Fat

by Rob Grant

  The meeting with Jason Black -- he was no longer 'Jase', in her mind, anyway -- had been a total, humiliating disaster. Well, he was gone in body, but his memory certainly lingered. Mum had scrubbed down the sofa several times, with increasingly powerful cleaning agents, but it was beginning to look like the damned thing would have to be thrown out, ideally in a nuclear waste dump, deep underground and, preferably, not on this planet. Not on a nearby planet, either. Pluto would just about do the trick. She'd brought plug-in air fresheners, lit fragrant candles and burned enough joss sticks to cause an addiction in the passive breather, but still the pungency loitered.

  And here's the funny thing: neither of them had actually mentioned the smell, not out loud, anyway -- Mum because she was probably afraid of upsetting Hayleigh, and Hayleigh because she felt vaguely responsible -- but they did share funny looks and wrinkled noses, and once in a while, they had actually both burst out laughing with the horror of it all. She wasn't all that bad, the old cow detective, so long as she wasn't on your case.

  'Oh, look at this, Hay.' Mum held up a picture from a Sunday supplement magazine. 'It's a picture of Jeremy.' She passed it over to Hayleigh.

  Jeremy? Who was Jeremy? Hayleigh looked at the picture, and, yes, it was old Lush Mush himself, standing next to a bunch of politicians. He wasn't dead centre of the picture, because the photographer had been more interested in snapping the Prime Minister, the fool, but it was a pretty good photo. His hair looked nice, and he was wearing the most gorge smile. 'It's a bit small,' Hayleigh said.

  'Well, we can get it blown up. Dad can scan it and blow it up in Photoshop. We'll give it to him when he visits tonight.'

  'Can he get rid of the Prime Minister?'

  'I'm sure he can. Only in the picture, though, unfortunately.'

  Hayleigh looked at the wall. Currently occupying pride of place was a super duper poster of Old Faithful, Chad Michael Murray, stripped to the waist with his jeans well bopped, showing off his fab abs. She reached round and took a chicken nugget from her plate and chewed on it absently while she contemplated this weighty dilemma. Much better to have a piccie of someone she'd actually met, wouldn't you say, in pride of place? Someone who'd actually shown her some kindness. No. Apologies to Chad, the old darling, and all that, but he would have to step aside. She lifted him carefully off the wall and replaced the poster a foot to the right, then stuck the Jeremy picture slap in the middle of the wall, where it rightly belonged, but only as a marker, until he could be enlarged: it would have been disrespectful to have him dwarfed by the likes of Jesse McCartney et al.

  She wheeled back and squinted, trying to imagine the effect. Mum made a funny sound. Hayleigh looked over at her, but she was facing away, towards the window. Spring was definitely in the air now. There was a shock of early-bird daffodils beginning their valiant assault on hoary old winter in the beds that lined the hospital path. In a couple of weeks, the trees would be sprouting cherry blossoms, which Hayleigh loved. They're only around for a week or two, and then the blossoms blow off and carpet the pavements with their beautiful pink petals. It was a magical time, really. Not like you were walking into school at all; more like you were walking into Camelot on Guinevere's wedding day. If you strained really hard, you could almost hear the trumpet fanfares. Maybe she would be back home by then. Maybe. She noticed Mum's shoulders were shaking. Was she crying?

  'Are you all right, Mum?'

  'I'm fine, baby,' she said, but her voice was cracking. 'I'm just being silly.' And a little sob escaped.

  Poor thing. She was probably menopausal or something. She burst into tears at the drop of a hat these days. Best to let her get on with it and not make a fuss, in Hayleigh's experience. She looked back at the wall display. Yes, if you caught it unawares like that, you could definitely tell what the finished article would look like. Not bad. Not bad at all.

  She reached around absently to pluck another nugget from her plate, and -- look at that! Would you believe it? They were all gone.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Without Jonny Geller, this book would never have happened. Whether that makes him loveable or loathsome is up to you. Simon Spanton, my unfeasibly skinny editor, also made invaluable contributions, and he bought me beer, and for that I can almost forgive his body mass index.

  This is, of course, a work of fiction. If you're interested in exploring further some of the issues raised, I recommend the following books:

  The Cholesterol Myths by Uffe Ravnskov, New Trends Publishing, 2000.

  The Epidemiologists by John Brignell, Brignell Associates, 2004.

  The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos, Gotham Books, 2004.

  The Obesity Epidemic by Jan Wright and Michael Gard, Routledge, 2005.

  Panic Nation by Stanley Feldman and Vincent Marks, John Blake, 2005.

  The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine by James Le Fanu, Abacus, 2004.

  Also by Rob Grant:

  Series

  Red Dwarf Scripts (with Doug Naylor)

  Son of Soup (1996)

  Novels

  Colony (2000)

  Incompetence (2003)

  Fat (2006)

  Series contributed to Red Dwarf 4.

  Backwards (1996)

  Non fiction series

  Red Dwarf Nonfiction (with Doug Naylor)

  Scenes from the Dwarf (1996)

  Table of Contents

  PART ONE:

  PART TWO:

  PART THREE:

  Table of Contents

  PART ONE:

  PART TWO:

  PART THREE: