The Desperate Bride’s Diet Club (12 page)

Violet felt the tears roll down her cheeks. Those two bitchy girls had been right. What had she been thinking of, going around looking like she did and not doing anything about it?

And what was Sebastian doing
with her? Violet found herself getting angry. How had she let her self get so gross? Her weight was overshadowing any happiness she might feel. Getting married was supposed to be the happiest time of her life. She could spend a fortune on a beautiful dress and make-up but she still wouldn’t look her best. Or anywhere near it. She’d look a right royal mess.

Everyone was thinner than she was. Except
for the others at the diet club, Violet reminded herself. But
even
there she had failed. She hadn’t attended the class that week. They would all get thin and Violet would stay the same. Forever fat. Forever miserable.

She didn’t know how long she sat in that toilet. Presumably someone would notice that she was missing eventually. But no one came looking for her.

As she sat in that cubicle, many
girls came and went. Some were drunk. Others just wanted to reapply their lipstick. But all seemed happy and confident.

Violet stood up, smoothed down her clothes and stepped out of the cubicle. Alone in the ladies’, she stared at her reflection. She had two choices. She could be a fat bride whom everyone laughed at. Or she could be slim and happy on her wedding day.

Violet knew at that moment
there was no choice. She didn’t want to feel this way any more. She had had enough.

She gave herself a deadline. She vowed to change her body by Christmas. Before Sebastian gave up on her and before her body gave up under the strain and stress of living like this.

It was time.

KATHY WORKED THE
Saturday shift in the shop to make up for being absent on Tuesday. It was a little busier at the weekend but the time still dragged.

Thankfully, Mavis didn’t work on Saturdays. Unfortunately, she was replaced by a different pensioner called Cheryl, whose conversation skills were the complete opposite of Mavis’s restraint.

‘I said to the ladies,’ she was saying
as another exciting story from the WI emerged, ‘if you want to have buns as light as mine, you’ve got to sift. There’s no other way.’

Kathy smiled and nodded but said nothing.

She was still feeling very low after the anniversary of her mother’s birthday and nothing seemed to budge her out of her fog of grief. The shakes and cereal bars didn’t help. In fact, she was ignoring them altogether and
overcompensating in the evenings.

Today she had woken up with the intention to be positive. To try to eat healthily. And her resolve lasted
until
Cheryl unearthed the box she had carried into the shop that morning.

‘Ta-dah!’ she said, whipping off the lid with a flourish.

Kathy’s mouth dropped open. There they were, about a dozen of them. A sort of doughnut-looking cake, with some kind of cream
in the middle, glistening with shiny icing.

‘They’re whoopie pies,’ Cheryl told her. ‘I’ve been practising all week for the bazaar and I need to try them out on someone.’

Kathy wanted to say no. But that would have caused offence and she didn’t want to upset Cheryl. Plus she could smell the sugar.

‘Cupcakes are so over,’ said Cheryl, shoving the box under Kathy’s nose.

Kathy selected her choice
and took a bite. It was extremely sweet. Extremely fattening too, no doubt. But what the hell.

She nodded at Cheryl who, she noticed, wasn’t eating. Cheryl was the shape of a lamppost but seemed happy to let Kathy pig out in front of her.

‘It’s wonderful,’ mumbled Kathy in between bites. ‘Aren’t you having one?’

‘Oh no,’ said Cheryl. ‘I only do gluten-free.’

Unfortunately, the whoopie pies
seemed to trigger a sugar craving of extreme ferocity. For the rest of the weekend, Kathy scoffed cakes, biscuits and chocolate in vast amounts. Living alone, she could binge in glorious solitude. She had totally fallen off the slimming wagon. Not that she had ever really got started.

It all came to a head on Monday night. Kathy was trying to finish up the last of the bad stuff in her fridge.
She had already decided to head back to the slimming
class
the following evening but the fridge needed to be clear of anything fattening if she were to start afresh. So she used extreme amounts of cheese and cream in her pasta supper and then finished off the three tubs of ice-cream she had bought the previous week.

