“What’s the matter, sweetheart? You love coffee and walnut cake.”
“I know… it’s just that. Well, I had this weird dream and I… oh I don’t know… I want to climb up and down the stairs again. I want to see the view from the bottom of the garden. I want to walk down the street. I just… I just have to come to terms with the way things are now. It’s hard to do that some days.”
“Do you want me to cancel seeing Mam?” Jakey asked gently, helping Clara to move from the bed end of the room to the family seating end.
“No, no, love. I’ll be fine. Look, don’t mind me. Turn the telly on for me and go and sort Skye. She’ll be snuggled in with Billie, I bet. It’s time they both got up and dressed.”
Jakey gave a worried frown but settled Clara into her bariatric armchair and turned the television on. As usual, there were a number of bland, well-preened individuals discussing the events of the day in their soothing morning voices. They made local muggings on elderly and vulnerable folk sound like a picnic. The Diamond Rider Syndicate or the Cobalt Bat Boys again, no doubt. Such ingenious jewel thieves (smiley, smiley). Such a lovely colour of blue (smiley, smiley). Next there would be some feature about weight loss or fat pets or childhood obesity. All intertwined with fluffy local news items to make their little corner of the world seem like such a wonderful place to be mugged or obese in. He wasn’t really sure how Clara could bear to watch it. Jakey much preferred to read cookery books or, better still, sit typing up his recipe notes at the small dining table that divided the living room into its two very different but functional ends. Jakey also uploaded many of his recipes to the internet and Guy had set him up with his own blog: Jakey-bakes.
Jakey picked his laptop up from the coffee table in front of Clara and took it out to the hall where he balanced it on top of his empty shoes, lest he forget it for his journey today. He yelled up to Billie and Skye, urging them to hurry up if they fancied homemade porridge and golden syrup. A bump or two from Billie’s bedroom at the back of the house told him that at least one of them had heard.
Jakey headed into the kitchen and began pouring porridge oats into a pan. Another bump, this time from downstairs, caught his attention. He crossed the small hallway and stuck his head round the living room door to see if Skye had crept down already. He saw only Clara, however, asleep in her chair. The remote control to the television had fallen from her lap, its batteries spilled out across the carpet. He bent soundlessly to pick them up and, as he did so, he felt a slight breeze across his neck. Jakey looked up and towards the door, expecting to see Billie sneaking in to make him jump, something she used to do fairly often for amusement. His ear twitched and he scratched it, confused. He had definitely felt something or someone swish by him but there was nothing and nobody in the room, other than Clara snoring gently, her mouth hung open to maximise breathing, and a necklace he’d never seen before undulating upon her wide chest.
7
Tuesday
CLARA
Clara somehow, unbelievably, managed to return to her dream. She hadn’t expected to do this, although she’d prayed for it all night long. Jakey was in the kitchen, starting breakfast for the girls when Clara saw the Celtic amulet peeking out from beneath one of her cushions. She didn’t recall taking it off and certainly couldn’t remember tucking it beneath a cushion, but nevertheless, there it was. Desperate to wear it once more, she lifted her heavy arms as high as she could so that the amulet slipped over her head. By lowering her chin, she found it slid easily over her hair, dropping onto her chest like a cold hailstone. Clara wasted no time in rubbing the purple stone with vigour, hoping to erase her present state if only for the length of a dream.
Once again, the punch inside, the soaring up and along, the launch towards Star’s body, which had appeared like a genie summoned. And then… settling into her like a bird coming to land on a smooth branch.
STARLA
Starla once more appraised her trim form. Was that crazy whooping sound really her? She spun herself around until she felt dizzy, and immediately bumped into one of the side tables. The remote control fell onto the floor, its battery guts spilling across the carpet at the sleeping Clara’s feet.
At the bump, Jakey’s head appeared round the door. Starla held her breath and waited for Jakey to see her. She was stood right in front of him! Jakey, however, simply squatted down at Clara’s feet, and began picking up the batteries. As he bent over to reach one that had rolled under the coffee table, Starla leaned forward and blew gently on his neck. Jakey spun round, puzzled, looking immediately towards the door. But he couldn’t see Starla, not one tiny part of her, so she flicked his ear and walked out of the room.
Starla headed up the stairs, the geography of the floor above almost forgotten by her years spent downstairs. Jakey had changed things round a bit by the look of things. The large master bedroom, overlooking the garden at the back, was now occupied by Billie. Starla knew this without even entering because a name plaque was attached to the door: Billie’s Room. She vaguely remembered Billie getting the plaque for her birthday some years ago from Mikey and Tina, then nagging Jakey relentlessly to fix it to her bedroom door. Before the big back bedroom had become Billie’s, it had belonged to Gavin, Guy and Mikey. The smaller double bedroom, at the front of the house, was the one that Clara and Jakey had shared before the stairs had become impossible for her to climb.
