Thin Girls Don't Eat Cake

by Lindy Dale

  Clomping up the hallway, I headed towards the meditation room Mum had created from my old bedroom. Often, Mum could be found there, wearing harem pants and a singlet top and chanting a mantra of gobbledygook designed to attract goodness and light into her life. Personally, I thought it was a little silly though I never said so to Mum. Why hurt her feelings over something so harmless?

  The meditation room was empty so I made my way slowly down the hall to the kitchen. It was as I was passing Mum’s room that I heard the noise the first time.

  I paused, my head cocked, listening. It was a muffled sort of moan, something akin to a cat being strangled. I turned and looked along the hallway. Mum’s cat was nowhere in sight.

  The noise occurred again. This time it was followed by a long slow painful ‘ahhhh.’

  Had Mum tripped and hurt herself? I’d heard horror stories of elderly parents lying on the floor waiting to be rescued for days because they’d broken a hip or a leg and couldn’t move. Of course that was a silly notion. The only one who tripped in the Merrifield family was me. Besides, Mum wasn’t anywhere close to elderly.

  The noise grew louder, reaching a frenzied cry. It definitely wasn’t the cat.

  “Mum?”

  Uncertain as to whether I should invade her private space — or more worryingly what I’d find if I did — I put my ear to the door. “Mum?”

  The noises came to an abrupt halt. There was a certain amount of grunting and shuffling from behind the bedroom door and then out popped Mum, done up to the nines in full makeup, a red silk shortie kimono she’d bought on a recent trip to Japan and little else than a rather awkward look.

  “Olivia!” She fluffed her hair.

  “Is everything all right? I heard noises. Are you hurt?”

  Mum’s face was flushed. “No. No. Of course not. Everything’s perfectly fine. Come to the kitchen and let’s get a wine. I wasn’t expecting you till seven but I’ve started on a roast beef for dinner.” Her voice was louder than usual, and forced, as if she thought I’d developed hearing loss overnight. Bustling me towards the kitchen, she glanced over her shoulder at the bedroom door.

  What on earth was going on? Had she had taken one too many of those cold and flu tablets again? Last time she’d gone into such a hallucination she was convinced I was Mariah Carey and had asked me for an autograph.

  I looked as much like Mariah Carey as Jim the Butcher looked like Tom Jones.

  “But the noise, Mum. What was that noise?”

  “Ah, er, the cat. He got stuck in the wardrobe. I was trying to get him out and he wasn’t being that cooperative.”

  Whilst naked? I doubted it.

  “And you were naked why?”

  Mum’s cheeks coloured. “Well, obviously I was getting changed when the cat got stuck.”

  I didn’t believe a word of it. I’d been caught in enough compromising positions in my time to know a fib when I heard one. Especially seeing that the cat had appeared through the cat flap from the backyard seconds before and was twining itself around my legs.

  Once we were in the kitchen, and Mum scuttled about in the pantry, pouring glasses of wine and filling platters with pate and biscuits. The conversation was inane and followed no logical path. We were both too distracted by what was hidden behind that bedroom door.

  “How long are you going to keep him in there?” I asked, at last.

  “Who?”

  “Whoever it is you’ve got hiding in your room. If it’s Jim, I don’t mind, Mum. He’s lonely; you’ve got no one. It’d be nice to see you together. He’s a lovely man.”

  The chardonnay in Mum’s mouth sprayed across the bench. She began to cough so hard I had to slap her on the back. “It’s not Jim.”

  “Then who? And why won’t you introduce me? Are you ashamed?”

  Mum looked like I’d asked her to ‘fess up to having the Pope in her room. The rearrangement of the cheese on the platter was suddenly quite pressing. And her glass of wine had disappeared faster before I’d taken a sip of mine.

  “Um, he’s rather younger than me,” she admitted at last.

  Surely not. My mother had a toy boy?

  “How much younger, Mrs Robinson?”

  Mum shifted on her stool but offered no information.

  “What’s he, like, twenty? You think I won’t approve?” I could accept Mum having a man of say, oh, forty-ish but if he was my age; I wasn’t too sure what I’d think about that.

  “I suppose I did. Especially after you broke up with that last lad. I was concerned you’d be hurt.”

  “I’m not hurt, Mum. I think it’s nice you’ve got yourself a man. As long as it’s not that groper Phil from the football club.”

  I couldn’t stomach if that lech was in the house after he’d had his hands on every girl’s bum in town. Plus, he most likely had some dreadful disease that could only be cured by a strong dose of antibiotics.

  “It’s not Phil.”

  “Great. Can I meet him then?”

  “You’ll be nice? No twenty questions?”

  This was a bit of a role reversal. I could remember a time when my parents used to quiz every new boy I bought home. It was so embarrassing when Dad used to ask them if they intended on taking me ‘parking’ at the end of the date.

  “You mean I can’t ask him what his intentions are?” I giggled.

  “Not unless you’re prepared for the answer.”

  Mum walked down the hall, opening the door to the bedroom. “You can come out. She won’t bite.”

  A smooth tanned hand with a silver signet ring on the pinkie appeared on the doorjamb. Oh no. It couldn’t be.

