by Claire Allan
Mentally I see Daisy, aged about eighty. She will be one of those wee grannies who dress in suitably grannified dresses (you know the floral patterned ones with the wee thin belt across the middle) but with a massive bobble hat she has knitted herself and a pair of the latest Nike trainers. She will strike up conversations with anyone at bus stops, the queue at the Post Office, wherever, and offer boiled sweets to random strangers and she will continue to do just what she is doing now and swear at stupid inventions we don’t really need.
The health centre has air conditioning but you wouldn’t really notice it, not today anyway. My palms are sweating and I’m leaving greasy marks on my Woman’s Weekly.
And then the light beeps which lets me know that Dr Dishy will see me now.
“C’mon, Daisy,” I say and stand up, and she follows suit, stuffing the magazine into her bag as she goes.
The room seems bigger than last week, the chairs more comfortable. We say our hellos and sit down.
“You are looking better already, Grace,” Dr Dishy says. “Well, I haven’t spent all morning crying and I’ve managed to put some make-up on so that is always a start,” I reply, trying to lighten the mood.
Daisy coughs as if to remind me I haven’t introduced her so I do the necessary. “This is my friend Daisy. She is here for a little moral support.”
He looks at her, his dark brown eyes twinkling, and he smiles, stretching out his (strong, manly) hand and shaking hers. “Hi, Daisy who is here for moral support, perhaps you can tell me how you think Grace is doing?”
I’m a little stunned he isn’t asking me outright, but I figure there has to be a method to his madness.
“Erm, I think she isn’t doing too badly. She is taking control of her life a little but she is still prone to occasional hysterical outbursts,” Daisy answers, batting her eyelids in Dishy’s direction.
“What sets them off?” he asks and it takes a few seconds before I realise he is talking to me. I wonder should I tell him my last emotional outburst was over Daisy not speaking to me – or would that make us both look like a pair of prize plonkers. I decide to save our blushes – for now anyway.
“Not much,” I answer. “I’m quite tearful, but I’m trying to get better. Silly things can get me going though. I feel quite edgy and defensive a lot of the time. That said you should have seen me kick some butt in work this morning over the ‘Change Your Life’ feature.”
“Yes, I meant to ask what you had decided about that one?” he asks, raising an eyebrow in a Dermot Murnaghan style.
“I’m doing it,” I answer, “but on my terms. I want it to be about more than what I weigh or what I wear.”
“Good for you,” he answers and I feel strangely pleased that I seem to be in the good doctor’s good books. “I actually have a couple of things you could try if you’re serious about taking an holistic approach?”
“I am, doctor,” I say.
And he turns to me as if in slow motion and says, “Please,” (oh, how I love how he says ‘please’!) “call me Shaun.”
I nod and sigh and I swear Daisy squeaks beside me in pleasure.
We set about discussing our options, including a very bizarre ‘Movement and Mood’ workshop he would like me to attend and we discuss whether or not to alter my medications, before I’m packed off to the real world again with orders to come back in a week.
I’m just about to close the door to his office when I remember my promise to Sinéad. “Doctor, I mean Shaun,” I say, “have you ever written for a magazine?”
❃ ❃ ❃
“Oh. My. God! How dreamy is he?” Daisy asks as we walk towards Brooke Perk for a cup of coffee and a healthy wholegrain sandwich (see, I’m sticking with this healthy eating malarkey).
“Daisy,” I grin, “you’re a grown woman, not some sixteen-year-old. You can’t be using words like ‘dreamy’.”
“But he is dreamy, Gracie, pure fecking dreamy, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is. He really is,” I say, linking arms with her and pushing through the door to find our favourite seat in the corner, giggling like schoolgirls.
As we eat our sandwiches a short time later Daisy looks at me and says, rather sorrowfully: “It’s not really the same without a Caramel Rocky, is it?”
I nod and agree but I can’t let myself be swayed, not when I need all the willpower in the world to get me through the next couple of months.
