The Desperate Bride’s Diet Club
Read The Desperate Bride’s Diet Club Online
Authors: Alison Sherlock
ContentsAbout the Book
Every bride dreams of looking beautiful on her wedding day. Doesn’t she?
Violet doesn’t. She is dreading it. In fact she can’t think why Sebastian ever asked her to marry him. When they met, she was a size 14-16. Now she is size 20.
How will she ever find a dress which doesn’t make her look ridiculous? And fat.
Dieting club New You! promises the answers. But things just go from
bad to worse. It is time for Violet to come up with some solutions of her own.
Alison Sherlock enjoyed reading and writing stories from an early age. However, she assumed that being an author didn’t count as a proper job so when Alison grew up, she worked as a secretary, training administrator and answered an IT hotline. Once older and a bit wiser, she realised that she really had to write her novel. So she gave up office life to sit at home and panic at
what she had done. To fund her dream, Alison became a cleaner, the experience of which she has used for her second novel. A chance meeting with a literary agent at Winchester Writers’ Conference set her on the road to publication. Alison lives in Surrey with her husband Dave and Harry, their daft golden retriever. This is her first book.
You can follow her on twitter – @alisonsherlock – and facebook.
This book is dedicated to my wonderful mum, Jean Sherlock. Forever missed, never forgotten.
Special thanks must go to my fantastic agent Judith Murdoch whose support and belief in my work has been invaluable. I couldn’t have got this far without her.
A huge thank you to my wonderful editor Rosie de Courcy whose enthusiasm and vision was so important to this book. Thank you to all at Random House who have contributed to this book, especially Nicola Taplin for guiding
me through the first book process with such patience!
Thanks to everyone at the Romantic Novelists Association for their advice and wisdom – and for throwing wonderful parties!
Thanks to all my friends, both old and new, for their endless support. Special thanks to Jo Botelle for bravely reading every story I have ever written and for two decades of friendship and cakes.
Thanks to my lovely
family for their encouragement over the long years to publication, especially my beloved Aunty Vera and my lovely sister Gill Collins for their constant strength and support.
Thanks to my father Ray Sherlock for not trying to change my mind when I said I wanted to write a novel. Your encouragement has brought me to this amazing place in my life.
Thanks to Ross, Lee and Cara Maidens for letting
me into your lives and bringing me so much happiness. I hope you all know how much you mean to me. And for Kelly and Sian Maidens for their friendship.
Finally, thanks to my husband Dave for encouraging me to keep writing, even when times were tough. For believing in me. For everything, including bringing Harry into our lives!
HELL HATH NO
fury like a woman without chocolate cake.
And not just any cake. Marks & Spencer’s Double Chocolate Gateau. Chocolate sponge filled with chocolate cream, topped with soft chocolate icing and smothered in chocolate shavings. That would stem the tears and stop the pain. It would help. It had always helped.
And Violet Saunders had to have it. Right now.
She rushed through
the aisles, the tears beginning to crust on her cheeks from the cold air in the food hall. She cannoned into people, stepping on their feet, and elbowed them out of the way. Violet didn’t care. She just wanted her cake.
She crashed to a halt in the bakery aisle. Standing in front of her was one of the most handsome men that Violet had ever seen.
But it wasn’t his rugged face that made her pulse
race as she stared up at him. Nor the broad shoulders, tapering down to long legs. Even his wavy black hair didn’t make her fingers itch to run through it.
Violet wasn’t interested in the handsome man at all. She was only concerned about his hands, which were holding the boxed double chocolate gateau. She glanced away to the empty shelf and then back to the stranger’s hands. There were no double
chocolate cakes left. None except the one in the hands of the man in front of her.
They looked at each other for a moment.
‘That’s mine,’ Violet blurted out, ignoring the inner mortification at her words.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Finders keepers.’
Then he broke into a smile. And the edge of sanity that she had been teetering on gave way.
