It’s my first session with the personal trainer Myra has found for me. I tried to protest, but she wasn’t having it. Despite her feeling as if I’m letting the side down by attempting to get fit, she’s determined to help me achieve my aim of getting back at Robert. I’ve told him I am working an extra hour in the afternoon. And even though I’m dreading it, I’m glad to have an excuse not to go home. The idea of him hanging around the house for the next four weeks is filling me with dread.
Myra waves me off like it’s my first day at school.
‘Don’t come back all super-skinny, will you?’
‘Very funny. I’ll be lucky if I come back at all.’
I’m expecting the gym to be full of buff young people, oiling their muscles and twirling giant weights around their heads like batons. As it happens, the place is quiet. While I wait nervously in reception for the girl behind the desk to finish her phone call, I look around. One woman – older than me, I would guess, but in fantastic shape – is being shown how to do something that looks tortuous in one corner of the room, but she’s laughing while she’s doing it so that’s a good sign. Maybe she’s getting the endorphins they always talk about, or maybe she’s just a masochist. Other than her and her trainer, the gym is empty.
There’s a row of machines that even I recognize – two cross-trainers, two bikes, three treadmills – and then a bunch of black metal objects with the appearance of torture-chamber implements. I almost turn and walk straight out again.
Just as I’m thinking seriously about it, the receptionist hangs up and turns to me with a smile.
‘Paula?’
I nod nervously. ‘That’s me.’
‘Don’t look so scared. You’ll be fine. I’ll tell Chas you’re here.’
When I booked the appointment, Myra standing over me while I made the call to make sure I didn’t back out, I was disappointed that only male trainers were available in the slot that I wanted. For some reason, having a woman would feel far less humiliating. I’ve been having nightmares ever since about some young lad laughing with his colleagues about the fat bird he’s having to try and knock into shape.
Chas, when he appears, turns out to be older than I’d expected – I would put him in his mid-thirties – and a thoroughly nice bloke. Just as well, because the first thing he does is tell me he has to weigh me and test my body fat. I tell him it’s fine, I don’t need to know how much I weigh, and he just laughs and says there’s no getting out of it so we may as well just get it over with.
In a small side room he chats to me as he grabs bits of the flab round my waist and on the back of my arms with what looks like a pair of tongs.
‘So what’s your usual fitness routine?’
I actually laugh. ‘Walking to the fridge?’
I hate it when I do this. When I make jokes about my own size. My way of saying, ‘Yes, I know I’m fat too.’
He’s kind enough to smile. ‘Seriously, though …’
‘Um. Nothing really. Walking, I suppose. I ran down a hill the other day.’
‘How often do you walk? And how far?’ Now he’s doing some kind of calculation on paper, based on whatever the tongs told him.
‘Every day, pretty much. Only for about fifteen, twenty minutes.’
I wait for him to scoff. Instead, his expression doesn’t change from one of friendly positivity. ‘Well, that’s something. You can’t underestimate the value of walking.’
‘It’s only been for the last few weeks …’
‘OK, slip your shoes and socks off and step on the scales. Any idea how much you weigh?’
I shake my head, no. I’m lying. A few weeks ago, the day I started my new regime, I forced myself on to confront the truth. Fifteen stone four ounces.
He peers down at the electronic scales. ‘93.89 kilograms.’
I try to do the calculation in my head. Fail. ‘I don’t know what that is.’
‘That’s … that’s fourteen stone eleven.’ He writes it down on my notes.
I can’t believe it.
‘Wow. I’ve lost half a stone. Just in a few weeks.’
Chas smiles. ‘I thought you said you didn’t know what you weighed.’
‘I was telling the truth. Because I thought I weighed fifteen stone four and it turns out I’m only fourteen eleven.’
‘That’s walking for you.’ At this rate, Chas is going to talk himself out of a job and I’m just going to spend my days hoofing it around north London. ‘And is that your main goal? Weight loss?’
‘Yes. And tightening it all up, you know. I don’t want it all to be flapping about.’
‘The weights will do that. How’s your diet?’
I talk him through the improvements I’ve made and he seems to be impressed. Chas himself is like a poster boy for healthy eating. Even his hair, which is thick and slightly bouffant, screams that his diet is perfectly balanced. His teeth are the white of a man who has never even tried red wine. He reminds me of David Hasselhof but without the lying on the floor demanding a burger bit. He looks up from his calculations.
‘So your fat percentage is forty-four. We’ll measure it regularly to see if it’s going down.’
Forty-four per cent. I am forty-four per cent fat. Forty-four per cent of me looks like the gloop you find in the U-bend of a blocked-up sink.
