Well Groomed (15 page)

‘I’m not a bloody groom!’ Tash wailed. ‘And I look really ghastly.’

‘No, you don’t,’ Penny reassured her as she examined the picture at close range. ‘You look rather sweet – and you were in great shape last summer.’

‘Oh God, I must be simply massive now,’ Tash rolled her eyes down to her stomach which, now she came to look at it, did resemble one in the early stages of multiple-birth pregnancy. The zip on her cord breeches was straining gallantly against burgeoning flesh, and the seams were starting to give out toothy smiles as the stitches grimaced with effort.

‘Well, you have put on a bit of weight over Christmas.’ Penny eyed her critically, then catching Zoe’s horrified look, added quickly, ‘But everyone does. I’ve put on tons – it’ll drop off while you get the horses fit.’

‘And Niall looks great in these shots.’ Gus was reading the lurid prose in one tabloid. ‘Christ! They say you work for Mark Todd here – you have gone up in the world!’

‘You look lovely, Tash.’ Zoe gave her a reassuring hug. ‘Fresh-faced, blossoming and sexy.’

‘I want to be in bud, not blossom. I’m too young to blossom. I’m going on a diet.’

Later, Tash was sitting on the steps that led down to the forge’s small kitchen, leafing through the Yellow Pages looking for slimming clubs and simultaneously diving her fingers in and out of a box of Frosties, when Beetroot started barking excitedly in the direction of the cat-flap.

Assuming that the little dog had just spotted Giblets, keen for a few scraps, Tash ignored her and tipped back her head to drop some more of the sugary cereal down her throat, wondering dreamily if they still had that tin of condensed milk in the cupboard. At that moment, Hugo let himself in through the front door and wandered inside.

Turning around at the sudden rush of cool air against her back, Tash almost choked.

‘Tell me if you need the Heimlich manoeuvre within the next couple of minutes.’ Hugo smiled frostily and stooped down to say hello to Beetroot who was greeting him with an ecstatic series of pirouettes.

Tash would have liked to smile frostily back, but she had far too many Frosties in her mouth. Coughing and spluttering fragments of orange cereal on to her chest, she stumbled upright and tried to look suitably outraged that he could walk in without knocking. Her windpipe was far too blocked for her actually to voice the objection.

But, straightening up easily, his blue eyes watching her with amusement, Hugo pre-empted her.

‘Sorry to barge in. I’ve got a fax from your fiancé – he seems to think that yours is up the spout.’

Tash looked briefly and guiltily at the fax, which she had broken an hour earlier while attempting to use it to photo-copy a full-length newspaper photograph of herself to stick on the fridge, food cupboard and freezer in an attempt to deter her from snacking. Embarrassingly, evidence of her earlier motivational attempts was still littered around the now dead contraption – curling reams of fax paper bearing very dark, grainy stats of her lumpy body.

‘What have you been trying to do?’ Hugo regarded them without great interest.

‘Oh – this and that. Publicity, you know. Magazine questionnaires and such.’

He looked sceptical but said nothing, handing her the fax that he’d brought along.

Seeing Niall’s messy, hastily scribbled handwriting, Tash felt the familiar hug of warmth and security fold itself tightly around her shoulders. She glanced irritably at Hugo. She didn’t want him to hang around while she was reading it, but she supposed that she should thank him for taking the time to bring it over, perhaps even offer him a cup of coffee. It was uncharacteristically kind of him, she realised – far more in character would have been a curt call from his secretary asking her if she could come over and pick it up, adding that Hugo didn’t want to encourage freeloaders using his fax to communicate with one another.

‘Er – thanks for bringing it round,’ she mumbled, suddenly feeling both grateful and awkward. ‘Would you like a drink or something?’

‘God, no.’ Hugo was glancing around rather critically. ‘I’m just racing to pick up Kirsty – we’re going to the Cubitts’ drinks party tonight. You not going then?’

Tash sucked in one cheek, aware that she was being put down and longing to have the wit for a quick-fire retort. She hadn’t been invited, wasn’t even aware that the Cubitts were having a drinks party. Had Niall been around, she realised glumly, they would have been top of the list. The locals were, as Gus continually pointed out, horrific star-fuckers.

