Fat

by Rob Grant

  She grinned. 'Depends who you believe. But no, not conclusively. It's actually one of the most fiercely contested arenas in all of science. And I'm really not sure why.'

  'Well, if it's going to save lives, isn't it worth the fight?'

  'Absolutely. But there's just as big an argument that reducing salt intake could cause more problems than it solves. If, indeed, it solves any at all.'

  'It could cause problems?'

  'Human beings need salt, Jeremy. We can't live without it. For instance, we need sodium to maintain blood volume. And salt is not just sodium. We need the potassium in salt for vasodilatation or constriction. We need the calcium in it for vascular smooth muscle tone. Even early civilisations recognised the essential nature of salt. What do you think "salt of the earth" is about? You know the word "salary" comes from Latin, from a time when Roman soldiers were actually paid in salt because it had a universal value, much more secure and cross-culturally acceptable than mere currency -- in fact, in some cultures, it actually was currency; again, you've heard the expression "not worth his salt". In France, the imposition of the salt tax was a major factor in bringing about the Revolution...' She grinned. 'But now I'm ranting. Sorry.'

  'But you're saying less salt can cause medical problems?'

  'As I said, we need salt to live. Those men we saw, working outside?'

  Jeremy nodded.

  'It's winter now, but come the summer, they will each excrete around twenty-five grams of salt through their sweat in a working day. That's not counting what they excrete through their urine. They could not survive on six grams of salt per day. If they stick to Government guidelines, they could very well drop down dead. I hope to God they bring their own packed lunches.'

  'Come on, now. Drop down dead? Don't you think that's slightly melodramatic?'

  Jemma raised an eyebrow. 'You think? In the nineties, an eight-year New York study of hypertensive individuals found people on a low-sodium diet suffered four times as many heart attacks as those with normal consumption. Four times as many. That's exactly the opposite of what the anti-salt theory predicts.'

  It was Jeremy's turn to exercise his eyebrows. Having put it off for long enough, he bit into the chickpea cutlet. It wasn't just bad, it was demonic. It didn't need seasoning as much as it needed exorcising. When he'd finally managed to swallow, he asked, 'So in what way is salt supposed to be good for us?'

  'Well, amongst other things, it's vital for balancing the sugar levels in blood, the generation of hydroelectric energy in the body's cells, the nerve cells' communication and information processing, the absorption of food particles through the intestinal tract, the clearance of mucus plugs and sticky phlegm in the lungs, for clearing up catarrh and sinus congestion, it is absolutely vital to bone structure -- salt shortage in the body can lead to osteoporosis; it regulates sleep, prevents gout, muscular cramping, varicose veins and spider veins. It's a very powerful, natural antihistamine. And two big relationship points here: it stops you drooling in your sleep and, most important of all, it's vital to the maintenance of sexuality and the libido. Plus, it makes food taste better.'

  Vital to the maintenance of sexuality and libido. Jeremy liked that. It definitely sounded like a come-on. He leaned forward. 'All right, so why has the Government spent literally millions on promotional campaigns to get people to consume less salt?'

  Jemma shrugged with her eyebrows. 'Beats the crap out of me. Because they're idiots? Because they're advised by idiots? Because they want to look like they care? Or maybe, and this is my personal favourite, because they like people to be scared about mostly everything. I really don't know.'

  Well, she did go on a bit, this one, and she was certainly opinionated to the point of outright combat, but Jeremy decided it was probably worth putting up with the mouthiness to have a shot at getting inside those M&S low-risers. 'Tell you what.' He grinned. 'Pass the salt.'

  FIFTEEN

  Grenville was in a cell.

  He was in a prison cell.

  Grenville Roberts was doing time.

  Technically, it was a holding cell, so it was not quite as well appointed, Gren imagined, as a genuine prison cell. Made of brick and concrete, it was painted a brilliant, relentless white. There was even a white brick partition separating off the toilet area. He was perched uncomfortably on a 'bed' that was more of a bench, really, again built out of bricks, topped with a smooth plank and with a folding foam-packed cushion for a mattress, such as might grace a steamer chair, thrown on top of it. He prayed he was not going to be forced to spend the night on it. Even if he managed to get most of himself on the 'bed' and maintain some kind of precarious balance all night with sufficient confidence to actually sleep, his back would never recover from the experience. Never. If he was forced to spend the night on this thing, come the morning you might as well just rip out his spine and throw it away.

