Death By Carbs (3 page)

THE WIDOW

 

 

Wednesday 7:13am

 

 

The Professor's death had been an unfortunate necessity, Maureen Ewehout thought, as she typed her sales pitch into the Banting for Life Facebook Page and then pressed ‘post'.

Her idea was pure genius: Tim Noakes ENDORSED meal plans. Surely there would be a huge demand for them now, and of course, with him having died so unexpect
edly, nobody could really question their validity, could they? It would be a ‘he said, she said' thing, and
she could easily manufacture proof of correspondence between them
if she absolutely had to, you could do anything on the internet these days. Nobody had a signature or handwriting sample online, everybody's voice
was a standard Helvetica nine points, and it was as easy as Banting-friendly pie to recreate that.

Maureen was totally safe. Nobody would ever know that the Prof had never even heard of her. It was inspired. Her inbox was already pinging with messages from interested Banters.

She took out her laptop cleaning spray and wiped her screen and keyboard with the blue purpose-made cloth. To think that two years ago she didn't even own a laptop, and now it was the last thing she looked at before she closed her eyes at night, and the first thing she touched when she opened them the next morning. What did the kids call it these days? FOMO, fear of missing out. She'd learnt what that was on Urban Dictionary – online of course. Maureen had FOMO: she didn't want to miss a thing online.

But then there was a lot about her that had changed over the last couple of years. The most visible being her weight. Seventeen kilograms off in her first year of Banting, another ten in her second, and she'd plateaued at around the weight she was when she'd married Gus, thirty-eight years ago. Pity he didn't live long enough to see the day when
at sixty, she could fit into the wedding dress she'd worn at twenty-
two. She'd pulled it out of the attic when she reached her goal weight, and it had fitted like a (slightly old-fashioned) glove.

The sad part was that if Gus were still alive today, she probably wouldn't have ever embarked on this journey in the first place. It was the loneliness that had set the whole thing in motion, along with her only son, who'd bought her the laptop before he and his wife emigrated to New Zealand, so they could ‘stay in touch'.

First Maureen had found a couple of old friends on Facebook, and then she'd stumbled across the Banting for Life Facebook group. She'd never even heard of the lifestyle before, and at that time the group had twelve thousand members. In the time she'd been following it, membership had grown to a hundred thousand people. It felt as if almost everyone in South Africa was getting in on the action in some way or other. They were talking about Banting in the queue at the pharmacy, and even at the weekly aqua aerobics class she'd started going to down at the gym once she'd lost enough weight to be able to get into a swimming costume.

Everyone on the Banting for Life Facebook group was so friendly and encouraging. After her first few weeks of silently following the activity on the page, she'd finally built up enough courage to ‘like' the occasional post. Eventually she had started commenting herself, and now her timeline was full of Banting chat.

At first, it was all the cheery success stories that had helped her overcome her shyness. So many people losing twenty, thirty, even forty kilograms in only a matter of months, and they all seemed to enjoy it so much, enthusiastically sharing their recipes and ideas. She could still remember her first post on the page, verbatim:

 

Maureen Ewehout

My late husband and I steadily put on weight over the 36 years of our marriage. After Gus died, I pretty much stopped caring altogether, and really let myself go. I recently tried to remember when last I'd seen my own feet from a standing position, but I couldn't remember that far back, so I've decided to give Banting a try. I went down to Exclusive Books at Cavendish, and got the book, The Real Meal Revolution, and I'm going to give it a try. Wish me luck.

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That was nearly two years earlier, and the support had been over-
whelmingly positive and inspirational. And what a revelation the Real Meal Revolution was – it went against everything Maureen had ever believed about nutrition. In this new world, up was down and down
was up. Fat was good – whatever next?

 

The Professor had been a genius, and she would definitely light a candle in his honour tonight, regardless of whether honey was on the orange list or not. It was an awful shame he had to die, she thought as she hefted the knobkierie off the kitchen counter, washed it carefully
under the hot tap, dried it and put it back behind the kitchen door where it belonged. The Banting community would miss him terribly. But sadly, his death was the only way her little business would ever thrive. That's life for you: full of sacrifices and quite bittersweet – even without any sugar in it.

 

 

 

 

THE HIJACKERS

 

 

Wednesday 7:27am

 

 

‘I didn't ask for a body,' Moe said. He was taller and fatter than both Thabo and Papsak. He stood behind the ambulance with his hands on his hips. His massive head was closely shaven and he had a curved pillow of fat, almost a second head, which rolled along the nape of his neck, giving his oversized bald kop something to lean on. He was not someone you wanted to mess with when he was in a good mood, and right now, having been woken and dragged from his bed far too early, he was not in a good mood.

