The Serial Dieter

by Rachel Cavanagh

  “You can have whatever you like though, of course,” Nathan says but I’m already sold, as I can see he is.

  He opts for the Popcorn Chicken Pakora (fresh chicken pakora made from minced chicken with curry leaves and hint of red chillies – brave!) as a starter, and I have the Mass Bora (fish meat coated in homemade breadcrumbs, deep fried – definitely not a dietary dish).

  “And for your main course?” our waitress Maali asks, digital handset at the ready.

  I’m sticking with the fish. “Hash tikka, please.” Duck marinated in mild spice and grilled. Duck twice in one day isn’t greedy, right?

  “And the butter murgh for me, please,” Nathan says and hands back his menu as I’m reading that it’s ‘a traditional home-cooked butter chicken cooked in garlic, tomatoes and medium spice then topped off with butter homemade butter cream sauce.’ A serious amount of butter. Definitely not within my five-hundred calorie limit.

  Oh, then I see the Murghi Mo Mo, chicken cocked(!) with honey with mild spice creamy and sweet very tasty dish… also available in lamb. Oh that’s not fair. Under that is the Mango Monsoon: a delightful dish which is cooked with mango and cream, making it a very mild and fruitful delight, garnished with ground almonds and coconuts. Available in chicken and lamb. Now I’m really torn.

  “I’m sorry, can I change my order please.”

  “Of course.” Maali smiles genuinely.

  “Could I have the Mango Monsoon please.”

  “Absolutely.” A couple of taps on the device and it’s done. “And sides?”

  I look at Nathan. “Shall we have a rice and naan to share?”

  He squeals (actually squeals!). “Great idea.” It wasn’t actually mine as I was led in that direction by the menu, although on the banquet specification it said ‘pilau’ but I notice under ‘accompaniments’ that it’s called ‘pulao’, Bangladesh again perhaps. I smile, say nothing, and Maali tap taps.

  We have drinks but have already some headway on them. Maali points at mine and raises her eyebrows. “Shall we?” I ask Nathan and he nods. “The same again then please.” Maali tap taps again and takes my menu.

  She goes behind the bar, normally I’d say to enter our order but the handset is likely linked up with the system so she’s probably just… I don’t know what she’s probably just doing but… checking it maybe. Everything looks fine and she goes to another table to start the process again.

  “So,” Nathan says, shuffling his seat a little nearer, “our last Monday together.”

  I hadn’t thought of that but next week is another bank holiday so yes, he’s right. I’ll see him in the office, of course, connected or not to his audio headphones but it won’t be the same as quality time like this. “It is,” I reply and sigh.

  “Ah… that’s really sweet,” he says and takes my hand.

  I’m rather taken aback and jolt a little.

  “I’m sorry,” he says and lets go.

  “No, I’m…” but I feel I’ve spoiled the moment. I want to take his hand but I can’t. And now it feels weird. It seems to pass as he blows a raspberry and chuckles. He has this habit of making light of any situation and I love that. I think we could all do with a Nathan in our lives.

  “I play the drums,” he says from nowhere.

  “You do?”

  He shrugs. “Badly, but I play them.” And the spoiled moment has most definitely passed.

  I tell him all about my mum and the guitar lessons, Bernard, and Charles next term.

  “And Greta, of course.”

  “Greta?”

  “She goes too.”

  “Oh really? The little minx has never mentioned that.”

  I don’t suppose it’s something that’s ever come up in conversation in exchanges in the kitchen or work parties. They’re not exactly close geographically at work although I can’t imagine Nathan not getting on with anyone, at work or otherwise.

  “And James?” I ask but them remember Nathan calling James ‘Jamie poppet’ the day I arrived. I can’t imagine anything going wrong since then. Of course not, Donna. It’s been an easy breezy three weeks.

  Nathan frowns. “James?”

  “Erm…”

  “Everything okay in that respect?”

  I’m saved by the arrival of our starters.

  My Mass Bora is even better than it looks, and that’s saying something. Nathan’s popcorn chicken does too but I’m glad I’ve gone for mine. So Nathan doesn’t return to the topic of James, I ask Nathan about his weekend. He blushes as he says, “Brad and I went to London.”

