How to Get the Body You Want by Peony Pinker

by Jenny Alexander

  Contents

  1 The year that’s gone and the year ahead

  2 Windy walks and woolly sandwiches

  3 The family organiser and the four-week plan

  4 Who are you and what have you done with my dad?

  5 The first one awake and Fitness Flakes

  6 Girls together and the ghost at the window

  7 The proof of the pudding and Toby’s tepee

  8 The slight adjustment and the secret stash

  9 Keep calm and don’t panic!

  10 The whale and the goldfish

  11 Big beacons and bad lies

  12 Cheat-snacks and sneaking

  13 Gran on a mission and doggy depression

  14 Life isn’t fair and Magnus doesn’t care

  15 Stickers and secret codes

  16 Geared up to go and the moon on the snow

  17 The best books and the body you want

  Chapter 1

  The year that’s gone and the year ahead

  You know when your whole family goes out for lunch at the Happy Haddock on New Year’s Day, and they talk about the best bits of the year that’s gone and what they want to happen in the year ahead?

  And you secretly think they’ve got as much chance of their wishes coming true as your rabbit, Dennis, would have of getting on Strictly Come Dancing?

  Well that’s what happened to me the first New Year that Gran was back in Polgotherick.

  Her new house wasn’t ready for her to move into yet because the builders were still sorting out the dry rot and stuff. It had been empty for years, standing all on its own out there on the cliff path, turning into a crumbly old ruin.

  In the meantime, she was living in the Happy Haddock because it belonged to her old school-friend, Jane, and that was how come we were there for New Year’s lunch instead of having our traditional frozen pizza. Why bother going out when you can easily pop a pizza in the oven? That’s what Dad says.

  The Happy Haddock overlooks the harbour and it’s one of the oldest buildings in Polgotherick. It’s got walls about a mile thick and tiny windows, so it’s always dark inside, even in the middle of the day. There’s a net of tiny twinkly lights across the black ceiling-beams that gives you the odd feeling you’re moving around at the bottom of the ocean, with bright bubbles on the surface above.

  The place was crammed. All the tables were squeezed up to make room for the Christmas tree. It was so noisy we had to almost shout to make ourselves heard.

  ‘It’s a good job we booked!’ Gran said, as we bagged our table.

  Dad went to get some drinks and nuts and order the food, and then we all sat round talking about the year that had gone by. When you came to think about it, amazing things had happened for each and every one of us.

  ‘I became an agony aunt!’ said Dad, and he had, well, sort of. He tried for a few weeks after Daphne, the real agony aunt, went missing, but then Mr Kaminski from next door ended up secretly doing it for him because he was so hopeless. Ed, the editor on the Three Towns Gazette, couldn’t believe how good his sports reporter had turned out to be at sorting out people’s problems.

  ‘I also haff become agony aunt,’ said Mr Kaminski.

  ‘An undercover agony aunt,’ agreed Gran.

  You might be wondering what our next-door neighbour was doing at a family lunch but as he didn’t have any family of his own, he had kind of adopted us. At the beginning of the year he had been like a sad old snail stuck in his shell, but doing the problem page for Dad and getting Mum to rescue his wreck of a garden seemed to have drawn him out.

  ‘I can hardly believe it, but I actually set up my own business,’ said Mum.

  It was called Garden Angels and although it meant she was out from dawn to dusk trimming trees and digging flower-beds at least she wasn’t spitting feathers any more about having to work for horrible Mr Pryce at the Green Fingers Garden Centre.

  Going round the table, Gran said, ‘I hung up my wetsuit in St Ives and came home to Polgotherick. No more surf-school teaching for me!’

  Mr Kaminski beamed at her. He had been even more keen on us Pinkers since Gran had come back.

  It was Primrose’s turn but she was busy texting Matt and didn’t notice. You could always tell it was him she was talking to because she got this gooey look when she read her messages and sighed every time she pressed send. I helped her out.

  ‘Primrose managed to get a decent boyfriend for a change,’ I said.

  ‘And what about you, Peony?’ said Gran.