‘I said bring me an ambulance, not bring me an ambulance and a dead body. You two skelms couldn't organise tik in Lavender Hill.' He sucked on his teeth and scratched his protruding belly with one finger, giving them a narrow-eyed look before reaching into his back pocket and pulling out two wads of cash. He handed one to Papsak, and gave the other to Thabo.

Thabo flipped slowly through his wad. ‘I thought you said five large, Moe?'

‘I did,' Moe said.

‘There's nowhere near that much here.'

‘Two and a half for you, and two and a half for umhlobo wakho,' Moe said, pointing at each of them and speaking slowly as if they were both dimwits. ‘That equals five. And you should consider yourselves lucky that you're getting any of it. Look at this old skadonk and the mess you've made of this job. That body is going to make this ambulance hotter than Bonang. They'll have to make an investigation, and this body's family is going to be looking for him. So unless you want me to get another ambulance to take you two fuck-ups away in, you'd better take your body and your money and voetsek!'

‘But what are we supposed to do with the body?' Papsak asked.

‘Not my body, not my problem,' shrugged Moe as he turned and waddled to his office at the back of the warehouse. ‘But you've got twenty minutes to get yourselves and him out of here.'

 

THE CEO

 

 

Wednesday 7:38am

 

 

Not a day went by that Trevor didn't wish he'd gone into bacon. People would always like bacon, wouldn't they? Most of them, anyway. Not the Jews and Muslims of course, although some of them seemed to be coming around to it.

Earlier that morning, Trevor had considered the road paint business; people would always need road paint. Well, as long as there were roads. And before that, in the changing room at the gym, he'd eagerly considered the towel business (although he would definitely make them bigger, he thought – everybody made towels too small these days). There was also the running shoe business, and at this point, even the showerhead business seemed attractive. Surely those industries would be less stressful than the one he was in right now? Hell, working as head of public relations at Eskom would be less stressful.

It wasn't even eight am yet, and Trevor had already weighed up at least ten different career alternatives to being the Managing Director of a company that manufactured bread, baked goods and snacks.

It was sheer dumb luck that he'd managed to find his way into a dying industry. What an idiot. These days, carbs were the enemy. Bread sales had taken a serious beating as a result, and were at an all-time
low. When Trevor had first started out as VP of sales at SnackCorp,
seven years earlier, it had been the heyday of bread. Carbs were king. They'd all cruised to some exotic destination for their annual corporate bosberaad to play golf and pat each other on the back. Company life was a year-round, all-you-could-eat buffet of prawns, strippers, congratulations, narcissism and booze. And carbs. Truckloads of carbs.

But not anymore. Sales figures had plummeted, stocks had hit rock bottom, and the board was tightening belts left, right and centre. And now, three mass retrenchments later, they were still running scared
and pointing fingers. Unless Trevor came up with something fast, it looked like they were going to use him as the next scapegoat. Trim the fat (ironically), lose the dead weight. And then what? Who in South Africa was going to hire a short, short-sighted, slightly overweight, fifty-six-year-old white man?

Trevor needed this job; he had his ex-wife's maintenance to cover. And what about his Merc, and the penthouse? Trevor scratched at his balding scalp, then self-consciously tried to rearrange the wisps of
hair that remained. It didn't help that SnackCorp had a forty-nine per cent shareholding in the Central Soda Company. Sugar
and
carbs:
just great. He'd backed the only two lame donkeys in a horse race. Why hadn't he gone into the xylitol business instead? Then life would be sweet. But he had a plan, and he felt a warm surge of hope as he considered it. If all went well, an upturn was imminent.

Trevor picked up a piece of toast off his plate and examined both sides of it. It was a slice of SnackCorp's low-GI wholewheat, and it was perfectly toasted on one side, but slightly overdone (read: burnt) on the other. He checked that his office door was closed, then pulled a brown paper bag out from the bottom drawer of his desk, and slipped the
piece of toast into it. He put the second piece in after it, folded the lip of the bag and placed the sack on the edge of his desk to deal with later. Then he tucked into the rest of his breakfast from the office canteen: eggs, bacon, tomato, mushrooms and avocado.