  “I love London, especially the South Bank. It’s easy enough by train from Northampton so should go more often.”

  Nathan devours another popcorned chicken.

  “But more importantly, how’s Braaadd…” I lengthen his name like the woman does with ‘Wanna take a baaath?’ at the start of Pink Floyd’s ‘One of My Turns’.

  Nathan pops another ‘corn’ into his mouth then points to it with the end of his fork.

  “Good, I take it.” This came out dumber than it meant to. “Great.” I have another bite of bora bora, and we finish our starters in companionable silence.

  No sooner have we finished than our plates are removed and the mains are presented to us. And how well they are presented. Around the edges are little garnishes of spiralled cucumber, radishes and tomatoes, crinkled like something out of MasterChef. Like those fancy candles, it all looks too good to eat but eat we must and eat we do.

  “Nice?” Nathan asks out of one side of his mouth.

  “Mmm…” I reply.

  Even though the food is plenty hot enough, we keep eating, murmuring every now and then and nodding, pointing to our food like… I don’t know what like… children, I suppose.

  We skip dessert, not because it’s extra but because the portions were really generous and we’re full.

  Nathan pays with the company credit card and I leave the usual fiver tip.

  “You don’t have to, you know. You’re doing all this in your own time.”

  I laugh and wave a hand around the room. “This is no hardship. I don’t know what I would have done without all of you. Stayed home alone at my mum’s and moped, probably.”

  “Could you go home from here, from work, I mean.”

  “I could but wouldn’t want to leave again,” I smile but then go serious. “I could, quite easily, but with traffic it would probably take an hour and a half, two hours maybe, to get back then a couple of hours there before bed.”

  “Ah but sharing that bed…”

  “I know. I’m not sure why I haven’t gone home. Duncan and I had agreed at the start that we’d see each other at the weekends. Perhaps with things a little uneven, I thought the space would do us good.”

  Nathan pulls a sad face as we hover by our cars.

  I wave a hand. “It’s fine. We’ve talked a lot. Sworn our undying love to each other…” I roll my eyes which makes Nathan giggle. He’s so funny.

  We hug, say our goodbyes and I head home.

  Mum’s not there, two nights in a row would have been a bit much but she’s left a carrot cake in a container at the near end of the dining table with a note to ‘help yrslf’. Since when did my mum do text speak? Worse than text speak. To be fair, the pen was fading at the ‘p’ so maybe she didn’t think it would last the whole eight letters. As I think that, I look a few feet away to a pot of pens of various colours and thicknesses. Always in a hurry, my mum.

  Chapter 78 – At The Same Places At The Same Time

  Tuesday 22nd May

  Not wishing to invite James to lunch again… I only have… oof, eight left, I discretely (peering round the corner of my hideout, and really leaning because her office is soooo far way, making Nathan smile) look for Leah but there’s no sign of her.

  “She’s gone away,” Nathan whispers but loudly enough for me to hear… plus he’s staring straight at me for the whole office (James) to see so I walk, no stride, to his desk, head held Brid
get Jones high.

  “Gone away? Not gone gone.”

  Nathan shakes his head making his skinny neck wobble. “With…” He leans forward. “her boyfriend.”

  Boyfriend? I squeal and clap my hands. If the office (James) hadn’t noticed me before now, they (he) certainly do (does) now. As the month’s gone on, part of me feels more like a piece of the Hemel Hempstead news office furniture but another part of me is more sensible, logical, detached.

  These people, I hope, with maybe one exception, have become my friends and I shall certainly call in whenever I’m visiting my mum during the week… if she can pull herself away from her betrothed. Boy, that feels so weird. I hope I get to see more of him before the month is up. As long as my mum’s happy but she has been known to be rather impulsive. Still, she must know what she’s doing and he seems good for her so far.