‘No,’ she said lamely, noticing that his tortoiseshell hair was gleaming, his suit oozed understated class, and his neck was wafting out subtle, delicious tangs of aftershave. ‘You look nice.’

One eyebrow shot up in astonishment. But, being Hugo, he found it impossible to return the compliment.

‘Which is more than I can say for this place.’ He nodded at the piles of mess. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you lately, Tash. You’ve really let yourself go since you’ve been with Niall – I thought women were supposed to do that after they’d got married, not during their engagement. Has that turkey crapped in here?’

Wrinkling his nose, he wandered out again without a breath of a farewell.

‘Bastard!’ Tash hissed, her cheeks flaming, his words still ringing in her ears.

When she read Niall’s fax, it only added to her misery and humiliation.

Hugo must have read it, she reasoned. And he would have gloated over every word which spelled out her lack-lustre love-life as dictated by Niall’s punishing schedule.

The following Tuesday evening, Tash had a rare chance for a night out. She was very careful about what she wore, she barely ate through worry beforehand and, an absolute first, she didn’t knock back a swift bolstering drink to steady her nerves. She didn’t even drink a cup of tea in case she developed water retention.

At seven o’clock she parked Gus’s Land-Rover in Marlbury High Street and, doing a few star-jumps on the pavement, headed towards the United Reformed Church Hall. It was only as she was passing the brightly illuminated McDonald’s windows that it occurred to Tash that perhaps she should have eaten before this particular date. In fact, not only should she have stuffed herself, but the more layers of very heavy clothing she was wearing the better. In weeks to come, she would thank herself for her forward planning.

She dashed back to the car and layered on Penny’s holey jumper, which had been in the back of the Land-Rover for six months beneath her own tatty moleskin waistcoat, a filthy Husky she suspected had been a dog blanket for several years and Gus’s ancient oilskin, which weighed a ton. Thus dressed like a rather unappetising explorer returning from a long, bath-free trek in Antarctica, she headed back to the church hall, stopping off first at the burger bar for a take-out.

The assistant wrinkled her nose as Tash took possession of her several thousand calories.

‘You been lambing then?’ She nodded at Tash’s extraordinary garb, obviously assuming she was some rosy-cheeked local farmer’s wife popping in for junk-food supplies to keep her menfolk going through the night.

‘No – just off to Flab-busters actually.’ Tash grinned amiably and took her burger and shake into a dark alley to wolf down before creeping into the church hall late.

She needn’t have worried about her unpunctuality. The post-Christmas boom had brought an unprecedented number of newcomers to the weekly Flab-busters meeting, all eager to shed those extra pounds brought on by Christmas pud and double sherries.

The church hall was lined with drawings from local play-groups, tables of craft displays and stacks of plastic chairs. One end had been set up for the Flab-busters slimming club, consisting of a plump circle of plastic chairs (not reinforced, Tash noted), two three-sided screens covered with promotional material, and a table weighed down with measuring spoons and scales, low-cal tinned food and recipe books with glossy before-and-after pictures on their covers. Beside one screen a tall, very thin dyed blonde wearing a fake Chanel suit was weighing her influx of fatties on the type of scales Tash associated with pre-boxing-match weigh-ins. At her side a skinny assistant with mousy hair and a dribbly nose was filling in score cards of some sort. The dyed blonde – called Theresa according to her jaunty plastic name-badge – was doing a lot of cheerful tutting as her customers climbed guiltily on the scales and tried to stand on one foot as they assessed the festive seasonally adjusted damage.

Letting out a Big Mac burp, Tash joined the queue and eyed a suspect-looking cardboard snow-man, moulting cotton-wool and sporting a ragged beret. He looked like a victim of nuclear fall-out. She suspected he’d been made by one of the local play-groups and abandoned after Christmas. She knew how he felt.

Theresa was now getting quite overwhelmed with excitement as she ruled the scales, weighing her new charges and letting them know their target weights as she handed over an official welcoming pamphlet and home-made list of motivational Ryvita recipes while her runny-nosed assistant filled in their diet cards.

At the rear of the queue, Tash was lumbering worriedly towards the scales behind a vast woman who, despite the frosty weather, was wearing a summer tent dress. She had been eyeing Tash thoughtfully since her arrival, her nose twitching slightly under the assault of old farmyard clothing.

