by Rob Grant
Just before they got to the door, Jeremy stopped and nodded to let Jason know this was the place. Jason nodded back, gave one final sucking snort and swaggered into the room.
Jeremy heard him say: 'Whassup, Harley?' in a loud, showbiz bluster, then pushed himself off the wall to leave. He hadn't got halfway down the hall when he heard a cry of 'Wait!' and Carla, the girl's mother, came racing after him. He turned and smiled at her. He couldn't make out what her expression was supposed to be saying. Her mouth was all twisted, like she was biting the inside of her lip. Was she going to hit him?
'You, mister, are some kind of wonderful.' There were tears pooling in her eyes.
'No sweat,' Jeremy said. 'Really.'
'I think you must be an angel or something.'
'I'm anything but that, Carla. All I did was phone a friend.'
'All you did was very possibly save that little girl's life, did you but know it.'
Jeremy could only smile. He had absolutely no idea what you could say in reply to that sort of thing. He fished in his jacket pocket. 'Listen, you'll let me know how she gets on, won't you?' He handed over his business card. 'Give me a shout when she's well enough to go home?'
'Jeremy Slank.' Carla sniffed. 'You will be guest of honour at her twenty-first birthday, and you'll be on my table, by my bloody side, at her bloody wedding.'
Jeremy nodded. 'It's a date, then.' He smiled again and turned to go again.
'Just one second, Mr Angel. You are not getting out of this building without suffering the biggest, sloppiest, blubberiest kiss you'll ever have to endure in your life.'
And Jeremy let the woman kiss him on the cheek, very sloppily indeed, and even held on to her for a bit while she sobbed helplessly all over his Armani-clad shoulder.
FIFTY-FOUR
It had been unbelievably exciting when he'd first come in, and he got her name slightly wrong, but never mind that, he was there in the flesh, and she thought her heart was going to burst out of her ribcage and go racing round London and complete the Marathon all on its own. She literally could not speak. She must have looked like she was a brain-dead vegetable, with her mouth lolling open, and, for all she knew, dribbling drool. But he bounded up to her, his arms wide open, with his big, dimpled grin all over his face, and took her face in his hands and kissed her sloppily on the forehead.
And he smelled. Wow, was he ripe. Well, fair enough. He'd probably been working round the clock in the studio, because the new album was a bit behind schedule, and he'd taken time out to visit Hayleigh in person, so she wasn't going to hold a little thing like a dizzying stench of body odour against him.
He sat down, then, on the couch, leaned back flamboyantly, arms thrown wide, lifted his head and sniffed back the vilest gurgling snort Hayleigh had ever heard in her life. And that, in all seriousness, was the high point of the encounter.
He spent the next five minutes just lolling there, his right leg crossed over his left, forming a triangle, just staring at the ceiling. Then he finally snapped out of it and looked down and gave a little start, as if he was surprised to find her there. He snorted again, and asked her what she was in for. Hayleigh smiled coyly and pointed to her leg. He stared at the leg for a ridiculously long time.
'Purple, innit,' he pointed out, ingeniously.
'Can you guess why, Jase?'
'No, mate, innit. Is it coz your surgeon was the artist formerly known as "Prince"?' And he laughed at that for about twenty minutes, which turned into a very strange kind of coughing fit, with his mouth shaped into a giant oval, and his face going redder and redder and odd little choking sounds coming from somewhere deep in his throat. Hayleigh looked round at her emergency button. She thought she might need to summon a crash cart. 'Fuck me,' he said when he finally recovered. 'Sorry 'bout that, babe. Got a touch of the flu, innit.'
Hayleigh did her best to pretend nothing very odd had happened. 'It's your favourite colour, Jason.'
'What is?'
'Purple.'
'Is it? Fuck me.' He glanced round at the decorated wall, and jumped. 'Fucking hell, man. I'm the fucking wallpaper. What is that about?'
Hayleigh squirmed in her chair. She noticed a thick glob of snot had started dribbling from his nose. Jason, intent on studying his tribute, seemed completely oblivious. To everything.
