But this time, as they strolled, shoulder to shoulder, Greta felt something shift between them. It was one of those perfect nights, the air still and quiet, with a large white moon, full, throwing light and shadow into the garden. And Greta thought about every romantic comedy she’d watched, where the girl got the guy. Could she too? What would happen if she reached over to clasp Dylan’s hand in hers? Or perhaps he would throw his arm around her shoulder, then pull her into his arms, his breath warm on her cheek. Greta longed to be part of something, a couple, a world, where someone cared about her and only her.
When they reached the entrance to the hotel, their cast mate Donna was watching them, a wave of cigarette smoke wafting into the air around her. She shouted over, jokingly, ‘You two look very cosy. Something you want to tell us?’ Greta flushed from head to toe. Had Donna somehow guessed what Greta had been fantasizing about? Was it written all over her face? She was about to tell Donna to feck off when she saw a look cross Dylan’s face. He looked horrified at Donna’s insinuation. The dream melted into the air, leaving Greta feeling silly for ever contemplating that she and Dylan should or could be anything but friends. She was happy on her own.
As Greta inched closer to the conveyor belt at security, another moment flashed into her head. A moment where she’d almost messed up her friendship with Dylan for ever, because she stupidly … she shook her head and forced herself to shove the memory back into a place deep inside her. Now was not the time to dwell on the past. She had to focus for her audition.
She typed a message back to Dylan, smiling through her pain, and did what she did best – when all else fails, make ’em laugh.
Greta: I’d better not read the lines as Inspector Clueless by mistake! Can you imagine? Good moaning, this iz Clara. Do you ’ave a massage for me?
Dylan: Never mind Inspector Clueless, all you need to do is put on your Ruby Mae costume and the job would be yours!
Greta: Er, I told you what happened with that a few weeks back. Don’t mention the war!
She’d played the part of Ruby Mae, a curvy, sexy saloon girl, until she’d had a wardrobe malfunction. Greta had stepped into her red and black cancan dress, but it wouldn’t go up over her thighs. It had been getting tight for months, but she’d always been able to manoeuvre her way into it, once she was wearing her Spanx knickers and slip. She stepped out of the dress and decided to put it on over her shoulders, so that she could shimmy her way into it. Several shimmies later, she was standing in her room, with a dress wedged on her shoulders. Her face was scarlet and her hair, washed and curled only twenty minutes previously, was now half stuck to her head. With two arms above her head, she couldn’t pull the damn thing either up or down.
Greta knew she was not going to extricate herself from this situation on her own. Dylan might be her closest friend, but there was no way she was showing him her lumps and bumps. So she had no choice but to call her cast mate, Donna, for help. Skinny Donna, who had two pert boobs that defied gravity, and an even perter personality. It was the worst ten minutes of Greta’s life, as Donna squished Greta’s boobs down as flat as possible, so that she could yank the dress up and off.
Then, when the mission was accomplished, Donna asked, ‘Shall I play Ruby Mae, seeing as the costume doesn’t fit?’ She’d had her eye on the role for months and practically danced out of the room with it in her hands.
Dylan: I told you we can just buy another costume. It probably shrunk in the tumble dryer.
Greta: Maybe you should throw me into the dryer too the next time! This queue to security is horrendous. Distract me with another URG example.
This was one of their things. Dylan the hopeless romantic, Greta the cynic, discussing moments in cinematic history that were Ultimate Romantic Gestures, or URGs, as they nicknamed them.
Dylan: I need to bring out the big guns so. How’s about Bridget Jones’s Diary? The first one, though. When Mr Darcy buys Bridget a new diary so she can make a fresh start. URG central.
Greta: OK, that’s creepy not romantic. I mean, the guy read her diary. Shootable offence.
Dylan: Noted. No reading of girls’ diaries.
Greta: I’d have shoved his new diary where … well … somewhere painful!
Greta put her phone away and placed her luggage in the large square plastic box on the conveyor belt.
