CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

Observation #6:
It gets tiring being judged all the time.

I’m still thinking about that on the walk home. But at the moment, the walk seems beyond me. I have to walk about twenty minutes. Downhill. It’s not exactly like climbing Mount Everest or even rolling down Mount Everest, which I imagine is quite hard, what with all those rocky bits and the odd hungry yeti to deal with. But even walking down this hill seems like a marathon when you’re hungry. I’ve gone beyond actually feeling any hunger to just having a constant slight headache and a general sense of being Rather Unwell. I wonder if I lie down and roll, I could get home without any level of effort at all. Okay, it might look a bit crazy. I can imagine all Mum’s friends. “Is Jesobel all right? We’ve just seen her lying down in a road and rolling down a busy street. Thank goodness I’d just put down my almond decaf soy latte and was watching the road, or I’d have squashed her head like a watermelon.” Watermelon would be good — very refreshing and very low in calories. Is food all I think of? Er, yes, because I’m practically STARVING MYSELF.

It is at this moment that I realize I am in a perilous situation. I am in desperate need of food and I am standing next to our nearest convenience store. It sells chocolate. It sells chips. It sells all manner of delicious, though processed, food that might give me enough energy to get home. Internal dilemma begins: Old Jess says, “You’ve eaten nothing all day. You fainted yesterday. This is not healthy.” New Jess whispers, “You’ll never look good on your wedding day to Matt unless you starve.”

I don’t know what to do. I mean, I’m not really intending to get married until I’m in my twenties anyway, and that’s a very long time to go without eating. Maybe I’ll find one small snack with a teeny, tiny number of calories. There might be a miniscule pack of nuts, not salted, of course, because that would be too much like taste. Nuts are good for you, aren’t they? No one’s looking so …

“I hope you’re not going to get a snack.”

I jump back as the beautiful, gaunt specter of Cat looms in the doorway. I’m not sure how someone so thin can loom. Maybe it’s more that she lurks. Anyway, in short, Cat is standing in the doorway, staring at me with laser eyes as if I’m about to eat a bagel. With lots of cheese. The double sin of carbs and full-fat dairy. I start to mumble, “I was going to …” but my voice trails away. I don’t even have the energy to lie to my sister properly. What is wrong with me? (Rhetorical question — I NEED TO EAT!)

But my brain does work enough to ask one question. “What are you doing in there?” Surely, Cat doesn’t have food in secret. Does she nibble like a rabbit on a huge block of dark chocolate or shove salted caramel popcorn down her throat in handfuls?

“I came for this, of course.” She waves a bottle of water in my face. “Still, I find sparkling water makes me bloat.” She taps her flat belly as if to make a point.

“Fascinating,” I reply. Ninety-nine percent of me wants to make a sarcastic reply about how bubbles of gas can’t make you fat, but I’m too tired and also it strikes me that this is the second conversation I’ve had with Cat in three days. Which is huge. So, I don’t want to blow it. Instead, I find myself wandering after her. “Farewell, unsalted nuts, our time will come another day,” I whisper back to the shop.

“Are you talking to yourself?” Cat spins round.

“Only to the shop. It’s the only sensible conversation I get some days,” I fire back.

We walk in silence for a few paces. So back to normal, then. Cat surges ahead, as if we’re in a race. Am I supposed to keep up with her or trail behind like a needy child?

“Do you have to walk so fast?” I blurt out.

“Don’t you want to burn off fat? This is the perfect fat-burning pace,” Cat says, as she taps the fitness tracker on her wrist to measure her progress. “Yes, heart rate at optimum level.”

I stare at her in awe. This is the longest conversation we’ve had in weeks, and I’m seeing her in a whole new light. My heart is full of Matt, but hers seems to function just as a workout tool. I’m not sure which of us is right, but she’s off down the road, long legs pumping at such a rate that I have to almost run to catch up with her.

“So …” she says as I puff alongside her, “what are you planning on cooking tonight?”

“Did you like what I cooked the other night?”

“It was better than your normal carnival of fat and salt.”

“I like to think of it as worshipping at the temple of flavor.” I’m thinking “carnival of fat” my arse, but then my arse is wobbling as we walk, and Cat’s tiny bum just propels her legs forward without so much as a jiggle. Like Mum, she is a jiggle- and giggle-free zone.

Cat gives me a side glance. “But you have to admit your choices aren’t healthy.”

This is getting personal. “Many vegetables and innocent salad items are slaughtered during the preparation of my meals, so I refute wholeheartedly any suggestion of lack of vitamins.”

“But you use fat, cream, butter, cheese.” She spits the words out as if just saying them will make her blow up to the next size.

Breathing heavily now, we sweep past our house. Are we going on a walk? Where is she taking me — a quick stroll round all of the UK? But if I want to keep talking to Cat, I need to stay with her, so I just fire back, “These are all elements of the well-known Mediterranean diet that contribute to long life and good health.”

“We’ve been to France. It’s full of fat old women who get their flabby boobs out on the beach. I’d rather die than turn into that, so you can keep your Mediterranean elements, thank you.” Cat strides majestically on.

“Well, I was thinking of chicken in a Thai glaze on a green salad,” I shout after her.

She pauses for a second. “Sounds good.” She stops and turns to look at me. “Jess, are you trying to lose weight?” When she asked me this before, I lied. Do I still lie? Why does it even matter?

“Maybe,” I find myself saying. “Just a bit,” I hedge. “I mean, I’m not made for skinny.” Cat walks around me now, eyes scanning up and down, measuring me with her precise gaze. It’s worse than standing in my underwear.

“Hmm,” she says.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing.” She keeps walking. “I’m just thinking.”

“You’re clearly thinking about me and this is all entering the territory of Very Weird.” I peek round. “You are staring at my arse, Cat. In public.” She keeps staring. I give her a good shove. “Stop it. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“You’re not going to like it,” she warns me.

“Well, I’m not exactly loving it at the moment. Spit it out.”

Sighing, Cat begins. “You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you. I mean, we’re talking years of willful overeating here, so you’re not going to put that right overnight.”

“But I’ve less than three weeks,” I whisper.

“What?” Cat leans in to hear what I’m saying.

“Er, nothing, I’m just inwardly sobbing.”

“Good, you need to. You’re reasonably in proportion apart from being top-heavy, and nothing but surgery is going to sort that out.”

Really? Surgery?

“You do have a waist of sorts, but obviously, it’s far too big. Don’t leave the house without plenty of Lycra on underneath, for starts. Wrists and ankles suggest that there might be hope for you once you get rid of all the blubber.”

I like to think that I’m quite tough. I mean, I’ve survived the best that Zara and her crew have thrown at me for years. But my sister talking about my blubber makes me think a) I’m the subject of that Great American Novel that no one ever actually reads or b) I’m about to be harpooned and brought to shore. I turn away so she can’t see my eyes brimming with tears.

“Jess, didn’t you hear what I said? There’s hope.”

I sniff and find some words. “Hope, yes, that’s great.”

She peers closely at me. “You don’t look that great.”

Will she never give up? “I know,” I say, “you’ve made that very clear.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Then she says the one thing that I would not have expected. I’m feeling a bit faint anyway, but this nearly has me falling to the pavement. “I think you need something to eat.”