‘You’ll regret wearing all that in a few weeks’ time,’ she told her.

‘Why?’ Tash was already regretting the Husky jacket, which was smelling increasingly awful as she heated up. She was convinced a small, furry animal had been incontinent in it.

‘Theresa’s very strict at the weigh-in,’ the woman warned, nodding at their leader who was arguing with a newcomer that she was definitely well over ten stones and needed to go on the ‘quick-step’ weight-loss programme, not the ‘slow-shuffle’ one. ‘She makes you wear the same thing every week, otherwise your weight changes.’

‘Oh.’ Tash shrugged out of her oilskin which was also smelling pretty rancid. She was sweating rather hard now, so she might already be losing weight, she realised cheerfully. ‘Have you been coming long then?’

‘Since July.’

‘Christ.’ Tash tried not to stare at her still-bulging body. ‘Have you lost much?’

‘Twenty-eight pounds.’ Tent Dress beamed. ‘I want to be Gloria Hunniford-sized by my daughter’s wedding in June.’

‘Oh,’ Tash swallowed miserably. She didn’t want to think about weddings right now. Since she’d become engaged, she and Niall had spent less than a week in one another’s company.

Tent Dress had reached the scales now and clambered on to them with some effort to be enthusiastically hailed by Theresa.

‘How’s my star slimmer then?’ she gushed, adjusting her scales with long, scarlet fingernails. ‘Not been tucking into too much Chrimbo cake in my absence, I hope?’

‘No, Theresa, I haven’t.’ Tent Dress was suddenly as obsequious and coy as a first-year pupil talking to her favourite games mistress. ‘Honestly not.’

‘And did you follow that fromage frais and raisin pud alternative I gave you?’ Theresa was staring sceptically at the scales, sliding the pounds reader grimly upwards.

‘Um – yes, well, my husband wasn’t too keen on that one.’

‘Hmm.’ Theresa’s enthusiasm had evaporated as quickly as spit on an iron. ‘You’ve put on two pounds this week. We’ll have to pull our pop socks up, won’t we?’

‘Yes, Theresa.’ Tent Dress hung her head as Theresa’s skinny assistant blew her nose before filling in a card and handing it back.

When Tash ascended the scales, she was relieved to see that Theresa had to do a great deal of adjusting downwards to ascertain her weight.

‘And who are we then?’ Theresa beamed up at her, nodding for the minion to fill out an application form.

‘Er, I’m alone actually.’ Tash was slightly nonplussed.

Theresa let out a little tinkly laugh and peered at Tash’s outfit, which was looking even more tramp-like without the oilskin. Her heavily mascara-ed eyes batted slightly, but she made no comment.

‘Name?’ croaked her assistant.

‘Oh, my name?’ Tash didn’t like the way Theresa was creeping the slide back up again. ‘Er, Natasha.’

‘Second name?’ the assistant said witheringly, blowing her nose again and adding a self-pitying cough for good measure.

‘Elizabeth.’

‘SURname?’ The assistant was reduced to a bronchial wheeze.

‘French.’

Theresa had achieved her balance now and glanced up at Tash with an air of surprise, as though trying to place her.

‘Do I know your mother?’ She crinkled her made-up eyes quizzically.

‘I doubt it.’ Tash looked dubious.

‘Hmm.’ Theresa clearly felt snubbed. ‘Eleven stone three. We have got a lot of work to do, haven’t we? How tall are you?’

Tash was gaping at her. She couldn’t possibly be that heavy, could she? She’d been under ten last autumn. At this rate she wouldn’t even need to use a weight-cloth across country; the shame would be torment.

‘Perhaps I should take my boots off?’ she wondered anxiously.

‘How tall?’ Theresa’s eyes narrowed. ‘Please spit it out, dear. I have a class to hold.’

‘Five ten.’ Tash could feel tears springing to her eyes. She suddenly felt like the side of a house, so vast in fact that she wanted to take the weight off her feet and lie down. Very quickly. In a dead faint.

‘Okay, you should be aiming for ten stone two.’ Theresa flicked her nails at her assistant before ramming some leaflets into Tash’s hands. ‘You’re not a vegetarian or anything, are you?’