by Claire Allan
“I will, Sinéad,” I say.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks and I know she is saying the words because she thinks she has to. Her heavy make-up and Fancy-Dan power suit cannot hide the fact that she is terrified I will actually start to spill details of my personal life out, here in this little office.
Sinéad and I can have the best of craic. We can talk about music, movies, TV and fashion until the cows come home but we don’t do personal. The closest we ever came to it was during my pregnancy when she talked about her own experiences as a mother. Then she showed emotion, and by emotion I mean genuine affection and excitement – the kind normally reserved for the day the magazine hits the stands and the sales figures come in.
“I’m fine,” I say, smiling. “I’m sure you’ll get to read all about it anyway.” I walk out of her office and realise she will probably not actually get to read about it, because I still haven’t quite figured out what ‘it’ is. Perhaps all it takes is for me to lose some weight to be happy, but I have this nagging feeling that it might take a little more than that.
At the moment though, losing weight is my best shot so I look at the clock and try to get excited about the fact that in approximately ninety-three minutes’ time I can have a jacket potato with tuna for lunch.
Chapter 13
I’m not sure what to expect of the Mood and Movement class. Dr Dishy sent me an email telling me to wear loose and comfortable clothing and to bring a water bottle in case I got thirsty.
He explained this was the first workshop of its kind but it was designed to help you feel more comfortable in your body. Initially I took that to mean it would involve weird tree-hugging-type movements and primal growls and would make me feel anything but comfortable, but as I had already booked the event into Liam’s busy schedule I could hardly back out now.
Daisy is very excited about the whole thing. I’ve tried to explain to her that I don’t actually think Dr Dishy will be there but she has gone and spent a mini-fortune in Pineapple transforming herself into the kind of dancing queen only seen before now in Fame and Geri Halliwell videos. She even spent £10 on a designer water-bottle, while I’m settling for a 60p bottle of Ballygowan from the corner shop. I have found my least tatty tracksuit bottoms though and a semi-fitted T-shirt which I think already looks better on me than the last time I wore it. I’m starting to wonder if this Weightloss lark could actually be working.
The workshop is taking place in a musty room at the top of an old refurbished building. The windows seem to be fastened shut and the sun is glaring directly through them. Already I’m wondering what exactly I’ve let myself in for. Eight other people are there – ranging in age from nineteen (automatically Daisy is giving her the Evil Eye and wondering if she knows Dishy too) to eighty. They all look equally nervous, apart from a man in his mid-sixties who, rather worryingly, is wearing a pair of cycle shorts which leave little to the imagination.
He looks as if he might enjoy this, a little too much if possible. Liam is standing at the back of the room – hugging his camera to him as if it is some kind of magic protective armour with a sly grin on his face. I know he is thinking these pictures are going to knock the socks off those he took on Tuesday night. Knowing Liam, and his somewhat warped sense of humour, he is probably planning a ‘Grace Adams Wall of Shame’ montage to be unveiled at the Christmas do.
Funnily enough, after having spent the best part of three days staring at the bloated images of myself, I’ve become quite used to them. Obviously I miss the pang of lust I used to get when Dermot stared back at me from the computer screen but the new images are the best deterrent in the world when the sweetie machine comes a-calling at four o’clock.
Daisy is doing a weird jumping-from-foot-to-foot thing which means she is either limbering up for the class or desperate for a pee. I’m not sure which.
“You okay?” I whisper, and immediately wonder why I’m whispering when the class hasn’t even begun yet.
“Yes,” she replies, craning her neck to the side as the door opens.
I know she is hoping it’s himself, but sadly it is a man and woman dressed in weird flowing tops. The man is carrying a stereo and the woman is carrying a bundle of yoga mats and I suddenly start to feel very afraid.
Sensing my unease, Daisy reaches her hand to mine. “We are in this together, hon,” she says and gives a tight squeeze.
