Chapter Two

Can somebody turn the sunshine off? It’s shining directly in my eyes as I roll over in bed and groan. I can’t get up yet, it’s so warm, so comfortable, so I just lie here for a few minutes, waiting for the tinny pop music to start playing from my radio alarm clock, and I wish, oh God how I wish, that I could stay in bed for ever.

Look, Jemima, see how when you roll over on your back your stomach feels, well, not quite flat, but certainly not fat. See how your breasts roll over to either side, giving the distinct illusion of a vast expanse of flatness in the middle.

Jemima lies there and rubs her stomach, half affectionately, half repellently, for there is something innately comforting in the bulk that is her body. But then she rolls over to her side, and tries to forget her stomach weighing down, sinking into the mattress. She tucks the duvet in tightly around her and wishes she never had to get up.

But today is the course day. Today is the day she is, as the editor put it, going ‘on the line’. And, much as she is looking forward to the course, for her brain, being active and large, is constantly on the look-out for new information, she cannot help but feel more than a little anxious because she will be breaking her daily routine.

From Monday to Friday Jemima’s routine is as follows: she wakes up at 8.45 a.m., lies in bed and listens to Sophie and Lisa getting ready for work. Listens to the door slam as they clatter up the path at 9 a.m., and then hauls herself out of bed.

Avoids the mirror in the bathroom, for it is full length and she really does not want to see herself in all her glory. Starts running a bath, and pours at least five capfuls of bubble bath in to hide her flesh.

While the bath is running, goes to the kitchen and pours herself a bowl of cereal. Healthy cereal. Slimming cereal. (Except you’re not supposed to have quite as much as that, Jemima, the bowl is not supposed to be so full the cereal is slopping out over the sides.)

Jemima eats the cereal in a hurry, comes back upstairs for the bath. Heads back to the bedroom and gets dressed, and only then, when she’s covered in the comfort of her clothes, does she look in the mirror and quite like what she sees. She likes her intelligent green eyes, and she applies the tiniest bit of eyeliner and mascara, just to accentuate them.

She likes her full pouting lips. But they tend to disappear in the round moon-ness of her face, so she paints them pale pink.

She likes her glossy hair, and she brushes and brushes until it gleams back at her in the glass. She preens in the mirror, pouting her lips, sucking in her cheeks, pushing her neck forward until her chins almost, almost, disappear.

I could be beautiful, she tells herself every morning. If I lost weight I would be beautiful. And as she looks in the mirror she tells herself firmly that today is the start of the rest of her life. Today is the start of her new diet.

And what happens next, Jemima?

Feeling virtuous, positive, excited at the prospect of your new life, you leave your flat at 9.25 a.m. and catch the bus to work. You stand at the bus-stop with the same people you see every day and you don’t say a word to them, nor they to you.

You find a seat on its own, and sit there, your thighs spreading on to the seat next to you, and you pray that no one will sit beside you, forcing you to hold your breath, squeeze in your thighs, suppress your resentment at their audacity.

And then you alight at the corner of Kilburn High Road, a short walk from your office, and every morning as you walk up the road, just as you pass the shoe shop with its window display of rather nasty shoes, your nostrils start quivering.

There is nothing in the world quite like the smell of bacon frying, I’m sure you will agree. Together with dill, fresh lavender and Chanel No. 5, it is one of Jemima’s favourite smells. If it simply remained a favourite smell then all would be fine, but Jemima’s nostrils are stronger than her will-power.

Your steps become slower as you approach the working man’s caff, and with each step the picture of a bacon sandwich, rashers of greasy bacon, awash with fat, oozing out of thick white sliced, becomes so vivid you can almost taste it.

Every morning you battle with yourself, Jemima. You tell yourself that today you started your diet, but the smell becomes too much to bear, and every morning you find yourself queuing at the counter and requesting two bacon sandwiches.

‘He likes his bacon sandwich doesn’t he, love?’ says the woman behind the counter, a woman called Marge whom Jemima Jones has got to know. Once upon a long time ago Jemima told Marge the bacon sandwiches were for her boss.

Poor lass, thought Marge, I know they’re for her. But Marge, being a kind-hearted soul, pretends to believe her.

‘Lovely day,’ says Marge, handing the sandwiches to Jemima, who tucks them in her bag, continuing the charade, before walking up the street. A few yards away the bacon sandwiches start calling you.

‘Jemima,’ they whisper from the depths of your bag. ‘We’re lovely and greasy, Jemima. Feel us. Taste us. Now.’ And you plunge your hand in, the craving fast overtaking any anxiety about eating in public, and in one, two, three, four bites the sandwiches have gone.