“Get thee behind me, Satan,” I tease. “I have that Charlotte one at Weightloss Wonders to face tomorrow night and I’m dreading the weigh-in.”
“I’ll go with you and hold your hand if you want,” Daisy offers, pulling a piece of soggy tomato from her bread and examining it as if it was a piece of dog dirt.
“What, and do our Little and Large routine? They’d laugh you out of the place, Dais. You would get pelted with low-fat marg and that spray stuff they expect you to use for frying.”
“Don’t be daft. I need to lose about a stone.”
“From which finger?” I scold, surveying my skinny friend in her figure-hugging jeans.
“Seriously, all these soda farls aren’t doing me any good. I’m fighting to stay in these things,” she says, gesturing to the aforementioned jeans. “C’mon, it will be fun! It will be like a night out on the piss, without the piss.”
She winks and I know there is no saying no to her. As long as she doesn’t expect me to tell her my weight. No, that will be between me, Charlotte and Our Father in Heaven.
When I get home I hear squeals of laughter coming from the backyard. I walk through to the kitchen and just watch the scene from the window for a while, enjoying seeing my two boys play together. Jack has his sand-and- water tray out and has discovered that his daddy squeals like a girl when doused in cold water. He has his small blue bucket and is filling it with water, a look of glee mixed with pure devilment on his face as he tosses it in Aidan’s direction. I dare not let them know I’m here in case I get a bucket of water in the face too. Besides, I’m enjoying this too much. I love just standing here, twiddling my locket between my fingers, and observing them together.
Aidan’s nights off are precious for so many reasons, but not least because they allow him to spend time with his son.
I stand for as long as I can before the urge to run and hug a soggy and cold Jack becomes too much and I shout a quick hello through the window. “Hey, there,” I grin and am rewarded with two huge smiles.
“Maaammmeeeeee!” Jack shouts before tearing towards me at the speed of light, dropping his bucket and enveloping me in a huge squishy hug which threatens to squeeze the life from me.
“I’d say someone is happy to see you,” Aidan laughs, pushing by us to get a towel from the kitchen.
“Well, I’m quite happy to see this little man too – and you look quite good as well,” I grin.
“My God, Grace, is this you actually coming home from work and not spending fifteen minutes giving out about how crap it was and how you hate Louise?” Aidan smiles.
“Well, I do still hate Louise. You should have seen the stunt she pulled today in the meeting, but this is the new positive me, remember? The one who doesn’t give out about everything.”
“Well, I like the new you. She kicks some ass.” “Quit your being smart, or I’ll kick yours too.”
A few hours later, I am sitting on the floor of the nursery as the sun sets outside. Jack is asleep in his cot. He is lying in that way only babies can, on his tummy, his bum in the air, his fair curls splayed out on the pillow and I’m happy. I don’t want for anything else in this moment, just for my son to sleep peacefully and for the sun to set and for life to stay like this.
I walk downstairs and Aidan is back outside, sitting on the plastic seats – a glass of wine poured for each of us and some citronella candles burning softly.
“Is he sleeping?” he says. “You were gone ages.”
I sit down and sip the wine, enjoying how it makes me feel sleepy and relaxed.
“T
his is the life,” I sigh, staring out over the wheelie bins and towards the hills.
“So how did it go at the doctor’s?” Aidan asks.
“Not so bad. Daisy was more than impressed. I think she may have a wee notion on the good doctor.”
“But how did you get on? Has he said you’re better?” “It’s only been a week, Aidan. It’s not like the flu. You don’t pop a couple of pills and feel better all of a sudden.” “But you seem better,” he says. “I mean, I’ve not seen you cry since Friday.”
“I do seem better and I’ll admit it, I’m feeling better but I’m having to work at it. I still get really scared sometimes that I’ll lose it again.”
He looks down at his drink and sits silently for a moment or two, as if trying to find the courage to say something he just can’t.
“Was it something I did, Grace?” he asks at last, his dark eyes searching for mine in the candlelight.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Well, the reason for you feeling like this? Did I do something wrong?”
