As I walk home from school, I think about how Ryan’s rejection has kind of burrowed into my brain. And not seeing Joe for the past two weeks isn’t helping. I think about him, and I really want to see him – but then I decide I don’t want to see him, because although he’d probably want to hang out with me, he’d also be totally disgusted by the idea of me fancying him for exactly the same reason Ryan was. Ugh. Boys.
My key is barely in the lock when my mum pounces on me.
‘Emily! You’re home!’
What’s all this about, eh? Something’s amiss.
‘I am indeed. Why are you waiting for me on the doormat?’
‘I’m just happy to see you, that’s all.’
‘Really?’
‘Really! How was school?’
I open my mouth to reply, but she’s already straight in.
‘Oh, and I was hoping you would do something with me tonight . . .’ She trails off, looking unsure.
I can already tell it’s not going to be a trip to the cinema or a cheeky Nando’s. ‘Try me,’ I say.
‘Well, I was thinking of trying . . . um . . . a new weight-loss group,’ she says quite matter-of-factly.
It’s so obvious she’s trying to make herself sound eminently reasonable.
‘And what does that have to do with me?’ I very much do not want to get involved with this.
‘I was hoping I could count on you for a bit of moral support, but if you’ve got too much going on, that’s fine,’ she says.
I’m much too easy to guilt trip, and she knows it.
‘No, go on.’
‘Well, it’s only at the church hall around the corner, and I was wondering if you would come with me,’ she says.
‘Why?’
‘Like I said – for moral support.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because Dad’s in town having dinner with his writing-group friends tonight, and I don’t know who else to ask.’
‘Why can’t you go on your own?’
‘Because I’m nervous and want someone there to distract me.’
She looks genuinely anxious. Maybe this isn’t about me for once.
Mum bites her lip and swallows. ‘And because I’m scared about facing the reality of how much weight I’ve put on,’ she adds.
My heart drops, and I can feel the blood rush to my cheeks. The hot feeling of shame as my mum’s shame is reflected back at me.
‘Ugh, I really do not want to do this,’ I say, shaking my head.
‘Do it for me,’ she whines, bobbing up and down with nervous energy. ‘Do it as a favour for your old mum.’
I close my eyes, hoping that when I open them, she’ll announce she was only joking. She’s not really going to try another destructive, madcap diet; she’s not going to plough all her hopes and dreams into what amounts to yet another scam; and she’s definitely not going to look to me for approval.
I open them. She’s still looking at me expectantly.
‘I just don’t understand why you have to drag me into it.’ I sigh. ‘What exactly is it, anyway?’
‘It’s called the Wellness System,’ she says.
Oh, cool. Seems legit – only the worst name you could think of. At least I was right in my suspicions of Mum hiding something weird on the computer.
‘It’s not like a normal slimming club; it focuses on, well, wellness and health and well-being.’
Oh, I’m sure it’s not like a normal slimming club. That’s what they all say. ‘But the point is you lose weight, right?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Why do you think this time will be different?’ I ask.
‘Different to what?’ She looks confused.
‘Different to all the other times you’ve tried to lose weight.’
‘I’m really ready to try this time,’ she says with a quiver in her voice.
‘So, what? All the other times, you were just messing about?’
Mum shrugs. ‘My heart wasn’t really in it then. But this time, it’s different.’
I sigh. I can’t help it. This time will not be different. It’s just the latest rung in the ever-descending ladder into madness and misery. This is a bad idea, I just know it. But it’s my mum’s idea. What am I meant to do?
‘Please – I really don’t want to go to this thing,’ I say. This is my last refusal.
Mum looks down at her feet, tracing a pattern on the carpet with the toe of her trainer. ‘It’s really important to me. I would really appreciate it. You don’t know how hard it is for me to do things like this. I’m not confident like you. I wish I was. I wish it was easy for me to bluster into new places and feel on top of things, but it isn’t. I need your help, Emily. Please, just come to one meeting with me so I can get myself started.’
I hate myself already because I know I’m about to say yes. I can’t stop myself. Even though I don’t agree with her, at least now I understand where she’s coming from, why she feels this way about her body. Women’s bodies are always pored over and scrutinized, but it feels like there’s nowhere to hide when you’re fat. I suppose it wouldn’t kill me to go along with her, just this once. The Wellness System. I hate it already.
