One whole week later, I still hadn’t opened that pack of berry oatcakes. I didn’t want to cheat, since it mattered so much to Dad. I felt quite proud of myself because berry oatcakes aren’t as bad as they sound and it’s very hard to resist a tasty treat when you’re faced with a jog before breakfast.
It was misty most mornings that week, and I wished Mum would stop saying it reminded her of murder mysteries. When Primrose kept complaining and coming over faint, stopping and starting, going slowly and then slowing down a bit more, I could cheerfully have dragged her into a dark alley and throttled her.
It was tough living on Eat-lite ready-meals, sawdust Slimsnax and cardboard Fitness Flakes and it was even tougher trailing round Polgotherick in the dismal dark with Primrose being a pain and Mum being patient, but it was worth it because Dad was delighted.
He put his big ticks on the family organiser every day to show we had stuck to the diet and done our exercise, and he always bounced off upstairs after breakfast to work on his book.
Amazingly, he also got up before the rest of us and ran further every morning, and by the time we got home he had breakfast on the table. He looked as fresh as a daisy, though a bit sweaty. As fresh as a dewy daisy!
When Mum remarked on the difference between Day One, when we all ran together and he staggered back looking as if he was going to die, and how great he looked in the mornings now, he said that was the proof of the pudding. His fitness plan was already making him fitter.
The mention of pudding didn’t help the Fitness Flakes and skimmed milk go down, but it did give me a happy flash-forward to dinner-time. I had stopped doubling up on chips and started having two puddings instead. After what Gran said about me still growing and everything, it seemed OK to eat what I wanted outside the house, so long as I was managing to stick to Dad’s diet at home.
At the beginning of Week Two, Toby invited me and Jess round after school for tea in his tepee. I was twice-over keen. For one thing, I couldn’t wait to see what a real live tepee looked like, and for another thing, it meant proper food instead of Eat-lite Chicken Delight.
Jess had never been to Toby’s house before, but she reckoned after the walk to Pike’s Bluff she knew what to expect. Ha ha! It was quite funny seeing her face when she realised we had to put the tepee up ourselves, with Toby’s mum not helping and his dad still at work.
‘Self-sufficiency!’ Toby’s mum and dad say, when they make Toby and Leah do things themselves.
‘Right,’ Toby said, reading the instructions. ‘We take this bit of fabric and put it on the ground where the pole’s going to be…’
It was a square of material with some lines going from the centre to the corners and edges. We put it in the middle of the lawn.
‘Now we peg one end of this piece of string in the middle and use the lines on the fabric as a guide to find out where we need to put the pegs in…’
Jess and me just did what we were told. Getting the pole up was tricky and we lost Leah under five acres of canvas when it collapsed on the first try, but after about an hour of wrestling with it, we finally got it up.
‘Nice job!’ Toby’s dad said, when he arrived home. ‘I’ll get the brazier.’
He brought a big metal tray on little legs out of the garage, and put it in the middle of the tepee. He got some sticks and coal and lit a fire in the brazier, opening the flap at the top of the tepee to let the smoke out.
While Toby and his dad were getting the fire going, me and Jess helped Leah and his mum to get the food. Leah wrapped some potatoes in foil to put in the edge of the flames and her mum filled a big black frying pan with sausages and burgers.
Me and Jess carried boxes of bread rolls and bananas out, and marshmallows and barbecue skewers to toast them on.
It was completely dark outside and getting chilly by the time we had got settled in. The flickering flames lit up the inside of the tepee with a warm yellow glow and soon the sausages were sizzling in the pan.
‘Would you like to know five facts about tepees?’ Jess asked, pulling her blanket round her. ‘One: they used to be made of poles covered in buffalo skins. Two: it was the women who made them and put them up. Three: they spent the winter months decorating them with pictures of animals and things. Four: they made little tepees for play-tents for the children. Five – and this is my favourite – they made tiny tepees for dolls’ houses!’
I hadn’t seen Jess look so happy since her parents split up, and Toby’s family were dead happy with her too. They said she was brilliant knowing all these facts, and they hoped she would be able to come to Snowdon with them.
