The Desperate Bride’s Diet Club

by Alison Sherlock

  She was getting closer to the group. Lucy tried not to panic when she realised that Nicola Bowles was with the other girls. Nicola had made Lucy’s life a misery at school with the taunts, the sneers and the laughter.

  Lucy had been fine until she’d reached thirteen and then her body had just expanded overnight. It hadn’t stopped until she was the heaviest in her class. And that included the boys. PE was the worst. How did they expect her to climb ropes or bounce on a trampoline? She could hear the laughter now.

  It was the same laughter greeting her on the street corner right now.

  ‘Oy! Fatty!’ called Nicola.

  Lucy put her head down and kept walking. But she came to an abrupt halt when the girls stood in her way.

  ‘I’m speaking to you,’ sneered Nicola. ‘Don’t you recognise your name, Fatty?’

  Lucy moved to go around her, having to walk on the road to do so.

  ‘No boyfriend, Fatty?’ called Nicola from behind her. ‘Never been laid?’

  The girls were all giggling.

  ‘Who’d sleep with that?’ someone said.

  Lucy kept on walking, striding out until she was around the corner and far down the road. She hated that her eyes were stinging with tears. She hated that she could feel her fat arse wobbling as she tried to walk quickly.

  Most of all, she hated that Nicola could still taunt her, even though they hadn’t been at school for two years. Lucy had gone to college and was loving her fashion-design class. Nicola had gone straight to benefits and standing around doing nothing all day on street corners. But Nicola was still superior, still had the upper edge.

  What Lucy hated most of all was the fact that she secretly admired Nicola for being so slim. If they could just invent a body swap then Lucy would be overjoyed. With Nicola’s body and Lucy’s personality, she could go places, have a future. But all the time she was fat, she was nothing. Would continue to be nothing.

  Feeling miserable, Lucy stomped through the front door to her home and up the stairs.

  ‘You all right, love?’ asked her mum, who was stationed in front of the ironing board with Midsomer Murders on the TV.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Lucy through clenched teeth before slamming the door to her bedroom shut and bouncing on to the bed.

  It didn’t matter. Nicola Bowles was a nobody. A thickie with no future. Lucy was going to be a fashion designer. A famous, fabulous fashion designer. Preferably a thin one, as well.

  She lay back on her bed, thinking about what one of the girls had said about nobody wanting to sleep with her. Actually, they were wrong. She had lost her virginity the previous summer.

  A guy from college called Robert had taken her to see Eclipse at the cinema. Lucy had watched the movie and hoped for a big romance. What she got in return was a quick fumble on the back seat of her dad’s Nissan when she drove Robert home and a lot of unanswered texts.

  Lucy knew what his problem was. She was the classic fat, easy lay.

  She sat up and glanced at herself in the mirror. It was a good thing she had some clue about fashion. It meant she could disguise her large body with trendy clothes. Trouble was, as soon as she stripped off, all the rolls of fat would appear.

  Her brown hair was all right. At the minute it had been straightened but Lucy thought it made her round face look huge. She had a few spots from her poor diet but at least she didn’t have as many as Nicola Bowles, who had loads across her forehead and chin.

  With a sigh, she reached into her handbag and drew out the Mars bar. She scowled at it, the enemy. But she savoured every last, glorious mouthful.

  Then she felt miserable once more.

  Edward Conley shuffled in his seat. You would have thought that they would make the chairs in a doctor’s waiting room more comfortable. And bigger. At 6 feet 3 inches, it was like sitting on a child’s seat. And at twenty stone, he was oozing off the sides as well.

  He rubbed his chest. He’d been practising in the cricket nets at the weekend so perhaps he’d pulled something. Whatever it was, the pain was keeping him awake at night and his work was suffering during the day. He’d nearly fallen asleep in a meeting that afternoon.

  He caught the eye of a pretty woman sitting opposite him. She gave him a brief smile and then looked away. Edward knew he wasn’t bad-looking. OK, so he was a bit overweight, but he still had all his own hair, unlike Tom from the cricket club, who was in his mid-twenties and already very thin on top. Edward ran his hand through his short brown hair, grateful that he was thirty but not bald.

