by Jean Ure
She sounded like she was just about fed up with me. Desperately, I said, “Saf, I am fat! I’ve got to do something about it.”
“I thought we’d already been through all this?” said Saffy. “They’d hardly have chosen you for a book jacket if you were fat!”
So then I told her. I told her how lovable cuddly Ellen was a Fat Girl, and how I’d hidden the book at the back of my cupboard and didn’t want anyone to read it.
That shook her, I could tell. I mean, that anyone could be so horrid! They had tricked me. Good as.
Then Saffy said slowly, “She may be fat in the book, but they wouldn’t actually put anyone fat on the cover. Not really fat. That’s why they chose you, because you’re not really fat. You’re cuddly!”
Saffy is such a good friend. She was really trying to cheer me up.
“With you on the cover,” she said, “I should think it would go like hot cakes! Everyone will buy it!”
She wasn’t to know that was just about the worst thing she could have said. I didn’t want everyone to buy it! I didn’t want anyone to buy it. I said this to Saffy. I said, “It’s going to be published next week. It’ll be in all the book shops. I just can’t bear it!”
Our town has rather a lot of bookshops. There’s Smith’s, for a start. That’s in the shopping centre. Then there is Ottakar’s on the top floor, and Books Etc. in the High Street, and a tiny little place tucked away down the hill. Just imagine if they all had the book!
“Do your mum and dad know you’re slimming?’ said Saffy.
I said, “No! And you’re not to tell them.”
“I bet they wouldn’t approve,” said Saffy. “Specially your dad.”
“It’s nothing to do with them,” I said. “It’s my body!”
Saffy promised not to tell, but I could see she was dubious about the whole enterprise.
“So long as you don’t overdo it,” she said. “You know what happened to Pauline Pretty.”
Pauline Pretty was a girl in Year 10 who’d faded away to practically nothing before anyone realised what was happening. There’d been an announcement last term in assembly, saying that she’d died. We’d all been shocked, even people such as me and Saffy who hadn’t even known who she was. It was just the thought of someone our age, dying. But Pauline Pretty had had anorexia. She had been sick. I wasn’t sick! I just wanted to get thin.
I said as much to Saffy and she said, “But then you won’t be you!” I thought to myself that if being me meant being fat, then I didn’t want to be me. I wanted to be someone different! Only I didn’t say this to Saffy as I didn’t want her to lecture me. Next week that hateful book would be in the bookshops and I needed Saffy to help me go round and hide it, because this was what I had decided to do. I couldn’t stop it being sold in other places, but I was determined it wasn’t going to be sold in my home town!
The following Saturday we met up in the shopping centre to go on a Here Comes Ellen hunt. We went all round the bookshops, starting with Smith’s. The tiny little tucked-away place didn’t have it, but all the others did. Ottakar’s actually had it on a table! In full view of everyone!
“Oh, Jen, I don’t know what you’re going on about,” said Saffy. “It looks brilliant! Why don’t we just leave it?”
I said, “No! I don’t want anyone buying it.”
So when nobody was looking we took the books off the table and scattered them round the shelves, putting them behind other books that were face out. We did the same in Books Etc. and in Smith’s. In Smith’s the book itself was face out, and that was really frightening because loads of people go into Smith’s. I mean, people that want other things, like CDs and stationery, and I had visions of them strolling past the book section and suddenly catching sight of my face staring at them from the cover and going, “Oh! That’s that girl whose dad works in Giorgio’s!” or “Oh, that’s that girl that goes to my school!” So I took some of the books that were next to it and turned them face out and stuck Ellen behind them and hoped she would stay there, hidden from view, until she grew old and musty and the shop sent her back where she came from. And serve her right!
Saffy wondered about the poor author. She said how upset she would be when nobody bought any of her books, but I said that I didn’t care.
“It was mean of them not to tell me!”
“Well, anyway, it’s probably selling like mad everywhere else,” said Saffy.
I know Saffy means well, but there are times when she can be just so tactless.