‘We’ll have a few practice hikes before then,’ they said, ‘starting with Beacon Hill in three weeks’ time.’
You could almost see Jess making a mental note to find out five facts about Beacon Hill. The only one I knew was that it was on the moor. I hadn’t ever been up it.
Toby said, ‘There’s a tower at the top that’s supposed to be haunted!’
I couldn’t wait to get home and put a sticker on the family organiser. Three weeks’ time was perfect – it was the last day of Dad’s get-fit-in-four-weeks plan. By then, I’d be striding ahead up that hill. It would be Toby who couldn’t keep up with me!
Chapter 8
The slight adjustment and the secret stash
As you might have noticed, my sister Primrose is the moodiest person on the planet, and all these early starts and starvation rations weren’t exactly making her more mellow.
Matt came round every day after school as per usual, and she bit his head off at the slightest thing. When he drew a heart on the Family Organiser for their six-month anniversary she said it was the wrong colour – her stickers and everything to do with her this year had to be red.
She snapped at him when he got all mushy remembering their first date, how it all started because they were trying to help Dad to get over his fear of dogs by introducing him to Sam, the oldest, sweetest-natured dog you could ever meet.
‘And your dad hid in the shed under the front steps, so we took Sam for a walk on the coast path and I promised to bring him up every day till your dad stopped being scared of him.’
‘Like that was ever going to work,’ said Primrose, scornfully.
‘And you looked so gorgeous in that little pink dress…’
‘Whatever!’
She was just as snappy when he talked about the special anniversary they were going to have.
‘We’ll try and get that little table in the alcove. We can have Jane’s three-fish pie and raspberry meringue…’
‘Don’t talk about food,’ said Primrose. ‘You are seriously not helping.’
The snappier she got, the more Matt seemed to admire her. The fact that she was even tetchier than usual – which was quite an achievement – just showed how tough it was for her helping Dad to test out his ideas. Yet she stuck at it. She was an angel! I wished she really was an angel because then she might flap her wings and fly away.
Unlike Matt, Mum’s patience with Primrose was wearing thin. By the end of Week Two it was like an elastic band stretched to the limit, and then one morning it snapped.
Primrose was doing her I-can’t-breathe-I’m-having-a-heart-attack routine when Mum suddenly stopped bending over her saying soothing things and stood up. Primrose took the gasping down a notch and looked up to see what was going on.
‘We’re having a slight adjustment to the way we organise our early morning runs,’ Mum announced. ‘From now on, I shall be running on my own. You two will have to stay together because we can’t have Peony running round in the dark all by herself.’
‘Why should I have to baby-sit Peony?’ said Primrose. She wasn’t gasping at all any more.
Like I was the one who needed baby-sitting!
‘Why do I have to be stuck with Primrose and you get to run at your own speed?’ I said. ‘I want to run with you.’
But Mum declared she was sure we would both be fine and then she just took off. I d
idn’t really blame her. Everyone sometimes reaches a point with Primrose when they have to get away quick before they completely lose their rag.
As it turned out, running with just Primrose was slightly less of a pain because she didn’t bother with the gasping, collapsing and clutching her chest thing. She knew it was a waste of time trying to get sympathy from me. She just flopped and trudged and grumbled along, which was slow but at least it was steady.
The second time we had to run on our own, Primrose more or less ignored me, but the third day, she was spoiling for a fight.
‘You trod on my heel, you little rat-bag. Back off!’ she yelled, clutching her foot.
‘I wasn’t anywhere near you!’
‘Yes you were. Look!’ She flashed her heel at me. It looked completely normal.
‘Go away,’ said Primrose.
‘I wish I could.’
‘Well you can. I’m in charge and I say you’ll be all right on your own.’
‘Mum said we have to stay together,’ I said.
‘Mum isn’t here.’
Considering Primrose’s top speed so far had been about Dad’s normal ambling pace plus stops, she shot off at a surprising speed. She disappeared round the bottom corner and by the time I came out at the harbour she was nowhere to be seen.