I’m not comfortable moving my body. I would love to be. I would love to be as free as I was when I was a teenager and dancing around my bedroom, but in the absence of a bucket-load of vodka to calm my nerves I sense this could be more rewarding than beneficial.
The man speaks, first of all raising his hands to the sky as if to summon the spirit of some long-forgotten god.
“Hushhhh,” he says. “Welcome to Movement and Mood. Today we will seek to find your internal energy and channel it with the vibrations and energy of music.”
I look at Daisy who I can see is trying to suppress a giggle and I force myself to look away before I join her.
The woman now speaks. “I am Mary and this is Samuel. Channelling into our inner energy has helped us become stronger people, physically and emotionally. It has helped us to learn to slow down and appreciate the world more. It has taught us about the beauty in little things. It has made us better people, better parents, better friends and better lovers.”
Daisy snorts and I cough quickly to hide her giggles. I know she has the same image in her head that I do, and that is of Mary and Samuel lifting their flowery kaftans and bumping uglies to the tune of ‘I’m Horny, Horny, Horny, Horny!’.
“Now, if we can all find a mat we can get started,” Samuel says before noticing Liam standing at the back of the room.
The same look of merriment is dancing across Liam’s face. “Sir, are you not joining in?” Samuel asks, laying an extra mat on the floor and beckoning Liam forward.
Not one for mincing his words, Liam replies curtly: “Are you on the glue?” and snaps a few quick images of me lying on the floor before whispering “Good luck!” and running out the door.
“Right,” Mary says, clasping her hands together in the manner of a primary-school teacher. “It’s time for the warm up. I want to let yourselves go. Lie down, close your eyes and imagine you are walking through the garden of your soul.”
I must, I tell myself, concentrate and get into the spirit of this. So I lie back and close my eyes. Some suitably plinky-plonky music plays in the background while Mary leads us on a meditation where we walk down a garden path to find the bench in our soul where we will reside for the rest of the class.
I realise this is quite relaxing and I’m coping without bursting into giggles, even though I’m pretty sure I can hear someone snoring at the other end of the room.
“Now,” Samuel says as the plinky-plonky music fades to one solitary pan pipe, “stay lying down, bring your knees upwards and raise your hands to the sky as if to invite healing energy into your body. Listen to these words. Feel their healing power. Sit on your bench and relax. Let the light flow into you!”
The music changes and Louis Armstrong starts to sing about it being a wonderful world. I’m coping now, but only just and when Samuel starts to sing along, loudly and badly, changing all the ‘I’s’ to ‘you’s’ (“You think to yourself, what a wonderful world”) I start to shake with laughter and feel actual physical pain trying to hold it in. Please God, let this song end soon, I pray, keeping my eyes tightly shut because I know if I open them I will look at Daisy and she will look at me and we will both we goners. “It’s okay to find this emotional,” Mary says. “In this busy world it is all too easy to forget it really can be a wonderful world.”
I hear Daisy’s telltale squeak of mirth and have to bite my lip to stop myself from joining her and cross my legs to protect my weak pelvic floor.
Thankfully it’s a relatively short song and I’m able to regain my composure when asked to sit up. I look around and notice Mr Cycling Shorts
is wiping a tear from eye, muttering that was “powerful stuff”.
“Okay, everybody, stand up!” Samuel yells. “Are we going to have some fun?” A half-hearted yes comes back from three of the ten participants. The rest of us look at our feet. “C’mon, people, do you want to get better? Do you want to connect with the real you?”
Again I am tempted to answer, à la Lofty from Bob the Builder, “Yeah, I think so!” in a squeaky voice, but I mutter a quick yes while still looking at my feet.
Mr Cycling Shorts is shouting “Yes!” at the top of his voice and I’m starting to wonder if he is a plant.
“Let’s go, people!” says Mary, changing CDs and once again adopting her primary-school-teacher pose. “Do you remember when you were a child? When you were innocent and carefree? Do you remember the simple pleasures in life? How happiness was measured by how many daisy-chains you made or how many ice creams you ate?” Samuel interjects at this stage and I wonder if they have actually scripted the whole session. “To get in touch with the ‘you’ you are now, you must get in touch with your inner child. So please join in, let your inhibitions go, and enjoy!”