  How long had he been there? He looked at his wrist where his watch no longer was. It felt like three months, but it was probably less than an hour. If they could just process this ludicrous case and release him soon, he might even make the studios in time for the show.

  They had removed all his possessions when they'd admitted him. He didn't understand what sort of threat he would pose if they let him keep his watch. Did they think he was going to open the case and use it as a digging tool to burrow an escape tunnel? He'd have to be in there longer than the Count of Monte Cristo just to scratch the outline in the concrete floor.

  His watch, his wallet, his loose change, his keys, they'd taken the lot. They'd even taken his temporary David Lloyd Leisure Centre membership card, which they could probably keep. Grenville seriously doubted they'd be welcoming him back there with open arms any time soon. They'd also made him remove his trainers, which, as we know by now, was not a pain-free business, which invariably left him breathless and carried with it a serious threat of blacking out. And then, the crowning glory, what might actually rank as the cream of the humiliation crop in a day that had so far provided such a bumper harvest of them, and was yet barely halfway over: they had removed the elasticated drawstring from his jogging bottoms.

  Now, just what did they think he was going to do with that?

  Certainly, he couldn't have hanged himself with it. It was elasticated. Even if he'd been able to find some kind of protuberance in the ceiling to tie one end to, which there wasn't -- these people weren't fools, you know: after the first few thousand cell-hanging suicides they'd stopped installing light fixtures that were potential gallows -- but even if there had been something to secure a noose to, and he'd then looped the noose around his neck and managed to kick the chair away from under him, he would have simply wound up bouncing endlessly around the room like a mad bungee jumper at a punk concert. The worst damage he could have done to himself was bang his head on the ceiling a few times.

  So he had to walk to the cells barefoot with one hand holding up his trousers. Fucking madness.

  They had read him his rights, again, and Moggoch had described the arrest, leaving out, of course, his own sardonic remarks, but reporting absolutely everything Grenville had done and said. He was being charged with Criminal Damage under the 1971 Criminal Damage Act and Driving Without Due Care and Attention. He'd been offered his phone call, and it had taken him quite a long time to try to decide who best to call. His first thought, oddly enough, had been his ex-wife, but he'd rejected that impulse. Wouldn't she just have loved that? Grenville banged up. She'd still be laughing next Christmas. As he thumbed with increasing desperation through his mental Rolodex, he'd realised a terrible, terrible thing.

  Grenville Roberts had no friends. Nary a one. How the hell had that happened? He used to have friends. Good friends. And he'd kept many of them all the way to his thirties. But, gradually, they'd all got married and childrened-up, and moved around the place. And they'd kept in touch, at least at first, but then less and less, until, finally, they'd all become more or less strangers. By way of substitution, he'd acquired new fri
ends, mostly the parents of his daughter's friends, as a matter of fact, but there wasn't the closeness there: no shared experiences; no time spent together in the trenches of youth. There was no one he felt was close enough to call and tell he was under arrest.

  In the end, the most important thing was letting the production team know he might be missing today's recording, though he really didn't want them to know quite why, and he couldn't think of a suitable excuse. Besides, what if The Girl answered the phone, as well she might? Grenville could live without that particular delicious humiliation, thank you very much, on this day so rich in them.

  His agent, then.

  It was unfortunate that his agent had to find out about this silliness, it being fairly early in their professional relationship, and this being a unique aberration in Grenville's behaviour, and he didn't want Seth thinking he made a habit of throwing berserker rages in health club car parks, but there was nothing else for it.

  He'd asked for a phone book, because he didn't know the number off by heart just yet, and he'd met with more law-enforcement derision. What did he think they were? Bloody Directory En-bloody-quiries? Did the desk sergeant look like one of the moustachioed tossers from the 118 adverts?

