Fat

by Rob Grant

  'We seek 'em here, we seek 'em there, we seek those lavvies everywhere...' Dad hardly ever talked in his own voice when he was with Hayleigh. He probably needed psychiatric help, the poor man.

  He pushed her to the loo door, turned around and started backing into the door.

  Hayleigh almost died on the spot. 'Er, what are you doing?'

  'I'm supposed to go in with you.'

  'No way.'

  'Mum said--'

  'I don't care what she said, you are not going in there with me. It's probably illegal.'

  'But you need help, don't you?'

  'It's a disabled toilet. I can manage, thank you.'

  He was confused, poor thing. 'Hang on.' He looked around. 'At least let me find someone to go in with you.'

  'Dad, I'm bursting.'

  There was nobody about. Nine-forty in a hospital ward is like four in the morning anywhere else.

  Dad called out: 'Hallo?' quietly, so as not to disturb the slumbering sickies, which sort of defeated the object, really.

  'Dad!'

  'Wait there. Just for a sec.'

  'I'm going in.'

  'Just wait. Please. Just one minute.' And he scooted off down the corridor, looking for the night duty nurse.

  Hayleigh wheeled herself into the loo.

  She had no plan. If she was to achieve anything here, she'd have to improvise, and she'd have to do it quickly. There was no telling how long it might take Dad to track down someone who'd be free to supervise her, or how long it would be before he gave up and came in himself in total defiance of probably several European Court of Human Rights laws.

  She looked around the room. There was a bath, but she wouldn't have time to use it now. There was nothing sharp, though, as far as she could tell. At least, nothing sharp enough to do the business. But then, triumph! There was a long mirror over the rank of sinks. She could break that and maybe produce a cruel enough shard. Nice irony there, mirrors being a long-term enemy. But could she do it quietly enough not to be heard outside? If she tried and failed, the jig would be up, and she'd be in permanent lockdown.

  She wheeled herself up to the paper towel dispenser and tugged free a huge wad of towels, which she started wrapping around her fist. They might just be enough to muffle the crash.

  When she'd finished her makeshift boxing glove, she wheeled herself over to the part of the mirror that was furthest from the door and wrangled the chair round to try to find the best angle from which she might launch a decent attack, but it was useless: the sink was in the way.

  She would have to stand.

  She slipped the brake on and grabbed the rim of the sink.

  She took a deep breath and tried to haul herself out of the chair, but she'd never tried it before on her own, and it took more effort than she'd anticipated, not helped by the reduced grip inflicted on her by the paper towelette boxing glove.

  She fell back on her seat, and her plastered leg struck the underside of the sink, causing her not inconsiderable pain. But the pain was all right. The pain was good. It helped her focus.

  She glanced around at the door. She heard nothing outside. Good.

  She unravelled the glove quickly and tossed it into the sink. She gripped the rim again with two good hands and hauled.

  And up she came.

  At last, she was standing on her own one foot.

  She swayed, dizzily. She felt so weak. Astonishingly weak. Like a newborn kitten. An angry butterfly could have dive-bombed her to the floor with ease.

  Well, there was no time for weakness. She wrapped the towelettes around her fist again: not easy when you had to stand balanced on one leg like a flamingo, while the other leg was feeble and sore and weighed an absolute ton. But she was determined and resilient and she got it done.

  Gripping the sink with her left hand, she turned her head away from the mirror and steeled herself for the punch. She was Maggie Fitzgerald from Million Dollar Baby. Go, mo chuisle. Yes, boss. And she swung. This would, of course, mean another seven years' bad luck, but that was hardly going to matter now, was it?

  She hit the mirror with what she considered to be a fairly mighty blow, but the towelette boxing glove just squeaked across the surface. All she'd managed to do was clean the bloody mirror. Brilliant.

  Come on, mo chuisle: one more shot to the chin. Yes, boss. She closed her eyes, turned her head away and swung again. Not so much of a swing this time; more a straight-ahead punch, like a karate blow she'd learned from Jonny practising on her. And she made good contact, and twisted her fist on impact, and yes, all those years as a makeshift punching bag for her pesky brother had not been wasted because there was a cracking sound, but it hurt her fist quite a lot and she was fairly convinced she might actually have broken her wrist, but she didn't yell out, or make any kind of sound whatsoever, because that could blow the whole thing.

  She opened her eyes and turned to inspect the damage. At first she couldn't see any, but that wasn't right, because she had definitely heard a crack. She wondered for a second if it might have been her own wrist she'd heard breaking, but no: if you craned in quite close to the mirror and stopped trying to blur out your own reflection like you were looking in one of those 'Magic Eye' books, you could just about make out a hairline crack, threading its way diagonally across the mirror.

  So the mirror was weakened, at least. One more blow should do it. Just one more, mo chuisle. Yes, boss. Yes, boss. But her hand was hurting quite a bit. It was certainly badly bruised. Try as she might, she could no longer form it into a fist. Could she do it with her left hand? The mirror was weakened, after all. It might not take very much at all to bring it crashing down.

  Breathing quite heavily, partly from the exertion and partly to try to shut out the pain -- she was already on painkillers, of course, so what she was feeling was probably just a small percentage of the actual pain -- she unwrapped the towelette glove to transfer it to her left hand. Her right hand was quite a mess. She was surprised that bruises could come out so quickly. Didn't it usually take a few hours before they went purple? Ah well, it was Jason's favourite colour. She started wrapping up her left hand, holding onto the sink rim with her elbows. It was slow going, balanced awkwardly as she was, and her right hand didn't want to cooperate very much; it was about as useful as a lump of Play-Doh. She was getting worried, now, that if she damaged her left had, too, she might not have sufficient dexterity to carry out the dirty deed at all. Perhaps it would be best to try to break the mirror with a series of light taps along the fracture. Yes, that might do it. In fact, it might be best to wrap the towels around her right elbow, then, come what may, she'd still have one good hand left, at least.

  But did she have time?

  How long had she been in here alone, now? She did find that the painkillers could distort her sense of time. It seemed to her she'd been in the bathroom for absolutely ages, and even Dad would be starting to get suspicious. She glanced round at the door again and listened, frozen like a deer.

  She decided there wouldn't be time. Not if she wanted to smash the mirror without detection and then do the deed without risking interruption. The mirror was cracked already. She'd made a start. Perhaps next time she could smuggle in a heavy blunt object to finish the job, so she wouldn't have to hurt her hand again.

  She ran the taps, just in case anyone was listening outside. She should have done that from the start, probably, to mask the sounds. In any case, her timing was impeccable, because at that precise second, the door was flung open and Dad stepped into the bathroom, looking confused and flustered.

  'Daad!' Hayleigh admonished.

  'Sorry, babe: couldn't find anyone. What are you doing?'

  'What's it look like? I'm washing my hands.'

  'But you're... you're standing up.'

  'It's the only way to reach the taps properly.'

  'No weight on that leg, they said. No weight for six weeks.'

  'I'm not putting any weight on it, am I?' She dried her hands on the bunched
-up towelettes, as if that was why she had them, which turned out pretty neat, really. She tried not to put any pressure on her injured hand, but it was fairly tender and the slightest touch was like cracking it with a toffee hammer. She fought the impulse to wince, though. This had to look natural and normal in every way. She threw the bunched-up towelette ball into the bin. Goal! And then lowered herself back into her chair. She wanted that to look natural and painless, as well; as if she did it all the time, did Dad but know it. But she could only support herself with her left hand, so it was quite tough, and her arm was shaking with the strain quite visibly.

  Dad let her go so far, wanting to allow her her dignity, but she couldn't quite pull it off without letting out a squeak of effort, and he rushed over to her and helped her back down.

  'Thanks,' she said, quite angry with herself for showing weakness.

  'I don't want you getting out of that chair again, all right?'

  'Fine. I'll sleep in it, shall I?'