‘You’ll have to take those shoes off,’ the security guard said, pointing to her boots.
She held onto the side of the conveyor belt and felt a shot of pain to her ribcage as she leaned down. The first time she’d experienced it, she thought she must have a serious illness. So she’d approached Doctor Google for help. And found two words that made her flush in shame and recognition. Apparently the pain was a fat cramp, caused by her lungs being flattened by her organs. By the time she managed to pull her shoes off and had placed them beside her iPad and handbag, a line of sweat had formed above her lips. She swiped it away with the back of her hand as she walked towards the security gate.
The alarm went off. The alarm always went off. Greta moved to the left as indicated and looked upwards with embarrassment while the female security guard patted her down. She was mortified by the woman’s touch, especially when her hands felt her back fat. And as always when she was embarrassed, Greta started to sweat like Donald Trump in a spelling bee. She could feel trickles of water snaking its way down her back, under her boobs, between her legs. And the shower she’d had only a few hours earlier began to feel like a distant memory. She couldn’t turn up at her audition looking like a sweaty mess.
Greta took a steadying deep breath and willed the perspiration to disappear. She made her way to the ladies’ bathroom, so that she could freshen up before it was time to board. A full-length mirror ran along the wall at the entrance which meant it was impossible to miss seeing her reflection.
Who was that woman staring back at her? A round face, shiny and patchy with sweat, looked back in horror. Greta walked closer to the reflection to study herself, something she didn’t do very often. This morning when she’d dressed she had felt good about her appearance. Her midi print dress in navy and ochre, with three-quarter-length sleeves, felt like the perfect audition dress. It had skimmed over her wobbly bits; paired with her ankle boots, she felt hip and trendy. As the saying went, fake it till you make it.
Now all her eyes could see were the two dark stains that lay under her armpits. She pulled her shoulders forward and tried to hide them, mortified that she’d walked through the airport unaware that they were there. Then she noticed a pull in the buttons that strained over her breasts. Had her boobs grown since she’d left home an hour ago? Was that even possible? And the print that she thought hid her extra weight, now seemed to offer a neon-light invitation for all and sundry to look more closely at her imperfections.
Her body had let her down.
Which wasn’t strictly true. It was she who was letting her body down. She had done this to herself.
Greta thought of her two brothers at home, fit and toned. And thin. She thought of her parents, now in their fifties, both managing to keep any middle-aged spread at bay. She stood out like a sore, angry thumb. The runt of the Gale litter. Except she was as far from little as you could be. What had the lads at the bus stop called her the other day? Fat cow.
Greta tugged at her dress. She had to get it off. What on earth had she been thinking? She felt something new and insidious begin to nip at her. Shame, she knew well. Anger; self-doubt too. But this pain in her stomach, the trouble catching her breath, it felt like … fear, panic. And it wasn’t like her. She was the girl who just brushed herself off, dusted herself down when life threw a curve ball at her. But right now, Greta knew that if she didn’t change her clothes, her audition would bomb. An irrational thought, but now that it was planted in her head it started to grow and blossom, until it took over everything.
Greta made her way into one of the cubicles and placed her case on the toilet. She pulled off the dress then mopped the sweat fro
m her body with swabs of toilet tissue. They turned to pulp in seconds. She sat down on the toilet and closed her eyes for a moment, to let the fresh air from the air conditioning waft over her. When her body temperature regulated back to the normal zone, she doused herself in deodorant once more, then changed into her black trousers and her oversized black tunic. They were her staples, her wardrobe of choice and her planned clothes for tomorrow. As she smoothed down the tunic over her hips, she felt better instantly. Less conspicuous. Less her.
Greta stuffed the dress, alongside her hidden pain, into her small case with a stifled sob. She zipped it closed, took a deep breath and exited the cubicle. She walked to the mirror and reapplied another layer of translucent powder, erasing the shine of sweat from her face. She couldn’t afford the luxury of feeling sorry for herself.