LOSING WEIGHT IS a bit like saving money: it is very difficult to get going. You find that you are making all kinds of excuses such as, “I’ll just finish this last packet of Maltesers, I’ll just wait till my birthday, I’ll just wait till after the weekend.” etc. and so forth. And then, sometimes, you never get started at all, which was what had happened to me when I first decided to slim. I put it off so long, and had so many snackypoos and bars of chocolate, that in the end it didn’t seem worth the effort. But once you do manage to get started it’s like your life becomes ruled by it. You can’t imagine living any other way. It gets so it’s impossible to stop. Both with losing weight and with saving money.
Like there was this one time I remember, in Year 6, when I desperately, desperately wanted a personal organiser like a girl in my class had got. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it; I just knew that I had to have one! Dad would have let me, but Mum as usual was more stern. She said I’d just spent all my Christmas money on what she called “useless rubbish” (meaning bangles and earrings and sparkly hair clips, which may be useless rubbish to Mum but certainly isn’t to me!) and if I wanted a personal organiser as badly as all that I could save up for it. I wailed that it would take me ages.
“I’ll be dead by the time I’ve saved up that much!”
So then Mum relented and said all right, if I could manage to save half she and Dad would come up with the other half. So I started to save, just little bits to begin with like the odd 20p, because I don’t have very much pocket money, well I don’t think I do, and I kept it in a jam jar with a plastic lid so that I could see how quickly it was mounting up. At first it didn’t seem to mount up at all, but then one day I suddenly noticed that the jam jar was almost quarter full, and I took out the money and counted it and it came to nearly £6. Six pounds that I had saved almost without realising it!
That was when it got a grip and I started to save in real earnest. I saved every penny that I could! I even picked up 1p pieces that people had dropped in the street. When the first jam jar was full, I started on a second one. By the time the second one was full I’d saved my half of the money and could have had my organiser any time I wanted, but now I didn’t want one. Well, I did, but I wanted the money more. I didn’t want to do anything with the money; I just wanted to see it mounting up. I had become a money junkie! I was a secret hoarder!
I might have been hoarding to this day if something hadn’t happened to break the cycle. It was only a little something, but that is often all it takes. Quite suddenly, for no reason, the whole of Year 6 went mad on body tattoos – the sort you stick on. If you didn’t walk round covered in them, you just weren’t cool. I begged Saffy to give me some of hers, but she wouldn’t. She said I’d become as mean as could be and could go out and buy some of my own. So I did, and that was the beginning of the end. We went to visit my auntie and uncle and they took us to the shopping centre at Brent Cross and I saw these really superior tattoos in a shop and I just couldn’t resist them, even though they were expensive.
I knew if I went to school with tattoos like that I’d be the coolest person there. I spent the whole of my pocket money on body tattoos! And that was that. Once I’d broken the habit, I couldn’t get back into it again. I didn’t even get the personal organiser; I just frittered the money away on more of what Mum called “rubbish”.
So this is how it was with me and slimming, except that instead of money mounting up, it was kilos going down. I bought a red felt tip
, a fine liner, and used it to mark the tape measure. Every time I measured myself, I made a little mark. At first, just as with the money in the jam jar, nothing very much seemed to be happening and it would have been all too easy to be discouraged, except that this time I was determined. And then, suddenly, the red mark moved! In the right direction, I hasten to add. Week by week, it kept on moving. Just a millimetre at a time, to begin with, then one Saturday a whole half centimetre! I could hardly contain myself! I immediately tried on every single skirt and pair of jeans in my wardrobe and discovered to my joy that some of them that I’d had difficulty fitting into now did up quite easily. It was working! I was getting thin!
There came a day when I actually had to use a safety pin to take in the waistband of my school skirt and pull in the belt on my jeans really tight to stop them slipping down. It just felt so good. Zoë looked at me in the changing room one Friday, as we were getting into our leotards. She did this double take and said, “Hey! Eleflump!” which was what she had taken to calling me. “Are you on a diet, or something?”