  Edward’s name was called over the tannoy. As he got up, he attempted to catch the woman’s eye once more but she was deeply engrossed in her magazine. Maybe he could strike up a conversation if she was there when he left.

  ‘Hello, Edward,’ said Dr Gillespie, smiling at him as he went through the door. ‘What can I do for you today?’

  She was gorgeous but completely out of his league. Not that Edward was unlucky with women. It was just that as he headed towards thirty, what he really wanted to find was ‘the one’. She hadn’t turned up yet.

  ‘I think I’ve pulled something in my chest,’ he told her as he sat down. ‘The pain comes and goes but it’s mostly at night. I played cricket at the weekend so maybe it was something I did then.’

  She nodded before getting him to reach across his back with his arms.

  ‘Any pain now?’ she asked.

  ‘Not at the minute.’

  ‘Let’s do a few other checks, shall we?’

  She took his blood pressure before asking him to stand on the scales. Edward waited for the inevitable prescription for anti-inflammatory pills and two weeks’ rest from the cricket nets.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not a muscle pull,’ the doctor told him. ‘Your blood pressure is dangerously high. You’re twenty-one stone, Edward. That’s morbidly obese.’

  Edward sank back in his chair. He was shocked. His weight had crept up by another stone.

  ‘But I play cricket,’ he spluttered. ‘I’m not a couch potato.’

  Edward didn’t add that he was normally stuck out on the boundary because he wasn’t up to leaping around the wicket. He couldn’t run or leap at all these days.

  ‘Do you run? Work out?’ she asked.

  Edward shook his head.

  ‘The additional weight is far too much for your body to cope with. Your pulse is racing to keep up and it’s causing your chest pains.’

  Edward was speechless. He ought to have known this. He should have realised. It wasn’t as if he was stupid.

  ‘Do you have a healthy diet?’

  ‘I try,’ he replied.

  He blushed at the lie. He hadn’t eaten well since moving out of home four years previously. Away from his mother’s large but relatively healthy meals, as a bachelor his diet consisted of vast amounts of toast, pot noodles and takeaways. The weight had piled on in the years since. ‘You must lose weight,’ the doctor told him.

  ‘And if I don’t?’ he asked. He had to know.

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Tablets for high blood pressure. And for what I’m presuming will be a high cholesterol count. Maybe treatment for diabetes as well. If all that doesn’t help, perhaps a small stroke will follow. Do you want to guess the rest?’

  A sharp intake of breath was his only reply.

  ‘At six foot three, you should weigh around thirteen stone. If you need help, there’s a number of weight-loss classes in the area. Try one of those.’ She gave him a sympathetic smile. ‘I really don’t want to have to give you one of my frequent-visitor passes.’

  Edward staggered out of the doctor’s surgery in a daze, the attractive woman in the waiting room all but forgotten. This was the last thing he needed. He had a stressful job and a busy social life. He didn’t have time to be healthy as well.

  As usual for a Thursday night, he bought himself takeaway fish and chips on the way home. But this time, he only had regular chips instead of his normal large portion and he chose a Diet Coke. That was
a start, wasn’t it?

  Kathy Baker hated blind dates. Worse still, it was an internet set-up so she was expecting the worst. Somewhere between psychopath and nerd, she was betting. Maybe she shouldn’t have bothered. But when you’re thirty and single, you have to keep trying. Or so she had been told.

  Kathy worked in a charity shop during the day and normally dressed in jeans and a jumper. She knew she should make the effort, in case a George Clooney lookalike came through the front door one day. But chances were it would just be another pensioner looking for a bargain blouse. So it had been nice to dress up tonight, for the first time in a very long time.