I admit I’m feeling nervous. The eighty-year-old in our company looks slightly on the verge of cardiac arrest and Daisy is swigging from her designer water-bottle as if it contained vodka.
The music starts and I can barely believe my ears. Anyone for a rousing rendition of ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’? Mr Cycling Shorts is clapping, stamping his feet and shouting
“We are!” like a good ’un and when I look at Daisy I see she is joining in too. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ‘em,” she whispers and I try to leave my self-consciousness behind. I’m starting to dread what their next trick will be.
“Well done!” Samuel cheers afterwards. “Do you feel your mood improve?” This time four people reply yes and I have to admit I’ve not laughed so much in years.
Samuel believes we may now be fully warmed up and so he announces it is time to find the song within our soul. I do not have a song within my soul. Perhaps there is the odd verse of ‘Little Peter Rabbit’ or the theme tune to Balamory in there but I doubt there is actually a song.
We are asked to lie down on our mats, and I do so with that certain sense of trepidation rising again. We are told to breathe in, raising our hands above our heads – looking for all intents and purposes like synchronised swimmers without the water to hold us up – and Samuel instructs us to tune in to our inner beat. I’m not entirely sure how to do that, but in the distance I’m vaguely aware of Mr Cycling Shorts doing his best Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing impression and saying, “Guh-gunk, guh-gunk!” over and over again. I look over and Daisy is lying, eyes closed, and I wonder has she actually gone to sleep.
“Now,” Mary says, “I want you to find a note you are comfortable with. It doesn’t have to be in tune, it just has to be a noise. And I want you make that noise as loudly as you can.”
I’m not sure I have ever thought about being comfortable with a noise before. Generally I talk and sometimes I warble. When I was in labour I know I made a sound akin to a cow mooing, but without my cervix dilating at an excruciatingly slow rate I doubt very much it is something I can easily repeat. From the general quietness around me, I sense everyone else – apart from Mr Cycling Shorts who is humming – is having the same difficulties.
“I’m sensing you might need some help with this exercise,” Samuel says, and so he and Mary stand together and start to sing random notes – encouraging us to copy them and to join in wherever we can.
I manage not to laugh, until that is, they bring the triangle out and start banging on it like it is some primitive drum finding the beating of our collective consciousnesses (or something). And then I’m lost, and Daisy is too and we laugh so hard and garner so many dirty looks from Samuel, Mary and Mr Cycling Shorts that we can do nothing but laugh all the harder.
Sitting in Jackson’s afterwards, looking very out of place in our sportswear, I turn to Daisy – having just composed myself – and say: “Do you think Dr Dishy will be really pissed off with us that we got thrown out of that class?”
She snorts and raises an illicit bottle of Bacardi Breezer to her lips, all thoughts of Weightloss Wonders out the window for tonight. “Gracie, if he is the type of person who would have expected us to keep a straight face throughout that travesty then I don’t think I like him any more!”
I laugh, feeling brighter in myself tonight than I have done in such a long time. I’m comfortable in my own skin, sitting here without full war-paint on, in my tracksuit bottoms, while Aidan keeps us supplied with a steady stream of drinks and my friend, my mad friend in her Pineapple get- up, is talking about having an interest in a man.
Much as I wouldn’t mind Dishy for myself I have to concede I’m an old married lady and perhaps my friend would be in with a much better shot.
Daisy always looks happy, but I know there is a sadness in her, a loneliness that due to my lack of a penis or manly arms I can’t fill. I know she looks at myself and Aidan and is sometimes jealous. Of course I do my bit to inform her of his bad points, frequently, but I know that at times – on a Saturday night when she is alone and Lily is in bed – she would just love someone to cuddle up with. And Lord knows she deserves someone to look after her – someone who will heal her pain – who will make her feel cherished. Someone who will give her a damn good seeing-to on a regular basis.