And then to the office, wiping your mouth with your sleeve and stopping at the newsagent to buy some sugar-free mints to hide the smell of bacon.

Your mornings are spent sorting out letters, and watching the clock until 11.30 a.m., when it is time for tea. ‘I’m starving,’ you say to Alison, the secretary who sits opposite you. ‘I haven’t had breakfast,’ and it is your way of apology for the egg and bacon sandwich you bring up from the canteen together with a cup of tea and three sweeteners.

And then at 1 p.m., every day, you head back down to the canteen for lunch. A salad is what you have, every day, except the salads you choose from the salad bar are as fattening as a cream cake.

Coleslaw, rice salad, pasta salad, slabs of cheese and potato salad swimming in mayonnaise, you pile them on your plate and tell yourself you are being healthy. A wholemeal roll, covered in two slabs of butter, completes your meal, except you are not really full. You are never really full.

The afternoon is spent writing up your Top Tips, before nipping down again at teatime. Sometimes you have a cake, sometimes crisps, sometimes biscuits, and occasionally, well, around twice a week, you have another sandwich.

And finally at 6 p.m. your day is over. Waiting for the bus home, you nip into the newsagent and buy a couple of bars of chocolate to sustain you on the journey, and then that familiar feeling of dread pours over you as you approach your house, and your two perfect flatmates.

And your evenings blend together into one. Alone again, a blessed relief as Sophie and Lisa are out partying, you eat your evenings into oblivion. You watch television, game shows, sit-coms, documentaries. There are few with such eclectic tastes as you, Jemima, and few with your knowledge.

Or you might read, for you have hundreds of books to quench that thirst for knowledge. And a lot of the time you spend lying on your bed, daydreaming about romance, which is something you have little experience of.

Don’t misunderstand me, Jemima isn’t a virgin, but her virginity was lost during a quick tumble in the dark with a boy who was so inconsequential he may as well stay anonymous.

And since then she has had the odd fling with men who have a penchant for the larger lady. But she has never really enjoyed sex, has never tasted the pleasures of making love, but that doesn’t stop a girl from dreaming does it?

But today, the day of the course, the day of learning how to surf the World Wide Web, is a break from that routine, and Jemima Jones hates breaking her routine. No bacon sandwiches for Jemima this morning, because the course is in the West End, many miles away from her familiar caff.

But at least she will not have to go on her own, because Geraldine, Geraldine of the perfect figure and rich boyfriend, will be picking her up.

‘I’m not getting the bloody tube,’ said Geraldine yesterday afternoon, when I asked how she was getting to the course.

‘I’ve got a perfectly good car,’ she added, fully aware that the entire office was envious of her shining new black BMW, the car paid for partly by her boyfriend and partly by her parents, although she doesn’t tell people about the parents’ contribution. She only told me because I wouldn’t let the subject drop and eventually she had to admit it.

‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Why don’t we go together?’ I couldn’t believe it, going to the course with Geraldine! Walking in with someone else, for once not being on my own. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘You wouldn’t mind?’ Because why would Geraldine want to befriend someone like me? It’s not that I dislike her – she, after all, is one of the few to have always treated me like a human being – it’s just that I can’t help but be intimidated by her perfection.

‘’Course not,’ said Geraldine. ‘The damn thing doesn’t start until 10.30, so I’ll pick you up at 10. How does that sound?’

It sounded fantastic, and here I am now, sitting in the living room flicking through the pages of a book on container gardening but not really looking at the pictures, just waiting for the hum of Geraldine’s car.

There is no hum, there are two short beeps of the horn, and pulling the curtain aside I can just about see Geraldine’s elbow resting on the door-frame as she taps her fingers to the music I assume she must be playing.

Geraldine and her car go together like apples and honey. They’re both sleek, chic, with glossy exteriors and purring engines. Geraldine, as usual, has done herself proud. She’s wearing a beautifully cut navy suit, the jacket just skimming her thighs, the lapels showing off a white silk T-shirt. On her head is a pair of large black sunglasses, keeping her highlights off her face, and she’s holding a cigarette languorously, sexily, out of the window.

I feel like an ungainly oaf next to Geraldine, so I lumber into her car and just as I put the seat belt on – Geraldine, incidentally, isn’t wearing one – she offers me a cigarette, which I take. You didn’t know I smoked? Of course I smoke because way back when, in the murky teenage years, all the cool people smoked, and even then I wanted so badly to be cool.

Now admittedly, more often than not it’s a pain in the arse because everywhere I go I’m surrounded by virulent anti-smokers, but it still makes me feel, well, not quite cool, but certainly less awkward.

