Sweet Temptation

by Lucy Diamond

  After the sports day disaster and the gym nightmare I’d just been through, however, I’d come to the painful conclusion that actually, even if it was evil Collette’s suggestion, maybe I should go through with it.

  I still wasn’t speaking to my mum after she’d put me through the experience at the gym. Once we’d arrived there en famille, I’d been taken to a private room by a strapping youth called Jacob, who had long, muscular legs and a six-pack that rippled like corrugated iron through his T-shirt. This might sound like the beginning of a porn film, but believe me, it soon turned into an X-rated horror flick.

  I could tell by the way Jacob strode through the door ahead of me that he’d never had an issue with self-esteem, had never winced at his own reflection in the mirror. This worried me. Quite a lot. Did we have anything in common?

  ‘Right, let’s get you on the scales,’ he said with a degree of wariness in his voice, as if he was wondering whether he’d need to call in a haulage firm to assist.

  ‘Shall I take off my shoes?’ I asked, indicating the still-gleaming trainers. Well … every little helps, as they said in the adverts.

  He shook his head. ‘No, don’t worry about that,’ he said. The subtext was clear: what difference would a few shoe-grams make to the rest of your bulk, Lardy?

  I stepped on, holding my breath, not able to bring myself to look at his face as he read the weight. ‘Oka-a-a-y,’ he said. ‘One hundred and four point eight kilograms … That’s quite a lot you’re carrying around there, Mrs Lawson.’

  I hung my head, chastened. ‘I know.’

  ‘Let’s take a few measurements,’ he said, wielding what looked like big surgical tweezers, then pinched various parts of my body, measuring the fatty bits. Upper arm, waist, hip, back … it was excruciating having this ripe young hunk of a man so up close and personal to my flab. I knew he must feel nauseated.

  He made some calculations, then pored over a chart.

  ‘Well, basically, you’re morbidly obese,’ he said casually as if we were discussing the weather. Was it my imagination or was there a glint of scorn in his eyes? ‘Oh dear, Madeleine,’ he went on. ‘We’ve got some work to do with you, haven’t we?’

  Have we? I thought in despair. I’d half hoped the misery would end, now he’d told me how big and disgusting I was – perhaps he would decide I was an impossible case. But unfortunately the humiliation wasn’t over yet. He took me through to the main gym area, which was packed with thin people pounding away on treadmills and other torture machines, all with earnest, gotta-get-fitter expressions on their faces. Loud music blared. Motivational signs screamed from the walls:

  You CAN Do It!

  Fitter, Faster, Stronger!

  Take Our Abs Challenge – Start Today!

  I hated it. All of it – the music, the signs, the thin, toned people. I was even starting to hate my own mother for ever thinking this was a good idea.

  ‘Let’s get you onto the exercise bike and see how fit you are,’ Jacob said. ‘That’s it – heave yourself on.’

  Heave yourself on. He actually said that. Heave yourself on, as if I were a whale. In his eyes, I guess I was. In a parallel universe, a gutsier version of me would have grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and slammed him against the abs challenge poster at that point, telling him just how rude he was being, how awful he was making me feel. But in the real world, I was too intimidated by all the thin people in Lycra, couldn’t bear them staring at me any more than they already were. So I heaved myself on.

  ‘Let’s put your weight in here,’ he said, pressing at a keypad. ‘What was it again … ah yes – a hundred and five kilos.’

  The woman on the bike nearest to me swung her head round nosily, and my cheeks flamed. Did Jacob have any idea about tact? Or was he deliberately trying to make me squirm?

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘Ten minutes at level four. Off you go.’

  Off I went. It took all of thirty seconds before my legs felt like jelly, my lungs were on the verge of collapsing and my hair had sweated itself loose from my ponytail. People were staring because I was puffing and panting so loudly; they gawped at me as if I were a freak. I desperately wanted to crawl out of there and give the whole thing up as a bad idea, but gritted my teeth and carried on. And on. And on.