He turned back towards her and, once again, seemed shocked to find someone else in the room with him. 'Fuck me sideways, gel. You is one scrawny bitch, innit?' The snot had now drooled all the way to his lips. Still staring at her, Jason stuck out his tongue and dragged the giant glob into his mouth with it. He chewed, thoughtfully, for a while and then swallowed it down. 'I like 'em with a bit more meat on, innit?' Then he wiped up the rest of the mucal debris from his upper lip with two fingers and sucked them clean.
Hayleigh was beginning to feel nauseous.
Jason's left leg started juddering quite violently. It was impossible to tell whether or not the movement was voluntary. He held up his wrist and looked at it. He was not wearing a watch. 'I best get going, innit.'
Hayleigh nodded. She was quite relieved. She'd been starting to feel a little bit frightened.
Jason put his right leg down and slapped his hands on his thighs. The left leg was still going strong. 'Well,' he said, 'I best get going, innit,' again.
But he didn't get up. He just sat there, hands on thighs, one leg doing a single-handed Lord of the Dance, pulling a series of very strange expressions with his face, wrinkling his nose and wiggling his lips as if he was trying to exercise his teeth. 'Well,' he said, finally, 'I best get going, innit.' And he stood. 'You get better, now, yeah?'
Hayleigh nodded.
'Here.' Jason fished in his back pocket and pulled out an unmarked CD case. 'This am our new album. Not quite finished the mix yet. That is well rare. That is well precious, mate. The record company ain't even heard that yet.'
He handed Hayleigh the case. She opened it excitedly. It was empty. She held it up to show him. 'There's nothing in it, Jason.'
'Shit. Must have left it in the machine, innit.' He stood there awkwardly for a moment. 'You want me to sign it for you?'
Hayleigh nodded and handed him back the case. She couldn't have given a toss whether he signed it or not. The stupid thing was cracked anyway, from where he'd been sitting on it. Whoops a dee, an empty, cracked blank CD case. By this time, though, she just wanted to get rid of him.
He patted down his pockets several times. 'Got a pen?'
Hayleigh turned and wheeled towards the table and picked up her pencil case, but when she turned round, Jason was already at the door. 'Later, babe,' he called back at her, and, as an afterthought, added, 'And put some fucking meat on you, innit? I like a bit of arse meself.' He made a crude grabbing motion with his upturned hands, and he was gone. He'd taken the broken CD case with him.
FIFTY-FIVE
Grenville rolled out of bed like he was tumbling down from the Cross. He literally had to roll. After -- what? A year? Eighteen months? No, wait: after four nights on that mattress, his spine had quite simply turned to jelly. And not nice jelly, either. Extremely painful jelly. Jelly with razor blades in it. He couldn't have straightened up if he'd tried.
He looked at his watch. Five forty-five. Brilliant. He'd managed to sleep through fully fifteen minutes of the obnoxious alarm that was piped into your room and didn't stop until you rose. How did they do that? How did they know? He was on the floor now, on his hands and knees, but obviously that didn't qualify as actually being up because the klaxon was still blaring at full volume.
With a great effort of the will, he reached up to the bedpost and hauled himself painfully into an L shape, his head resting against the post. Still the klaxon blared. He lifted his head and yelled: 'I'm up, you filthy bastards. This has got to count as being up.'
But he was not rewarded with the silence he craved. He looked around. The former rugby player was still asleep. Admirable. World-class sleeping ability, that. Hats off, mate. Grenville sta
ggered to the shower room, like the Crooked Man walking his crooked mile.
Why they had to wake up at five-thirty in the morning anyway was a bizarre mystery to Grenville. Was there something intrinsically slimming about getting up before the milkman? Did it somehow aid the reduction of subcutaneous fatty deposits, keeping the same hours as a three-month-old baby? He turned the showers on, knowing from bitter experience that it would be another fifteen minutes before they were sufficiently hot not to induce frostbite in your extremities, or kill you from shock, and you then had a window of five minutes before the eco-friendly energy-efficient solar panel heating system gave up for the day.