‘Oh, all right,’ I say. Mistake, mistake, mistake flashes in my head like a big neon sign.
‘Emily, you’re such a good girl! Thank you!’ she says, hugging me. ‘The meeting starts in half an hour. Let me just get my things together and make sure I’ve got cash . . .’
A split second later, she’s off rummaging around in the living room. As I watch, I wonder how much money she’s put into all these fad diets over the years. Frittering away my inheritance on juice cleanses and colonic irrigations. I don’t want to know the answer. Think how many lipsticks or dresses or gig tickets that would buy. It’s painful.
When we arrive, the church hall smells like . . . a church hall. Orange squash, biscuits, dust – the usual. It’s a wild hive of activity, split up into three main areas: the first, several lines of chairs facing no one in particular (at the moment); the second, a long trestle table covered in brightly wrapped packaged food; and the third, lines of people queuing to be weighed at a couple of sets of scales. Tonight’s the night for the Wellness System.
I shuffle in with my mum, burning with profound embarrassment. It’s not that I think it’s embarrassing to go to the Wellness System; it’s more that I’m ashamed that people here will be looking at me and seeing another unhappy fat person. I hate that I’m adding to the numbers here, hate that I’m encouraging people to feel like this about themselves. I feel like even by turning up, I’m saying, ‘Yes, you’re right. I should change. You should change.’ Is that what I’m saying? Is now the time for me? I never wanted this before, but now . . . I don’t know. I hate that in a moment of weakness, I caved, and now I’m here and thinking these thoughts.
‘Are you feeling all right? You look a bit peaky.’ Mum presses a hand against my forehead to, I suppose, feign checking for a temperature. I wonder if she’s already looking for an excuse to leave.
‘I’m fine – loving life.’ I sigh. I’m the picture of a sulking teenager.
We’re standing around – looking conspicuously new, lost and uncomfortable – when a pretty, petite blonde woman swoops on us.
‘Hi! I’m Sharon, and I’m the area leader for the Wellness System,’ she says with a massive fixed smile that comes across more like a grimace. ‘Congratulations on taking control of your destiny. You’re new, aren’t you?’ She’s clearly delighted at the presence of fresh, fatty meat. Gammon. Or pork belly.
I let Mum do the talking. I don’t want this woman to think I’m in any way actively participating in her shenanigans.
‘Yes, we are new here. I’m Helen, and this is my lovely daughter Emily, and we would like to join today,’ Mum says very quickly, twisting her bracelets and not looking at me once. The snake! Does she really think I’m going to fall for this? Does she see it as some kind of intervention?
‘Wel
l, that’s just wonderful,’ simpers the boss lady. ‘This is the first day of the rest of your life.’
‘No, no, no.’ I shake my head and smile. ‘In fact, as my mum well knows, I’m just here for moral support.’
‘Are you sure? It doesn’t look like it would do you any harm . . .’ Sharon says brightly, fixed smile still frozen on her thin face.
Screw you, Sharon.
‘I’m really fine just the way I am,’ I say defiantly. Awkwardly, but defiantly.
‘Come on, Emily,’ implores my mum. ‘It would be for your own good. I’m only encouraging you because I care about you.’
‘No way. I’m sorry.’ I’m not sorry at all.
‘But we’re already here, you might as well,’ she tries again.
Like I’ll fall for that. ‘I’m only here because you dragged me here! This isn’t about me.’
‘Em. Can I call you Em?’ Sharon ventures.
My face should tell her she most certainly cannot, but still she continues.
‘Look, Em. This could be a wonderful opportunity to transform you into the young woman you were always meant to be. This is a really significant step, you coming here tonight. I know you’re scared, but take my hand, and we can begin this journey together.’ She holds out her hand.
I slowly look down at it and then back up at her eyes in sheer disbelief. She quickly withdraws it. God loves a trier, and Sharon is trying hard. It’s so absurd that even in my extreme rage, I can’t help but laugh. I only half manage to suppress it, and it comes out as a choked cough. Sharon looks at me as if I’m contagious. Mum just glares at me, but I’m not in the mood to be polite.