  Chapter 14

  “Connor.”

  “Hello Olivia.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Stupid question, seeing as how he’d come out of Mum’s bedroom and not ten minutes ago I’d heard them in the throes of a rather rowdy sex session. So much for Kama Sutra Yoga.

  Mum looked from Connor to me. And back. Quite a few times. Her brow crinkled. She even scratched her head. “You two know each other?”

  “Let’s just say he’s seen me naked,” I replied. There was no point sugar-coating the situation. Connor had been intimate with both of us. Mum needed to know what sort of a slime ball he was. “Connor’s the one who dumped me because I was too fat.”

  The colour drained from Mum’s face, an indication she may well have been about to vomit. Or it could have been the retching and holding of her mouth as she ran to the toilet that gave the game away.

  I faced Connor. “You’re a piece of work. First you tell me I’m fat, then you say you want me back and now I find you’ve been whooping it up with my mother. Was this going on while we were together? Were you bonking me, Shannon and my mother?”

  “I’d like to know the answer to that question too.” Mum had returned from the toilet and was standing in the middle of the kitchen with her hands on her hips. Her face was delineated by a scowl from ear to ear that said if Connor didn’t give an answer she was satisfied with she might use the paring knife for something other than preparing vegetables.

  Connor gave a nervous swallow. “I never meant to hurt anyone. And I wasn’t seeing you both at the same time, Betty.”

  Had he called my mother Betty? Nobody called her Betty unless they wanted a dressing down that would last an hour. My mother was Bettina. Bettina Gwen Merrifield.

  “Olivia and I split up at least a month before I met you. You can do the timeline yourselves if you don’t believe me.”

  I was astounded. He sounded so… well… sincere. Who was this person and what had he done with the real Connor Bishop?

  “What game are you playing exactly?” I asked, determined not to let him fool me again. “Were you thinking this to be a little bit on the side before you move on to your next big conquest? Did you see my mother as easy pickings because she’s older and a widow? Because if your intentions aren’t what they should be Connor, you have to know you’re going to be
run out of town. My mother is not me. People don’t give two hoots about my love life but if you jerk her around, you’re going to receive death threats from most of the Bowls Club, not to mention the Repertory Society and the Tennis Club. Is it worth it?”

  Connor grasped the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb. I could see him trying to squeeze the tension away. Clearly, he hadn’t considered the ramifications of dating a woman old enough to be his mother.

  “Look. I know we didn’t part on the best of terms—“

  Something of an understatement.

  “—But I truly like your mother. She makes me feel like I’ve never felt about women my own age. I want to do the right thing. I don’t care that she’s older than me. I mean, look at her. She’s amazing.”

  Well, that was the truth.

  I glanced at Mum. She had forgotten she was angry and was beaming like she was fifteen and Connor was her first boyfriend.

  Connor walked over and took her hand. He returned the gooey smile and ramped it up till it landed in a league that included beauty queens and very soppy people on daytime soaps. Then he reached over and removed a lock of hair from where it had become stuck in a bit of spew trapped on the side of Mum’s mouth. It was so sickening I almost felt the need to rush to the toilet myself.

  He smiled again as he tucked the hair behind her ear. “That’s better, honey pie.”

  “Thank you, snuggle bunny.”

  For Pete’s sake. They had endearing names for each other too? This was the last straw, the absolute last straw. Were they doing drugs together or something? Because that would be preferable to the scenario they were expecting me to believe.

  “In fact,” Connor continued after a good two minutes of gazing into my mother’s eyes, “I was going to ask your mother if she’d consider marrying me.”

  Pardon?

  “Married?” The word that left my throat sounded more like a squeak than a single word sentence. It was one thing to have a bonk in the afternoons and a couple of wines at the pub or some companionship, but marriage? They’d only known each other a month tops. Nobody got married after that length of time unless they were absolutely insane. Then there was the little fact that she was old enough to be his mother. She was my mother for God’s sake!

  The idea seemed something of a shock for Mum, too. She’d begun to scramble in the bottom drawer of the kitchen cabinets for the stash of emergency cigarettes and lighter she kept there. She never smoked in front of me any more. In fact, I thought she’d given it up some time back.

  Mum lit up and took a deep drag, releasing the smoke in tiny circlets that swirled above her head. She coughed and slapped at her chest. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m more serious about this than I’ve been about anything in my life. Let’s get married.”

  Mum sucked in another gulp of smoke. A thoughtful look came over her. But only after she took a large glug from the bottle of wine on the counter. “What the hell. Why not. You only live once.”

  “MUM!” Now I was grabbing for the wine. “You’re not going to marry Connor.”

  “I think I might.”

  “Give me one good reason why.”

  Because I couldn’t think of any.

  “Well, he is quite good in bed.”

  “Which should never be the sole reason for a wedding.” I was starting to sound like the parent. This could not be happening. How could it be that my mother, a widow of only six months had managed to hook herself a second husband — one who’d practically only started shaving — when I couldn’t even get a boyfriend? And Connor, of all people. Seriously, it wasn’t fair. Not at all. Not to mention immoral. There had to be some sort of law against hooking up with your daughter’s ex-boyfriend. I was positive of it.

