It was two o’clock on Monday afternoon, the lunchtime rush was over and Bunny had nipped out to get some fresh air, in the hope that it would clear her head. Since the disaster that had been her Gloucestershire SlimmerYou talk, she had felt as if her composure was crumbling on a daily basis. Vivid memories of the man shouting at her would surface without warning when she was trying to serve a customer, leaving her distracted and forgetful, muddling up people’s orders or accidentally overcharging them. ‘Everything all right?’ her boss Jasmine had asked, overhearing one customer complaining that she’d been given the wrong food, and then another that she’d been given the wrong change. Bunny had blushed scarlet and apologized in a fluster, but knew she’d have to pull her socks up if she wanted to avoid her manager’s bad books.
Outside now, she marched past a tempting-looking bakery, deliberately not looking at the flaky sausage rolls in the window, or the traybakes and cream cakes. Since losing all the weight, she had developed a strategy towards food like that: she visualized a massive block of lard, and then imagined the sausage roll or cake or brownie tasting of the lard. It worked well enough to keep her walking on, most of the time, and today she headed resolutely instead towards Museum Gardens, clutching the takeaway salad that staff were allowed to have free for their lunch.
Museum Gardens was her favourite spot to take a break, with its riverside setting, medieval abbey ruins and flower-filled borders. Today, though, her phone started ringing before she had arrived there, and she stopped to answer it in the street. The caller was Margaret from SlimmerYou, according to the screen, and Bunny steeled herself in readiness. After Gloucestershire, she had vowed she wouldn’t take on any more promotional work, but Margaret would wheedle and beg, she knew. Bunny would have to be firm this time, stick to her guns. ‘Margaret, hi,’ she said. ‘How are you?’
‘Well, to be honest, I’m a little bit concerned,’ Margaret said without so much as a ‘hello’. ‘It sounds as if there was something of a to-do at your talk last week. I hope you’re all right.’
Ah. So word had got back to head office. This put a different spin on things. Bunny swallowed, wondering if she could speak honestly to Margaret. She’d only met her once before – a commanding sort of person in her fifties – but she’d liked the other woman’s crisp, practical manner. ‘I’m fine,’ she replied after a moment. ‘Absolutely fine.’
‘It did sound rather unpleasant,’ Margaret went on. ‘Is there anything you need to tell me?’
‘Um . . .’ Bunny hesitated. Sometimes when you kept a secret to yourself – a bad secret – it swelled up bigger and nastier, the longer you remained silent. Obviously she hadn’t been able to tell Dave what had happened at the Cotswold village hall the other week, because that would have meant unrolling the full awful story for him. But maybe Margaret, another woman, would understand, if Bunny explained. ‘The thing is . . .’ she began, and then out it came. ‘I was in an abusive relationship,’ she said in a tiny voice, edging around the side of the shop into an alley so that nobody would hear her. ‘And one day he was beating me. Quite badly. I thought I might die. And so I . . . I defended myself.’
‘You stabbed him, is that right?’ Margaret had always been very businesslike, but the brisk, matter-of-fact manner in which she asked the question quite took Bunny’s breath away.
‘Well . . . yes,’ she replied after a moment. ‘In self-defence. And I—’
‘I see,’ Margaret said. Clearly, for her to have asked the question in the first place, she’d already known that this was the answer, but she sounded horribly disapproving, as if her worst fears about Bunny had just been confirmed. ‘And this man in the audience last week recognized you, and brought it to the attention of the entire gathering, I hear. One hundred and fifty-two people, might I add, according to Sally, the organizer.’
‘Yes,’ Bunny said humbly, wrapping her arms around herself. She was leaning against the brick wall of the building and could smell the ripe pong of a nearby dumpster. The air was muggy and fetid, but she was shivering all of a sudden.
‘Right. Well, forgive me for stating the obvious, but this is not the sort of negative publicity we want associated with our brand, frankly,’ said Margaret. She sounded positively cold now. Angry with Bunny. ‘You should have told us these . . . these circumstances at the time of winning, because of this very eventuality. As it is, I’m afraid SlimmerYou no longer wants you to represent the company in further talks, or promotions of any kind. Our contract with you is hereby terminated, with immediate effect.’
Bunny let out a gulp. ‘But, Margaret, I—’
‘I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is,’ came the reply. ‘It’s a shame we have to part on these terms, but my job is to protect our brand. Let me know if you have any outstanding expenses to put through, otherwise . . . Well, otherwise this is goodbye.’
Bunny wanted to shout, to punch the wall behind her as the call ended. This was so unfair! It wasn’t so much the fact that Margaret had stopped her from doing any more talks – she didn’t want to do any more stupid talks; she was done with the wretched talks! – it was that the other woman had taken her ex-boyfriend’s side, just like the Gloucestershire press had, and – let’s face it – even her own family, who’d made very little effort to see Bunny while she’d been in York. Margaret might be from an older generation and not exactly touchy-feely, but she’d left Bunny feeling as if she was the one to blame for what had happened.
Tears burned in her eyes at the injustice of it all. What, so she should have let Mark beat her to death on the kitchen floor, should she? She wasn’t supposed to fight back and protect herself? Because some people definitely seemed to think that way. Her purse-lipped sister-in-law, who had banned her from seeing Chloe, her own niece, for one. And now Margaret, punishing Bunny by turfing her out of their slimming promotions, terrified of her diet programme becoming tainted by association. So much for understanding. So much for sisterhood!
Swallowing back a sob, Bunny tried to control her emotions, remembering that she needed to be back at work in half an hour, and that her customers did not want to see a blotchy face and red eyes when being served. But the strength had gone out of her, the willpower too, and so it was that she found herself trudging back towards the bakery, as if it was drawing her magnetically closer and she was powerless to resist. And yes, then she was buying a warm sausage roll and an oozy square of millionaire’s shortbread for her lunch, just like Rachel used to do after a bad day, when she too had felt low and weakened. Who cared about calories? What was the point of trying to stay in shape when your past was tapping on your shoulder, catching you up?
Once back in the small staffroom above the café, she tucked into her diet-busting lunch, doing her best to savour each mouthful rather than shovel it down, like she wanted to. Bloody hell, it all tasted amazing. Bakery treats made her feel a million times better than a box of quinoa and grated carrot – just like the family-sized slabs of Dairy Milk and the huge cheesy pizzas always had done in the past. The very realization of this was enough to stop her short, though, and then her eyes jerked wide open again.
Was this another sign that her new life was slipping away from her? The dwindling willpower. The longing for something tasty, just to help her through the day. It was all horribly familiar. She mustn’t let herself get drawn into that downward spiral again, she thought, brushing pastry flakes from her skirt and scrunching up the empty paper bag. She mustn’t. Because she was stronger than that now, wasn’t she?
‘Bunny? Are you there? We’re getting busy again downstairs,’ came the voice of Jasmine just then.
‘Coming,’ called Bunny, throwing the crumpled bag into the bin. No more bakery binges, she told herself sternly. No more weeping in public. Rachel was gone – and good riddance to her. Bunny was absolutely not about to let her back.