  I grinned at her. ‘I got Dennis.’

  I had never had a pet before, and I probably never would have if Gran hadn’t suddenly decided that having a house rabbit might distract us from arguing all the time.

  ‘Well, I’d say that was a pretty good year!’ said Mum, and we chinked our glasses together.

  ‘And here comes a great start to the New Year,’ said Dad, as the waiter arrived with our fish and chips.

  The sign outside the Happy Haddock says, ‘The best fish ‘n chips in Polgotherick’, and it’s true, though to watch Primrose picking at her fish as everyone else tucked in to theirs, you’d have thought there must be something grim and stinky lurking beneath the batter.

  Mum shot her a frown. If we’d been at home she would have told her off about wasting food and being silly worrying about her weight, when she was perfectly normal and a lovely-looking girl. Then Primrose would have gone off on one, saying it was all very well for someone who had not mysteriously ballooned into a blob to say things like that.

  In four weeks’ time it was Matt and Primrose’s six-month anniversary and they were planning to do the same things and wear the same clothes as they did on their first date. Unfortunately, when Primrose tried her dress on before Christmas, she discovered she had to choose between either doing it up or breathing.

  Dad tried to distract Mum with the sauce basket but she spotted Primrose slipping a chip to Magnus, and gave her a double-strength glare. She couldn’t say anything because she didn’t want to spoil Gran’s special lunch.

  Dogs are supposed to look like their owners, but although Magnus is as round as an apple like Jane, he hasn’t got her friendly face. Labradors are usually very well-behaved and sociable, but Magnus took Primrose’s chip as if he was doing her a favour, and then scowled at her until she gave him another one. I thought Mum was going to explode.

  It was annoying Primrose messing about with her food all the time but I was just as annoyed with Mum for getting in a stress about it. I mean, it wasn’t as if Primrose was going to starve. Whenever she gets in a mood, which isn’t exactly rare, she goes through the fridge like a walrus hoovering up clams. A walrus can eat four thousand clams in one sitting – I saw that on David Attenborough.

  ‘Let’s talk about what we want to happen in the year ahead,’ said Dad. ‘Who’d like to start?’

  Gran said, ‘Well, I’ll be moving into Nash House, of course. Then I want to get my skipper’s certificate so I can start doing boat trips round the harbour.’

  ‘Is no need,’ Mr Kaminski said. ‘I haff skipper’s certificate.’

  ‘You can’t always be there, Viktor,’ said Gran.

  ‘But yes,’ he said. ‘I can.’

  Mr Kaminski said what he wanted in the year ahead was to help Gran with her boat trip business. I hoped he had some other wishes up his sleeve in case Gran got another of her big ideas and went off the boat trip thing. She had nearly abandoned it once already in favour of having a tea-room at Nash House, till Mum reminded her about the Great Bed-and-Breakfast Disaster. The problem with Gran is, she’s easily distracted.

  ‘Have you got any other
New Year wishes?’ Dad asked Mr Kaminski. Great minds think alike.

  Mr Kaminski got embarrassed and muttered something in Polish. He said he did have another wish but he couldn’t explain it in English.

  ‘Vot about you, Jan?’ he asked Mum, changing the subject.

  Mum said she wanted to make her business really successful so she could take on more people and end up working less hours. Dad rolled his eyes.

  ‘What?’ said Mum.

  ‘You working less? I don’t think so!’ said Dad.

  Magnus nudged Primrose’s elbow with his nose and she gave him another chip. Then Jane stopped wiping the bar with her tea-towel and called out, ‘Walkies, Magnus!’, so he waddled off. He’s the only dog I’ve ever met who hears the word ‘walkies’ and hides.

  ‘What about you, Primrose?’ said Mum.

  ‘She wants to try and hold onto Matt and not drive him away by being a drama queen,’ I suggested, helpfully.

  ‘Yes, and Peony wants to learn how to keep her beak out of other people’s business,’ said Primrose.

  ‘What about you, Dave?’ said Mum, moving swiftly on.

