How to Get the Body You Want by Peony Pinker

by Jenny Alexander

  I was ready, but my legs were not. They seemed to have gone stiff but when I struggled up to standing, they suddenly turned to jelly. As I put my back-pack on, they actually wobbled, and when I tried to set off, it was like my feet had grown roots. They would not budge.

  Toby’s mum said I looked very tired, which was spot on but I wasn’t going to say so. If they thought I couldn’t even manage Beacon Hill, what chance did I have of going up Snowdon?

  So I lied.

  Some lies are OK. For example, when your Gran’s had a new haircut that makes her look like an electrocuted hedgehog it’s all right to say you think it looks lovely. You aren’t doing it to protect yourself, you’re doing it to be nice.

  Some lies are not OK. They are very, very bad. For example, when you’re hiking up a hill with your friend Toby’s super-fit family and you can’t keep up because you’re not fit enough but you’re too proud to ask them to go slower, so you pretend you’ve got a tummy upset.

  What happens then is that they have to abandon the whole hike and take you home, and you get upset and start to blub in the minibus but you can’t tell whether that’s because you’ve spoilt everyone else’s day or because you’ve lied to people you like. The only thing you know for sure is that it isn’t because your tummy hurts, which is what everyone else thinks.

  ‘Never mind,’ Toby’s mum said. ‘These things happen. We can have another practice hike when you feel better.’

  ‘Peony and Jess could come midnight-orienteering with us,’ Leah said. ‘That would be good practice.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Toby ‘and it’s not until next month, so Peony’s bound to be better.’

  ‘What’s orienteering?’ asked Jess. Finally – something she didn’t know!

  ‘It’s like a treasure trail. You have to read a map and find all the places on it,’ said Toby.

  ‘You race against lots of other teams,’ said Leah.

  ‘And do you always do it at midnight?’ asked Jess.

  ‘No, but it’s much more fun in the dark!’

  Toby’s mum said it was a shame, practice-wise, that the particular orienteering event they were going to do wasn’t hilly.

  ‘I think you’d enjoy it though,’ she said.

  Considering it wasn’t hilly, I thought I might enjoy it too.

  Chapter 12

  Cheat-snacks and sneaking

  The good thing about having a sister like Primrose is that you never have to worry about being the centre of attention. When I got home, she was in a full-on flap, so there wasn’t any question of anyone giving me the third degree about my tummy upset.

  ‘It’s Matt again!’ she cried, shoving her phone in our faces. ‘What am I going to do?’

  Mum was getting the boxes out of the fridge for dinner.

  ‘Well, you can’t just keep him dangling, Primrose,’ she said. ‘You’re going to have to answer, sooner or later.’

  Dad was setting the table.

  ‘We weren’t expecting you home this early,’ he said to me. ‘Did you have a nice time?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘We didn’t get to the top because I wasn’t feeling well.’

  I tried to look as if I felt sick, which I actually did when I thought about Toby and the others going down to the harbour for fish and chips while all I had to look forward to was Eat-lite shepherd’s pie and strawberry dessert.

  ‘And say what?’ goes Primrose, completely ignoring me and Dad.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mum. ‘Tell him you didn’t want to cancel your anniversary but just postpone it. I mean, that would make sense, wouldn’t it? Your first date was at the end of July – it’s the end of January now and much too cold to wear the same clothes, let alone drag poor old Sam out on the coastal path.’

  ‘So are you saying we’ve got to wait until the end of a whole year?’ said Primrose.

  ‘That is a long time,’ said Dad.

  Primrose turned her fire on him.

  ‘What, so you think we won’t last that long?’

  Mum put the first box in the microwave.

  ‘You could do nine months – that would take you to Whitsun and it’ll be much warmer by then.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ll probably be even fatter!’ cried Primrose, flinging herself down on a chair.

  Ping! The first dinner was done. Mum put another one in.

  ‘Are you going to manage yours, Peony?’ she asked me, as if it was a seventeen-course banquet and not a scrap of mince and potato with six soggy peas.