  The electronic display on the bike kept flashing up all sorts of facts and figures. I had burned 38 calories, it said after nine minutes. Big wow. Not even a slice of toast, by my calculations. What else? I’d managed to pedal a mighty 1.4 kilometres. My heart rate was currently 185 beats per minute – and when Jacob loped back and saw that particular figure, he did a double-take. ‘Jesus, slow down a bit,’ he said in alarm. ‘Get your breath back, okay?’

  I was about to feel proud of myself – he obviously hadn’t realized I could actually give it some welly and get my heart pumping – but then he told me off in that same loud voice.

  ‘Mrs L – you know, you’re very unfit, you’ve got to take it slowly,’ he said. ‘Try to keep your heart rate below 165 until you’re used to this machine, all right? We don’t want you having a heart attack on us!’

  We don’t want you having a heart attack indeed. Was he for real? No, that would be inconvenient for you, wouldn’t it? I wanted to shout – but I didn’t have the breath. Instead, I dropped my eyes – and my pace – and pedalled slowly for the last minute. Then I clambered off the machine, legs shaking, hoping that would be the end of this embarrassment and that he’d send me on my way. Paul and the kids were in the pool, and, by then, I was desperately in need of a strong coffee and something sugary before I had to meet them.

  But no.

  ‘So that’s your warm-up,’ Jacob said, showing me where he’d written it on a blue piece of card. YOUR FITNESS PROGRAMME STARTS HERE! bellowed capital letters across the top. ‘Now, let’s get you going with some cardio.’

  Warm-up? I wanted to cry. That was only the warm-up? I was already scarlet from the exertion and needed a sit-down – no, a lie-down – with a magazine and some Gipsy Creams. ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said. ‘I’m here today just to have a look around. I don’t need a programme yet, because I haven’t actually decided whether I’m going to take out membership or …’

  The baffled look on his face stopped me in my tracks. His eyebrows were knitted together in a bushy frown as he glanced down at the card in his hand, then back up at me.

  ‘Well, according to this, you already have,’ he said. ‘According to this, you’ve taken out Platinum Membership and enrolled on our Couch Potato programme.’

  ‘No,’ I argued. ‘I haven’t.’

  He was still frowning. ‘It’s all been paid for,’ he told me. ‘Three months’ membership up front, plus the joining fee.’

  Three months’ membership? All paid for? But how …?

  The penny dropped. I stared at him with my mouth open for several seconds. ‘The sneaky little …’ I muttered, hot with fury. My interfering mother, of course. No doubt she meant well, but even so … I was going to kill her when I got out of here. With my morbidly obese bare hands.

  ‘I think there’s been a mistake,’ I said, folding my arms across my chest.

  He shrugged. ‘It’s paid for,’ he repeated. ‘Non-refundable, I’m afraid. And the Couch Potato course gets great results – you have your own personal trainer for eight weeks.’ Another shrug, as if it was all the same to him. ‘As your statistics show you’re overweight and very unfit, I really think—’

  ‘Sorry, no,’ I said with my last remaining ounce of dignity. ‘I really don’t think so.’ I felt like Anne Robinson on The Weakest Link as I uttered my most dismissive ‘Goodbye’, and before he could protest or even react I’d stormed out, nose in the air.

  Somehow I found my way back to the changing rooms to shower and change without publicly bursting into tears. It was all very luxurious in there with private, limestone-tiled changing cubicles and showers, expensive-looking toiletries which you could help yourself to, and big fluffy towels and ro
bes to use. I barely noticed the niceties though, I was trembling with shame and mortification, still reeling from the things Jacob had said to me.

  Oh dear, Madeleine.

  You’re overweight and very unfit.

  We’ve got some work to do with you, haven’t we?

  The words stung like barbs under my skin for the rest of the weekend. I couldn’t concentrate on anything because the experience was replaying endlessly in my mind, like a torture loop. I tried to watch the TV on Saturday evening, but I kept seeing the scorn in Jacob’s eyes, the way he’d joked about me having a heart attack. Morbidly obese, he’d called me. It sounded way scarier than plain old fat.

  ‘Silly sod,’ my best friend Nicole had said when I dropped in to see her at her tapas restaurant. ‘Don’t let him get to you.’ But even one of her big hugs, a cold San Miguel and a dish of green olives couldn’t snap me out of the glums. Nicole was beautiful, confident and successful. However much she tried, I don’t think she could understand what an ordeal it had been for me.

