by Claire Allan
“You must be Grace,” she trills, shaking my hand firmly. “Louise has told me all about you. Are you ready to change your life?”
In the words of Lofty, the blue digger thing in Bob the Builder, I reply: “Yeah, I think so.”
“C’mon then,” she says. “Let’s get you weighed and this picture thingy done before the rest of the class arrive. We don’t want to alert them to your secret mission, do we?” “I guess not,” I mutter, mentally visualising myself as Undercover Elephant – ready to set out on a new mission to find the leaner, slimmer, happier Mrs Adams – last seen circa 2001.
Liam follows and starts working out lighting and focus and other such things. Charlotte takes her scales out, writes down my personal details on a little purple form, then asks me to stand on the scales and assess the damage.
I think about this for a moment. I can’t remember the last time I weighed myself. I’ve been in denial about my size for so long it’s really not worth depressing myself by forcing bad news on me. I guess, given the comfort of my waistbands, the extra room I now feel in my tops, that I’m going to come in about the 14 stone mark. Taking a deep breath, I step on, my nerves jangling, as Liam snaps contentedly from the corner. I can’t look down. I cannot bear to see those numbers glaring up at me, so I step off the scales again and take my seat beside Charlotte.
“Well done for making the first move,” she says, congratulating me on getting (or did she say fitting?) through the door to tonight’s meeting. “Right,” she says, “here is the deal. You weigh 15 stone and 5 lbs.”
“What the fuck?” The words jump out of my mouth as quickly as I can think them and my hand flies up to my mouth as if in some desperate attempt to push them back in.
“Don’t get annoyed, Grace. That is that last time you see that number again. It’s downwards from here on in. I promise.”
At that stage, my face crimson, I sense Liam is still snapping away and I want the ground to open up and swallow me whole – only I’m willing to bet even the ground would get full up before I was properly consumed.
“Do you want to set a goal?” she asks.
I think about what I would like. I remember being 11 stone just before the wedding and feeling fabulous, so I tell her to put that down on my card – ignoring the fact that I would need to lose four stone and five pounds to reach that goal (61lbs if you want to think of it that way – 122 packets of sausages).
The doors start to open and one by one the Weightloss Wonders traipse in for class. Some are so skinny it’s hard to understand what they are doing here and others are clearly in the same boat as myself. I leave Charlotte behind and find myself an inconspicuous seat at the back of the class.
Daisy bounds in just as the last people are taking their turns on the scales. She steps on, blushes profusely in the manner which I also did, and sits down beside me with a face like thunder.
“Eight fecking stone and four fecking pounds!” she says. “I can’t believe I’ve let myself get so bloody fat! No more soda farls for me, not a one. Nope!”
I try to smile and look encouraging but the fact is her starting weight is less than my goal and secretly I want to slap her silly. Thankfully Charlotte starts speaking then and my violent urges are swept away in a sea of nutritional advice and hints on exercise.
I leave, feeling marginally okay about what the scales have told me. As Charlotte has said, this can be the last time I see those frightening figures jump out at me. Next week the number will be lower, and the week after it will be lower again. All I have to do is survive a week without cheese, chocolate, alcohol or Caramel Rockies. Can it really be that hard?
“Right, my lovely! This time next week you will be a right skinny minny!” says Daisy. “Are you for taking the kids out on Saturday?”
“Hang on a minute, missy,” I say. “Aren’t you going to do this Movement and Mood thingummy with me that Dr Dishy recommended?”
“Shit, I forgot about that. Do you think he will actually be there himself?”
“Not sure,” I say, “but there is only one way to find out.”
“Right, you’re on. Friday night, is it? Mammy doesn’t mind taking care of the two little ones, does she?”
“Are you kidding? She loves it! She is already talking about putting a tent up in the kitchen and having an indoor picnic.”
“Forget the class. I wanna do the picnic!” Daisy laughs, before kissing me on the cheek and running off. “Call you tomorrow, Gracie Pops!” she shouts back and like a whirlwind she is gone.
