Prime Time

by Jane Wenham-Jones

  He stopped by our table, towering over us. He had dark hair and amazing blue eyes. Clara gave him a big smile. ‘This is Laura – a new recruit to the torture chamber. Laura, this is Alfie. And hey! You look like you’ve shifted a few more pounds.’

  He grinned. ‘Can almost touch my toes now. Still can’t see them, mind you.’

  ‘He was a lot bigger before,’ said Clara, as Alfie went off, swinging his kit bag. ‘He really was absolutely vast. The doctors told him it was getting dangerous and there was talk of him having a gastric band fitted but he’s been coming here and he’s on this special diet – one of those awful ones where you drink nasty soups all day. He’s lost about three stone. He’s got another five to go, I think.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ I said. ‘I want to shift ten pounds and that seems hard enough.’

  ‘You don’t even look like you need to lose that much,’ said Clara supportively. She rolled up her sleeves. ‘This is what I need to work on.’ She grasped her upper arm with the other hand and shook it. ‘And this,’ she added, patting her midriff. ‘Just got to stop drinking wine, keep eating this crap –’ she poked the half eaten cereal bar ‘ and keep coming here. Up for it tomorrow?’

  Clara, it turned out, was a radiographer at Margate hospital where she worked shifts. This week, she told me, she was “on lates”, so was coming early each morning when she finished work, before going home to bed.

  ‘It’s supposed to be easier with a gym buddy,’ she said optimistically. ‘If we do half an hour on the treadmill, half an hour on the cross-trainer and then some weights and power plate, it will fall off.’

  ‘I haven’t had my induction session on the power plate yet,’ I said. ‘I suppose I could ask …’

  ‘I’ll show you tomorrow,’ said Clara. ‘And bring your iPod.’

  I’d have to wrestle it off Stanley first, I thought, as I drove home.

  ‘Music is what you need,’ Clara had said. ‘Get your son to put on some good dancing stuff – then you just think of the treadmill as five songs. If they’re four minutes each, that’s twenty minutes gone. And if you get into the beat, it goes in no time.’

  But Stanley was surprisingly amenable to spending his evening on the computer with my credit card and the iPod Nano he and Daniel had bought for me the previous Christmas and that he had used almost exclusively since. Especially when I agreed he could download five songs of his own choice too.

  ‘The new iPhone is so cool,’ he said longingly, between mouse clicks. ‘If I had one of those I could put all my music on it and wouldn’t have to use yours. Can I have one for my birthday?’

  ‘We’ll have to see,’ I said, although I’d already decided he could. I might have come back from the cookery programme with a hamper full of high-class soups and dried truffles instead of hard cash, but the work Mike was piling on me daily would pay for it, and Stanley deserved something lovely.

  I’d already told Daniel I’d stump up for the phone if he paid for the contract each month. To my amazement, he’d agreed without argument – obviously realising that a) it was the least he could do and b) it would save him a shopping trip and give him more time to stay home eating tofu and nutritious seed mix with The Twig instead.

  ‘There you are,’ said my son proudly, handing me the iPod an hour later. ‘I’ve made you a special playlist called Gym Songs for Mum . I’ve put the songs you wanted on, and some other good ones I think you might like. They might be a bit young for you,’ he added doubtfully, ‘but they should be all right to jog to.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m going to be jogging just yet,’ I said. ‘I’m doing fast walking uphill at the moment. But thank you very much.’ I kissed him. ‘I’m going to go every morning this week.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, looking at me cynically. Then he grinned. ‘Bet you don’t.’

  ‘Oh yes, I will!’

  I dropped the corkscrew into a drawer and shut it, taking another sip of my delightfully fat-free water. If Clara had already lost six pounds and the cheery Alfie a whole three stone, then what was stopping me doing it too …

  I didn’t feel quite as enthusiastic as I dragged myself from bed the next morning, and I was positively exhausted after Clara not only put us through our paces on treadmill and cross-trainer but insisted we did five minutes on the more punishing of the two step machines.

  ‘Sadist,’ I gasped as I tottered across the floor to the water fountain.