I’m stunned by his question but more because I don’t really know how to answer. No, I suppose he did nothing wrong but his feelings of disappointment that I was not the wife he wanted me to be have, I guess, played their part. As I gained weight, first of all with pregnancy and then in the aftermath when the only things I had the energy to eat were chocolate biscuits washed down with lashings of milky tea, as I became this zombified version of his previously vibrant wife, as I spent my days in tracksuit bottoms and pyjama tops, baby-sick encrusted on my dressing-gown, hair not washed, he pulled away from me.
When he cuddled me, he did so in the manner normally reserved for at best an old acquaintance and at worst your granny. Passion was a non-starter and we became ships that passed in the night. When I returned to work, taking on the Parenting Role, he lost any interest in my work entirely. He cared for his son, yes. He loved being a parent, yes – but he did not have a great interest in nipple-creams and playgroups.
And I know, you see, that it’s partly my fault – that I allowed him to lose interest in me. I was just too tired to make that effort to find out what passed for intelligent conversation in those days. I was too tired to make the first move in the bedroom so a quick hug and a peaceful night’s sleep were fine by me. Oh, yes, it suited me and my expanding body down to the very ground I left cracks in as I walked along. I should have challenged him then. I should have reminded him I was a woman. I was his wife, his partner, his lover, his friend – not just this creature who survived on McVitie’s Digestives and who he had witnessed push a 7lb baby out of her delicate lady area.
But I couldn’t challenge myself then. I would try, intermittently, to do so. I would buy loads of fruit to replace the biscuits. I would buy an occasional pair of jeans or nice hair-clips and I would cook a meal and make the pair of us sit down together to enjoy that old familiar feeling of just being a couple.
But all it would take would be for Jack to wake or for the phone to ring and the spell would be broken and we would both, with a certain sense of relief, go about doing our own things. I would head to bed to grab a few hours’ sleep and he would sit up – working on rotas, playing the computer, anything that would mean he didn’t have to have a conversation with me.
Sleeping suited me just fine too, because I didn’t have to have a conversation with myself or challenge myself on my general pathetic-ness of late.
So who really is to blame here? And who will it benefit to hear this? So I do what I’ve been doing for the last two days and bury the negative down.
This is the New Me, remember? The one who stays positive.
“No, Aidan, you didn’t do anything wrong,” I say and sip my wine.
Chapter 12
I went on my first diet when I was eleven years old. I remember the day well because it was the last day I had sugar in my tea.
Until then I had a cup of milky sugary tea every morning. Mammy would make tea for breakfast and serve it with two sugars and a healthy dollop of milk. Along with my sweet, milky tea I would have two slices of toast with real butter – none of your fancy margarine nonsense for us. The toast would always be piping hot in the way it can be only after being grilled – not cooked in one of your Fancy- Dan toasters. The butter be melting slowly over it and it would taste delicious. Forget chocolate and cake – toast with real butter and sweet tea were the ultimate in comfort foods.
At eleven years old, tall for my age at about 5’2”, and heavier than your average eleven-year-old (I was, I seem to remember, seven stone and I thought this was ginormous!), I decided it was time to take some drastic measures. I’ll never forget the look on Mammy’s face that morning when I told her I didn’t take sugar any more, that I was ‘sweet enough’. Equally I can remember the look on my own when I tasted my bland, vile tea devoid of sweetness. I have never really enjoyed a cup of tea the same way since.
I can’t remember now if I managed to lose weight back then, but I know it was only the start of a lifetime of trying, and trying, to lose weight and then to keep it off. I seemed to find a dress size to match my age, being a frumpy Size 16 at the age of sixteen and skating perilously close to an 18 by the time my adult years came into view. By this stage I was long established as Grazing Grace. I didn’t even attempt to engage in any of the conversations about fashion and make- up with my classmates – there was no point. They shopped in Top Shop, I ferreted around the Plus-size section of Dorothy Perkins buying what fitted as opposed to what looked good.