‘Well, I can see I’m not going to get anywhere with Em . . . but, Helen, it’s just wonderful to have you here tonight. Now let’s get you registered so we can do your first weigh-in!’ Sharon is galvanized, in her element, ready to go. My rejection clearly didn’t sting too badly.
Sharon leads my mum over to the trestle table covered in food, where there’s another woman guarding a box of record cards like it’s some kind of treasure chest.
‘A new member, Sally!’ says Sharon, doing jazz hands as she approaches the table.
Sally brandishes a clean record card for my mum to fill out. My mum’s brow is furrowed, deep in concentration, properly in the zone. Then it’s her big moment. She’s led to a weighing station, where the queue has died down as everyone has migrated to the rows of chairs. Despite my annoyance, I try to give my mum an encouraging smile, but she doesn’t see me. This clearly means a lot to her, even if I think it’s totally bogus.
While Mum’s facing her Moment of Truth, I peruse the table displaying the Wellness System-branded food for sale. I instantly understand that despite all its crowing about ‘health’ and ‘wellness’, this is a pure money-making weight-loss thing. All the food is un-delicious replacements for delicious things. You can still eat cookies and cakes and spaghetti carbonara! Just . . . an anaemic version. Everything good and fun and tasty in any given food is replaced with artificial colours and sweeteners and additives, which I guess is fine in itself, but . . . why all the wellness chat? Why can’t they be upfront about what they’re doing? Why do they have to couch it in such slippery terms that aren’t even true?
My musings are interrupted by the reappearance of my mum, who looks a lot like someone has died.
‘God, I’ve really let myself go,’ she says, nibbling her lip.
I knew this was a bad idea.
‘No, you haven’t.’ I sigh. ‘You look great.’ I want to soothe her, but I know it’s pointless.
‘I don’t – I look awful. I feel awful. I hate it. At least I’m doing something about it though. Come on – the meeting’s about to start.’
And with that, my mum frogmarches me across the hall to the rows of folding chairs where everyone has congregated. Meeting? I thought we had done the meeting. I thought this was the meeting. What horrors lie in store for us now?
We take our seats somewhere in the middle near the front, as my mum doesn’t want to miss a single word. I look around at the other attendees. They’re a mixed bunch: a few men, but mostly women; some young people, but mostly older. I am the youngest person here by a long way.
Sharon takes the stage. It feels appropriate that we’re in a church hall because she’s adopted the air of a benevolent vicar.
‘Good evening, everyone, and a very warm welcome to you. I hope you’ve had a very successful week and you’ve seen some big losses on the scales tonight!’ she simpers. She sounds like a children’s TV presenter. ‘Although, I know some of you haven’t been so good . . . I’m looking at you, Orla!’ She nods her head and pouts at a woman who looks like she’s usually pale but is now beet red, her mouth an open ‘O’ of consternation. Poor Orla. Naughty Orla – letting herself live. ‘But don’t be discouraged! Tomorrow is a brand-new day! Take my advice and drink a glass of water before every meal! In fact, drink a glass of water whenever you’re hungry!’
‘What, so you can faint and piss yourself at the same time?’ I mutter under my breath.
‘Shh!’ Mum hisses, elbowing me in the ribs.
Enough is enough. ‘Mum, I love you, but I’m outta here.’ And with that, I quietly slip out of the hall to go and wait for her on a bench outside.
That kind of talk is completely poisonous. I’m not going back in there. How could Mum think she could trick me into buying into this? Why does she want this for me so badly? Is it only because she wants it for herself? I sit on the bench until people start filing out, all looking a bit despondent. When my mum appears, she’s not so much morose as furious.
‘Emily Daly, I did not raise you to be a rude little monster,’ she says, clearly fuming.
‘You can talk! You lured me here against my will, under false pretences, with a sob story that I believed because I’m an idiot, but now I’m the monster!’ She is truly outrageous. It’s as if she’s created her own reality. I bet in her mind, I’m completely desperate to lose weight, and I begged her to bring me.
She gasps. ‘A sob story?! You’re unbelievable! I was doing this for your own good.’