  ‘If you do get fatter,’ Dad said to Primrose, ‘you can simply put your anniversary off again.’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ said Primrose. ‘Don’t be silly!’

  Ping! The second dinner was done.

  ‘OK, so if you do decide to finish with him after nine months because you still can’t fit into your anniversary dress…’ Mum paused, trying not to roll her eyes. ‘At least you’ll have had three extra months of going out together!’

  ‘And of growing up,’ I mumbled, under my breath.

  ‘What did you say?’ said Primrose.

  Ping!

  ‘Could we give this a rest while we eat?’ suggested Mum.

  Primrose’s phone rang. She glared at it.

  ‘It’s him again.’

  Ping!

  Mum said she was very tired. It had been a hard weekend, trying to keep up with Stella digging the pond. Stella who, by the way, was ten years older than her, which made it also plain embarrassing.

  Primrose said, ‘How do you think I feel?’ Then she sank into a sulk like a crab in wet sand.

  Dad tried to cheer everyone up by reminding us that this was our very last Eat-lite meal. As soon as we had finished, he said, we could do our weigh-in. It was exciting! We might find that we were quite a few pounds lighter. After all, the rest of us had stuck to the diet, which made him feel very proud.

  He got the scales and put them in the middle of the floor. Dennis crept up to them, ready to leap back if they suddenly made a move. When they didn’t, he got bold and went right up to them. He rubbed his chin on them, which is a rabbit’s way of saying, ‘This is mine!’

  Dad’s efforts at cheering us up weren’t working, so he gave up and microwaved the puddings. I was just wondering what the strawberry on the top was actually made of, when Gran and Mr Kaminski called in.

  ‘Woah!’ goes Gran, taking one look at us. ‘Why the long faces?’

  She was in an exceptionally good mood, even for Gran, probably because she had just spent her first night in her new house. You could tell how happy she was by the way she bounced in and pulled up a chair. Mr Kaminski seemed unusually smiley too, basking in the sunshine of her cheerfulness.

  ‘Matt keeps ringing me,’ Primrose said, poutily.

  ‘We didn’t get to the top of Beacon Hill, and it was my fault,’ I said.

  ‘I’m worn out from digging that pond,’ said Mum.

  Dad said he was still smarting a bit from being put on the bench, but on the whole he was feeling pretty good…

  Then he stood on the scales.

  ‘This can’t be right,’ he muttered. He got off and stepped back on again; he was still the same weight as the first time we weighed ourselves, before we started getting fit in four weeks.

  Mum was perplexed. OK, he had cheated on the diet, but those long runs every morning should have more than made up for that.

  ‘Is not far enough, ze shed,’ said Mr Kaminski.

  ‘The shed?’ goes Mum.

  I suddenly remembered the ghost in the window – it was Mr Kaminski, watching our early-morning comings and goings!

  Dad went as red as the so-called strawberry on my pudding, which I had cunningly hidden under my spoon. Mr Kaminski realised too late that he had landed Dad in it.

  As he didn’t have any choice, Dad fessed up.

  ‘I’ve been hiding in the shed until the coast was clear and then sneaking back inside for a snooze before you all got back.’

  ‘But
… you were all sweaty,’ said Mum.

  Dad didn’t say anything. He just got the plant-sprayer from the cupboard under the sink, filled it with water and sprayed it all over his face and the front of his t-shirt. We gawped at him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but all of you did it and that’s the point of having guinea pigs. A great scientist doesn’t test his ideas out on himself. He just writes down what he discovers… isn’t that right, Mum?’

  Gran wasn’t being drawn in. Primrose flounced and tutted, and got up on the scales. Her mouth fell open. She hadn’t lost any weight either. In fact, she had put some on.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ she said. ‘You might as well know. Me and Peony have been hanging around in the cafe eating egg rolls when we were supposed to be jogging. But I haven’t cheated at all otherwise except the bourbons in my bedroom. You can’t sleep if you go to bed hungry.’

  ‘I’ve got a whole box of berry oatcakes in my bedroom and I haven’t touched one!’ I couldn’t help gloating as I stepped onto the scales.

  ‘You’ve put on more weight than me, Miss Smug I-laid-off-the-oatcakes Peony!’