As carelessly as I could I said, “Me? No! Why?” Hoping and praying that Saffy wouldn’t give me away.
“You look like you are,” said Zoë.
“Yes. You do!” Twinkle was now gazing at me. “You look sort of… thinner.”
“Really?” I said. Yawn yawn.
“You used to bulge,” said Twinkle. “You used to look like a big hovercraft.” And she puffed out her cheeks and went waddling across the room with her feet splayed and her bottom stuck in the air and her arms held out like panniers.
“Flomp flomp flomp,” went Zoë, joining in.
Such sweet girls. I don’t think.
“You do look as if you’ve lost weight,” said Portia.
I was pleased, of course, but also a bit embarrassed. I wanted people to notice – but I didn’t want them remarking on it! Saffy was really good. She could easily have betrayed me, but she didn’t. When Portia turned to her and said, “Don’t you think she looks as if she’s lost weight?” Saffy just said, “I suppose she does. I hadn’t really thought about it.” But next day, when we went back to her place after class, she read me this mumsy-type lecture, all about how I’d lost as much weight as I needed and how I’d got to start eating properly.
“I can say this,” she said, “‘cos you’re my friend. If you carry on not eating you’ll get ill. You’ll get hag-like. You’ll end up like Pauline Pretty!”
What did she mean, I would end up like Pauline Pretty? How dare she say such a thing! I wasn’t anorexic. I could stop any time I wanted, just like that! I said so to Saffy. I told her that I could stop any time I wanted.
“So when are you going to?” said Saffy.
I said, “As soon as I’ve reached my target weight.”
“Which is what?”
Blusteringly I said, “Well! Whatever I decide.”
I couldn’t give her an exact weight because I didn’t have one. I didn’t have a target weight! I just had this fixed idea that I would go on slimming until I could finally look in the mirror and like what I saw. It wasn’t a question of weight. It was a question of how I looked.
“I wish we’d never started drama classes if this is what it’s done to you!” cried Saffy.
I said, “It was you that wanted to. Don’t blame me!”
“I’m not blaming you,” said Saffy.
“Sounds like you are.”
“I’m not, but ever since that stupid woman came you’ve got all miserable and cranky and obsessed with yourself!”
“I’m just thinking of my future,” I said. “If you don’t mind! I’m just exercising a bit of willpower. You’d think,” I said, “being my friend, you’d want to help me. Not go nagging on at me the whole time!”
Saffy pursed her lips, making them go into a narrow line. “What about your mum and dad?” she said.
I said, “What about them?”
“What do they say?”
“They don’t say anything. They don’t nag!”
The truth was that Mum and Dad still hadn’t noticed. I was being that cunning! Plus Dad isn’t the most observant of people, except when it’s food. Plus Mum was always working. But I was developing new strategies all the time. I’d not only learnt how to avoid eating but when I was at home I’d deliberately wear clothes that made me look the same plump Pumpkin that I’d always been. I’d wear long baggy T-shirts over big saggy jeans, and when I dressed for school I’d wear my blouse outside my skirt. As soon as I left the house I’d tuck it back in and pin up the waistband. I didn’t want to go out and buy new clothes until I’d reached my target body image. That’s what I was calling it. Target body image. I think I knew, deep down, that Saffy was right. I had to have some aim in view; I couldn’t just keep slimming indefinitely. It was a question of knowing when to stop. And the answer to that was… when I was thin as a pin!
Sometimes on a Sunday me and Dad and Pip, and Petal if she doesn’t have anything else to do, go and visit my gran. That is, Dad’s mum. (The one I sort of based my old cranky person on for Sob Story, though as I believe I said before, my gran isn’t really cranky. She just reckons that life is not as good now as it used to be when she was young.) Mum doesn’t very often come with us when we visit as she and Gran don’t get on awfully well, mainly because Gran thinks a mother’s place is in the home. She thinks it is terrible that it was Dad who looked after us while Mum went out to work. So Mum usually stays behind while the rest of us go off, which is just as well for me since otherwise, on this particular occasion that we went to visit, I might have been found out!