  Being chicken, I purchase another lunch from the van, popping downstairs after I’d spotted James walking across the car park and getting in his car as the van pulled up. There are several advantages to having a window-sided desk and watching him get back out, chat to Val – not close enough to see what’s said but then I can’t lip read. He returns to his car and drives off, which means I can race (sedately, Donna) downstairs and get something for my lunch and still have plenty of time to get a drink from the kitchen and return to my hideout.

  I successfully do all that and have scored (paid for) a delicious-looking thick ham salad wrap (439 calories, which is fine and will make for another article as I can talk about processed vs thicker more natural protein) with a massive – because it’s so cold (not), although because I’m really thirsty (greedy), specialty roasted hazelnut latté at probably not far off the same count!

  That’s not true as I go for skinny milk but as a favourite, I know if it’s anything like Costa’s it’s around 350. Unlike history dates, I’m quite good with figures when it comes to my job and remember, courtesy of nutracheck.co.uk that my drink, even as a ‘Massimo take out’ only has 333. The fat content, understandably, is quite high at 15.7g and the protein worse at 13.5 but carbs are good for you in small quantities, and while 34.8g isn’t exactly small, I don’t have one of these every day so…

  Other than trips to the loo (engrossed on my phone – I’ve got to know the route through the office without having to look up (at James) or bumping into anything (James’s desk), I keep myself to myself and five thirty rolls around quickly.

  Frank’s ready and looks raring to go. With many places yet explored, we return to the Marlowes centre for Turkish, at the Maramis, for a change. At Frank’s recommendation, a medium Cop Shish chicken kebab is my weapon of choice – I’m a sucker for anything barbequed and this is ‘lean chunks of marinated small cubes of chicken skewered & grilled over a charcoal BBQ grill’. The ‘lean’ is good too.

  Frank opts for the ‘Iskender Kebab’, sliced lamb doner on a bed of Turkish flat bread topped with chef special tomato sauce and yoghurt. That does sound nice and I’m torn as to whether to stick or twist – my dad and I used to play Pontoon, as it’s a couple of minutes before our waiter comes over.

  “Hi Karawan,” Frank says and I look at the man’s name badge. I wonder if it means something, most names do, but then Frank speaks again. “And a Coban salad to share please.” Frank looks at me. I don’t know what that is but nod.

  While the men are talking, I find the salads on the menu. ‘Coban Salad’ consists of chopped tomato, cucumber, onion, fresh peppers, parsley marinated with sumach, pomegranate sauce, lemon juice and olive oil. It all sounds very healthy, although I don’t know what sumach is. It would be too rude to google it and while I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first to ask the origin of an ingredient, I feel I should know so keep schtum. The parsley being ‘marinated’ means it has to be some kind of liquid but Frank fills me in.

  “I’m not normally a parsley fan but the berry marinade…”

  And when it comes, it does indeed look red, and delicious. It goes perfectly with our kebabs.

  I’m reminded by Karawan’s badge to ask Frank if he objects to me looking something up on my phone.

  “Not at all. Can I help?”

  “Karawan. I wondered if it means something.”

  “It’s an expression used to ‘avert the Evil Eye’,” Frank informs me. “In fact… I’ll let you into a little secret.” He doesn’t get any closer, but as he points at our meals he does have a conspiratorial feel about him, something no doubt Charles would be intrigued by, or join in. My mum certainly would. “This is what Frankie and I have every time we come here.” He sits straighter and laughs.

  I’m more than happy to be Frankie’s substitute for the evening. We’ve never met but Frank has told me so much about her already and he tells me about their hippy days and how they may well have been at the same places at the same time: “And even Woodstock, New York, in August 1969,” he says. “It was the place to be back then. Frankie and her family had gone especially for it. My parents, on the other hand, had a holiday home in Rochester, rented it out to tourists going to Niagara Falls, but had kept it back for those few days so they could go. Fabulous part of the world. We’ve not been back, Frankie and me, since then, and the recession hit my dad’s business so they had to sell the house. It needed a lot of work doing to but it still got them out of a hole because it was pretty massive. But then they are, aren’t they over there. I think someone connected to Eric Clapton bought it. That’s what my mum told me so I passed on that little nugget to Frankie who has all his albums. CDs, you know.”