My first cigarette was in the back row of a cinema, in the days when everyone was allowed to smoke in the back row. I was fourteen years old, with a group of girls and boys from school, and, although I never really fitted in, they didn’t care if I tagged along because they thought I was ‘a good laugh’.

Naturally I was never fancied, but I was always able to put a smile on their faces, and so I became one of the gang. And in the back row of that cinema, while the others kissed loudly and longingly, at that stage not quite aware of what desire feels like but desperate to emulate it anyway (that knowledge came with hindsight, none of us knew that at the time), I sat and smoked.

I remember unwrapping my pack of ten Silk Cut, the first pack of cigarettes I’d ever bought, and drawing out my first ever cigarette. I lit it with a match and sat back to watch the film, feeling impossibly cool and grown up.

‘You’re smoking!’ said one of my friends loudly, in both horror and respect, and all the others stopped kissing and turned to watch me.

‘So?’ I said, puffing away on my cigarette, holding the smoke in my mouth then releasing it in one big gasp.

‘So, where d’you get them?’

‘I bought them, dumbass.’

‘But you don’t smoke.’

‘I do now.’ I carried on puffing, painfully aware that six sets of eyes were watching my every move.

‘You’re not inhaling!’ said one of the boys, loudly enough for an older woman sitting in front of us to turn around, a look of anger on her face, and say, ‘Ssshhh!’

‘Ssshhh! Ssshhh! Ssshhh!’ my friends echoed, falling about with laughter, while I felt slightly sorry for the woman, who did, after all, want to watch the film.

‘But you’re not doing it properly,’ he insisted. ‘My mum smokes and it only comes out in a puff of smoke when you don’t inhale. I bet you can’t blow it out through your nose.’

I tried, and failed, I snorted but nothing happened.

‘See, told you. You can’t inhale.’

‘I bloody can,’ I said, and, in a gesture I had seen hundreds of times on television, sucked the smoke into my mouth and breathed in. The smoke filled my lungs, a burning, acrid smoke, and almost instantly I started to feel dizzy. But see how cool I am! See how sophisticated I look! I exhaled the smoke in a long, slow stream from my nostrils, and turned to my friends with a smile.

‘Who says I can’t inhale?’ The others were too impressed to speak, and I finished my cigarette, feeling more and more dizzy and nauseous. Deep breaths, I told myself, deep breaths. I. Am. Not. Going. To. Be. Sick. And I wasn’t. Not until later, anyway.

But amazingly enough that didn’t stop me. For years cigarettes made me feel sick but it didn’t stop me. And now, after years of practice, cigarettes have stopped making me feel sick, and they have become a habit, an addiction that, much like food, is proving impossible for me to break.

Sitting here in Geraldine’s car, when I compare Geraldine’s seductive long drags to my short ones, I feel all wrong smoking. I look awkward, awkward fingers grasping the cigarette, exhaling all too quickly. I still, unfortunately, look like a fourteen-year-old trying out her first cigarette.

‘So how’s everything at work?’ says Geraldine, flicking the butt out the window and checking in the rear-view mirror that her lipstick is still perfectly applied.

‘Same really,’ I say with a shrug. ‘I went to see the editor again and surprise surprise, there aren’t any vacancies at the moment.’

‘Oh poor you,’ says Geraldine, but I think she’s probably relieved. Geraldine knows I can write, Geraldine wouldn’t be anywhere if it weren’t for me because whenever she has a deadline I’m the one she comes running to asking for help. At least once a week I sit in front of my computer reading Geraldine’s haphazard copy, before ripping it apart and putting it back together again so it makes sense.

And I don’t mind, really, I don’t, and perhaps in a strange way this is why, sitting in her car, I’m feeling less bad, less intimidated by her, and I’m starting genuinely to like her. And perhaps it’s also because I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that when it comes to words I am infinitely more talented than Geraldine, however slim and beautiful she may be.

For if I were promoted, who would help Geraldine?

‘Oh well,’ she continues, ‘never mind. Your time will come.’ She lifts her hand and puts her sunglasses on, groaning. ‘God, what a hangover.’

I look at her in amazement, for Geraldine obviously does not know the meaning of the word. A hangover means bloodshot eyes, pale skin with a hint of grey, lank hair, deep shadows under the eyes. Geraldine, as she always does, looks perfect.

A gurgle of laughter emerges from my mouth. ‘Do you ever look anything less than perfect, Geraldine?’