  'Don't get lippy with me, you monkey. Mum will probably slaughter me for letting you do that.'

  He started to wheel her towards the door. Hayleigh managed to keep her right hand hidden under the folds of her hospital gown.

  She'd have to wait till later, till Dad had dropped off to sleep. She could do that. She could lie awake all night if she had to.

  FORTY-ONE

  Grenville was trying not to think of the discomforts and minor humiliations that had already been inflicted on him on the trip to the Well Farm. He was trying to focus, instead, on the bright future that was awaiting him. A future where he was slim again. Off The Peg. Touch your toes. Admire your own penis. Where you could bound effortlessly up stairs two, or even three, at a time. Throw everything even slightly Day-Glo out of your wardrobe. Get out of a chair without any involuntary grunting. Sit down in a chair without involuntary grunting. Take a bath without fear of being stranded there for days like a whale in the Thames. Have sex without fear of crushing your partner. Tie your shoelaces without fear of fainting. Turn, suddenly, and look over your shoulder without the risk that dozens of shafts of pain might go shooting through your internal organs, as if you were being assaulted by the massed ranks of the English archers at Agincourt.

  There would, of course, be months, many long months, before all this could come to pass. And there would be deprivation, discipline and hard work. There would also, it appeared, be stupidity, ignorance and incompetence to deal with along the way. But it would be worth it.

  The launch had all the hallmarks of a disaster happening in slow motion. In the first place, the celebrity vanguard had been picked up from their various residences in London in minibuses for transportation to a photo shoot in a Government building in Whitehall, which meant senseless hours added to the journey. Grenville would have happily made his own way, and it would have taken about an eighth of the time, but the organisers didn't want to risk anyone not turning up, and they didn't want to splash out on individual cabs for everyone, so that was that. And he, of course, had been the first one to be collected.

  And of course, the minibus was too small. It would have been adequate for transporting regular-sized, Off-The-Peg skinnies, but the seats were a crush for a bunch of gruesomely overweight celebrities. Seatbelts wouldn't fasten. Elbows ground painfully into inflated abdomens. The more people they picked up, the more the internal temperature in the vehicle rose alarmingly, making everyone sweaty and grumpy, and hardly in the best frame of mind for posing for publicity shots. Grenville was wearing his chef's jacket, as requested, and soggy dark patches were already starting to form under his armpits, and, presumably, on the small of his back. Smashing.

  And, naturally, when the full complement was finally on board, the minibus broke down. They easily exceeded its maximum load, and first there was this terrible metallic grinding as the exhaust was forced onto the road surface, but the idiot driver didn't think of stopping and perhaps disembarking one or two of his passengers for pick-up by a back-up bus, or some such. Oh, no. He kept on going with sparks flying out of his undercarriage, defying his passengers' protestations, and the mass horn power of London traffic, until the rear suspension snapped entirely, and irrevocably, stranding them all perfectly at Hyde Park Corner, the busiest, most aggressive and dangerous road intersection in the entire Western world.

  Only then had the slack-brained donkey radioed in for back-up. And, of course, the back-up had taken over an hour to arrive, with everybody stuck in the broken-down bus, because to leave would have been to court death by traffic. And, obviously, the back-up had been an absolutely identical minibus, which Slack Brain had tried to cajole them into, as if, somehow, this one might somehow magically accommodate them all. But Grenville and a couple of the others finally rebelled and, amidst protestations and all kinds of jobsworth threats, had hailed a black cab and made their own way to the destination.

  The photo shoot had been planned to take place on the roof of the building, some forty-eight floors above the ground, and the lifts had been very small indeed. A quick calculation of the permitted acceptable poundage in Grenville's head led him to the conclusion that even two of the celebrities in the lift at one time would run the danger of exceeding the maximum load, and he suggested they all went up one at a time, individually, but the PR girl was already way behind schedule, and the safety plaque on the lift advised that four people at any one time would constitute an acceptable load, so she compromised with three. Grudgingly, and with a certain degree of trepidation, Grenville had taken the first car, along with a former breakfast TV presenter and a losing Big Brother contestant, who weren't quite so rotund as the bulk of the celebrities. It had been a squeezed and claustrophobic journey, with the elevator car groaning and grinding disturbingly at times, but they'd made it safely enough, and climbed the last two flights of stairs to the roof terrace without too much pain and breathless complaining.