  Kathy was quite pleased with her outfit. Her full black skirt had come from the shop, a bargain at two pounds. She was trying not to think about the size-eighteen label inside and the fact that the elasticated waistband was at full stretch and digging into her. The pink, low V-neck top was an old favourite but must have shrunk from frequent use. She tried to sit up straight so that the tight material didn’t highlight the rolls of fat around her middle. She knew it was good to have a bit of cleavage to attract the men but was trying to ignore how tight the top felt across the bust. She was worried that any quick movement would result in a Barbara Windsor in Carry on Camping tribute.

  Kathy knew she had to get out and meet people. Having just moved to the area, she knew nobody except the elderly ladies who worked in the shop with her, and whose idea of a hectic social life was a daytime whirl of bridge, bingo and bowls. But Kathy needed company; she craved it. She was no good on her own.

  So Kathy had decided to venture into the world of internet dating. After all, there were some success stories she had read about. And perhaps ‘Mike’ would be the one, if that was his real name. Maybe Mike would be someone to talk to, to share life with, a hardy soul who could support her no matter what.

  His photo had looked nice so here she was, perched on a stool in a wine bar. It was Thursday night and the place was packed with young and good-looking office staff, all loosening their ties and flinging off their jackets. Kathy shuffled on her stool, trying to appear relaxed but in reality she was silently praying that her arse didn’t look too big spilling over the sides.

  ‘You’re not Kathy, are you?’ said a voice behind her.

  Kathy turned round and nearly fell off her stool. The man was six feet tall but only about a foot wide. He was the thinnest person she had ever seen.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ she said, giving him her widest beam, even though she was dying inside.

  He wasn’t exactly a looker but then she remembered his photo being quite dark. Maybe there was a reason for that.

  Kathy hadn’t supplied a photo, but she knew she was reasonably good-looking. Her cheeks were always too red, her face too shiny and her shoulder-length brown hair could do with a decent cut to give it a bit of body, but her brown eyes were nice and her skin wasn’t spotty. She wasn’t exactly a fright. Or at least, she hadn’t thought so until now.

  ‘You said you looked like Elizabeth Hurley,’ he said, with a whine in his voice.

  ‘From a hundred yards,’ replied Kathy, still smiling.

  ‘More like Hurley from Lost,’ he muttered, looking over his shoulder.

  She scowled at him. ‘Why do you keep glancing around? Are you looking to see if there’s someone else here that you know?’

  ‘I hope not,’ he said softly.

  But she caught it, all the same.

  ‘Just go, would you?’ she told him. ‘Crawl back under that rock you’ve been hiding under.’

  ‘Least I could find one big enough,’ he snapped back before leaving.

  Kathy tried to pull herself together. It was fine. He was an idiot. He was the one with the problem, not her. All she had wanted was someone to talk to, to help stem the loneliness and the grief. But she wasn’t that desperate.

  She finished her drink and pushed her way through the crowd to the street. Only then did she let her mouth tremble with the emotion hidden deep inside. But she pushed her shoulders back and strode off down the street. There was a lovely, comforting cheesy pasta waiting for her at home. That would take away the pain and make her feel better.

  But Kathy knew it was only temporary. The loneliness would soon seep back, suffocating her.

  This was why Kathy hated blind dates.

  Chapter Three

  ON FRIDAY, VIOLET was sprawled on the sofa as usual. She was sliding the crumbs from the bottom of a tube of Pringles into her mouth when the front doorbell rang.

  She shuffled into the hallway, regretting that she was still in her grubby dressing gown and slippers at one o’clock in the afternoon. God, she hoped it wasn’t Sebastian. She never wanted him to see her like this.

  She opened the door and peered around it.

  ‘Hello!’ said a cheery woman. ‘Are you Violet Saunders?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I have this lovely bouquet for you.’ She held out a huge bunch of flowers in varying shades of pink. ‘Could you just sign this for me?’

  She held out a delivery sheet so Violet had no option but to open up the front door. She quickly signed her name.

  ‘Get well soon!’ said the florist, before heading back down the front path.

  Violet shut the door, trying not to mind that the florist thought she was unwell. She glanced in the mirror before quickly looking away. Perhaps the florist was right.

  She put the bouquet on the coffee table in the lounge and opened the card.