  So that was that. Your one permitted phone call could only be made to phone numbers you had committed to memory. Since Grenville only actually knew two numbers -- his ex-wife's and his own -- he was, quite frankly, fucked. He wasn't going to let them get away without paying for a phone call, though, so he rang himself up and left a long message on his answering machine, which was mostly a long and bitter diatribe about the astonishingly poor standards of law enforcement in this country in general, and wild speculation about the immediate ancestry of one Scottish law enforcement officer in particular.

  He'd also been offered a choice between contacting a solicitor he knew, or availing himself of one of their own duty solicitors. He only knew one solicitor: the one who'd handled his divorce, a certifiable moron whose monumental incompetence was only matched by his magnificent flair for fiction when it came to billing. So Grenville opted for the duty solicitor, who would doubtless turn out to be equally incompetent, but had the twin advantages that he would turn up sooner and he'd be charging precisely nothing.

  He'd been fingerprinted, photographed and had a DNA swab taken, which entailed a pretty policewoman inserting a sort of elongated ear bud into his mouth, not all that unpleasant an experience, actually. It had been a long time since a pretty girl had touched his mouth.

  But he was now in the system. Any crime, anywhere in the country, and Grenville Roberts would be one of the names that popped up on the database. Any car crime, any criminal damage, and Grenville Roberts would doubtless be hauled in for questioning and sweated under the lights for hours on end. He might as well get to like it here because it looked like he was going to be a regular visitor. Perhaps he should have his address book tattooed on his body, so he never got caught out at the phone-call stage again.

  They'd asked him if he was Muslim, which seemed a bit cheeky, but it turned out they were just trying to ascertain his dietary proscriptions. Just how long were they planning to keep him here? He'd told them he was on the GI diet plan, which had just produced more merriment and derision.

  He shifted his weight on the brick bench, the edges of which were cutting into his thighs, quite cruelly. How much longer before they would come and collect him? Surely the solicitor should be here by now? Surely someone was free to interrogate him? Perhaps they could only find two nice cops and were waiting for a nasty cop to become free. Perhaps they'd forgotten him altogether, and he really was destined to spend the next fourteen years in this cell, like Edmond Dantes, in which case he should probably get on his knees and start scratching at the concrete with his fingernails. The journey of a thousand miles, after all, begins with a single step.

  Mercifully, there was a noise at his door. Grenville stood. The door was a solid-looking thing, with a thick glass window in the top half -- Grenville assumed the glass was unbreakable, and he certainly had no intention of trying to test that theory just as yet, though precisely what proportion of the fourteen years might elapse before he was driven to try breaking through it with his bare forehead remained to be seen.

  There was a face at the window, looking through at him. The face had a uniform under it.

  Below the window, there was a wicket; a sort of metal chute which was a conduit for supplying the cons (which is how Grenville now thought of himself) with sustenance. A tray appeared in the wicket, and the voice on the other side announced that it was lunch.

  My, my. Luncheon was served. La-di-dah. Waiter service, too. The Wormwood Scrubs Hotel, if yew don't mind.

  Grenville approached the repast with some trepidation. What unspeakable Dickensian gruel awaited him under the aluminium heat cover? Sloppy porridge crawling with roaches? Texan grits dotted with bluebottle carcasses? Dried biscuits alive with wriggling maggots?

  He lifted the lid cautiously, then lifted it off completely. It was a fairly appetising-looking pie. Chips were piled liberally beside it. There was gravy, and there were beans.

  And, as far as he could recall, his GI diet forbade Grenville from eating any of it.

  He couldn't remember, with absolute certainly, the list of forbidden foods -- perhaps he should have that tattooed on his body, also. Clearly, he was going to have to spend a great deal of time in tattoo parlours should he ever regain his freedom. But he could say, with a fair degree of conviction, that pies were not permitted, and he knew for a fact he was not allowed chips or beans. Perhaps he could lap gently at the gravy, but he doubted it: it almost certainly contained flour.

  He carried the tray over to his bed anyway. He didn't want to look like he was refusing food or being awkward and uncooperative in any way. There was a fruit juice, probably from concentrate, which, unless he was getting mixed up with the Atkins, was also denied him. He'd been on this diet for an entire week now, this morning's insane breakfast excepted, and he was just beginning, he thought, to feel some benefits, and he was damned if he was going to backslide again.