As she passed by WHSmith, a display of books stopped her in her tracks. A large cardboard poster hung from the ceiling at the front of the store, in bright red, saying DOCTOR GRETA GALE, THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Underneath it was a display of hardback books, dozens of them, piled high in stacks, side by side. Her book, What’s In Your Cupboard, had been in the Irish bestseller charts for over a year and showed no signs of leaving it any time soon. There was a giant photograph of her namesake on the poster – a triumph of shining platinum-blonde hair, Hollywood smile and translucent, porcelain skin. Her familiar brown eyes twinkled and seemed to say,
Greta, you’ve got this!
‘I know what I have to do. I’m gonna fake it till I make it,’ she whispered to the poster, then forced a smile onto her face. And with every step Greta took as she made her way to the departure gate, her smile grew wider.
Chapter 2
By the time Greta inched her way down the aisle of the aeroplane towards her seat, she had successfully managed to bury her feelings about how she had looked in that mirror. Until she sat down and realized that her seatbelt would not clasp shut. She felt her body tense in shock and took several deep breaths to try and calm herself down, not quite believing the situation that was unfolding.
She checked to make sure her belt was not tangled. It wasn’t.
She then pulled the lever to extend the belt to its full length, getting an extra millimetre by doing so. But no matter how hard she tugged and pulled, the two ends never met. A glob of acidic bile made its way into the back of her throat, as the enormity of this discovery hit her. The unimaginable had happened. She was too fat to fly.
In silent loathing, she went through her options. She could call the attendant and ask for a seatbelt extender. This she eliminated immediately, because she couldn’t bear the shame of saying the words out loud, feeling the judgemental side-eye of her fellow passengers as they took in the fat girl. There was only one other choice. Deception. Greta took her jacket off and placed it over her lap hiding her unclasped belt. With a bit of luck, the stewardess would only glance in her direction and not insist on double-checking that all was buckled under her jacket. Then her mind jumped to a movie she’d seen a few years ago. What was it? Not that it mattered. All that mattered was the fact that in the film an aeroplane took a sudden drop in altitude and a guy who’d undone his seatbelt had catapulted to the roof of the plane, where his head proceeded to split open. Touching her head, which she happened to like, Greta knew something for sure.
A scenario that included possible death was still preferable to admitting publicly that she was too fat to fly.
Greta glanced at the man who sat to her left. He had pushed himself closer to the window, as if touching her would contaminate him. She looked to her right at the woman who was reading a book, oblivious to her predicament. Maybe she was being polite, who knew? Greta closed her eyes for a moment and silently asked Dr Gale what would she do in this situation. She imagined her idol taking her hands between her own, saying, ‘Honey child, there are a lot of problems in this world, but this sure as hell isn’t one of them. Now you need to use your weight as your strength. Reclaim your power, be a grown-ass woman, and ask for that extender.’
Feck it. Taking a deep breath, Greta pushed the call button, and when the stewardess walked over to her, with a big pearly-white smile, Greta mustered every bit of the kind of dignity and defiance she believed Dr Gale would adopt in the situation.
‘My New Year’s resolution was to lose twenty pounds. Only twenty-five to go …’ Greta pointed to her tummy, smiling ruefully at the stewardess.
‘Oh I hear you!’ The stewardess smiled. ‘The struggle is real.’
‘For sure.’ Greta lowered her voice a fraction and asked, ‘Could I have a seatbelt extender, please?’
The stewardess smiled even more brightly and said, ‘With pleasure, I often use one myself, it’s far more comfortable.’ Then she trotted away to fetch it.
The man in the suit had contempt written over every chiselled part of his face as Greta added the extra section to the seatbelt and tightened it. She had only needed an inch, but that was all it had taken to shame her. The woman on her right had sympathy written all over her face. And there was something else there too. Relief. She knew what she was thinking. She’d seen it reflected in the eyes of many other women too. While that woman might be carrying a few extra pounds, she wasn’t as fat as Greta was.