What was I supposed to do now? If I went home, Dad would be disappointed I hadn’t done my jog. If I did my jog, Mum would be cross that I ran on my own. I was stuck unless I managed to find Primrose, but if I did manage to find her, I’d have to put up with her.
I walked slowly all the way along the harbour, pondering what to do. Then I walked back again. The stars were fading in the cold, clear sky, and now that I’d slowed down I was starting to shiver.
There were lights on in lots of the houses, though none of the shops were open yet, except Dot’s cafe on the corner of Cave Lane. I glanced in through the steamy window as I passed… and guess who I saw?
‘Primrose – you cheat!’
She was sitting there warming her hands on a steaming cup of hot chocolate.
‘I came over funny,’ she said. ‘I thought I was going to faint.’
‘What, and you just happened to be passing the cafe, and you just happened to have brought some money with you like everyone does when they go jogging?’
She planned it! She faked the argument to get rid of me so she could skive off down the cafe.
‘Don’t tell Mum and Dad, yeah?’ she said. ‘I’ll buy you a hot choc too.’
It was soooo tempting! My teeth were rattling in my head, the hairs on my legs were standing up inside my jogging bottoms and my fingers were turning blue.
One moment of weakness, and I was sunk. The problem with accepting a bribe from someone is that then they’ve got something on you. If I told Mum and Dad that Primrose went to the cafe, she would tell them that I was there drinking hot chocolate too.
After that, we jogged straight down to Dot’s cafe every day, hung around there as long as we could, then jogged back up the hill. It was much shorter than the route we were supposed to be doing, but also much faster, so I reckoned it would be just as good for my fitness.
Primrose brought enough money for us to have an egg roll with our hot choc. She said it wasn’t as if she needed to lose much weight, and I wasn’t trying to lose any weight at all. We weren’t like Dad, trying to lose a paunch.
Primrose said we should think of the egg roll and hot choc as our breakfast. OK, we had to eat some Fitness Flakes and skimmed milk when we got home or Dad would smell a rat, but they didn’t count because they didn’t have anything fattening in them. Therefore we weren’t really eating two breakfasts at all.
I wasn’t sure about that, and I also wasn’t sure she was right that the stress of getting up so early was enough to make us thin.
‘You can feel the kilos dropping off with all that struggling to get out of bed,’ she said.
All I knew was, I was doing a bit more exercise than usual and, like Gran says, every little helps. If I could jog up and down to the harbour then surely walking up Beacon Hill should be a piece of cake.
I managed not to feel guilty when Dad poured the milk on the Fitness Flakes. Like Primrose said, he was doing the exercise-and-diet thing, and that was what mattered. We were kind of supporting him, or at least, he thought we were.
Plus, he had Mum. She set off at the same time as us and arrived back a bit earlier, so she must be going at a good pace. She was usually in the shower when we got back. She was usually in a good mood too… until the morning she found the secret stash.
‘Well, well, well,’ she said, as she came into the kitchen. ‘I was searching for some tissues in the cupboard under the phone, and look what I found.’
She had a white plastic bag in her hand. She emptied it out on the table. There was a six-pack of doughnuts with only one left, half a box of shortbread biscuits, two chocolate bars, a tin of toffees, three empty crisp packets and one bag of sweets.
‘Has anyone got anything they would like to say?’ asked Mum.
Chapter 9
Keep calm and don’t panic!
Nobody did have anything to say. We were all too busy staring at each other accusingly. I was giving Primrose the evils because if you’re caught then you ought to fess up, but she was doing a very good job of looking as astonished as I was by Mum’s find.
‘Oh, all right!’ Dad blurted out, suddenly. ‘It was me. But it’s not my fault.’
‘Whose fault is it, then?’ asked Mum. ‘The doughnut fairy’s?’
‘It’s all very well for you to get sarky on me but what have you had to do?’ said Dad. ‘A bit of jogging and a holiday from cooking!’
He had decided to come out fighting, which I personally didn’t think was a good idea. Mum took a long, slow breath. It seemed to blow her up to three times her normal height.