That fucking Real Meal Revolution or Banting, as people had taken to calling it, was killing him slowly and saving his life quickly – at the same time.

Here he was, on the verge of a ruined career, potential homeless-
ness and Mercedes-lessness on the one hand; but on the other, he'd lost twenty-five kilos in under a year – thanks to Banting. He still had another fifteen kilos to go before he reached his goal weight, but he
had to admit it was working for him. He felt lighter, healthier and
more energetic than he had in years, plus his eczema had magically cleared up. Whenever anyone asked what his weight-loss secret was, he attributed it to the running and swimming he now had to do every
day at the gym as part of his carefully constructed cover-up. But in truth, he knew it was that fucking diet; the very thing that was slowly strangling his company and hanging him out to dry.

He'd started the whole thing out of curiosity more than anything else. He'd created a fake profile on Facebook with the intention of following a few of the Banting groups that were becoming more and more popular. He considered it research. Classic Sun Tzu strategy from that famous book,
The Art of War
. Know your enemy and your customer and your rivals, and all that nonsense. He needed to know what people were saying about his products. He'd also wanted to prove to the nervous nagging voice in his head that Banting was just another fad that would soon pass. But that had been well over a year ago. And he'd slowly been sucked into all these people's posts. Their highs and lows and triumphs and failures – and the spats too, of course. People seemed to lose all manners and judgement once they had a monitor as a barrier between themselves and real life. But the overwhelming truth he'd discovered was that there seemed to be so much weight being lost by so many people. Thousands of fans who were evangelical in their belief in this lifestyle, with the before-and-after selfies by the bucket-load to prove their success. These posts had become irresistible to Trevor, whose belt had been stretched out beyond recognition by all those good bread years at SnackCorp.

And so shortly after he joined the Banting for Life group, he'd decided to try Banting for himself, in secret of course (the b-word was strictly banned at SnackCorp). Motivated partly by research, partly fear, and partly simply the size of his gut.

Trevor sifted through the morning papers as he ate his breakfast, mopping up the last of the yolk with a piece of bacon as he worked his way through
Business Day
and every column inch of depression it brought with it. His spirits sagged as he scanned SnackCorp's plummeting shares. He hadn't thought they could get much lower than the previous week's dismal showing, but this morning they had exceeded all his worst fears.

Of course there were other factors involved, one being the one-
million ton drop in maize supplies in the last year. The drought in the Free State and North West had caused irreparable damage to maize prices and consumption in South Africa. But one of the biggest factors impacting on sales of bread, rice and similar products was, without a doubt, coming directly from the top end of the market. A drought would eventually end, rain would come as it always did, and maize would grow, but the more serious issue was these Banting converts. They were growing in size and power daily, and once they stopped buying ninety-eight per cent of SnackCorp's products, and began seeing the positive results, they were unlikely ever to return to their former purchasing habits – and when these people went, they were taking their families with them. His target market was literally shrinking. He'd had to man up and do something about it. He'd had no choice.

When Trevor was done with the papers, he turned to his laptop and logged on to Facebook. It was his morning ritual: the bad news first, scouring the papers and the stock prices, and when that was finished, over to Facebook, which always cheered him up. The irony of how much he enjoyed the Banting groups that were doing his business in wasn't lost on him. He navigated straight to the Banting for Life page, and scrolled through the posts and comments that had been added since he'd been online the night before.

He yelped, then covered his mouth with his hand. He shot to his feet, his chair rolling back along the floor. Still standing, now leaning over his computer, Trevor went to Google and typed in Noakes's name. He scrolled carefully through every relevant piece of news he could find, his mouth dry.

The phone on his desk rang, but he ignored it. Then his cell phone rang. He ignored that, too. When it finally cut off, the phone on his desk started ringing again. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the pager he'd bought last month. Ancient technology, but perfect for his purposes. There were no new messages. Still ignoring the bleating phone on his desk, Trevor snatched up the brown paper bag and hurried out his office and down the green-carpeted passageway. The feng shui office design consultants, who'd cost him a hundred k just two years ago, said that green would have a ‘calming effect' on his employees and ‘would boost productivity.' Well, he wasn't bloody well feeling very calm right now. He pressed the lift button and shifted from foot to foot as he jingled the change in his pocket. Someone from sales greeted him, but he didn't reply. He rose on his tiptoes, and then dropped back down again while he waited for the lift. He pressed the button four or five more times, knowing that it wouldn't bring the lift any faster, but needing to give his trembling fingers something to do.