  ‘Power plate now!’ she said, undeterred. ‘You’ll love this.’

  It was a strange-looking machine shaped like old-fashioned weighing scales with a vibrating platform that you stood on to perform various squats and stretches.

  ‘The idea is,’ said Clara, as if reciting from the brochure, ‘that the vibrations cause your muscles to contract zillions of times a minute and that tones them up. They say ten minutes on here is worth an hour of ordinary press-ups and stuff. Here – try.’

  She pressed the start button on mine and leapt onto the machine next to me. ‘Like this,’ she said, thrusting her backside outwards like a pregnant duck and bending her knees. ‘Feel the vibrations?’ I nodded mutely as I juddered from head to foot. ‘Hold that for a minute and you’ll be toning your buttocks and inner thighs. Or–’ she said wickedly, when we’d come to a merciful halt ‘ you can forget all that and just sit on it. It’s a step up from the washing machine.’

  I buckled gratefully at my weak knees, plonked myself down on the plate, and pressed the repeat button. ‘Mmm – it’s got definite possibilities …’

  We collapsed in giggles.

  ‘Hey, you’re not supposed to be enjoying yourselves.’ Alfie loomed over us, a towel around his shoulders. ‘I daren’t get on that – not sure it would take my weight.’

  I looked at him as he chatted. He was quite good-looking under all the extra flesh. He had a nice face and those lovely bright blue eyes.

  ‘He’s doing ever so well,’ said Clara, as he headed off to other machines. ‘He’s here every morning without fail.’

  And so would I be. I did two more mornings with Clara till her shifts changed and then made myself go alone. She was right about the music. Listening to The Proclaimers declare that they would walk 500 miles, I could stride along quite happily myself on the treadmill, while a spot of Take That was brilliant on the cross-trainer.

  I had Stanley put some more Madonna on the iPod for me too, and a selection of my favourite Oasis songs. ‘It makes all the difference,’ I told him. ‘Do you think I’m looking thinner yet?’

  Stanley screwed up his nose. ‘I can’t really tell,’ he said, ‘but I told them at school you let me use your credit card and they thought it was cool.’

  ‘Oh good.’

  ‘I’ve told them you’re going to be on TV too.’

  ‘Really – what did they say?’

  ‘They thought that was cool too. Danny said did that mean we were really rich? I said no, we weren’t, but that I thought I might get the new iPhone for my birthday.’ He looked at me hopefully.

  ‘No promises,’ I said. ‘They’re a lot of money.’

  ‘Not if you go on a contract – then the phone isn’t so much or it’s even free sometimes.’

  ‘Nothing is free – if you don’t pay for the phone, you have to pay loads for the contract and you wouldn’t use the minutes, so it would be a waste.’

  ‘I could phone you and phone Connor and I could have all my music on it and it’s got really cool apps.’ Stanley looked more animated than I’d seen him for a long time.

  ‘We’ll see. So is everything OK at school now – better than it was?’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Shall we have Connor round again soon?’

  ‘OK.’ Stanley suddenly remembered. ‘And Mr Lazlett asked how you were and if you were going to the gym. He went this morning before school.’

  ‘Oh – I didn’t see him.’

  ‘He says he’s got to get thin too, or his wife will be cross with him.’

 
; There was no danger of me being cross – well, not visibly anyway. The Botox had taken a grip and I could no longer frown or raise my eyebrows. It felt very odd at first and there was something different about my expression – I was somehow wider-eyed and my eyebrows were higher, which was strange.

  But for the first time, I could understand people who had shedloads of money spending it on their faces. The fillers worked too. The corners of my mouth had plumped out and the tram lines coming down from either side of my nose were now hardly visible. I was beginning to wonder what I’d look like with an eye lift. And my wrinkly knees – shame I couldn’t do something for them.

  Really, I needed to win the lottery or marry somebody hugely rich, so I could be one of those ladies who lunch, and spend my days having treatments, and seeing my personal trainer. There was one at the gym called Marco, Eastern European with dark eyes and a moody expression. Clara spent a considerable amount of time watching his bum as he stalked about the floor, and bemoaning the fact that she couldn’t afford a one-to one with him.