  With a strength of purpose and resilience of will he found extremely admirable in himself, he sat back on the bench again, the food tray as far away from him as humanly possible. He tried not to be distracted from his introverted misery by the taunting aromas the repast was hurling his way, but his strength of purpose and resilience of will were not quite as strong, purposeful or resilient as he'd first hoped.

  He was hungry. He hadn't been hungry before the food had shown up, but now, it turned out, he was absolutely bloody ravenous.

  He thought he would try one chip. A single chip wouldn't blow his diet, now, would it? He wasn't put on this planet to sit around starving to death, was he? He wasn't supposed just to wait in his cell, ignoring perfectly edible food, and then later be forced to scrabble around on the floor trying to trap an unlucky juicy centipede and gobble it down greedily like Papillon, on Devil's Island. Better a chip than even the juiciest of centipedes, in his opinion.

  It was not a bad chip. Grenville knew his chips, and this was not a bad one. He, personally, preferred frites, slightly thinner, crisper on the outside, and this was a thicker chip and not quite crisp enough on the outside, but floury and lush inside, and it would probably be improved by a small splash of gravy, so he took another chip and barely dabbed it in the gravy, being careful not to contaminate it with the tomato sauce from the beans, which, let's face it, was almost pure sugar, and, indeed, the gravy did complement the chip delightfully. Out of professional courtesy, he thought he should at least see what was in the pie. He took up the plastic knife and fork, wondering, vaguely, if he should be thinking about somehow secreting the knife away so that later he might in some way be able to tool it into some sort of 'shank' for personal protection in the exercise yard, and cut into the pie.

  The pastry was admirable. Firm, yet crumbly. And the pie was minced beef and onion, which was one of Grenville's personal fav
ourites in the whole of pie creation, bested only by steak and kidney pudding. Plus, of course, he could probably eat it with impunity, so long as he stuck to the filling only.

  He lifted the tray onto his knee, removed the lid, and in less than seven minutes the entire meal was just the memory of a smear on the plate.

  SIXTEEN

  It was lunchtime before Hayleigh could attend to the contraband secreted away inside Chick Chat. There had been no morning break because Mr Madders (guess what his nickname was) had given the whole class a detention because Daniel McWeaver-Boastcroft had let off a terrible fart, which smelled so, so bad that Maddo had thought it was a stink bomb and wanted the culprit to own up, but Daniel was just too embarrassed, and so the whole class suffered. Hayleigh didn't blame Daniel, though. Owning up to a fart so deadly that people at the back of the class were actually suffering third-degree burns and radiation poisoning would have been a massive humiliation from which his reputation would never have recovered.

  She slipped into the loo and, mercifully, found an empty cubicle right away. Working quickly, she dealt with her lunch first. She squeezed the banana (a hundred and forty-three calories) out of its skin and into the plastic bag, and emptied the carton of semi-skimmed milk (200ml, ninety-six calories) down the loo. She unwrapped the tuna and mayonnaise baguette (a whopping five hundred and thirty-five calories, not to mention twenty-three grams of fat) and crumbled it over its wrapping, which she then smeared with some of the filling. Incredibly, there was another sandwich in the lunchbox. Was Mum trying to kill her? This time, it was ham and cheese (five hundred and fifty-seven calories and a heart-stopping twenty-seven grams of fat). Again, she removed the wrapping and, rather cunningly, she thought, crumbled half of the sandwich over the wrapping, and left the other half intact. She didn't have to pretend to eat everything, did she? Leaving half a sandwich would be even more convincing. Ha ha. Detect that, queen of detectives. She disposed of the cheese and onion crisps (a hundred and eighty-four calories), again down the loo. Crisps got soggy and went down when you flushed, unlike bananas which were, quite literally, unsinkable. They should have made the Titanic out of bananas. She gingerly removed the Mars Bar (two hundred and ninety-four calories, I don't think so) from its wrapping and laid it beside the banana.