  ‘But…’

  ‘You had two breakfasts too,’ Primrose said. ‘What else?’

  When you came to think about it, it was two of everything. Two breakfasts, two puddings at school, and two teas, what with having tea and cake with Gran at the Happy Haddock on the way home most afternoons.

  ‘Yeah, but the trouble is, when you eat those tiny suppers and stuff you still feel hungry,’ I protested. ‘And you think about food all the time!’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mum, as she took her turn on the scales. It turned out she had been walking up to Stella’s for toast and marmalade instead of jogging every morning.

  ‘I did tell you I hated jogging,’ she pointed out to Dad.

  He was dumbfounded.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, shaking his head.

  We all looked at each other.

  ‘I suppose we could try again?’ suggested Mum. She looked as keen as a cat that’s got to go to the vet’s.

  ‘There’s no time now,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll just have to write the book anyway.’

  ‘But your trial run didn’t work,’ said Gran.

  Dad said people were always writing books without checking their ideas worked. ‘What about the person who wrote “You can be a Millionaire”?’ he said. ‘If he really knew how to be a millionaire he wouldn’t be bothering to write a book about it, would he? He’d be sipping champagne in his hammock on his own tropical island. Back me up, Viktor,’ he said.

  Mr Kaminski put on a puzzled look as if he had suddenly lost the ability to understand English.

  ‘All right then – what about Daphne?’ goes Dad. ‘If she really knew “How to handle stress at work”, do you think she’d have left the paper high and dry without an agony aunt?’

  Dad said he wasn’t going to let any of us tell him what he could or could not do.

  ‘I am going to write my book!’ he said.

  Chapter 13

  Gran on a mission and doggy depression

  That night, I dreamt about this beautiful tepee, all covered in paintings of wild animals. When I tried to go into it, it turned into a huge pointy mountain. I leapt up the mountain like a surefooted goat, all the way to the top, but before I had a chance to look at the view, the ruined tower from the top of Beacon Hill suddenly dropped out of the sky and squashed me flat.

  Flat. That’s how I felt all the next day, and it didn’t help that Toby and Jess kept going on about orienteering. I had thought it was just a walk with a map, which didn’t seem impossible, especially if it wasn’t hilly. But it turned out it was more like a race. You worked out the next place you had to get to and then you ran as fast as you could to get there quicker than anyone else.

  It wasn’t surprising I didn’t manage to get up Beacon Hill, considering I seemed to have got fat in four weeks instead of fit. But if I couldn’t keep up with Toby and his family walking, how was I ever going to keep up with them running?

  When I got home from school, Primrose was in her bedroom playing gloomy music, so she obviously hadn’t sorted things out with Matt. There was a note from Mum on the counter.

  Bo-o-o-o-ored! Gone to Stella’s.

  Back in time to cook tea. Love, Mum.

  There was also a weird, huffy note from Dad.

  I might be a bit late. Going to the library on my way home from the office to collect some books I ordered. Yes, it’s research for my book, and you can pick your chins up off the table. Dad.

  The family organiser was completely empty after the Big Weekend. There wouldn’t be any more ticks for sticking to the diet and doing our runs from now on, and there was nothing on it at all until Easter with Mum’s drawing of an egg and my gold smiley next to ‘Snowdon’.

  I was just trying to decide whether or not to put ‘midnight orienteering’ on to break up the emptiness, when Gran arrived. She was on her way down to the Happy Haddock to see Jane. She said she was on a mission of mercy and wanted me to go with her.

  ‘Jane’s really worried about Magnus,’ she said. ‘The vet says he’s depressed. Well, I told her, “You know who’s a genius with dogs? My Peony! I’ll get her to come down and see him after school.”’

  She glanced at the family organiser behind me.

  ‘Dear, dear – it looks so bare,’ she said. ‘Still, I’ve got a good idea!’

  Gran’s always having good ideas, such as the time she set up a rescue centre for unwanted cockerels and upset the neighbours because they crowed half the night. Or the time she booked a flight to India and forgot to check whether her passport was up to date.

