.
Kath paused before answering the phone. It might be from his side and she hadn’t seen nor spoken to them since Neil was born. They had cast her aside like vermin and yet now the phone had been ringing as though nothing had happened as they delivered up-to-date news.
She picked up the handset slowly.
“Hello?”
“Kath,” Roni barked, “have you seen the state of me? I mean, you’re a personal trainer – how the hell could you have let me get into this state? I look like I’m about to give birth . . . why didn’t you tell me I looked as bad as this?”
Kath was stunned. Whatever she had been expecting, it certainly hadn’t been an irate Roni. “What are you talking about, Roni? Calm down a little, love.”
“My figure – if you could call it that – my body – it’s a mess, Kath. Only because the gym is bloody-well covered with mirrors did I manage to get a good old look at myself, a three-hundred-and-sixty degree look at myself . . . and I look . . . I look . . . hideous!”
Kath suppressed her amusement as she re-arranged a vase of long-stemmed lillies, careful not to get too close to the pollen. Hard as she’d tried, she couldn’t remove the make-up stain from her bell-sleeved top and she knew she had to try harder to look after her clothes, because replacing them before they practically decayed was just sacrilege. Also, it was rare for Kath to pay full price for any clothing but this purchase was definitely not on the reduced rail.
“Roni, firstly, stop being so hysterical. Secondly, you don’t look hideous.”
Kath stopped what she was doing to think. She could lie to Roni or she could tell her the truth. It really was that easy.
“You could do with a little work, Roni, I won’t lie to you, but it’s nothing that can’t be put right with a bit of effort.”
Kath wandered into the living room, plonking herself down on the brown sofa. A wad of multicoloured cushions supported her back and she allowed them to take her weight.
“You’re not particularly big, Roni, a fourteen isn’t big but because you don’t have height in your favour it means you can’t carry it off as well as others can. I’m afraid that five-feet-two gives you nowhere to hide.”
“You mean I am a fat poison dwarf!” Roni blurted out.
Kath’s eyes blinked with tiredness as she observed the sympathy cards on the slate hearth. Her friends had been rallying around both of them and she was touched by their individual acts of generosity. She could choose her friends but she couldn’t choose her family. And she had chosen her friends well – even Roni.
“Roni, we are about to bury a poison dwarf.” Kath swallowed hard. “Trust me, you are not one of them. Listen to me now, Roni . . .” She spoke from the heart. “Your kids love you, Pete adores you and we all think the world of you –”
“Except Sophie,” Roni scoffed bitterly.
“In fairness, Ron, Sophie doesn’t like many people.”
“True.”
Unbeknownst to Roni, Kath’s eyes had welled with tears, but they were tears of frustration. Twenty years of pent-up emotion was ready to spill out, bile and all. But Kath would be damned if she would shed a tear for that old cow. She believed in life after death and if Elizabeth was watching her now she would never give her the satisfaction.
“And anyway, Sophie does like you but she also likes to wind you up, but that’s beside the point, Roni. I’m trying to tell you to put your life into perspective.”
Kath stood up and left the room. She couldn’t bear the hypocrisy which came with the messages of sympathy – they were everywhere she turned – and the witch was dead. Soon she would be buried.
“It’s a bit of excess weight, Roni, you’re not lying dead in a box waiting to be buried nor are you dying with a terminal illness. We can fix it between us but, please, trust me when I say that the more relaxed you are over it the easier it will be to shift the weight.”
Roni took in the words from her friend. They were spoken with uncharacteristic tenseness. Kath was usually in a constant state of relaxation and Roni felt bad for lashing out at her. No-one forced her to indulge in rich foods and fine wines, did they?
“You’re right, Kath,” Roni answered curtly. “I’ll pay you double. When can you start?”
“Let me get this funeral out of the way first. Okay?”
Helena recognised the face as the old lady hobbled towards her, sticks first and body last. She panted heavily as each stick was lifted in turn and planted down again in a bid to shuffle forward at a snail’s pace. Her distorted legs bore the brunt of too much weight and her face twisted with pain.
Helena rushed forward, holding out her arm.
“Here, let me help you,” she offered kindly. The sympathy tone wasn’t there but that was because Helena knew the elderly didn’t want sympathy. They simply wanted to be treated the same as everybody else.
The lady took in Helena’s slight frame and chortled.
“I’m not sure you could take the weight, my love.”