‘Jesus.’
‘We’ll get it down, no worries.’
I wish I had Chas’s faith in me. A large part of me is hoping he’ll say that’s it for today and the hard work will start next time but, of course, that’s not how it works. I have never felt so out of my comfort zone. We don’t even use weights (‘I’ll ease you in gently’) but after a slow but steep walk on the running machine, a sequence of squats and lunges and stepping up on to a low box, and a few arm movements with stretchy bands, I’m sweating like I’m in a sauna and wheezing like a bulldog.
‘I can’t …’ I say about a thousand times and, to give him credit, he lets me have a breather every now and then. I get the impression this is the last time that’ll happen.
The last five minutes is bliss as he stretches out my aching muscles while I lie on my back on the floor, feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck.
‘When are you in again?’ he says as I peel myself up off the mat, revealing a sweaty impression of myself. I imagine alien scientists examining it in aeons to come, like the Turin Shroud. Concluding that humans were large, shapeless mammals made up of forty-four per cent fat.
I want to say ‘never’, but I bought a block of twenty sessions to force myself to attend (and because of the hefty discount). ‘Thursday,’ I pant.
He beams at me with his big, straight teeth. ‘Great. And well done. You’ve started, and you’ve made a commitment, that’s the main thing.’
I want to punch him but I don’t have the strength.
Knowing that Robert will probably be home when I get there, I have a quick shower and change back into my work clothes. Walking is out of the question. Perspiration is still dripping from every bit of me when I get on the bus.
‘She went ballistic.’ Josh is smiling at me across the table. We’re back in the same café, coffees on the table. Officially, I’m putting in a few extra hours at Myra’s, and Josh is in his office, prepping for the next run of filming after the break.
‘OK, tell me everything. What did you say?’
‘I tried to make it sound positive. Like she had this great story coming up …’
‘What is the story, by the way? I imagine “woman gets fat and lets herself go” doesn’t cut it.’
‘She’s been compulsive eating ever since she found out she couldn’t have children.’
‘I know. It’s soap at its worst. But, to be honest, our viewers will probably love it. It’s a tragedy.’
‘So when you come back after the break it’s already happening?’
‘Exactly. But she’s trying to keep it a secret from Hargreaves, because she’s scared he’ll leave her if he finds out they can’t have kids.’
‘She’s eating her feelings!’
He laughs. ‘Right.’
‘OK, so you sat her down and told her this.’
‘I told her she had this great story coming up and that she was going to get so much attention, and she got all excited, obviously. Then I told her what it was and she asked me if she was going to have prosthetics to wear. Of course, that’s out of the question because of the cost and the time it would take to put them on every day …’
‘And?’
‘And then it dawned on her. She asked me if I was asking her to put on weight and I said that was why I was telling her about the story now, so she could start right away. Oh, I forgot! I’d bought her a big cake. All cream and chocolate. And I went and got it then.’
‘Ha!’
‘She practically threw it in my face. Out and out refused to do it. So then I said, “Look at Charlize Theron. She made herself look terrible when she played that serial killer and she won loads of awards”.’
‘Oh God, she really might end up winning a BAFTA.’ Even though I shouldn’t care about this, even though it would happen long after everything was over, because the BAFTAs aren’t till April or May, I still hate the fact that it might end up being the best thing that’s ever happened to Saskia.
‘Oh no she won’t.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because I’ll forget to enter her. It’s up to the producers on each show who gets thrown into the mix. If she’s not in the race, she can’t win.’
‘Won’t she find out?’
‘How? So long as we don’t tell anyone.’
I can tell he’s proud of this twist in the plan from the way he sits back and looks at me.
‘Oh my God, you’ve turned out to be an evil genius.’
‘I’m trying my best.’
‘So Charlize Theron clinched it then?’
‘Not immediately. There was lots of her trying to negotiate how much weight she would be expected to gain. How quickly she would be allowed to lose it again. Lots of tears and “what if you don’t still find me attractive when I’m fat?”-type comments. Which was rich, to say the least. The truth is, I wouldn’t care if she was twenty stone if she was still the same person I thought she was until a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Well, you say that now …’
He cuts me off, more animated than I’ve ever seen him so far. ‘It’s the truth. I love my wife. I’m not that fucking facile that it’s all based on how she looks.’
‘She’s lucky,’ I say wistfully.
‘She obviously doesn’t think so.’
There’s an awkward silence where I don’t know what to say and I think he feels a bit embarrassed about his outburst. Eventually, I say, ‘No, well, who knows what they’re thinking?’