Of course, I had varying degrees of success from time to time. I did look stunning on my wedding day. I had shunned proper food for measly salads and meal replacement drinks and on several occasions when I had overindulged, I’m ashamed to admit this, I put my fingers down my throat to get rid of the evidence.
I did look amazing. I still look at the pictures now, all that antique lace, that fishtail sweeping around my feet, the subtly plunging neckline and I feel as if I’m looking at a different person. She, Mrs Adams, is the person I want to be. She looks so damn happy and just a little bit smug and I want to be her. Of course, it wasn’t perfect in that dress. When they brought our meals out, I dared not eat much in case the seams went!
Once the wedding was over and we were sailing around the Caribbean on honeymoon, I let myself go a little. I ate, drank, was merry and gained half a stone. From then on I battled to keep control of my weight until, falling pregnant with Jack, I found the perfect excuse to eat as much as I could fit in my big fat mouth. By the time he was born I had gained three stone, and by the time he was three months old, and I should have been back in my pre- pregnancy jeans, I was still two and half stone up on my previous weight.
When I looked in the mirror I no longer saw Mrs Adams Smug Married – I saw Grazing Grace stare back at me. I saw puffy cheeks, a double chin, bingo wings, spare tyres enough to open my own branch of QuikFit and eyes that were just resigned to never being noticed for the right reasons again. I looked as tired and fed up as I truly felt in the very pit of my stomach.
And now there is another feeling in the pit of my stomach – raw, fluttering, boke-making nerves. I am standing outside Weightloss Wonders and Liam our photographer is with me. Daisy is running a little late, so it is the two of us, each not sure what to say to the other. He’s not sure if there is anything he can say in this instance not to make me feel like a big fat blob and I’m not sure I can say anything without bursting into tears.
I know in a moment Charlotte will arrive and I will have to don my best professional journalist face as I talk to her about how I’m going to change my life. I’m going to stand on the scales and Liam is going to take a picture (without looking at the result!) and my humiliation will be done and dusted for another day. The thing is, though, that I feel sick to the pit of my stomach. I have barely eaten a bite all day as if hoping my good intentions would be enough to shift an excess couple of stone off my body before stepping on the scales.
I’m wear
ing light cotton trousers and a T-shirt. I have flip-flops on, and I have even declined to wear an underwired bra just in case it adds to my weight. I am more hungry than I have ever been in my life, my treat-size Mars Bar going untouched in my lunch box today.
When Daisy phoned to say she would be late I’m sure I grunted something indecipherable down the phone to her in return. Seems one of her charge’s parents was running late and she couldn’t exactly leave little Katie to wait outside Little Tikes on her own, now could she? In my pre-weigh-in rage and panic I thought Daisy was being entirely unreasonable to put the needs of a four-year-old above those of her oldest, dearest, fattest pal.
Now my panic has switched to the silent variety, whereby I am in danger of chewing my nails, complete with fingers and most of my hands, off with nerves and I have broken out in a rather unattractive sweat – which is doing absolutely nothing for the make-up I have caked on for my photo shoot. I seriously contemplate getting up and walking out, but then I would be falling at the first hurdle – letting Lollipop Louise, who had never needed to diet in her whole entire life, get one over on me. Oh no, I must be strong – I’m in this for the long haul.
The door opens and I know Charlotte has arrived. I have heard much about Charlotte in recent years. I have even interviewed her over the phone in my Health and Beauty Editor days but I have never met her. She has a certain celebrity status in Derry. She is the woman who will help you lose weight, who will stick with you through thick and thin (literally) and who knows everything there could ever be to know about dropping dress sizes.
I’ve often wondered what she looked like – imagining some Derry version of mad Lizzie from TV-am (showing my age there!) but instead I’m intrigued when I see a young, fairly normal woman in front of me. Yes, she is thin, but she isn’t gaunt. She looks, dare I say it, healthy and she doesn’t – much to my shock – look me up and down in a way which makes me think I am akin to something she has dragged in on the bottom of her shoe.