He staggered over to the washbasin and cleaned his teeth. He was growing overly fond of cleaning his teeth. It was the only time in the day he experienced flavour. Cleaning his teeth was literally the best meal of the day. He showered and had a stab at drying himself with the smallest bath towel he had ever seen. He'd complained, on the first day, that they hadn't been given any towels at all, but the Residential Consultant had assured him that these were the bath towels and not, as Grenville had wrongly assumed, face flannels.
That was one of fully fifty-seven complaints lodged by Grenville and his roommates on the first day. The following morning, some wag from administration had stuck an A4 sheet above their door with the legend 'Heinz Lodge' etched upon it. Grenville didn't mind that. It showed at least that someone, somewhere within this administration, had at least the faint stirrings of some kind of wits.
Six of the beds had broken during that first night, spilling their occupants quite painfully. A one-hit-wonder ex-pop star had been stabbed clean through the upper arm with a large shard of wood from the splintered frame, and had to be choppered to hospital. And he hadn't even been the first of Grenville's lot to go. The former breakfast TV presenter and the losing Big Brother contestant had gone straight after dinner: just walked out of the dining hall, through the gates and kept on walking, they didn't much care where. Grenville had badly wanted to join them. The food had been utter swill. No, wait, at least swill had flavour. Pigs climbed over each other to get to it, did they not? Somehow, the magnificent swill-master plying his demonic craft in the kitchens had managed to remove even the vaguest hint of taste from every last morsel on offer. There was no seasoning, there were no sauces. Everything was steamed or boiled. Everything. Even the meat. Steamed chicken. Unbelievable. But he'd sucked it up and stuck it out. There was a lot at stake for him here. And he was, undeniably, losing weight. Starvation would definitely do that for you.
That didn't stop him complaining about the food, though. And even though it seemed to be getting him nowhere, he carried on complaining about the food, on the official forms provided, after every single meal, at very great length and in very great detail.
In a day or so, he would have to start writing his newspaper diary column. He would find it very hard to put a positive spin on the experience so far. Very hard indeed. Perhaps he should think about starting it today. It would require a gift for fiction he had not tapped since his A-levels. He unhooked his dressing gown and pulled it around his damp body. It was labelled extra large. If he tugged hard and held it tight with both hands it could just about stretch to cover one of his nipples. His stomach, his tackle, his remaining nipple and everything north and south was left dangling on display for all the world to see. Thank merciful Christ he'd made a stand about the mixed barracks.
Their luggage had finally shown up yesterday, and that had been a good thing. Grenville had spent the first two days and nights in his chef's jacket and trousers, which, after eight full-on gym sessions, countless table tennis games and a knackering stroll through the nature walk had begun not just to smell, but actually to evolve. He had earned enough credits to buy a new outfit, or even two -- he had lost over ten pounds already -- but he'd be buggered if he was going to blow that on more hideous Day-Glo sportswear when he had brought perfectly good hideous Day-Glo sportswear of his own, if only the dozy bastards could find it. No, Grenville was going to save up his credits till he could afford something big. Like an escape helicopter, for instance. Or an AK-47 to use on the Hell Farm mattress supplier.
You were only allowed one suitcase, however -- Lord knows why -- and he'd been unable to fit his own dressing gown in it -- that is, if he wanted to bring anything else at all. He'd tried wearing the standard-issue dressing gown back to front, but it was so tight around the neck that if he sat down and accidentally trapped the wrong part of it under his buttocks, he wound up strangling himself.
By the end of day three, Grenville and Geoff, the rugby player, had been the only remaining occupants of Heinz Lodge. Geoff hadn't left because he had nowhere to go. His wife had kicked him out when she'd found out about his mistress, and then his mistress had kicked him out when she'd found out his wife had kicked him out, because he was no longer enticing as a single man who spent the entire day and night drinking beer and watching sports. Geoff was there for the duration, come what may.
Grenville hadn't left because he had staying power. He was not a quitter.