I get in my car and start the engine – suddenly ravenous but not sure what exactly I can eat. Usually if I wait until after seven for my dinner I’ll stop at the chipper on the way home for a sausage supper, but I know that is so out-of-the- window now. So I stop in at Tesco, pick up a bag of salad and some lean chicken breasts and make my way home, excited about the new skinny me.
“I’ll show you, Mrs Adams!” I say, cranking the radio up and singing along to Barry White crooning about his lady being his first, his last and his everything. I’m already imagining the new, slim, sexy me walking into Jackson’s one evening and Aidan grabbing the mike from behind the bar and serenading me with that very song as I shimmy and shake my way towards him à la Olivia Newton John in Grease.
I’m just sitting down to my new healthy tea when Aidan walks into the room, fresh from his shower and ready for work.
He says, “You look surprisingly chipper for a woman who has just shared her weight with someone else. Are you sure you are my wife? Are you sure you’re not a robot or an alien replacement?”
“Very bloody funny!” I laugh, adding, “I suppose you have eaten?”
Aidan looks at what I have prepared and turns his nose up in disgust. “Me man,” he says in a fake caveman voice. “Me eat meat. Big steaks. Not rabbit food. Me no like rabbit food.”
“You’ll be lucky,” I reply. “There will be none of your fancy steak and chips here for a while.”
“I think I may just eat at work more then,” he says, kissing me on the nose and heading out the door.
The night is so calm that I decide to eat my dinner outside, balancing my plate on my knees as I stare over the concrete yard into the sunset. It feels strange not to reach for a glass of wine, or to contemplate a sticky dessert for afters but I’m feeling calm about this now. When I’m finished eating – and when the sun has set and it has started to get cold outside – I walk into our living room and stare at the picture of me on our wedding day and promise that I will be that happy again.
Arriving for work the following morning, I’m amazed I’m still feeling positive about things. The rush to get ready was as manic as always, with Jack demanding peas for breakfast and me getting myself in a whole bloody panic while trying to find a clean blouse to wear. I’m sure my hair would be looking better if I had the chance to wash it before getting out this morning but I didn’t want to be late for work – not when this was set to be my busiest-ever month.
I switch on my computer, smile at Dermot, and take a swig from my water bottle – which reminds me it is time to take my happy pills. I’ve realised now I have to balance the intake of my happy pills quite delicately. Yes, they make me feel sick, and if I take them close to bedtime they seem to wake me up to a point where I find myself counting the Artex swirls at four in the morning. Taking them during the day gives me a certain edge and, yes, while a good vomit is never too far away, I’m also better able to concentrate on the job in hand.
“How did it go last night?” Sinéad asks, wandering into the office and slinging her trademark box of doughnuts down on my desk. I eye up the box of treats and try to stay strong. I have a banana with me for my mid-morning snack. I’m pretty sure if I think hard enough and visualise Mrs Adams in her finery long enough, the banana will start to appeal to me almost as much as the doughnuts.
“Fine,” I say to Sinéad, “just fine. I’ll write a prelim report on it and fire it through on email before lunch.”
“Delighted to hear you sounding so upbeat, Grace. Nice that you have a bit of fire about you. Come and see me later and we will discuss how everything else will pan out.” She turns on her heel and walks into her office, a puff of cigarette smoke escaping just before she closes the door.
I sit back and sip more water. Two litres is a lot to get through in a day, especially for a coffee fiend like myself. I wonder if my kidneys and post-baby bladder will take the pressure.
“Hey, Gracie, looking good, pet!” Liam cheers, walking in the door waving his camera at me.
“I want to see those,” I counter. “Right now.” And I’m out from behind my desk in record speed.
Sensing a commotion from the other end of the office, Louise lifts her head and shouts over: “Ooooh, are they the pictures from last night? I’m just dying to see them!” Quick as a flash she is beside me and following me into Liam’s room, known in the office as The Den.