  Dad drew himself up in his seat, paused until he had everyone’s undivided attention, then made his big announcement.

  ‘I’m going to write a book!’

  We gawped at him. Writing a book sounded like quite a lot of effort for someone whose hobbies were watching sport on TV and snoozing.

  ‘Ed says all the best agony aunts write a book,’ said Dad. ‘Daphne’s was “How to Handle Stress at Work.”’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ goes Mum. ‘She wrote that just before she went on holiday and refused to come back!’

  Dad said his book was going to be about fitness because lots of people who wrote to the problem page weren’t happy with their bodies and it was a subject he knew about, having had a life-long interest in sport.

  ‘But it doesn’t have to be something you know about, does it?’ Primrose said. ‘I mean, it’ll be Mr Kaminski who writes it, with Gran checking his English like she does with the problem page.’

  It was a fair comment, given that Dad’s favourite motto is, ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth getting someone else to do it.’ But he insisted he had always wanted to write a book and this was his big chance.

  ‘I am definitely going to do this myself!’ he declared.

  Our New Year’s Day lunch seemed to be turning into the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, and when Gran pointed out that I hadn’t come up with anything I wanted to achieve in the year ahead, I almost said about getting Dennis on Strictly.

  They would have told me off for being silly, but just to sum up:

  the person with the shortest attention span in the country was going to study for her skipper’s certificate and set up a boat trip business without getting side-tracked by other ideas

  the person with no Plan B was going to depend on her seeing it through the biggest workaholic in the world was going to build up her business but cut her hours

  the most outrageous drama queen in the galaxy was going to keep her boyfriend and not get into a strop and accidentally dump him (again)

  the laziest person in the whole entire universe was going to write a book even though he could easily get out of it

  ‘I can’t think of anything,’ I said.

  Gran squeezed some more ketchup on her chips and put the empty sachet on the edge of her plate beside the other five.

  ‘It’ll come to you,’ she said.

  Chapter 2

  Windy walks and woolly sandwiches

  On the second day of January every year, my friend Toby and his family have a picnic at Pike’s Bluff. Mum says most people wouldn’t even think of having a picnic in the middle of the winter and if they did, a windy cliff would be the last place they would choose for it.

  Dad says most people wouldn’t go to Pike’s Bluff at all, it being about a billion miles down the coastal path and in the middle of nowhere. Anyone with an ounce of sense would walk to the first stile and then come back for tea and cakes in the Harbour cafe.

  I’d never been as far as Pike’s Bluff before so when Toby invited me, I said yes. I thought there must be some kind of shelter if they went there for winter picnics and it couldn’t be as far as Dad said because Toby’s little sister, Leah, had done it last year when she was only seven.

  Toby’s dad ran the Polgotherick Scouts and his mum ran the Guides. When you went on a day out with them it felt like you were going for your Survival Skills badge. They wore shorts all the year round, not beach-style shorts but knee-length ones with lots of pockets. Toby often did as well, which didn’t do much for his cool-rating at school.

  The only one in Toby’s family not wearing shorts that day was Leah. She was well wrapped up, with tights and leggings under her skirt and a thick woollen hat, scarf and mittens.

  It was freezing as we set off along the coast path. Our breath made clouds in the air. There was a dusting of snow on the ground and the grass crunched under our feet. Toby’s dad took the lead, the hairs on his legs fluffed out in the cold. He had a massive back-pack and two strong walking-poles, as if he was planning to trek to Siberia.

  Toby’s mum walked just behind him, with me, Leah, Toby and Jess, our friend from school, bringing up the rear. Jess doesn’t usually like outings and stuff but what with her dad walking out and everything, me and Toby were on a mission to try and cheer her up. By the time we reached the first stile I was already puffing and panting.

  The path was very up-and-down, with wooden steps dug into the dirt on the steepest bits. I was struggling to keep up but Jess was even worse than me. She had never been on a day out with Toby’s family before so she was probably in shock.

  ‘Are they bionic?’ she muttered, as we stumbled down a steep bit into a ravine and trudged back up the other side.