‘So I keep hearing.’
‘I just thought that what with Camila looking so nice these days, you might want to do the same.’
Her words linger in the air. A lump forms in my throat.
I’ve been ambushed, and it’s ‘for my own good’. I’m meant to be grateful?
We stalk home in silence. There will be no films and fondant fancies tonight.
As soon as we arrive home, Mum springs into action, riffling through the kitchen cupboards, pulling things out and putting them on the worktop. I decide it’s easier to just let her go for it, and I entertain myself by perusing the Wellness System’s reading material. The basic vibe is . . . well, reading the handbook, I’m struggling to figure out what the logic is at all. Except that anything delicious is banned, I guess? There are glowing testimonials by lots of thin white women about they have ‘much more energy!’ since starting ‘the System’, how their ‘skin looks so much clearer!’ and how they’re ‘sleeping so much better!’ But every single testimonial also contains a little star with a number in the middle to show how much weight each quoted woman has lost. The numbers are wild, exaggerated, obscene. They make no sense.
I’m beginning to see how Mum could have been drawn in by all this. I see why, right now, she’s going through boxes of cereal and sorting them into ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ piles. This bad dieting energy has been let into our house, and I know I won’t be safe from it. I know it’s going to pollute my home just at the time when I’m feeling weird and wobbly (metaphorically) and vulnerable after getting knocked back the one and only time I tried it on with a guy.
I wait until she’s finished her sweep of the kitchen, go in to make myself an omelette, take it upstairs, and hole myself up in my room for the evening. I plough through my food while checking my phone. Within seconds, I discover that the group chat has been afla
me tonight – clearly something’s been going on. I scroll back up to the origin of the excitement . . .
It’s nice to know I’m missed when I’m not around, I guess. Now’s my cue to jump in . . .
Urrrrgh. Am I? Am I going to invite Joe? Even if we’re firmly in the friend zone, it would still be nice to have him there. Maybe if I don’t invite him, someone else will. Someone invited him to Ben’s, after all. This is a really good excuse to talk to him. But would it be weird if I did it? Would it be decidedly un-chill?
That’s a lie, by the way. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to ask him.
CHAPTER NINE
‘Fighting Talk’ – Everything but the Girl
I finally decide to take the plunge as I’m walking home from the bus stop after school the next day. It’s a crisp, clear October afternoon, and I am feeling good about being alive. The first month of my final year of school has passed without catastrophe (tick), it’s coat weather (tick), and I’m feeling less completely out of control of my crush on Joe (tick). Accepting he’s probably never going to fancy me and keeping my distance has left me feeling calmer. This is the kind of mood you should make decisions in.
I stop for a moment on the corner of my street, close my eyes, and attempt to formulate the perfect message. That’s right: it’s time for baby’s first message to Joe. I’ve tried to keep my distance from him, play it cool, and not ‘just happen’ to drop by the shop again. Now I’m going to use the number he gave me instead. Like an adult.
Hey, I type. Is ‘hey’ more casual than ‘hi’? Yes, I think it is. OK. Hey, I was wondering . . . No, delete that. ‘Wondering’ is only one step below ‘thinking’, and we all know it’s weird to think about people. My fingers go into rapid-fire mode, typing out a message:
I press send before I can think about it.
As I walk through the door, I immediately notice the table is set for five for dinner tonight. I groan, my positive mental attitude of ten minutes ago evaporating as I realize that Auntie Isobel and her boyfriend Weird Dennis are coming over today. Unable to face the sheer horrific enormity of this prospect, I go straight upstairs so I can put Pixies on loud enough that when the doorbell goes, it’s not completely implausible that I wouldn’t have heard it. Every little helps. The worst part is, Aunt Isobel used to be cool. But her decision to have a relationship with Weird Dennis is completely inexplicable. Tonight, let’s play Weird Dennis bingo: if he mentions my weight, the fact he’s been to prison (more on that) and my dad’s status as chef, cleaner and child-rearer, I will consider it a full house. If he tries to talk to me about Bitcoin, or any kind of ‘cryptocurrency’ or actually anything that begins with the word ‘crypto’, then it’s bonus points.
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