  The occupants of the second car were not so lucky, and Grenville and his fellows were left shivering on the roof, with a couple of dozen other overweight celebs whose minibus journeys hadn't proved quite so disastrous, for another forty minutes while the rescue operation took its course. That lift was closed down and the rest of the celebrities were compelled to use the one remaining lift, one at a time, and the whole operation took another hour.

  And just as they were finally set up, and the photographer had at last managed to get everyone to smile, however unconvincingly, and framed them spectacularly against the London skyline, the building's Health and Safety Officer had broken the whole thing up because they were contravening about one hundred and thirty-seven H&S regulations, including not wearing hard hats, overalls and safety harnesses, which would have made a very strange publicity shot indeed. Grenville didn't understand why they had to wear hard hats under the open sky, anyway. What was likely to fall on their heads there? The planet Mercury, perhaps? Old bits of Russian space station? Nothing, certainly, that a hard hat would offer convincing protection against. And they also, it seemed, en masse constituted an excess load for the roof, which was hard to believe since there was a helicopter landing pad up there.

  So they'd all been trooped off again and had their photos taken in an office, all crammed together to try to accommodate some small section of the skyline through the window behind them, but, quite frankly, the shot could have been taken anywhere. Because of the confined space, the photographer had to use a fisheye lens, which would make everyone look even fatter than they were, especially on the periphery, where Grenville was. He would have bet good money that the caption appearing in the papers along with the shot would be 'Never Have So Few Weighed So Much', and he'd have won, too.

  So, after very much ado about absolutely bugger all, quite frankly, they were all bussed back down to the ground, one at a time in the single remaining elevator, except for one or two brave souls, including Grenville himself, who decided to take the emergency stairs.

  And waiting for them outside was a small fleet of minibuses ready to transpo
rt them all to Norfolk, identical to the one that had broken like an Airfix model on the way to the shoot.

  But the mess had been sorted, overspill buses had been provided, and they were now on their way to Norfolk, in slightly more comfort, air conditioners on full blast, and there was just a chance things might proceed smoothly and without further cock-ups.

  Because, so far, all in all, the whole enterprise looked set to make the launch of the skyscraper in The Towering Inferno look like a hats-off, rip-roaring, runaway success.

  FORTY-TWO

  It was the pain that woke her up. Her leg was caning, as usual, but her right hand was hurting, too, and it took her a few seconds to remember why. She looked over at her bedside clock. Five-ten a.m. Normally she would have pressed the button to summon a nurse and get her pain management meds, but not this morning. She had other plans.

  Dad was snoring quite volubly on the couch. She had tried to stay awake, to outlast him the previous night, but he was having none of it. He was poring over Mum's list of instructions like he was cramming for his GCSEs or something. He'd probably memorised it, which would not be a good thing. It might mean that the laxities she'd fought so hard to win yesterday would all be lost. She'd managed to stay awake until he'd finished that business, but then he'd slipped the other DVD into the laptop and started watching it with his earphones in. It's extra hard trying to stay awake when you're pretending to be asleep, and Hayleigh must have finally succumbed.

  But the pain, her new friend, had given her a shot. You might think that ten-past five is very early in the morning, but not so in a hospital. In a little over forty minutes, the day would be starting. Hayleigh had no idea why hospitals arranged the days in this cockamamie fashion. Perhaps someone thought it was inherently healthier to have your breakfast at six and go to bed at nine. Perhaps they wanted to make hospitalisation such a miserable experience that people couldn't wait to vacate their beds and get back home to have breakfast at a civilised time, and still be awake in the evening at the same time as most ten-year-olds.