The Fat And The Thin Of It

by Julie Croft

sit down,” I warned her back after forcing the rice cake down my throat. “Mark is in da house and his aim sucks, dude.”

  She gave me a spiky-fingered rap salute round the toilet doorframe before closing the door.

  I felt sorry for her, really I did. Jill had hardly spent a day without working since she left university, working until the contractions with Penny were five minutes apart then breast-feeding her cradled in one arm while she shouted instructions to her assistant down the phone held by the free hand. She was definitely a workaholic, and although I admired her energy, sometimes I felt she put her work before everything else, Terry and Penny included, and it certainly wasn’t a life I would have chosen. My situation was very different, anyway.

  I’d worked as a hairdresser until I got married to Bob, and at his suggestion became a full-time housewife. He didn’t have to insist too hard, actually, as I’d never been that happy setting perms and washing out blue rinses. Bob worked with his brother in their estate agency and, although things fluctuated, they did quite well. We had a nice, four-bedroom house in Surrey, although it needed some modernisation now. I was content, he was content, and things only went a teeny bit pear-shape when he decided to branch out in southern Spain hardly a year after we’d married.

  That was twenty-four years ago, and the business is so good over there that he’s still spending ten days there and a week here. It was tough at first, what with a new-born baby and all, and Mark was a shock conception six years later as Bob had only been home once that particular month. We’d practically decided to move out to Spain before Mark was conceived and I was devastated, but Bob simply laughed and said he’d claim damages from the condom factory. Still, he said that we’d have to put our plans on hold as he didn’t trust the hospitals over there and besides, he preferred the children to have a British education. As it stands, I got used to bringing the children up practically single-handed and now think that it adds a little spice to our marriage. When Bob comes home he can hardly keep his hands off me, and he brings me a present every time and takes me out for dinner at least once in the week he’s here. I sometimes wonder what he sees in me, being so fat, but he reassures me I’m his one in a million girl and to him I’m more delectable than Cindy Crawford. Silly man, but I love him to bits, and thanks to him I got to like myself better. I could see myself through his eyes instead of my own, because I usually tried not to look too close at what was going on from my neck down. In his arms, though, I felt adored for who I was on the inside, and if he was okay with what was on the outside, that was just dandy.

  Once both kids are independent, we will move out to Marbella permanently. When that will actually happen is a mystery and a worry, unfortunately. Chloe moved out to Bath last summer to a really good job in marketing, but Mark simply can’t get his act together. He dropped out of school saying he needed a gap year to ‘sort his head out’. “You take a gap year after your A Levels, Mark.” Bob had said, but he let the boy leave school, anyway. He’s spent the last six months in practically total hibernation in his room, emerging like a sloth to slouch on the sofa and zap at the telly, leave piles of clothes strewn all over the place and eat me out of house and home. When he’s not slouching, strewing or chewing, he’s ‘hanging’ somewhere with his mates. Just as well I’ve known his mates since primary school, or I could worry more than I do. My main preoccupation these days is getting his head sorted, start him ‘hanging’ in a job and moving out ASAP before I lose my patience and we have a serious fall-out.

  So far, I’ve tried going on strike and not doing his washing, but he went and borrowed his mates’ stuff and then left that all over the place. I tried hiding everything he left where it shouldn’t have been, but when Bob came home Mark claimed something he needed was broken or lost and his father instantly whipped out his wallet. I even had a stint of only preparing fish and steamed spinach when we were on our own, but even I couldn’t cope with that one. I did lose a stone that month, though.

  Anyway, with patience and perhaps a little more parental cooperation from Bob, I live in hope Mark will turn out okay. There’s time before we decide to move out to Spain, and I’d have to find us a different place to live before anything else. The one-bedroom apartment Bob lives in now is very basic, and the poor man works so hard that he hasn’t had the chance to make it look like a home in all the eight years he’s been living in that particular place. It’s the main reason I don’t go there more often, but to be honest, I wouldn’t trust Mark in the house on his own for too long. It looks like a carnival’s paraded through the place every time I leave him for just a week.