“I could always sit you on my chair and wheel you in.” Helena giggled at the prospect of it. The elderly rebelling in a banking hall the size of a football pitch, whizzing past at breakneck speed. “I could play skittles with you on the chair,” she teased. “See how many people you could knock down.”
“Sounds good to me. I’d certainly like to take down som
e of those high falutin’ banking people . . . you know, them ones at the top.”
Helena knew it would be wrong to involve herself in that conversation. She tried to keep her face as impassive as possible. “No comment.” The corners of her mouth twitched when she spoke the words which were counter to her real opinions on ‘them’ types.
As they chatted, the area between the main entrance and Helena’s desk was covered in no time and Helena had parked the lady comfortably, resting her walking sticks on the desk to the side of her.
The old lady untied the knot beneath her chin, removing the transparent rainhood. Her hair was wrapped tightly around a set of blue rollers, gripped into place by long steel pins.
Helena watched smiling as the rainhood was placed over the handle of one of her walking sticks.
“What can I do for you, Mrs . . .” Helena paused vacantly. Her mind had gone blank.
“Patterson.”
“That’s right. I’m so sorry, Mrs Patterson. I knew I recognised you but your hair is different from the last time I saw you.”
“It shouldn’t be . . . it . . .” Her hand shot to her head and she shrieked with embarassment. “I forgot to take my rollers out!”
She grabbed the rainhood, thrusting her head back into it, wincing with pain as her heavy-handedness caused the sharpness of the rollers to impale her scalp further.
“Oouch!”
“It’s hard work being a woman, isn’t it?” Helena observed. “Beauty is pain, or so my friend tells me. She’s a hairdresser.”
“You’re right, love, you’ve got the beauty and I’m in pain!”
They laughed harmoniously.
Helena had such a way with the more mature customers of the bank, but it seemed she had yet to serve a client under the age of sixty. Not that it bothered her; she loved the stories they told, their brazen out-spokenness which she guessed came with age, and the joie de vivre which many of them had in abundance.
“What can I do you for today then, Mrs Patterson?”
Helena waited as the lady delved deep into her oversized tatty bag smeared with stains. She littered the desk with hairbrushes, coin bags and photographs of young children – presumably her grandchildren – until she eventually found what she was looking for.
“It’s this, my love.” She opened a red passbook, holding it out for Helena to see. “The last time I came in I got some cash out but it seems the money has been taken out twice.”
Helena took the book from her hands, scanning it.
“That shouldn’t have happened.”
She saw the two lines identically printed across both pages of the passbook: 15/4/2011: £500.00.00 . . . Balance £69,753.98. The line below was an exact replica bar the remaining balance of £69,253.98.
Helena pushed back her chair, holding onto the red book.
“Give me a minute, Mrs Patterson, and I’ll check out withdrawal slips, see what you signed for.”
“Thank you, love.”
“No worries.”
Roni realised she hadn’t even bothered to send her friends a card to acknowledge their bereavement. But she knew that Kath hated her mother-in-law with a vengence and that it was thanks to her Tai Chi and Yoga that she had managed to meditate her way through life in peaceful accord. Still, she would need to do something.
Showered and dressed, she took the time to apply her make-up, starting with foundation. Next she applied a two-tone soft pink to her eyelids starting with the lighter colour which she dusted into the corner of her eyes before using the darker shade on the outer lids, sweeping it out for a smoky effect, just as she had been taught at the Estée Lauder counter. Roni was also a fan of Benefit make-up but she forced her daughters to buy this for her, convinced she was too old to be seen at the high-fashion concession desk.
After her conversation with Kath, Roni had taken her advice and put towels over all the mirrors. Not in the gym, however – that would be an impossible task. Roni had recognised that her impatience would be detrimental to her efforts if she didn’t find a way to alleviate how she felt about herself physically. Mentally, she was still work in progress. The answer had been easy.
‘Don’t look at yourself,’ Kath had advised her. ‘Not until you start to feel better about yourself will you look better . . . through your own eyes, Roni . . . it’s what you see that counts.’
Roni had already seen something she liked through her own eyes – the unveiling of her new self, Karl proudly standing behind her, beaming at his work of art. Roni’s heart beat in double time as she imagined how good she would feel when all of her was new. It would be like looking at a total stranger. Aesthetically, she could get there through Kath’s help and with regular visits to Karl but inwardly she still had a lot of work to do.
She looked around her, wondering what Peter would say on his return from work. The place did look rather odd. Her en-suite mirror was draped with a lemon-coloured, bath-sized towel and the antique white cheval mirror in her bedroom had been especially selected to receive first-class attention with its pale-blue shade matching the coolness of her duck-egg-blue bedroom. She felt better already but there was something she needed to do before she forgot. The rest of the towels would need to be hung later.