  I’d met Nicole on our first day at primary school. She was crying in the playground after David Streetley had bounced his football at her, and I’d put my arm around her and called him a smelly poo-head. And from that moment on, we were best mates, even though we were completely different. I always wanted to get married and have a family, whereas she was more driven by her career, working her way up through the restaurant world with breathtaking speed until she’d opened her very own place, Nicole’s, not far from the cricket ground. The big thing we had in common was that we were foodies, but the thought of dieting would never cross her mind – probably because she ran half-marathons in her spare time (for fun!) and could therefore eat like a racehorse if she felt like it (which she usually did).

  ‘You could always come for a run with me one day,’ she said, taking my hand over the table and squeezing it. ‘Much nicer to be out getting fresh air than stuck in a gym, I reckon.’

  I smiled wryly, remembering the godawful mums’ race with a shudder. ‘Nicole, I love you, but we both know that’s never going to happen,’ I told her, popping another olive into my mouth. ‘I guess I just have to write off today as a bad experience never to be repeated.’

  It was Ben who delivered the clincher. I was kissing him goodnight on Sunday when he tightened his arms around my neck. ‘I don’t want you to die, Mum,’ he said in a tiny voice.

  ‘What do you mean? I’m not going to die!’ I told him, smoothing his hair. Where had this come from? ‘Well … I mean, everyone dies at some point, but hopefully I’ll be here for a long, long time yet. You don’t need to worry about that.’

  He sniffed and wouldn’t look at me, and my head was full of Jacob, suddenly, carrying a long scythe like the figure of Death, a black cloak draped around his six-pack, pointing at me. You are MORBIDLY OBESE! Enjoy that heart attack, mwah-ha-ha-ha!

  I blinked the disturbing image away. ‘Ben?’ I said, taking his chin and turning his head so that I could look at him properly. ‘What’s brought this on?’

  He was seven years old but seemed much younger all of a sudden, his eyes big and scared-looking, his voice uncertain and wavering. ‘It’s just … I heard Dad and Granny talking about you, and they said …’ His lower lip wobbled. ‘I don’t want you to die, Mum!’

  ‘Oh, darling.’ I wrapped my arms tight around him, cuddling and rocking him. I had tears in my own eyes now. ‘Don’t you worry. I’m not going anywhere – and that’s a promise.’

  Once I’d comforted him and got him settled, I locked myself in the bathroom and burst into sobs. It felt like the world was on at me to lose weight – Collette, Mum, Jacob, Mrs Gable and her megaphone and now my little boy. I don’t want you to die, Mum, Ben had said. Well, I didn’t want that, either.

  I slumped onto the edge of the bath and blew my nose. Sod it. I was stubborn, but I wasn’t that stubborn. I was going to have to make a few changes to my life.

  So there I was on Monday evening, pushing open the doors of the church hall, holding my breath and hoping this wasn’t going to be a terrible mistake. I had a stupid mindset that always took over when I was in a room with lots of other people – the first thing I looked at was how slim everyone else was, and whether or not I was the fattest person there. I knew it was ridiculous, but I’d done this for as long as I could remember, and it was a cast-iron habit.

  Usually, I was the fattest person there – or sometimes the only remotely large person in the whole room, which always meant an instant nosedive of confidence. Nothing else mattered. If I’d found myself in a confined space with a bunch of goose-stepping neo-Nazis, I would still have felt inferior to them if they’d had smaller bums than me.

  I had dreaded being the fattest person at FatBusters. What if the others had already bust away their fat and I was the only one still wobbling? Or what if the place was full of faux-dieters – those annoying Oh help, I’m over nine stone, I’m positively gigantic types who claimed to be really devastated if they couldn’t squeeze into their size ten skinny jeans. That was just showing off, if you asked me. Bad manners.

  So I was relieved – oh God, was I ever relieved – when I discovered I was in a room full of people like me sitting on plastic chairs in a circle. Nobody I recognized on a first sweep of the room – good. I had been expecting to see someone I knew from the school run or the high street who might laugh at me or gossip to others that they’d spotted me, but everyone looked reassuringly anonymous.