  The sound of the chain being pulled broke my train of thought, and Jill sauntered down the short passageway to the kitchen. You couldn’t help but watch her when she walked. She had a model-ish glide, hips slightly forward which made her look a little off-balance, and she was wearing a pencil-skirt I would have donated my liver to be able to wear.

  “There was a brown girl left in the ring, but the landing strip was dry.” She smiled.

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh, for goodness’ sake. I’ll have to have a word with him about pulling the ruddy chain… again.”

  Jill stood in the doorway, one hand on her hip and staring at the phone which was in the other hand, her head was bowed as she considered things. “Right…” she whispered.

  ‘Right’ was good. She usually said that when she was fomenting a plan, gathering her thoughts. She’d obviously been working on something while she peed. I sat, smiling encouragingly, waiting for her to speak.

  “I’ll call my people and say that I wanted them to hear from me that I’ve left Catwalk. I’ll say that I’m going to start working independently again, and if they’d be so kind as to pass on the word to others.” She raised her head and gave me a little smile. “I wouldn’t actually be asking them to collaborate with me, would I? It would be entirely up to them what they did, wouldn’t it?” the phone chimed again but she ignored it.

  “Exactly.” I answered with a light slap on the table.

  She stood biting her lip for a while, nodding in thought. “Right…”

  She shrugged her jacket into place to button it, then she shrugged on her coat and picked up her handbag while she was still holding the phone – and I thought she was quite clever to be able to do that – she drained her mug and said,. “Jackie, my love. You always give me such a boost.” She bent and kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll leave you now. You just might have time for lunch at Gordon Ramsey’s.”

  I accompanied Jill to the door and waited, shivering, to wave her off as she pulled out of the drive. I hadn’t noticed the bass thud of Mark’s music while Jill had been there, but now I did and it was very annoying. I marched to the bottom of the stairs and craned my neck up the stair-well. “Ma-a-ark!”

  It took a while for him to heave himself to the door, but he eventually opened it and shouted back. “Wassup!”

  “Turn that infernal racket down, or I’ll be up there with a hammer to pound that ruddy sound system to smithereens!”

  Mark tutted and groaned. “God, Mum! You’re like such a knob sometimes!”

  He slammed the door and the volume dipped a couple of decibels. “Ingrate!” I shouted back. “And learn to pull the ruddy chain after you’ve taken a dump, son!”

  I marched back to the kitchen and put the tea mugs in the dishwasher, then took out the ironing board to begin tackling the pile of Mark’s tent-sized t-shirts. Whilst I ironed and folded, I was racking my brain as to how Bob’s gene pool, coupled with mine, could have produced two kids who were poles apart from each other, and what I could do with that ruddy boy.

  The Thin Of It:

  JILL

  I honestly have no idea what came over me.

  Of course, I was upset; extremely upset as it came completely out of the blue. As far as I was concerned, everything was going really well. I’d begun work on the February fashion season as soon as the Christmas holidays were over – before, in fact, making sure that the models�
�� schedules wouldn’t overlap with our regular fashion houses during the two weeks of shows and presentations. Therefore, when Harriet called me into her office, I automatically presumed that she wanted to talk about the order of the presentations. I even took my laptop into her office.

  “Good morning, Harriet. How was Aspen?” I smiled. She’d taken a two-week break when we were supposed to be getting down to business, but that hadn’t bothered me. She usually left most of the arrangements in my hands, simply occupying herself with calling the clients and sending them the models’ photos and details by fax.

  “Useless.” She replied. “The snow was far too soft.” She looked up at me with a stern face, as if I’d personally gone over to Aspen and fluffed the snow up with a rake.

  “Do you have any dates as yet?” I decided to ignore her gruff manner and continue with business.

  Harriet leaned back in her chair and her stern gaze didn’t waver. “Jill, we have a problem.”

  “Oh,” I was sure I could help. “How can I help?”

  “We have to let you go.”

  That simple, that plain. However, I didn’t quite understand. “Let me go where, Harriet?”

  Harriet sighed. “Home, Jill. We’re having a few economic issues and we have to drop some staff.”