‘I can’t concentrate at work, wondering what she’s up to. At least when we’re filming I have an idea.’
‘Robert was out all afternoon yesterday. Said he’d arranged a golf lesson.’
Josh puts his face in his hands. ‘Sas told me she went to the spa. Said there was no point trying to call her because she’d either be having a massage or too blissed out afterwards to have a conversation. Shit.’
‘There’s no point torturing ourselves trying to work out the details. We know what they’re doing, we don’t need to know the hows and wheres.’
He puts his coffee mug down and looks at me. ‘You really think they’re planning a future together?’
‘I have no idea.’
There are tears brimming at the corners of his eyes again. He flicks them away and I can see him trying to keep his mouth under control, to stop himself going into full-blown crying mode. I look away, to give him a chance to recover his composure. I wonder if the waitress thinks we’re a couple going through a bad time.
‘I’ve been going over the schedule for when we’re back,’ he says, trying to smile. It’s actually heartbreaking to watch. ‘I’m trying to have them in on different days whenever we can. Make it harder for them to see each other. Obviously, half their scenes are together though so …’
‘Good one. Any obstacles we can put in their way. Maybe I should book us a holiday or something. Get him away for a week or so. Not, to be honest, that I want to spend any more time alone with him than I have to at this point.’
‘Will he go for it, do you think?’ He looks hopeful and I know it would make him feel so much better if he wasn’t having to wonder what his wife was up to every minute when he was supposed to be working.
It’s years since Robert and I went on a proper summer break because, wherever we go, he gets paranoid that people are sneakily taking photos of him in his trunks. Which they are most of the time.
‘Sod it. I’ll just book it. Tell him it’s a surprise. If I make it somewhere he’s always wanted to go, then I’ll look like Wife of the Year even if he’s pissed off with me.’
In the end, all the good places are booked up because it’s holiday season and most people have the sense to plan ahead. I settle for asking Myra for two weeks off and announcing to Robert that I’ve done it so we can spend time together while he’s not working. To say he looks horrified when I tell him would be a disservice to the word ‘horrified’. I know as soon as I say it that he and Saskia had planned to spend their days together. I don’t even have to stick to him like glue to make sure that doesn’t happen now. The potential is enough.
We’re sitting on our little balcony overlooking the gardens below. After a week of rained-off Wimbledon the sun has suddenly come out and half of London seems to be outside making the most of it. Robert is idly picking dead leaves off the geraniums in the pot beside him.
‘I thought we could have a staycation,’ I say, pretending not to have noticed the look on his face. ‘I didn’t like the thought of you having to entertain yourself all day with me at work and George away. I thought you’d be bored stiff.’
He can’t really argue with this. Robert would (usually) be the first person to admit he hates being on his own for too long. He needs an audience.
‘I’ve got things arranged, though. Plans,’ he says petulantly.
I shrug, as if that’s not important. ‘Like what?’
‘I told Alice I’d spend a day doing galleries with her. And golf. I thought I’d get some more lessons in.’
‘You can still do all that,’ I say brightly. ‘I could join you and Alice. Or, I know, even better, I could leave you to the cultural stuff and then meet you both somewhere for lunch. Where are you going, do you know?’
‘We haven’t sorted out the details yet.’
‘And you’ve always been on at me to learn golf. I could come for a lesson with you.’
He scoffs. ‘You hate golf.’
I do. I hate it. It’s up there with darts and motor racing for me. Sports that really should not be called sports. ‘Only because I’ve never tried it. It’ll be fun. Anyway, Myra’s already got someone in to cover for me, so you’re stuck with me now.’
‘Fine,’ he says, with complete disregard for how curt he sounds.
‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ I say, turning on the tears. Just enough to make him feel bad, not so much he wants to run a mile. I do a good job of looking like I’m trying to hold them back too. Look away, as if I’m trying to hide them from him.
He softens, because he’s not a monster. I don’t think for a moment he wants me to be unhappy, whatever he’s doing.
‘I am, love. I just wish you’d have talked to me about it first. Maybe the following week would have been better …’
‘I wanted to surprise you. I didn’t think.’
He leans over and kisses me on the top of the head. ‘I appreciate it, thank you.’
‘And if you have plans, that’s fine,’ I say, knowing that I’ve pissed on his bonfire so thoroughly that he won’t feel invincible enough to sneak off for extended periods of time any more. And I can make sure he doesn’t anyway, by springing the odd surprise on him here and there. ‘I’m happy pottering around on my own, you know that.’
When I text Josh to tell him what I’ve done, I get a smiley face back in return.