  ‘He’s supposed to be a complete slave driver,’ she said dreamily.

  ‘You’re a complete slave driver,’ I grumbled back. ‘Can we stop now?’

  ‘Two more of these.’ Clara sat on the power plate with her knees tucked up toward her chest, wobbling precariously, an agonised expression on her face. ‘Hit start,’ she gasped.

  ‘Is it working? I enquired when her minute was over and she was rolling on the floor, clutching her abdomen.

  ‘It had better be.’ Clara prodded herself in the stomach. I think it’s all a bit firmer than it was.’

  ‘I think mine is too,’ I said, poking myself. ‘But I don’t seem to be that much smaller – I want to lose weight as well as firming up.’

  ‘Not too much, though,’ said Clara. ‘Look at her!’

  She nodded over to where an incredibly skinny woman was running on the treadmill, ear phones clamped to her ears, weights on her wrists.

  ‘She does it for hours,’ whispered Clara, ‘until she’s pouring sweat and seems about to pass out. It can’t be good for her. And she doesn’t even look nice.’

  We both stared at her. Her arms and legs were like sticks and she had a minute bottom. With a shock I realised it was the woman I’d seen in the changing room the first time I came to the gym. The one with the fabulous body. She seemed to have lost about two stone since then and it wasn’t an improvement.

  ‘You can definitely be too thin,’ I agreed.

  ‘Not that we have to worry about that just yet,’ said Clara wryly. ‘She has training sessions with Marco,’ she went on in the same low voice. ‘I think she’s got a few quid – I’ve seen her getting into a Merc outside and her clothes are fab. But she’s totally obsessed. I was talking to her in the changing room one day and she tests her urine every morning to make sure she’s in ketosis and burning fat. She told me she has an egg white omelette for breakfast and another one for lunch. That’s it. Chicken and salad in the evenings. I suppose she’s on one of these missions to get to a size zero. She’s already got the horrible breath.’

  ‘Blimey,’ I whispered back. ‘Isn’t she starving?’

  Clara shook her head knowledgably. ‘Apparently once you’re in ketosis you stop feeling hungry. Alfie said that too – he’s only on about 600 calories a day, and endless litres of water.’

  Lucky old them, I thought. My appetite was showing no particular signs of abating.

  ‘Neither’s mine,’ said Andrew Lazlett a couple of days later, after we’d almost crashed into each other as I stumbled sleepily into the gym and he swung his way through the turnstile on the way out.

  ‘Goodness, what time did you get here?’ I said, looking at the clock.

  He pulled a face. ‘Six a.m. when they opened. Only way I could fit it in. I really need to be in school by eight – lots to do.’ He sighed. ‘And I could do with being earlier than that. I think I might have to start coming at six in the evening instead.’

  ‘Ooh no,’ I said, ‘that’s glass of wine time.’

  ‘I know,’ he said with feeling. ‘Beer time for me. But I’m still off it.’ He pulled another face. ‘I’m on water only.’

  ‘Well, so am I actually,’ I admitted. ‘Well, in theory anyway …’

  I was trying to cut down on alcohol and eat only good things. Forcing down Sally-Ann’s vitamin protein shakes when I could bear it and attempting to remember to rub her pungent creams into various parts of me morning and night. This was a complex procedure dependent on recalling whether you did your breasts yesterday or this morning and if it was the turn of your upper arms or inner thighs to smell peculiar.

  I hadn’t noticed any particular enhancement in my cleavage yet – one of the benefits promised in the extensive leaflet that came with the product – but from the dreams I’d been having, causing me to wake up flushed and strangely embarrassed, it seemed to be doing something to my sex drive. Or perhaps that was just all the exercise which, Clara informed me, done properly produced as many endorphins as a “stinker of an orgasm”.

  ‘I can barely remember,’ I told her.

  But whatever it was doing to me, I realised one morning I was actually looking forward to the gym. There was something about being on the cross-trainer, hot and sweaty, legs aching, short of breath yet with the music pounding away in my ears, my legs and arms moving to the rhythm, that felt good and uplifting. It was nice to go with Clara if she was around, but equally OK to go on my own.