  “Your father did say he wanted me to move on if he departed this world before me,” Mum added.

  At that moment, the front door squeaked open.

  “See! It’s a sign. You’re father is sending his approval.”

  “I’ve always believed in the spirit world. It’s good to know Mr Merrifield has sent us a sign,” Connor said.

  I was not getting into some crazy conversation about my dead father and creaking doors. “Oh my God. That’s it. I’m going home to the dog. You two are completely mad. Let me know what you’re going to do about the nuptials etc etc. I’ll have to save the day.”

  I turned on my one heel and began to hobble down the hall.

  “Wait! Don’t leave like this, darling. Please, stay for dinner. Family dinner.”

  Talk about rubbing salt into the wound. Connor was going to be my stepfather.

  “I don’t think so, Mum. I’m sure you’ve got lots to talk about and I’d be the third wheel. We can catch up tomorrow.”

  “But—”

  “I need some time to process this development. Alone.”

  With my friend vodka.

  *****

  After declining a lift home, I began the slow walk along the street towards Blue Wren Cottage. Merrifield was a quiet country town. It was safe for a girl to be out in the streets alone at night, even if she only had one good leg. Besides, given the mood I was in at that current moment, I’d have had no trouble fending off a potential attacker — if one existed — with a wild swing of my crutch.

  Walking home in the dark gave me plenty of time to think. Yes, I was upset about what had happened but my mother’s life was her own. If she wanted to go out with a man half her age, who was I to stop her? I’d never have been able to anyway. Mum and I were a lot alike in that respect. We were both quite dogged when we put our minds to something.

  Then something else occurred to me. If Mum could find a man, why couldn’t I? There had to be a man somewhere that wasn’t slimy or married or only after sex but if I didn’t put myself out there, how would they ever know I was available? It was time to move on from the disasters of the last three years. A diet and a new body was not enough, though it was a pretty good start. It was time to man up or, girl up — if such a phrase existed — and get myself a boyfriend.

  I reached the corner of Mum’s street and feeling rather weary all of a sudden plonked down on the kerb, unhooking my crutches and resting my chin in my palms. I looked down the road to where the lights on Mum’s house had been dimmed. Yes, I was pleased she’d found love, nobody would want to deny her happiness but why did it have to be Connor Bishop? And where did this relationship leave me? I couldn’t face making chitchat with my new stepdad across the roast potatoes every Thursday night. It would probably take a good decade before I could bring myself to be polite after the things he’d said about me.

  Worse though, Connor had seen me naked. No amount of roast beef and fine wine could gloss over the fact that it was practically incestuous. And if truth be told, I was also having a little trouble coping with the fact that Connor found my mother more attractive than he did me. She was almost twice my age. Why couldn’t I have a boyfriend? I wanted a boyfriend. Someone who would love me the way I loved them. I wanted my own Connor.

  Okay, not Connor — he was still a sleazebag — but a man. I wanted a man.

  I sat in the gutter feeling forlorn until a four-wheel drive came speeding up the hill. It pulled to an abrupt halt, worthy of a stop in pit lane at the Melbourne Grand Prix, and swerved to my side of the road before coming to a stop along side me. A spray of gravel and mud flew in my direction, landing on my jeans. Fabulous.

  The driver’s side window wound down.

  “Olivia.”

  It was Cole.

  “Hey.”

  “What are you doing out here in the dark?”

  I squinted into the car. Smells of something warm and sugary with hints of lemon wafted out the window. God. It was divine, like freshly baked lemon tarts or cake or something. Where did one get car freshener like that? My car invariably smelled of wet dog and dog hair. Sometimes dog shampoo if I were lucky.

  “I was on my way home from Mum’s place.”

  Col
e glanced at the console of the car. “It’s three degrees. Aren’t you cold? And why are you sitting in the gutter?”

  I glanced around. I’d been so consumed in my thoughts I hadn’t even noticed the fog had settled early. And it was cold. Bloody cold. I must have looked utterly stupid sitting beside a foggy road with a pair of crutches.

  “My mind was somewhere else, I guess.”

  “The Bahamas?”

  “I wish.”

  “Hop in. I’ll give you a lift.”

  I hesitated. Cole was nice. It was okay to be friends with him, no romance involved. People had friends of the opposite sex all the time. But being friends was pretty hard when you imagined the person naked whenever you looked at them. And Cole was the type of man you imagined naked a lot. And in many different positions.

  “Uh, I only live about two hundred metres that way. The cottage on the left; I’m pretty sure I can make it there without freezing to death.”

  “Your lips are blue. You shouldn’t be out without a coat as it is.”

  “I’ll remember that next time, Dad.”

  Cole laughed. “Get in.”

  “You sure?”

  “I won’t be held responsible for you turning into an iceblock and being unable to clip Adelaide’s dog. She’d have heart failure.”

  Why did he have to remind me he was married?

  “Who? Adelaide or Lulu?”

  “Both probably.”

  I opened the passenger side door and hopped into the car. Immediately, I felt the warmth from the heater on my toes. So nice.

  “So, where to?” Cole asked.

  “Oh. Back the way you come. On the left. The blue cottage.”