Even though there is no longer a need for dark rooms in our profession, thanks to the arrival of digital photography, Liam still maintains he needs a room of his own. On his poncier days he maintains that he is an artist and artists need time to create their masterpieces. Sinéad and I have a sneaking suspicion that Liam actually just likes time on his own to listen to his country music, look on Ebay and download porn onto his company computer.
It’s a strange phenomenon to me that, even though the dark room was retired from business some three years ago, there is still a distinct smell of developing fluid in the air. On warm days such as these it can be quite cloying.
“Give me a few seconds to get her up and running,” Liam says, patting the side of his computer as it was a horse, a pet or his latest wife. He sits back, puts his feet up on the table – not caring to offer either me or the Lollipop a seat.
“Right, here we go,” he says and onto the screen pop six images of me – each worse than the one before. In the first I look terrified. In the second I have broken out in a cold sweat. In the third I have that ‘what the fuck?’ look about me and in the rest I look as if I have just been told all near and dear to me have just been wiped out in a freak shark attack.
I stare at them – at the person I have become and my heart sinks. Surely a year’s worth of eating bananas and not doughnuts cannot undo this damage?
“Perfect,” Louise says, clapping her hands with glee. “You always need the before pictures to look really crap so that the afters look better.”
She turns on her heel and I stand in a state of stunned silence.
“Don’t fret, petal,” Liam says, sensing my unease. “Photoshop is a wonderful tool.”
“Don’t touch them,” I say. “Leave them as they are. In fact, could you email copies over to me too?”
He nods, looking a little confused by my instructions, and I turn and walk back to my desk and wait for the wee email icon on my desk to flash, letting me know the pictures are there for me to see, to keep and to do with what I will.
It does, and I look at them. Each one screams ‘Grazing Grace!’ at me. Each one reminds me of the bullies, of the pain, of the sense of low self-worth that has enveloped me over the last few years. Each one reminds me I’m a failure.
So I save them to my screen and then, when that is done, I set the worst one – the one where I look as though I might actually throw up – as my desk top. I’m not going to look at Dermot any more. I’m going to look at my big, stupid, gormless face looking back at me until I can face myself in the mirror again.
I’m going to be strong. I’m going to be amazing. I’m not going to look at Dermot again until I would be happy to look at him square in the face in real life. I reach my hand to my locket and remind myself that someone believes in me and then I set about eating my banana – just to see what happens.
It’s eleven thirty when the phone rings.
“I’m fecking starving!” a familiar voice squeals down the line at me. “I swear I’m hallucinating from lack of caramel and biscuity goodness!”
“You’re not hallucinating, Dais,” I laugh. “Come on, you can’t be cracking on the first day. I mean, I’m used to eating fifteen times as much as you and I’m not giving in yet, so you can’t either.”
“I know,” she whines. “I’m just sooooo hungry!”
“Well, if you had seen the pictures I’ve seen this morning you would not be contemplating feeling hungry again any time in the next two and a half thousand years,” I say.
“They couldn’t have been that bad,” she soothes.
I ask if she is online and send the pictures to her through the magic of email. I’m waiting for the gasp of shock when she opens them, but she stays remarkably calm.
“Not your most flattering angle, I agree,” she says. “Okay, I promise never to phone you again and talk of caramel and biscuit combinations until we are real sexy ladies.”
“Thanks, babe,” I say, and hang up – realising the damage is done, and I am now indeed hungry myself.
Thankfully, at just that moment Sinéad calls me into her office to discuss how the feature is going to progress.
To many people Sinéad is quite a scary lady – but not to me. I have known her much too long now to be scared of her, and besides I’ve seen her drunk. I even helped carry her home on her hen night. I’m pretty sure if Sinéad was not my boss, and not tasked with kicking my arse from time to time, we could actually be really good friends.