Gran has very sharp eyes for an old lady; she notices things. She noticed immediately that I wasn’t looking as gross as I had been.
“Jenny,” she said. “Have you lost weight?”
Fortunately, although we were all together in the kitchen, Dad was busy checking the contents of Gran’s cupboard – he always checks the cupboard, to make sure she’s properly stocked up with food – and when Dad is counting tins of baked beans or jars of marmalade the rest of the world simply passes him by. If Mum had been there, she would have pounced! Even Petal might have looked twice, but she’d gone to spend the day with Helen Bickerstaff, one of her friends from school, and Pip didn’t because what did he care if I’d lost weight?
“Well,” said Gran. Like in these accusing tones. “Have you?”
I said, “I wish!” Flapping my hands in my T-shirt.
Gran said, “What do you mean, you wish? What kind of foolish talk is that?”
“Gran! Everybody wants to be slim,” I said.
“Well, everybody shouldn’t,” said Gran. “Everybody should have a bit more sense. We’re human beings, not stick insects!”
Dad then turned round from the cupboards to ask why Gran didn’t have any pasta in stock, and the talk swung off in another direction, but I noticed Gran looking at me every now and again with narrowed eyes so I made sure to really glut when it came to teatime. I knew I’d have to pay for it later, but the last thing I wanted was Gran going and putting ideas into Dad’s head. As we left she said in a loud voice, as she kissed me goodbye, “And no more of that I wish nonsense, thank you very much!” This time, Dad heard.
“What was that about?” he said.
I was about to say “Nothing,” in a vague and meaningless kind of way, when Pip had to go and pipe up.
“She wants to be slim!”
I could willingly have strangled him. But Dad just said, “Oh! Is that all?” Obviously not taking it seriously. Phew! Relief. It did set me thinking, though. I thought, what is the point of losing all this weight if I still have to go round pretending to be fat in front of Mum and Dad? I decided that as soon as I had reached my target body image I would REVEAL ALL. By then I wouldn’t need to diet any more, so it wouldn’t matter what they said. After all, not even Dad could force me to eat pizzas and pasta and Black Forest gateau.
One Saturday – the Saturday after our visit to Gran –
Mrs Ambrose announced that we were going to do some improvisation. She said that we could improvise on our own or with a partner, whichever we preferred, and the theme was to be “travelling”.
She said, “You might be on a bus or a train… you might be walking, driving a car… riding a horse. You might be on a plane, you might be at an airport. Anything that takes your fancy! All go away and think about it, then we’ll see what you’ve come up with.”
Normally, me and Saffy would have been partners, but today, for some reason, she didn’t seem to want to work with me. She teamed up with Portia instead. I thought, Huh! See if I care. I’d do it by myself.
I was just going off into a corner to think of something when Ben Azariah (whose hair grew to a point like a turnip) poked me in the ribs and said, “Hey, Jenny! Want to do it together?”
I frowned. I’d had this feeling, just recently, that Ben was getting a bit interested in me. Last term I might have been flattered. I mean, what with being so fat and not having much confidence. But I wasn’t fat any more! I wasn’t yet thin, but at least I wasn’t bursting out of my clothes. I felt that now I could pick and choose. And I wasn’t going to choose a geeky turnip head!
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
Ben’s face fell. Just for a moment I felt sorry for him and wished I’d been nicer, but then I hardened my heart. People like Zoë and Twinkle didn’t worry about being nice. It didn’t bother them if they hurt someone’s feelings. And they didn’t get partnered by geeky turnip heads. Zoë had gone into a huddle with Gareth. Now if he had asked me…
“I thought we could do something funny,” said Ben.
I didn’t want to do anything funny! I was sick of being a figure of fun. I wanted to be a figure of romance!
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve got other ideas.”
I swished off towards my chosen corner. Ben came scuttling after me. Some people just won’t take no for an answer.