Clutching her distended stomach, she went into the bathroom with the intention
of running a nice bubble bath to relax in. But then she remembered the weigh-in which was only twenty-four hours away. What was the point of spending all this money just to be told that she was still huge?

Then Kathy had a thought. What if the food could disappear? What if she could eat without putting any weight on?

So Kathy made herself sick for the first time. And swore it would be the last
time as well.

Afterwards, she sat in the bath and sobbed. What was wrong with her? Was she now making herself ill just so she could carry on eating fattening foods? Was she mentally ill as well? She knew Alzheimer’s could be hereditary. Perhaps she was beginning to show the early signs?

But she knew that dementia wasn’t the reason. She was just being a total pig. What would her mother have said
if she were alive? Probably that she was developing an eating disorder and needed to sort herself out.

Kathy kept crying until there were no tears left to come. But from the misery came determination.

It was time for her to take action.

Edward had been in the queue at the fish and chip shop on Friday night when he had begun to feel strange and unwell. His skin suddenly felt clammy
and
his pulse
was racing. Perhaps it was food poisoning from the burger at lunchtime. He changed his mind about the fish and began to walk out of the shop.

Then the chest pain began. It started in the middle of his rib cage but quickly began to spread out around his body. He could feel his heart thumping, hard and loud.

Oh God. He was having a heart attack. And then everything went black.

He woke up in the
ambulance with an oxygen mask on. He tried to take it off but the paramedic shook her head.

‘Leave it on,’ she told him. ‘You need the air.’

He closed his eyes and tried not to panic.

Many hours later, the doctor stood by his bed in the A and E cubicle and told him what was wrong. ‘It was an angina attack.’

Edward breathed a sigh of relief. It hadn’t been a heart attack. He was fine.

But
the doctor’s face told him otherwise. ‘Your blood pressure is sky high. We’re going to give you some beta-blockers to slow down your heart.’

Edward nodded.

‘You were lucky,’ the doctor told him. ‘It was angina and not that big an attack. If you don’t change your lifestyle, next time you might not be so lucky.’

Edward stared at him.

‘If you don’t change your way of life, there might not even
be a next time.’

Left alone in the cubicle, Edward mulled over the shocking words. It was just an angina attack. Well, not just. He had thought he was going to die. And he hadn’t yet lived.

But if he didn’t start taking his health seriously,
he
was going to end up back in hospital. And he didn’t want it to be in the mortuary. He’d been given a warning. A flashing-bells, screaming-siren warning.

It was time to be a man and face up to his future. Otherwise he might not have one.

Lucy was feeling uncomfortable. She had squeezed herself into a black denim skirt that was a size fourteen but it was far too tight. She couldn’t be bothered to change it once she’d left the house so she carried on to the bus stop.

God, but she was hot. It was almost June and she was in black tights so that her
legs wouldn’t look too fat in the skirt. Plus the waistband was digging in so hard that it was making her stomach hurt. She had hidden her lack of waist with a large black top with long sleeves.

She waited in the morning sun, willing the bus to arrive soon. Especially once Nicola Bowles’ gang appeared around the corner. Thankfully the bus was trundling down the road and Lucy stuck her hand out,
desperate to get the hell out of there.

But there was a little old lady taking her time to get down the steps and once it was Lucy’s turn to get on board, the other girls were nearly there.

Lucy quickly stuck her leg up to climb the steps and heard a loud rip. Her skirt suddenly felt much looser. She glanced down and saw that the side seam had split all the way up to her thigh. Mortified, she
had no choice but to swiftly cover her exposed leg with her big college bag. She showed the bus driver her student pass and went to the back of the bus. Getting off would have meant facing the other girls and they would have seen her burst skirt.

So Lucy sat on the bus, tears trickling down her face, her skirt open all the way up to her knickers. She had no choice but to wait on the bus when
it reached the town centre and return back home. The journey took over an hour, during which Lucy finally admitted to herself that something had to change. That she couldn’t and wouldn’t carry on like this. She would rather die than be this miserable. And she really did want to live.

Maggie sank on to the sofa, still wearing her raincoat. For once, she didn’t feel like reaching for the biscuit
tin for comfort. She was in too much shock for that.