  Toby’s mum and dad were dots in the distance by the time we got to the old lookout so we didn’t stop for a rest but pushed straight on.

  ‘H-h-h-how far are we going?’ puffed Jess.

  ‘My dad says it’s about a billion miles,’ I said.

  She groaned and flopped forward, resting her hands on her knees. Toby and Leah had gone ahead by then so they didn’t notice.

  ‘It’s all right when you get used to it,’ I said. ‘You reach a stage when you think you’re definitely going to die, then that kind of passes and you feel okay.’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Jess.

  I gave her my best encouraging smile, the one your mum does when she’s finished explaining the bit of homework you’re stuck on.

  We trudged on. From time to time Toby and Leah stopped to wait for us, but their mum and dad were nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ goes Toby. ‘You can’t get lost up here.’

  I had thought the path would go on being up-and-down all the way to Pike’s Bluff, but after a while it hit a high bit and stayed there. The coast levelled out and the path, no more than a dip in the grass now, followed the line of the cliffs for as far as the eye could see.

  Up here, we were suddenly hit by the wind. It blew in blasts straight in off the sea, buffeting us, making our hats flap and our chins tingle. It was exciting, like a blast of music on a funfair ride.

  Toby turned his back to the wind, undid his coat and flung it open. He looked like a cormorant drying its wings. A gust of wind lifted him clean off his feet and he flapped and stumbled across the field, laughing hysterically.

  We all joined in. We were like human kites, bumping across the frosty grass, trying to take off and never quite managing it. Eventually, Leah threw herself down on the ground, rolled onto her back and lay there laughing. We all flung ourselves down beside her.

  ‘I’m not tired any more,’ Jess said, in surprise.

  ‘I told you,’ I said.

  Toby said it was just as well, considering we still had a bit of a way to go.

  But it only felt like five minutes before we saw a sharp rise up ahead and a spur of cliff jutting out towa
rds the sea. Big waves were breaking on the rocks below, and flecks of foam flew right up over the path like giant snowflakes on the wind.

  ‘That’s Pike’s Bluff,’ Toby said. The wind seemed to blow the words right out of his mouth, so we could hardly hear him.

  ‘What, and we’re going to have our picnic up there?’ I shouted. There wasn’t a stick of shelter.

  Toby laughed.

  ‘No – that would be nuts!’

  Leah was walking ahead now, and she suddenly dropped out of sight, like she had fallen off the cliff. I screamed and broke into a run, but Toby grabbed my sleeve. He shook his head to say there was no need to panic.

  As we got closer to the place where Leah had disappeared we saw that the cliff at this point wasn’t as sheer. It was lumpy. It looked as if great chunks had fallen off and tumbled towards the water a billion trillion years ago, and then gone grassy.

  Toby set off down a narrow dirt path that wound steeply down in front of us. Jess and me looked at each other. What was the point in clambering all the way down when there was nothing at the bottom but foam and rocks? But we couldn’t stay up at the top on our own.

  The path wasn’t as frightening as it looked. When we got to the last bit, we suddenly saw a thin strip of sand right up against the bottom of the cliff that you couldn’t see from the top. A secret beach! We speeded up.

  The sand was criss-crossed by a few tracks where Toby’s family had walked over it. His dad had made a fire at the far end under the cliff, and Toby and Leah were collecting drift-wood to keep it burning. The flames flew sideways in the wind.

  Toby’s mum called us over and we all sat down to eat our sandwiches. We didn’t take our gloves off or our fingers would have frozen. The crumbs stuck to the wool, and the wool snagged on the crusts, so as well as the gritty crunch of sand you always get when you eat on the beach we also got the odd stringy bit of wool stuck in our teeth.

  ‘Would you like to know five facts about Pike’s Bluff?’ asked Jess.

  Jess collected facts like a squirrel collects acorns, stashing them away in her notebooks ready to bring out when the time was right. She said five was the perfect number of facts to find out – it was enough to make you feel you knew something worth knowing, but not so many that you got bogged down.