  “Staff?” she couldn’t have meant me. I wasn’t just ‘staff’.

  Harriet was getting impatient. “We’ll pay you the customary forty-five days per year of the time you’ve been with us, and the board has decided to boost that up to a pretty healthy six-figure sum.”

  “What?” I know it sounds strange, but I really didn’t understand what she was going on about.

  Harriet sighed again. “Look, Jill. You’ve been a wonderful asset to the agency during these past ten years, but what you do here can easily be done by me. We employed you in the beginning because,” she gave a lazy laugh. “I wanted a little more time on my hands. But, in these economic times, the board has told me that I shall have to get my hands a little more dirty than is customary.” She spread her hands and shrugged a ‘what can I do?’ shrug.

  There must have been a time-lapse, as Harriet looked at me for a while, then began typing at her computer. I had finally digested what she’d said to me, and although I understood that she was firing me, I didn’t comprehend her explanation.

  “You can do easily what I do, Harriet?” she took no notice, so I approached her desk. “You can convene half a dozen venues, with their respective lighting, music, sets and seating arrangements? The pre-show finger-food and cocktails, the press, the fittings and schedules for the models; you can do all of that easily, without me?”

  I have to admit that my voice had got a little shrill by the time I’d finished. Harriet, however, appeared not to hear me.

  “And, may I remind you that I came here with my cache of professionals, which is the reason this agency head-hunted me in the first place…”

  “And, may I remind you, Jill, that you signed a contract that ceded to this agency your cache of professionals; which means, Jill, that those professionals remain with this agency with or without you!” Harriet’s voice was now booming and drowning out my shrill. She was a small lady, but her voice was large and loud and her demeanour intimidating. “What you do, Jill, I can do perfectly well,” she waved her hand dismissingly, as if she were talking about organising a fifth birthday party. “And it will be done without having to pay your extortionate wage.” She jabbed a very rude finger at me. “That is where we’ve decided to make the cuts.” She tossed her head and carried on tapping at the keys of her computer. “Now, if you would be so kind as to clear out your office before lunch. Afterwards, you can go down to Thomas and he’ll sort out your severance pay.”

  And that was that.

  I remember leaving Harriet’s office and going back to mine. Someone must have gone in there while I was with Harriet, because I saw a pile of flat-packed cardboard boxes on my desk.

  Oh, my goodness! That was when the whole terrible truth hit me! I really had been fired!

  I felt as if I was going to vomit. My head was light and my breathing shallow and I could feel cold sweat breaking out under my blouse, making it stick to my back. I have a memory of collapsing into my chair and resting my head on my forearms across my desk, and I believe I stayed there for quite some time until the sickness eased. When I raised my head and looked through the glass walls that separated me from the office floor, I could see the rest of the workers were very agitated. Most kept their gaze away from my office, but some couldn’t help a sadistic peek at me. They tried to carry on with their duties as per usual, but their attitude was acutely sombre. They surely had heard Harriet and me shouting at each other! Oh, the shame, the embarrassment! That I most definitely remember feeling!

  I know I collected myself sufficiently together to pack my belongings, and I did so with a systematic precision. If not, I would have burst into tears with every photo I took down from the wall, every paper I filed and packed, and every pen and pencil I stowed away in a leather box and finally placed on top of everything else. I had three, rather hefty boxes to take down to my car, and the thought of having to make three trips through the office, down the lift and up again was agonising: all those people watching me take three walks of shame, for goodness’ sake!

  I recall almost breaking into a giddy sweat again with the mere thought of it, when Damien put his head round my door.

  “Ms Carpenter, would you like some help?” he asked in a very polite tone. Dear Damien; so young, ambitious and enthusiastic, but never malicious. I’d yet to hear him say a spiteful word about anyone here, and now he was the only one who had the courage to address me and offer help at a time like this.

  I smiled gratefully at him. “I would be very grateful if you would help me with these boxes, Damien. Thank you for offering.”

  Damien and I walked silently towards the lift, and we didn’t exchange a word either in the lift or on the short walk to my car in the garage below the building. I don’t believe I looked any of the other workers in the eyes as I left, but I do remember being acutely aware that I would never see any of them again.