She had booked an appointment with her doctor, figuring that the tiredness and increased need to go to the loo in the middle of the night were all symptoms of the menopause.

But when Maggie had asked for a prescription for HRT, the doctor had shaken her head.

‘It’s not the menopause I’m worried about,’ she had told Maggie. ‘It’s your diabetes.’

‘My what?’

‘You’ve got type two diabetes,’ the doctor said.

Maggie was aghast. ‘Are you sure?’

The doctor gave her a small smile. ‘I ran a few extra tests with your blood sample.’

Maggie tried to rally. ‘But that’s the mild form of diabetes, isn’t it?’

The doctor’s smile dropped. ‘There is no such thing as mild diabetes. All diabetes is serious and, if not properly controlled, can lead to
serious complications.’

Maggie bit her lip. ‘What do I do about it?’

‘You should lose weight and exercise more. But in
the
meantime, I’m going to start you off on some medication.’

Maggie had driven to the chemist in shock and was still clutching her paper bag full of pills.

It was the worst possible scenario. She had turned into her mother. Not the pettiness or guilt-inducing, woe-is-me act.
No, Maggie had taken on the physical attributes of her mother, who had lost sight in her right eye in her early sixties due to her diabetes. Maggie’s mother was also on a daily injection of insulin.

Maggie shuddered. She hated needles and injections. Luckily she was on the pill form of medication.

She rang Gordon while she waited for her prescription. But he was busy with a client. She assured
his secretary that she was only calling about that night’s dinner. It sounded stupid but she so rarely rang her husband during the day that she didn’t want Gordon to panic.

In fact, she’d decided not to tell him at all. He didn’t need to know. She didn’t want him to think any less of her. To think that she was menopausal and now so dangerously overweight that she had to be medicated.

Tears rolled
down Maggie’s cheeks. She felt as if her life was over when it was only halfway through. The front door burst open and Maggie quickly stuffed the pill packet into her handbag. Brushing away the tears, she tried to fix on a smile.

‘You all right, love?’ she asked as Lucy came into the lounge.

Then she realised Lucy also had tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘What’s the matter?’ she said, taking
her daughter in her arms.

‘I tore my skirt,’ sobbed Lucy.

Maggie looked down and saw the skirt was split nearly up to Lucy’s waist.

‘It’s only a skirt,’ she said to her daughter.

‘It’s not the skirt, it’s me!’ cried Lucy. ‘I’m too fat. Nothing fits. I’m disgusting. I hate myself. I don’t want to be this fat any more.’

Maggie held her daughter for a long time until she finally began to calm
down.

‘You’re not disgusting,’ Maggie said. ‘And nor am I. We just let things get out of hand, didn’t we?’

Lucy nodded as Maggie held her close.

‘How about we go back to that diet club tomorrow night?’ said Maggie.

‘Yes,’ said Lucy, the tears still rolling down her cheeks. ‘I can’t go on like this.’

‘Me neither,’ said Maggie, letting herself join in the tears. ‘So let’s start afresh, eh?’

Lucy nodded.

And the mother and daughter pact was made.

ON THE SUNDAY
morning, Violet had woken up with piggy eyes and a stomach ache from all the stress of the previous evening at the wedding.

Sebastian was struggling with a horrendous hangover and was still snoring in bed. Violet wanted some fresh air so left him to it. For once, she had no appetite. After the previous night, she wasn’t sure it was ever coming back. The women’s bitchy
comments still lay heavily on her.

She even walked rather than get in the car. It was only a short walk to a nearby Sunday market in the town car park. The warm morning air felt quite refreshing. Once arrived, she headed to the fresh fruit and vegetable stalls. She hardly ever touched fruit, always going instead for the quick and more tasty option of chocolate. Violet counted the pineapple on
her Hawaiian pizza as one of her five a day. But that morning, she treated herself to a banana and began to munch on it while she wandered around in the early summer sunshine.

Violet found herself reluctant, for once, to scurry back to Sebastian. He hadn’t said anything about her disappearing for hours on end to the ladies’ toilet. And when she had finally joined him back at the party, he was
too busy with his friends to notice how upset she was.