  I do, so I nod. My mum’s also a fan, probably just one reason why she and Frankie have bonded.

  Frank and I share a portion of Baklava and Häagen Dazs vanilla ice cream for dessert and it’s lovely being this up close and personal to someone I know would have got on really well with my dad. I look up to the ceiling to stop threatening tears. A cobweb is dancing to the tune of a nearby air conditioning unit and I’m mesmerised.

  “You okay there?” Frank asks and my attention returns to him.

  While the fairies and I were away together, Frank’s paid the bill and already put a five-pound note on the dish that would have housed the receipt.

  I look at the money. “Oh, please let me–”

  “Tosh,” he says and swipes his hand. “It usually costs me way more and it’s been a pleasure.”

  None so truer words have been spoken. That doesn’t sound quite right but I say, “Absolutely. Thank you so much.”

  We part company at my car with a brief hug and Frank pecks me on my right cheek before returning to his car, a generic Ford Mondeo, a few spaces up.

  He would be the person I’d choose as a second dad but of course he’s already taken. Although we only met three weeks ago, three weeks and a day, I feel a certain kinship with him. I hope I’ll have that with Charles. Frank though is more like my dad, more laid back, more… dad like, I suppose. But I suspect Charles will be good for my mum. She’s not exactly been a wallflower this past few years but having someone a little more… dynamic will be good for her.

  And what’s good for me is bed. So that’s exactly what I do in the empty shell of a house that used to be my dad’s.

  Chapter 79 – Almost A World Tour

  Wednesday 23rd May

  After a standard day and third visit of the week to the van (a repetition of Monday’s lunch, it was so nice), Greta, who’s on fine form after her second official date with Owen – how proud am I, joins me for dinner at the wildly named Smoky Boys, a fabulous American restaurant on the Saint Albans Road. I’ve had so many different dinners this month, I almost feel like I’ve been on a world tour. Not as exhausting as one of Mr Clapton’s but I’m sure as enjoyable nonetheless, although he’ll have eaten something akin to what I’ve been eating in their original locations. Except, it comes back to me, that he’s a vegetarian. Oops.

  “That sounds nice,” I say as Greta orders halloumi skewers for starters and a grilled chicken ‘haus’ salad.

&nbs
p; “What are you having?”

  “I was going to choose the chicken barbeque shots followed by a cheese burger but…”

  “You could order that and we could share?”

  “We could.”

  “Let’s?”

  I nod at the waitress: Colleen. I remember there being a Colleen in ‘Neighbours’, or it might have been ‘Home and Away’. She was a very sweet but rather doddery and clueless little lady. The gossip queen, if I recall. She wasn’t particularly old but more my mum’s age than mine. This one though is tall, skinny and has bright purple hair. I’m rather jealous. I don’t have to dye mine yet but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. I get sent dyes which go to Karen, our fashion columnist, or friends and friends of friends who are more than willing to be guinea pigs. None though were this colour. Our Colleen’s slightly younger looking than me, early/mid-twenties, I’d say, and is the kind of girl, woman, who would look great wearing the proverbial cloth sack.

  Colleen smiles and retrieves our menus after jotting everything down on a jazzy red, white and blue notepad and tucks it into her red, white and blue stars and striped pinny. Everything about the place is traditional American, or certainly what we think it would be, with its Elvis Presley memorabilia, Route 66 metal signs, ‘American Graffiti’ guitar on the wall (although that looks a little out of place with its black background and yellow ZZ Top-type car), and gazillions of beer bottle stops all across the walls. It’s impressive.

  As is our food that arrives mid-conversation about Owen, who, Greta tells me, had scored the winning goal at a ‘friendly’ at the weekend. “Some take it way too seriously,” she says… very seriously. “They lost the previous week and Owen moped about for days.” He never struck me as a moper but then people are often different in private as they are in public, at work.

  Although I have another week and two days to go, it does feel like I’m nearing the end of this ‘project’. While it’s not been easy at times, having such lovely people around me has made it feel less like a job. The statistics, however, are only too keen to remind me that it is when it comes to putting my articles together, but I enjoy that side of it.