  Sometimes I did forgo the wine totally and went early evening if Stanley was elsewhere. I even took myself down there on a Sunday morning once Daniel had picked him up, instead of taking up my default weekend position of staying in my pyjamas and eating crisps.

  ‘It’s exhilarating,’ I explained to Charlotte.

  She looked deeply unimpressed. ‘Doesn’t turn me on, love.’

  ‘That,’ said Becky, ‘is because you’re sad. If you exercised a bit more, and gave up smoking …’

  ‘Now you’re both boring me,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Do you understand?’ I asked Andrew, with whom I’d fallen into the habit of having a freshly squeezed orange juice if we happened to coincide in our sessions and then catch each other’s eyes across the top of the chest press.

  ‘I don’t think I’m quite there yet,’ he said. ‘I come because I know it’s doing me good – I am beginning to feel my abs again – and because I do like the feeling of being in shape. I know it’s hard to believe, but I used to play football for The Flying Duck when I lived in Southampton.’ He grinned at me. ‘And I ran a marathon for Cancer Research when I was in my first year of teaching. And up until just a year ago I used to cycle everywhere. I was really quite fit – I know it doesn’t look like it now.’

  ‘No, I can believe it,’ I said. Looking at him afresh, he did have that look of the former athlete about him. Something about the way he moved, the easy rhythm of his running. The way he caught an exercise ball lobbed at him from across the floor by Alfie.

  He waved at Alfie now. ‘He’s a great guy,’ Andrew said. ‘I can’t believe how much weight he’s shifted, he’s so focused.’

  I waved at Alfie too. His once-great girth appeared to have shrunk a bit further every time I saw him. He seemed taller as a result and his face had more definition.

  ‘And he always looks so cheerful with it,’ I said.

  ‘He does. I’d like to enjoy it more. But I’m not getting the high out of it just yet. Still kicking myself for everything I can’t do. Hey, do you play tennis?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘Er no, not really. I mean I have done, but badly.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you could try again. Maybe we could play in the spring?’

  ‘Yes, maybe.’

  We lapsed into silence.

  ‘How’s the diet anyway?’ I asked after a while.

  ‘Boring,’ he said. ‘I’ve never eaten so much bloody cheese in my life. I’m sure it must be sending my cholesterol sky high and I’m
about to keel over with heart disease and furred-up arteries, but Elaine says it’s only short term and it’s the quickest way to shift all this lard. But, frankly, if I don’t get a piece of toast soon … Hey,’ he said again, looking round the café area, ‘can you stay for breakfast?’

  I shook my head. I’d been feeling comfortable sitting talking to him but at the mention of his wife, I felt myself withdraw. Andrew was a nice bloke who’d been really kind, always asking after Stanley and checking how we were, and I liked him. But it while it was very well passing the time of day with him, I’d just been forcibly reminded that he was married and having breakfast together seemed a bit more intimate than just chatting over an orange juice. I didn’t want to be any sort of Hannah figure, especially after I’d been so vociferous about her.

  I was no closer to getting to the bottom of exactly where Roger was with all that, but I’d be going to his works do soon and I was determined to find out then. I’d only popped into Charlotte’s a couple of times recently and he hadn’t been there either time, but I’d gathered via a casual comment from Charlotte that Roger went for a drink most nights after work, so I assumed he was still in Hannah’s thrall.

  ‘That’s a pity,’ said Andrew now, smiling. ‘While it’s the weekend and I can. Another time perhaps?’

  I smiled back but shook my head again. ‘I’m really busy at the moment,’ I said.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  It wasn’t untrue. Mike was giving me more work than ever before and what with going to the gym and looking after Stanley and needing to concentrate on not eating too much, it was a constant battle to keep up.

  Whereas once I was delighted to be interrupted by Charlotte at any hour of the day, now my heart sank slightly if the doorbell rang, knowing I would have to abandon my brochure-writing for an hour the latest deadline was getting scarily close and there were still pages to go – and that she’d also expect me to eat biscuits.