Geraldine flicks her hair back and says, ‘Believe me, I look a mess,’ but she’s pleased because, like all girls who are perfectly groomed, below the perfection is a writhing mass of insecurity, and she likes to hear that she’s beautiful. It helps her to believe it.

‘So what happened last night?’

‘Oh God,’ Geraldine groans. ‘Dimitri took me out for dinner and I drank so much champagne I was positively comatose.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘The Collection.’

‘I haven’t been there yet,’ I say, knowing full bloody well that I’ll probably never go there, being, as it is, a restaurant for the rich and the beautiful, but I know all about it. I know about the bright young things from the magazines who go there, and I know about it from Sophie and Lisa, who naturally have been wined, dined and seduced in both the bar downstairs and the restaurant above.

‘I suppose it was filled with the famous and beautiful?’

‘Actually,’ says Geraldine, ‘actually, it was filled with lots of people who looked as if they ought to be famous, except neither of us knew who anyone was.’

‘Bloody wannabees,’ I say with a deep sigh. ‘They’re just everywhere these days,’ and we both laugh.

Geraldine suddenly turns right and pulls up outside a large mansion block. ‘Sorry,’ she says, turning to me. ‘Ben Williams was bugging me for a lift so I said we’d come and get him. You don’t mind do you?’

‘No,’ I say, heart suddenly pounding. ‘I didn’t know he lived here.’

‘Me neither until he gave me his address yesterday, but even a rat must have a home.’

‘Who does he live with?’

‘Two other guys, apparently. God, can you imagine what their flat is like?’

‘Ugh,’ I say, even though I haven’t got a bloody clue. Me? How the hell would I know what a bachelor pad is like, but then again I’ve watched Men Behaving Badly and even I can pretend. ‘Stinking socks draped over all the radiators.’

‘Porn mags piled up in the corridor,’ Geraldine says, grimacing.

‘Sheets that haven’t seen a washing machine in six months.’

‘Piles of filthy washing-up overflowing the sink.’ We both clutch our stomachs and Geraldine makes gagging noises. I laugh, but suddenly I see Ben running out the front door and the laughter stops as my stomach does its usual lurch on sight of this gorgeous man.

‘Make him sit in the back,’ whispers Geraldine. ‘I don’t want to sit next to him.’

So Ben walks over to the car and I climb out, trying to be dainty, delicate, feminine. ‘Morning girls,’ he says, ‘both looking particularly lovely today.’ He doesn’t mean me, he’s just being polite, so I stand awkwardly on the pavement and Ben looks at me patiently, waiting for me to climb in the back.

‘Ben,’ shouts Geraldine from the driver’s seat. ‘You don’t mind getting in the back do you?’

‘Oh,’ says Ben. After a pause, in which I wish more than anything in the world that the ground would open and swallow me up, he says, ‘Sure.’ And in a swift and graceful movement he climbs in.

I buckle up my seat belt while Ben leans forward, resting his arms on either seat in front. ‘So girls,’ he says, as Geraldine pulls out. ‘Good night last night?’

‘Yes, thanks,’ says Geraldine, while I stay quiet.

‘What did you do?’

Geraldine tells him, and I start playing this little game I play a lot of the time. I do it when I’m in a car and we pull up to traffic lights. If the light stays green until we pass, then I will find true love. Sometimes I add within the next six months. I don’t know why I carry on playing it, as it never comes true, but I do it again now. I think, if you ask me what I did last night, then it means that we will end up together. Please ask me, Ben. Please. But then if he does ask me, what will I say? That I stayed at home and ate chocolate biscuits? Oh God, how can I make myself sound interesting.

‘What about you, Jemima?’ Oh Christ. The question’s out there before I’ve formulated an answer.

‘Oh, I went to a party.’

‘Did you?’ Ben and Geraldine ask the question simultaneously.

‘You didn’t mention that,’ says Geraldine. ‘Whose party?’

Quick, quick. Think, Jemima.

‘Just an old friend.’

‘Wild night, eh Jemima?’ says Ben with a wink.

‘Yup,’ I say finally, deciding to throw caution to the wind. ‘I got very drunk, slightly stoned and ended up shagging some guy in the toilet.’

A silence descends on the car, neither Ben nor Geraldine knows quite what to say, and I feel sick. I know I’ve said the wrong thing. It doesn’t come out as funny as I had intended, it comes out as peculiar, so I take a deep breath and tell the truth. Well. Sort of. ‘Actually, I’m lying. I stayed in and watched World in Action.’

Ben and Geraldine get the joke and they laugh. Except unfortunately, at least if you’re sitting where Jemima Jones is sitting right now, it really isn’t very funny. It’s actually rather sad.