  I sat down, feeling shy – Maddie No-Mates on her tod. Most of the other members of the group seemed to know one another and were chatting away. There was a desk with some leaflets on it at the back of the room, a folding screen (maybe the scales were behind there?) and a lifesize cardboard cut-out of a mousy-haired woman who was at least twenty stone. Was that meant to frighten or inspire us? I wondered.

  I sneaked a look at my fellow FatBusters. There were about twenty-five of us, I reckoned: a handful of teenagers with scraped-back ponytails and puffy faces, about five pensioners with matronly bosoms and polyester dresses, two middle-aged blokes, and the rest were women ranged between twenty and fifty. Size-wise, I seemed to be about mid-list, from what I could tell. There were a few seriously overweight people whose bodies spilled over the edges of their chairs, and at the other end of the scale, a couple of younger women who were just a little bit plump around the middle.

  My phone trilled and I almost jumped out of my seat. Caller display: Mum. Huh. I sent it to voicemail and switched off. She could grovel into my message-box; I wasn’t interested in hearing more apologies. I stuffed the phone into the depths of my handbag, scowling at it.

  I was just trying to pluck up the courage to speak to the auburn-haired woman next to me, who also seemed to be on her own, when a trim blonde woman walked in and the room fell silent. Oh no, I thought, my heart sinking at the sight of her. Was this the group leader? She was about fifty, I guessed, and looked great in a deep coral scoop-necked dress that fell just below the knee and strappy wedge sandals. Ri-i-i-ight. What would someone like her know about weight loss?

  ‘Hi, everyone!’ she said in a thick Brummie accent and smiled around the room. ‘How are we doing this evening? Hope you all had a lovely weekend.’ She caught my eye and I found myself smiling back at her. She was personable, at least – you had to give her that. ‘There are a few new faces here tonight – fantastic. For those of you who have come along for the first time, my name’s Alison and I’m your group leader. And believe me, I know what it’s like to be on a diet. Have you all clocked the flattering picture of me over there?’

  She pointed to the cardboard cut-out and I couldn’t help gasping out loud. That was Alison? No! Surely not … But as I stared, I recognized the blue eyes and the smile buried deep in the chubby round face. It really was her. And clearly, therefore, she really did know what it was like to be on a diet.

  She’d caught my reaction and was grinning in delight. ‘Ahhh, I love it when people do that,’ she said, mimic
king my double-take. ‘Now then … Down to business. For the newbies, this is how it goes: I chat to you, you chat to me, then we get out the scales of doom and see how we’ve all got along. Everything that gets said in here is confidential, so try not to be scared – you’re among friends and allies. You can tell the group how your week’s been, and how you’re finding the diet, or you can have a private chat with me when we do the weighin. Okay? Let’s get started, and see who’s here tonight, and then our new girls can introduce themselves.’

  She opened a ringbinder folder and ran her finger down a register. She reminded me a bit of Julie Walters – warm and funny, with a wicked laugh and a twinkle in her eye.

  ‘Brenda … Have we got Brenda? Ah yes. Hello, Brenda! Clare … Yes, there’s our Clare, with a rather gorgeous new pair of shoes, I see … I’ll be asking you about those later, Clare, they’re just what I’ve been looking for. Derek – there you are, excellent. You know, Derek, I’m sure you’re looking slimmer around the face these days. Well done, love. Helena … do we have Helena tonight? No? Okay …’

  So it went on, with a word and smile for everyone. ‘Well, that’s not a bad showing,’ she said when she got to the end of the list. ‘And we’ve got … let’s see … one, two, three new faces here tonight. Ladies, would you like to introduce yourselves?’ She turned to a woman across the circle from me. ‘Perhaps you could go first, hon?’

  The woman in question had brown shoulder-length hair in a neat bob, and a round face. She didn’t look hugely overweight to me, just a bit plump. The kind of body I could only dream about, sadly. She seemed vaguely familiar … then, as she opened her mouth, I recognized her. I’d seen her in the coffee bar at the fitness centre on Saturday – she’d been kind to me, given me a tissue when I’d been blubbing there like an idiot. I felt my cheeks turn pink. Oh no. I hoped she didn’t recognize me.