He went back into the bedroom to put on his exercise gear. He left a puddle trail behind him because the complimentary towelling slippers were, inevitably, three sizes too small. When you have great fatness thrust upon you, the excess load causes your feet to spread inexorably. Grenville had achieved full-grown adulthood with a shoe size of nine. Now he needed twelves. He wasn't even Off The Peg in the footwear department. The klaxon was still going off, and Geoff was still asleep. Incredible. Half an hour of it. Was he just asleep, or was he dead? Grenville waddled over -- he still hadn't worked up the courage to straighten up just yet -- and leaned over to check Geoff was still breathing. He was. He must have jiggered himself out yesterday watching the test match, poor bloke. Five hours of constant peddling was enough to take it out of anybody.
Grenville got dressed. Even under normal conditions this process demanded strange, uncomfortable contortions. Doubled over like a hook, it was close to impossible. It took ten minutes. The incessant klaxon made it even more enjoyable than usual. The armpits on his freshly laundered T-shirt were dark and damp by the end of it.
Gren waddled to the living area, leaned his back against the hilarious Borrowers sofa and in one swift, brave movement straightened his spine. It sounded like the photographers' flashbulbs going off on Oscar night as the Rat Pack and their entire entourage strolled along the red carpet. Flashbulbs went off in Grenville's head, too. He couldn't see for three full minutes. He might have screamed, but he couldn't hear himself above the klaxon.
When he'd recovered sufficiently, and convinced himself he wasn't actually crying, he stepped out into the chill dawn.
The Stalag street lights were on, and the sky had a purple glow about it. Very pretty, that. Perhaps that was something he could mention in his column. Although it would be hard to ascribe the quality of the sunrise to the administrators of the Well Farm, it was, at least, something positive.
He started jogging towards the gym centre, but stopped after three steps with a mild cramp and just walked instead. The klaxons were still going off in several of the hovels he passed. Signs of a rebellion brewing?
Although the attrition rate had been extraordinarily high in the celebrity huts, as far as Grenville could see, it had kept to a reasonable level in the rest of the camp. He assumed most of the remaining inmates weren't quite so free to make their choices. Perhaps they could ill afford not to stay. Perhaps they'd rented out their homes for the duration, as Grenville was preparing to do. Perhaps they had nowhere else to go. He knew for certain that those on the dole would cease to receive benefits if they quit. But that didn't mean they were prepared to sit back meekly and take whatever the camp kommandants threw at them.
The whole enterprise had been undertaken with astonishingly little foresight. All the fixtures and fittings had been designed and bought by normal-sized people, with a breathtaking inability to project what the requirements of the oversized might be.
The chairs, for instance, were not only uncomfortable, they were instruments of torture that required balancing talents normally only encountered in the circus to be put to their intended purpose. They were impossible to use for anything except hurling at Residential Consultants. The beds had all needed replacing at Lord knows what cost because they were not merely too small and uncomfortable, they were potentially lethal. The turnstiles in the gym had to be removed because people kept getting trapped in them. It was a nightmare.
A farm employee was tending the immaculate lawn outside the centre. The first daffodils of spring were showing their heads in the beds that lined the path. That looked pretty, too. He could mention that. Nice lawns, lovely dawns. Great.
Although he was already ravenous, Grenville decided to clock up a few minutes on the rowing machine. This was partly because the rowing machines were the most comfortable seats in the entire sorry complex, and his backside sorely needed the respite, and partly in order to rack up some more valuable credits, which he now decided would be best spent on a surface-to-surface rocket launcher with which to dispatch the kitchen swill-meister.
He put his card in the slot and rowed. So far he must have rowed the equivalent of a transatlantic crossing. If he kept this up, in a month or so he'd look like Stretch Armstrong.
He finished his session and retrieved his card. The cards were precious, here. You couldn't do anything without them. Seriously, you even needed your card just to open the toilet door. You literally couldn't take a dump without your card. He scanned the notice board. Tonight's movie was to be Shallow Hal. Superb. A comedy with Gwyneth Paltrow dressed in a fat suit for us all to laugh at. Was somebody actually trying to foment a riot?