  ‘Dinner tonight. 7 p.m. Wear something nice. Sebastian.’

  He had rung every day since Monday but she hadn’t picked up the phone. She was too busy working her way through the Easter leftovers. Food was the only thing that made her feel better. The only thing that blocked out the pain.

  The news had come on to the television in the corner. Lots of headlines about unemployment figures being high. Violet had been made redundant just before Easter. She was a secretary in a small office of accountants. The directors had told her that they needed to reduce costs and were going to integrate two of the secretarial positions.

  So why did they choose Andrea over me? wondered Violet for the hundredth time. Andrea had only been with the firm for six months. Violet had been there since she left school. But Violet knew why. Andrea was slim and pretty.

  Violet sighed. She had registered with a couple of agencies but they didn’t hold out much luck. Jobs were scarce, they said. And she knew that she hardly gave a great first impression.

  Violet knew she would have to face Sebastian tonight. Wear something nice, he had said. Knowing the trauma that lay ahead, she lay down on the sofa, grabbing an Easter egg box from the top of a nearby pile. She had bought a few in the post-holiday sales. Plus she needed something sweet after all those crisps.

  She broke off a piece of chocolate with one hand, using the other to flick between channels. Bored senseless by daytime television, she briefly contemplated doing some housework, but what was the point?

  Her mobile suddenly rang. But this time it wasn’t Sebastian. It was an unknown number.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Violet? It’s Patricia from Job Searchers.’

  She remembered. A patronising cow who couldn’t disguise the horror in her eyes as she beheld Violet’s appearance.

  ‘Great news. We’ve got an interview for you.’

  Violet sat bolt upright, scattering chocolate everywhere.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘We’ve had a bit of bother with this particular chap,’ she carried on. ‘He doesn’t seem to like any of our girls. So we thought we’d try you out. See how you get on. I think you’ll be perfect.’

  To her horror, the interview had been arranged for the following Wednesday. Only four days to prepare herself for the hideous trauma of meeting new people. Violet began to panic.

  She was still pacing the lounge nervously when the doorbell rang at seven o’clock that evening. But this time she knew who was outside. She took a deep breath and opened th
e front door.

  ‘Hello,’ said Sebastian, with a soft smile.

  ‘Hello,’ Violet stammered back, her heart leaping as it always had, right from the first time they met.

  Two years earlier, Violet had been standing at the counter at a popular wine bar in the centre of town, trying to catch the bartender’s eye. The office Christmas party was in full swing back at the table. Violet allowed herself a small shudder. Whilst she had been merely enduring the innuendo and continuous laughter, her colleagues were letting their hair down and having the most marvellous time.

  Especially the new girl in human resources, just returned from a lengthy absence with one of the directors, now surreptitiously doing up his flies as he drunkenly lurched back towards the table.

  Violet sighed.

  ‘A pretty face like yours shouldn’t be so sad,’ said a male voice next to her.

  Violet glanced over her shoulder, knowing that the man couldn’t possibly be speaking about her. But she was nosy enough to want to see whom he was talking to.

  To her amazement, she saw a blond man smiling at her. She glanced around but it was just the two of them.

  ‘How about I buy you a drink to cheer you up?’

  Without waiting for a reply, he ordered two champagnes from the barman, who had suddenly materialised in front of them. Violet watched him order their drinks. He was slim with spiky, fair hair and had an air of self-confidence, as if he could take on the world and win.

  The man handed Violet a glass of champagne and clinked her glass with his.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said. ‘Here’s to my idiot friend who stood me up. And thank God, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the chance to meet you.’

  Violet stared in wonder as he carried on smiling at her.

  ‘The name’s Sebastian,’ he told her.

  ‘I’m Violet,’ she stammered, before sneaking a quick glance at her colleagues.

  ‘They’re too drunk to notice you’re missing,’ said Sebastian, following her gaze. ‘Besides, they don’t deserve you. And I want you all to myself.’

  Later, he had kissed her under the mistletoe as they left the bar. Violet couldn’t believe that someone was interested in her, could even want to be seen in public with her.