  Gran stuck a bunch of smileys of all the colours on the family organiser and wrote, ‘Gran’s Grand House-warming Party!’ next to them.

  ‘We’ll have it in four weeks because that will give me plenty of time to get the house nice and organise everything,’ she said.

  It was also the day after Toby’s midnight orienteering, so it helped me to make up my mind. I couldn’t go racing round the countryside all night and then help Gran to prepare for her big party. I’d probably fall asleep in the jelly.

  You can’t say no to Gran when she’s on a mission so I got changed out of my school uniform and we walked down to the Happy Haddock together. She said Jane was hoping I’d have time to take Magnus for a walk because she was very busy herself and the vet said it would do him good to get out in the open air.

  ‘You’ve got so much experience taking all sorts of dogs for a walk,’ she said. ‘You do it every Saturday at the kennels.’

  I didn’t like to point out that I had absolutely no experience of prising a big grumpy Labrador out of his hiding-place and dragging him off round the harbour, and to be honest it wasn’t my idea of fun.

  We didn’t say the word ‘walkies,’ but Magnus spotted the lead and bolted under the bar. We tried to coax him out, then Jane hauled on his collar, but he wouldn’t budge.

  In the end we had to trick him with a chip. As soon as he leaned out for it, Jane slipped the lead over his head.

  Magnus gave Jane the evils as she pulled him to the door and pushed him out onto the street. You could see he wasn’t depressed – no way! He was spoilt and bad-tempered, but I guessed that wasn’t the kind of thing a vet could say to a dog owner.

  ‘Thank you so much, Peony,’ said Jane, handing me the lead. ‘This is so kind of you.’

  Like I had any choice.

  ‘That’s OK,’ I said, trying to smile.

  The walk was every bit as bad as I thought it would be. Magnus grunted and grumbled along for a couple of minutes, then sat down and gave me his you-can’t-make-me look.

  With a normal dog, you can talk to them. You can sit down and sort it out together, make friends, make him want to work with you. When I tried to talk to Magnus, he completely blanked me.

  We limped round the harbour with me pulling and pushing him every time he ground to a halt,
and then we started back towards the Happy Haddock. Magnus speeded up when he realised we were going home. By the time we got there, he was almost pulling me.

  He dived under the nearest table and sat there glaring out at us.

  ‘He looks much more cheerful now,’ said Jane.

  Gran agreed.

  ‘Would you like Peony to walk him every day? I’m sure she wouldn’t mind!’

  ‘Well, maybe just till he’s starting to feel happier, yes please,’ said Jane. ‘That would be marvellous!’

  I was doomed. We’d be in another ice age before miserable Magnus started to feel happier. He didn’t want to be happy. He liked being mean and moody. It worked for him. It got him chips.

  Gran didn’t seem to notice that her plan to cure Magnus’s depression was making me feel depressed. On the way home, she bought me a packet of dog stickers, all different breeds, in the paper shop.

  ‘You can stick one on the family organiser every day when you’ve given Magnus his walk,’ she said, with a big, wide, happy grin. ‘Won’t that be nice?’

  Chapter 14

  Life isn’t fair and Magnus doesn’t care

  I stuck a Springer Spaniel on the family organiser. There were fifty stickers in the pack. I just hoped Gran wasn’t expecting me to get through all of them.

  ‘What for you put dog on?’ Mr Kaminski asked.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table talking to Mum while she was cooking. First day back to normal meals, and Mr K couldn’t even wait till it was ready before ‘just so happening’ to pop over.

  ‘Jane wants me to walk Magnus every day,’ I said. ‘Gran landed me in it, and then she bought me these stickers.’

  ‘You’ll enjoy that,’ Mum said. ‘You like dogs.’

  ‘It isn’t dogs – it’s Magnus.’

  Mum changed the subject.

  ‘We’re having leeks-and-cheese tonight.’

  She nodded towards five muddy leeks lined up on the kitchen counter. In case you’re lucky enough never to have seen a leek, it’s like a long thin onion, with lots of layers. Mum’s leeks always come with extra crunch because she isn’t good at getting the grit out.