Greta closed her mind to them all and concentrated on today’s audition. This month alone she’d read parts for two adverts, a play in The Gaeity and a new character in Fair City, Ireland’s longest-running soap opera. The odds should have been in her favour for at least one call-back. But each time she was told that while they’d enjoyed her audition, they’d decided to go in a different direction.
Greta wished someone would tell her what direction all these roles went in, so she could set it as a favourite in Google maps on her phone. The last time her agent Michelle had rung with bad news, Greta had joked, ‘If at first, you don’t succeed … it’s probably never going to happen.’ They’d both laughed for a moment, before awkwardly falling into silence.
But the audition today felt different. Even Michelle had said so when she’d emailed her the main characteristics of Clara: This role has your name on it! It could have been written for you. Clara, in her thirties, fat, unattractive, funny, wisecracker.
While Greta had long since given up on the dream of ever being cast as the good-looking lead, the fact that her agent had emphasized the words fat and unattractive still stung. Unfortunately she knew her agent was right: it did sound like a great part for her.
But Greta was a trouper and she shoved the hurt deep inside her and focused on the words funny and wisecracker. She’d been playing that role her whole life.
She arrived at the casting studio in London fifteen minutes early, which gave her plenty of time to freshen up before her audition. As she looked around the reception hall for the ladies, a woman marched over to her holding a clipboard.
‘I’m Maria. You are?’ Maria looked down at the page in front of her, while she waited for an answer.
‘Greta Gale.’
Maria tilted her head to one side as she contemplated the puzzle that was in front of her.
‘You mean like the real Dr Greta Gale?’
‘Real as opposed to me, the fake one standing in front of you?’ Greta said.
Maria smiled, ‘You know I have a friend called Tony Hadley. He does a pretty good version of “Gold”, as it happens. Right, follow me, we’ve had a cancellation, so you’re up next.’
‘If I could just have five minutes …’ But before Greta could ask where the bathroom was, Maria had marched through a set of double doors, leaving her with no choice but to follow.
‘Greta Gale auditioning for the part of Clara,’ Maria called out, leading her into a studio.
Three sets of eyes looked up from their smartphones and scanned Greta up and down. Greta wheeled her luggage over to the side of the room, wishing that she’d had the foresight to put tissues in her trouser pocket. Could she ask for a moment to go to the ladies? Or would that go against her?
Greta grabbed her résumé and headshot folder from her handbag and walked to the centre of the room. She stood in front of the panel, who were seated behind a long rectangular desk. Louise Cavendish, a casting director, sat at one end. Greta had auditioned for her a few times and she’d also taken one of her workshops. And while it was never promised outright, rumour had it that by attending a course taught by Louise you had a better chance at being picked for a role cast by her. It cost Greta a full month’s wages to go to it, so she hoped the rumours were true.
Greta smiled in Louise’s direction. She got nothing in return. Not even a cursory nod of acknowledgement. So she turned her attention to the guy in the middle. He looked as though he was no more than sixteen years old and was more interested in his phone than in Greta. A little less brightly, Greta smiled at the last member of the panel, a woman who was wearing earrings the size of satellites. Earring lady just shook her head in response to her smile, then looked away.
Why didn’t they say something? I should say something. This must be a test to see if I can channel Clara!
‘Hey everyone.’ It might not have been fierce, but at least it sounded more confident than she felt. She wiped a bead of sweat that had pooled above her lip with the back of her hand and willed her body to cool down. Her body ignored every plea she whispered, until her face was covered in a layer of sweat that dribbled down her double chin, landing in big plops onto her black tunic top. The panel began to whisper to each other, glancing back and forth towards her.
Louise was the first to speak. ‘Would you like a napkin?’ She waved a white tissue in her direction.
Greta nodded and bit her lip. She needed to pull herself together, fast. She walked over to Louise and took the tissue, which disintegrated into mush within seconds when she dabbed her face.
My Pear-Shaped Life: The most gripping and heartfelt page-turner of 2020! Page 3