‘Mine!’ Violet wailed into his face, before snatching
the cake box out of his hands and running off to the far end of the shop without looking back. She threw her money at the cashier and rushed out.
She kept going, not caring about the spring rain that soaked her as she ran. It was a dark, dismal day and suited her mood perfectly. Finally she reached the car park and rushed blindly across, not caring about the cars that had to brake hard to miss
her.
She found her car, slid behind the wheel and put the keys in the ignition. The car started with a vroom but Violet wasn’t going anywhere. She needed her fix.
Violet tore open the box and grabbed a lump of chocolate cake with her hands before cramming it into her mouth. Sweet, wonderful, comforting chocolate. The tears had begun again. But the salty taste didn’t diminish the chocolate. In
a funny way, it made the cake taste even better.
She snatched at another piece of cake and then another. Shoving it into her mouth, she could feel her pulse starting to slow, the hurt beginning to heal.
Two-thirds of the way through the cake, she became
aware
that someone was standing next to the car. A traffic warden was staring in at Violet through the windscreen, his mouth wide open. If that
was an invitation to share the cake with him, he was going to be unlucky.
Violet quickly threw the car into gear and sped out of the car park. At every red traffic light and roundabout, she stuffed more cake into her mouth. Every last crumb, every glorious piece of icing. More and more until there was no cake left.
She parked the car outside her house and stumbled up the front path, clutching
the empty cake box in her hands. Once through the door, she shut it behind her and slid down the wall in the hallway. Sitting on the floor, she realised her whole body was shaking. With a sob, Violet remembered the traffic warden’s horrified face. And the man in the food hall whose cake she had stolen. Violet began to cry again.
The phone rang on the little table nearby, making her jump. But
she didn’t move. She stayed on the floor, the despair welling inside.
The phone rang six times before the answerphone clicked on. She knew it would be Sebastian. ‘Violet? Are you there? Pick up if you are.’ A little sigh whilst he paused. ‘Look, I told you that girl didn’t mean anything. I was drunk and so was she. I’m not proud of myself. You’ve got to believe me. She’s an idiot. She’s nothing.
Call me, OK?’
The phone clicked off, leaving only silence. Violet’s sugar rush quickly turned to nausea and she realised she was going to be sick. She grabbed the radiator and hauled herself to a standing position.
She was about to stagger upstairs to the bathroom when she caught her reflection in the small hallway
mirror
. The nausea died in her throat as she watched herself take a deep breath.
Violet looked a mess. She had smears of chocolate across her face and down her shirt. The shirt was missing a button, having given way against the strain of cleavage. She was already a size twenty. Was she now going up to a size twenty-two? Her blue eyes were red and wild-looking. Her long, black hair was lank and greasy, flopping against her fat cheeks and thankfully covering up the rest of her
pale face.
She was disgusting. Ugly. Fat. Horrible. She watched her reflection as a new tear trickled down her cheek. It was her fault that Sebastian had slept with someone else. Why wouldn’t he? Just look at her.
Violet shook her head at her twin in the mirror. Did she really want to go through life feeling like this? She’d had twenty-nine years so far but enough was enough. She knew she was
lucky Sebastian still wanted her. That anyone wanted her. She had to lose weight. Otherwise she would lose Sebastian for good.
She loved him so much. Her life was empty without him. She had nothing else to love, nothing but him. When he took her in his arms, she was safe. Whatever he had done, whatever he was, she was his girl and that was all she had to hold on to.
Violet hung her head in misery.
The abandoned cake box caught her eye. Serves twelve, it said on the cover. Twelve normal people or one fat porker like me, she thought.
She leant down and picked up the box, as well as the post that lay on the doormat. It was all junk including a flimsy bit of pink paper. But she stared at it and let everything else fall back to the floor.
‘A New You!’ screamed the words on the leaflet.
‘Join
Us! Lose Weight! Get Fit!’ It was an advert for some kind of diet club, which would be held the following Tuesday at a nearby church hall.