“You’re sacked.”
“Who is this?”
“This is Veronica Smyth of The Tudors.”
Roni didn’t take any messing and she certainly didn’t expect her staff – part-time as they were – to mess around between the sheets with her friend.
“I said you are fired, Rafi. I hired you as a bartender not as a male prostitute,” she snarled. “I’ll post any monies owed along with your cocktail book.”
“Prostitute? Hang on a minute, Mrs Smyth,” he begged. “She was the one who accosted me. I barely stood a chance . . . it wasn’t my fault!”
“Not my problem any more, Rafi.”
“But . . .”
Roni hung up. She could cope with a little flirting, isn’t that what bartenders did? It was part of their job to be charming, but on this occasion it seemed he had literally charmed the pants off Sophie Kane. Or she him. Roni didn’t care who had instigated it but she knew that if he could sleep with one of her friends, he could not be trusted. Sophie she’d never trusted anyway, yet she still referred to her as a friend.
Roni stopped dead as a thought passed through her mind. Who was it that she was cross at? A young man full of testosterone or a middle-aged married woman who had initiated a kiss with a man far younger in years than Rafi? Roni felt vile about her double standards.
She had cancelled this week’s lesson, replacing it with an excuse which Darren had the sense not to question, but come next week she would have no choice but to be back in that pool beside him.
The holiday brochures had been pored over by Peter and her side of the deal was that she should be able to swim, even just a little, to take the weight off his concerns. ‘I can’t relax when we go away, babe – it’s like when the girls were little again. I feel like I have to watch you constantly and I work so hard, love, that I want to relax when I’m away from work. Shut down.’
Roni was feeling the pressure from every direction. Peter was not letting up, Sophie would be furious with her when she discovered Rafi had been fired, no doubting hitting back with spiteful revenge, and Darren, well, he was on her mind far more than she cared to admit. Each time she thought of him she drooled with bloodythirsty lust.
Helena sank back into her seat.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting, Mrs Patterson.”
She handed two slips of paper to her.
“Is that your signature?” Helena asked her.
The elderly lady looked down at the crisp white pieces of paper filled with pre-printed red boxes and her messy signature scrawled identically on both sheets.
She nodded, frowing intensely.
“It is indeed mine . . . and it’s not easily forged as you can see.” She managed a grin. “I can’t imagine why I took it out twice though a
nd I certainly don’t remember spending it.” She scratched the front of her hairline, flinching as she accidentally tugged on a roller. “Well, I guess if I can come out with rollers on my head, I’m going to have to admit to losing my faculties.” She continued staring at the bank slips until Helena withdrew them, shuffling them neatly, stapling them together for filing a second time.
“It happens to the best of us, Mrs Patterson.” Helena stood to assist her to the exit. “Now go home and take those rollers out before your head explodes with pain.”
Sophie slipped her hand beneath the duvet while he was still sleeping. She could think of no better way for him to wake up than with a massive hard-on with her skilled hands wrapped around it. He had been an extremely giving lover and it was rare for Sophie to invite anyone back to her apartment, but Rafi was one of Roni’s employees, now an ex-employee, and if the Symths had trusted him in their home then so would she trust him.
Sophie gritted her teeth as she considered how to get back at Roni for firing Rafi. She would make her pay for it.
Rafi stirred from his sleep, groaning with pleasure as Sophie’s hand slid up and down his more than average-sized erection. He flung back the bedclothes, grabbing her, forcing her on top of him so he could enjoy the view thus intensifying his orgasm when it came.
Sophie rocked back and forth, whimpering as his fingers flicked expertly against her clitoris and she came quickly with an explosive burst which sent her into a frenzied howl. She knew it would wake Helena but she couldn’t help it. Her body had succumbed to his touch and she had become lost in the moment.
Rafi continued to rock her, holding back to extend his pleasure until Sophie’s phone shrilled from somewhere around the clothes-littered bedroom.
“Don’t answer it,” he panted. “I’m nearly there.”
Jude stood staring at the shutters of the new salon. She couldn’t move a muscle. Her feet were glued to the floor and her mouth had dried up like nothing she had known before.
It was only 7.30a.m. and thankfully few people were about but Jude knew that in half an hour or so the street would be busy with hurried workers and passing cars and yet she had absolutely no idea what to do.
Some Like it Hot Page 24