TMF had wanted to be that man, thus explaining our falling-out because I had been taken in by him and even tried to persuade Daisy to let him back in her life. If I hadn’t found out shortly afterwards that he had fed me a pile of lies, including a false name – and if he hadn’t then walked away from his two girls when life got a little tough again, I would have thought him quite the catch.
In fact, my telling Daisy, prior to finding out that he was indeed The Mighty Feckwit both by name and by nature, that I thought everyone deserved a second chance was the cause of our almighty ruck, She didn’t trust men after that, and I knew it would take someone really special to break down her barriers.
I wonder if Dishy could be that man and suddenly I’m having a little fantasy of setting the pair of them up. I smile to myself but then I realise my dabbling will most likely not be welcome after last time. Sipping my cold drink, I vow to keep my promise to stay out of Daisy Cassidy’s love life forever.
Besides, I have much bigger fish to fry at the moment. “How the hell am I going to explain this one to Sinéad?” I groan. “She is expecting at least two pages on Movement and Mood.”
“Surely Sinéad appreciates honesty more than most, Grace. Tell her you had to leave early to protect your continence and your sanity. She’s a mother – she’ll get what you are talking about.”
I nod sagely, with the wisdom that a couple of illegal drinks can offer, and then head off to the toilets. All this talk of weak bladders has made mine wake up and call for attention.
I stumble to the toilets, pushing my way past the glamorous skinny girls in their micro-minis, with their highlighted blonde hair and their Wonderbras and I grin to myself. They are here on the pull, I think, and then there is me, here with the new manager behind the bar pouring me drink after drink and buying me lockets and making love to me on an occasional basis and look at the state of me. I look like shite. I look dreadful, overweight, sweaty, with non- designer trainers on. But I have one up on them. I sit on the toilet, my head nodding in time with the music and I feel deliciously drunk. I will not let them make me feel bad, not tonight. I am better than them. I have found the song in my soul. I have found the movement to match my mood. I’m almost tempted to dance, to climb up on that bar and shake my groove thang, but thankfully sense stops me.
I stumble back to Daisy, who by now is looking the worse for wear, so we say goodbye to Aidan. For just a split second I think I see a look of relief wash over his face, but I’m too drunk to care. We make our way outside, grab a taxi and head back to mine where we make half
a loaf of toast before saying our goodnights.
I’m aware of Aidan coming in during the night and, while the room is spinning, I’m aware he doesn’t slip his arm around me. The old me would be paranoid – the new me refuses to think about it, so I go to sleep – if for no other purpose than to stop the room spinning around me. In the words of the lovely Scarlett O’Hara, tomorrow is another day.
Chapter 14
The room is still spinning as I wake up and I try to make it stop. I bury my head under the pillow and even though my eyes are now closed I’m pretty sure I’ve just seen my wardrobe sail by as if on some weird subconscious roundabout. My mouth is dry and my tongue feels distinctly furry. My stomach can’t decide if it wants to throw up or be fed and I lie for a few minutes trying to regain my composure.
Food, I decide, is the answer. So I put on my slippers, pull my hair back in a hair-band and make for downstairs and the comfort of my cupboard. As I walk past Daisy’s room I hear a vague moaning and I realise her room is swimming too.
“Get up, lazy-bones!” I shout. “I’m going to make some breakfast!”
I make my way downstairs and find Aidan sitting in front of the TV with a face on him like he has been chewing a wasp.
“You okay?” I ask, as I pour myself a large glass of cooling apple juice.
“Fine,” he replies curtly and I’m not quite sure what is going on.
I start to fish through the fruit and veg in the fridge for something distinctly un-Weightloss-Wonders-ey – something that will require tomato sauce, real butter and which will ease my hangover. Spotting some bacon, I decide sarnies are in order, so I call in to Aidan – hoping the temptation of a bacon bap will rouse him from his sour mood.
“I’m going to make these baps for me and Dais!” I call. “You want some?”