  The sensation of such finality, such a severing of something that had been so prominent and all-consuming in my life… well, I have no words to describe that sensation. It clouded my vision as well as my ability to think coherently, therefore what followed I cannot claim to be completely responsible for. I suppose one would call it ‘temporary insanity’.

  Damien and I made our way back into the building, and he kissed me fondly on the cheek. “I’ll miss you, Ms Carpenter. It was a pleasure to work with you.” He told me.

  I smiled and said the same to him, then went to make my way to Thomas’s office on the floor below mine… or what had been mine.

  As I pushed the button to call the lift, the feeling of such indignity, of such injustice in the way I had been so unceremoniously relieved of my position, spurred me into returning to the office’s floor and going in search of Harriet and trying to reason with her and clear the air.

  Harriet was seated at her desk and tapping at the keys of her computer. I knocked on the doorframe and she glanced up and gave me a glare.

  “Haven’t you left yet?” she said impatiently.

  “Harriet,” I said quite calmly. “Could we have a chat?”

  At that point, Harriet pushed herself away from the desk and marched towards me. “I have nothing to chat to you about, so I want you to leave and let me get on with my work.”

  Now, from this point on, things are a little fuzzy. However, I do remember she approached me and put out a hand as if to push me out of her office, and somehow, she fell backwards and hit her head on the corner of her desk, but not before letting out a loud scream, I should add.

  I was, as one can imagine, quite shocked, but someone shouted from behind me, “Ms Carpenter’s hit Harriet!” before pushing past me and rushing to Harriet’s aid, but I have no idea who it was, as I backed out of the office
and rushed towards the elevator.

  Fuck. I hope I can remember all that if I’m dragged into court.

  God, I was shaking like a leaf when I left the office building. I hadn’t hung about to see if the Hairy-it was okay or not, and legged it to the elevator. Before the door slid shut, though, I could see she was still lying on the floor with Perry kneeling beside her and tapping lightly on the side of her face. I wished he’d solidly whacked her one, actually; that would have brought her round.

  I stood by my car and fiddled about in my handbag for my cigarettes and lighter with shaky hands. Do my job, indeed! She hardly knew what end of the bloody telephone to speak into! Pretentious bitch! Well, let her fuck the whole season up; then ‘the board’ will realise just who’d been running the show for the last ten years.

  I saw that my old, leather agenda was in my bag and wondered how it had got in there. The Hairy-it had commandeered it when I joined Catwalk and I’d often spied it lying discarded on the bookcase behind her desk, gathering dust, totally unloved, and it had always infuriated me. It had taken me many a painstaking year to gather all the phone numbers and addresses inside it and it had been the best assistant I’d ever had, so I must have grabbed it before I… whatever it was I’d done.

  What the hell had I done? Had I hit her? Had she fallen? Christ Almighty; had I killed the silly bitch?

  I dragged deep on the cigarette and exhaled slowly, feeling the calming effects of the nicotine giddily rush through my bloodstream. I took a few puffs before I felt relaxed enough to poke about for my car keys. I got my car door open, drove out of the parking lot and parked a few blocks down, put a pound in the metre and went to Nero’s. Caffeine was probably not what I needed right then, but I felt shivery, and it wasn’t because of the arctic conditions outside. As I stood outside the coffee shop puffing on a cigarette and sipping the steaming skinny latte, I felt the need to hear a nice, soft, friendly voice. I still had the Hairy-it’s booming rasp grating in my middle ear and I had to get it out of my head, so I stuck the fag between my lips and fumbled with the freed hand for my phone and called Jackie

  Good old Jackie! She was always there when I needed her, bless. Always going out of her way to help or comfort. I ditched the coffee cup and went to my car and set out for her house.

  God, it felt strange driving to her house in the middle of a working day! I’d left the city’s hubbub and traffic, and then as I drove to Surrey, everything changed. No commuters, no school-running mums struggling with station wagons and a half dozen bouncing kids in the back. When I arrived, I could hear Mark’s