‘It’s not easy having to organise everything,’ Dad said, sounding a bit less sure of himself. ‘I’ve had to do all the work – making the fitness plan, buying the food, planning the running routes. And I’ve had to keep everyone up to the mark.’
‘Everyone except yourself,’ said Mum.
Dad was starting to crumble.
‘I’ve had the book to write as well,’ he whined. ‘Writing a book is a lot more stressful than you think!’
‘And that’s your excuse, is it?’ said Mum.
Dad said there was no excuse. He had let us down. He looked as crestfallen as a cockerel who’s lost his hens. He doesn’t usually do crestfallen, so we were all a bit taken aback.
It was Mum’s turn to crumble then. She said actually, maybe it was understandable. Lots of people started comfort eating when they were under pressure and she hadn’t really thought about all the stress this fitness business must be putting on Dad.
‘When you come to think about it, handling stress is part of fitness too,’ she said. ‘We could do some stress-busting things so you don’t have to comfort-eat any more, and then you could write a chapter about it in your book.’
‘But I don’t know any stress-busting things,’ Dad said. ‘I thought I just had to do diet and exercise. This is terrible!’
Mum tried to back-track since the subject of stress seemed to be stressing Dad out, but it was no good. She said she would find out about stress-busting stuff for him. She would make the plan and keep us up to the mark, stress-wise. She would be happy to do that because she herself was feeling stressed, what with not having had any work since Christmas. People just didn’t think about their gardens in January.
‘Normally, I cook if I get stressed,’ she said. ‘So it’ll be good for me to find something else to do, for the time being.’
Aah… Mum’s cooking. I could almost taste her sautéed sprouts and apricot fritters just thinking about it. I was surprised to find I was really missing it.
‘Do we have to do stress-busting too? Primrose asked. ‘Only, some of us aren’t comfort eating, plus we’ve got other things to keep us busy suc
h as, for example, having a life.’
Mum said we were Team Pinker and that meant everyone sticking to the plan.
‘Except Dad,’ Primrose mumbled.
At such moments, what you want is a distraction, and hey presto, Mum’s friend Stella arrived. She’s as lean and lively as a greyhound, although she’s even older than Mum and has a white badger-stripe down her parting.
‘Great news!’ she boomed. ‘Garden Angels has got a job!’
Mum jumped up and grabbed the green pen to write on the family organiser.
‘It’s next weekend,’ Jane said. ‘We’re digging a pond for the pink house on Acre Lane.’
There wasn’t much room to write on next weekend. Mum had to squeeze in ‘pink house pond’ between Primrose’s anniversary and my morning at the kennels on the Saturday, and my walk up Beacon Hill and the big weigh-in on the Sunday.
‘Gosh!’ Stella exclaimed, suddenly noticing the snack stash tipped out on the table. ‘I thought you still had another week to go with the diet.’
Dad looked sheepish. Mum covered for him.
‘These are visual aids, to remind us about all the things we mustn’t eat between meals,’ she said, stuffing them back into the carrier bag.
Primrose rolled her eyes, and Stella looked at her quizzically. Mum said, ‘We were just talking about stress.’
‘I know all about that,’ said Stella. ‘I’ve been practising yoga for twenty years. Would you like me to show you some stress-busting exercises?’
Dad perked up and got all keen again. He never stays gloomy very long. He can’t be bothered!
Stella got us all to lie down on the floor. Dennis was delighted. He jumped down from his lookout on the roof of his hutch and hopped round us, sniffing our hair and bouncing over our legs. Stella said she wasn’t used to having animals joining in with yoga exercises but we all agreed that Dennis’s huffing and hopping was actually rather restful.
Stella said all the yoga exercises had names and this one was called the corpse pose. Basically, we had to shut our eyes and act dead, except for breathing steadily in and out, which obviously real corpses don’t do. They don’t snore either, so Dad wasn’t getting it quite right when, five minutes later, Gran called in.
How to Get the Body You Want by Peony Pinker Page 4