The thing with Sinéad is that you have to know how to deal with her. You have to know that come the end of the month she tends to go off her head a little while deadline approaches. I have also figured out that sometime around the middle of the month there is a similar tendency to lose control which is tied in with her monthly cycle. (It’s bizarre that I know that, but you tend to work these things out in a office.) Sinéad does not suffer fools, or excuses gladly. She is as straight as they come. She will tell you when she likes your work, but by the same token if you are not quite up to scratch she will come down on you like a ton of bricks.
To some of my colleagues, Sinéad is a bitch. To me, she is a woman working damned hard to get ahead in her profession and, for the most part, I’m happy to take her arse-kickings because I know I will only ever get one if I deserve it.
My biggest debt to her, however, was that she took a risk with me. I was young, just out of college and rather inexperienced, when she took me on board as junior features writer. She pushed me damn hard and within two years I was Health and Beauty Editor and Sinéad and I were sharing Cosmopolitans once a month at the post- deadline party. Every now and again, when I had a drink in me, I would get all mushy and attempt to tell her how grateful I was for her giving me a chance but she would always cut me off at the pass. “Save your bullshit for the next edition!” she would roar and the conversation would revert to what it was before. It was kind of hard to take, because I wanted to be her friend. I had so few in my life – but the boundary was forever drawn as worker and employee.
“Right, young lady,” she said as I sit down on the sofa. “Let’s talk about this without the bimbo interfering with her suggestions on Botox and face-lifts.”
“She thinks I need Botox and a face-lift?” I ask, taken aback.
“She thinks everyone over the age of twenty-six needs Botox and a face-lift,” Sinéad says, taking a slug from her can of Diet Coke. “Seriously, Grace, she might have her finger on the pulse of what the young people are up to these days but she hasn’t a notion about writing or putting together a good features list.”
I’m almost tempted to ask why, in that case, Sinéad hasn’t sacked her yet – but I don’t because I don’t want to become the office bitch. I spent too much time on the other side of the fence to get caught going down that road. Before I can start though, she is off on a roll.
“Obviously you can’t be expected to change everything about your life in the space of one month,” she says, “so we have to plan this carefully. What have you got for me?”
I sit back, absorbing the n
otion that my life – this pickle, for want of a better word, that I have got myself into – is no more to Sinéad than a feature for a magazine.
“The advertising guys are getting really excited,” she butts into my thoughts. “They are booking support ads here, there and everywhere.”
Please God, do not have them phoning my mother-in- law for a support ad! She would be convinced I had brought shame on her family.
“What kind of support ads?” I ask gingerly.
“Well, obviously Natural Nails, City Couture and Weightloss Wonders are on board. All the trendy-lefty health food shops and therapy centres are jumping on the bandwagon too.”
“You don’t expect me to try them all?” I ask, suddenly seeing the next month of my life swept away in a wave of energy-healing sessions, yogic flying and colonic irrigation. “Nope, Grace. I know you by now. I’ll trust you to do this properly. I just want to know what exactly you intend to do properly.”
So I reel off my plans. “First of all there are the shameful pictures from Weightloss Wonders and my ongoing food and mood diary (e.g. ate chocolate, felt good, ate lettuce felt strangely uninspired). The Movement and Mood workshop on Friday should provide a fair insight into the loony-lefty alternative-therapy movement and, along with my image overhaul at City Couture and our ongoing comments from Dr Dishy, sorry, Dr Shaun Stevenson, we should be aiming high for an eight-page spread.”
“Sounds amazing, Grace,” Sinéad says, lighting a cigarette and inhaling deeply. “Sales should be up with this one. Everyone likes to read of the underdog triumphing.”
Oh great – so now I’m not only a (guinea) pig, I’m a dog (worse still, an under one).
She sits forward, adopting her concerned face, and adds: “You do know, Grace, fabulous sales figures aside, this is about you feeling better about yourself. If there is anything we can do, please let us know. We do have a duty of care to you after all.”
It’s nice that Sinéad has said that – nice that she cares, but I know her well enough to know she is now in a trance thinking about her end-of-year bonus and the accolades such a feature could win for her.