Starla pushed open the door to the bathroom. Jakey had painted it slate grey and fixed new white tiles around the bath and basin. It looked really smart with its sleek black trimming, chrome fittings and mirrored cabinets. She had a hazy memory of Jakey buying paint and tiles and disappearing upstairs to make a right royal racket chipping the old tiles off. She hadn’t involved herself in any part of the design, however, knowing that she would never see the end product.
A tall green plant stood in the corner next to the bath, its healthy fronds giving the room a splash of natural colour which coordinated with the bubble spot design on the blind above the window and the matching shower curtain. The bathroom smelt lovely with a fragrant ‘forest glade’ air freshener on the windowsill adding to the overall aesthetic. Jakey really had given the bathroom a five star makeover!
Suddenly, Starla felt angry. This was luxury that belonged only to Jakey and Billie. How could they have been this cruel to leave her out? Why, she hadn’t even seen a photograph of this lovely bathroom! What would she find in Jakey’s bedroom: a massive, sexy water bed and a harem of belly dancers hiding in the wardrobe?
Starla pushed open the door to Jakey’s room as if to confirm her suspicions and immediately her anger melted into love for him. The room was sparsely furnished with the same bed they’d shared before she’d been forced to sleep downstairs, and one wall was covered in mounted photographs of Clara, Billie and both sets of twins at different ages and stages. Next to his side of the bed, Jakey had framed a massive photograph of Clara’s face, her huge green eyes staring innocently up towards the camera and her hair waving seductively around her face. She looked like a model: a saucy model perhaps, since the tip of her tongue could just be seen between plump ruby red lips, as if in preparation for a kiss. Over the top of the frame, Jakey had draped a red ribbon with white edges. Starla recognised it immediately as the ribbon she had worn in her hair on the night that they first made love. She closed her eyes in recollection and saw Jakey pulling the end of the ribbon as they danced slowly to a Van Morrison CD.
As if struck by lightning, a bolt of desire ran through Starla’s body. She didn’t recognise it initially but eventually the feeling grew until she could feel the material of her top against her nipples and the tightness of her leggings below. Of course, why wouldn’t she have these feelings? It had been months and months since Jakey had stayed the night in the bariatric bed downstairs. She desperately wanted him next to her but knew that she had grown too big to accommodate him on the mattress beside her. She also knew that an oxygen mask to ward off sleep apnoea wasn’t exactly the sexiest of adult accessor
ies.
Starla reached out and stroked Jakey’s pillow. He was a good man and she loved him with her heart and soul, if not her body. She took another swift look around then left the room… almost colliding with Jakey in the process. She shrank from him, afraid that she might wake up if she made contact with reality.
A pyjama-clad Skye ran out of Billie’s room and jumped into Jakey’s arms. Starla crept backwards into the third bedroom – the tiny one that used to be Billie’s. It was clearly a room with two purposes now: a bedroom for Skye and a general storage room. At the end of Skye’s child size bed, clad in ‘Princess’ themed bedding, there were bags of kit for Clara’s sanitation, as well as bariatric clothes, and equipment that was either broken or no longer suitable for someone weighing over thirty stone. Down the longest wall, there was a stack of boxes containing paraphernalia for baking and cooking: cake tins, plastic boxes, utensils, food mixer, juicer and so on. The room was certainly functional, mused Starla, and quite a contrast to the minimal look of Jakey’s bedroom and the clean, contemporary bathroom.
Starla peered out around the bedroom door to see Jakey carrying Skye downstairs. Billie, already dressed in her school uniform, followed them, checking her phone rather than her step on the staircase. Starla’s heart lurched with the worry that she might stumble but Billie seemed well-practised in the art of moving and texting.
With the upstairs now free of family members, Starla couldn’t resist having a look inside Billie’s room. This was the largest room and, for many years, it had housed a set of bunk beds and one single bed, to accommodate the boys. The floor used to be covered in plastic building blocks, metal cogs, cars and cartons crammed full of cheap junk like dinosaurs and guns, which probably got passed on to the binmen. Originally, the walls had been covered in football and rugby heroes but eventually scantily clad models and favourite female singers seemed to hog all the wall space.
Now, it was a typical fifteen year old girl’s room and, in many ways, it took Starla back to her own teenage years. Back then, her bedroom walls had displayed the likes of Duran Duran, Blondie and Abba, as well as a very young Rob Lowe, Johnny Depp and John Travolta. It amused Starla that Billie also had a couple of Johnny Depp posters, although these were of a chiselled, older, ‘Jack Sparrow’ as opposed to the young, floppy-haired ‘Glen Lantz’ from Nightmare on Elm Street. Starla didn’t recognise any of the musicians, whose posters also embraced Billie’s walls. However, they were all young and a bit gormless-looking, sporting names like ‘Dane’ and ‘Brett’ and ‘Jay’. Such perfect teeth and hair too! Probably Americans.
Billie’s dressing table was covered in make-up pencils and compacts; hair spraying, drying or straightening equipment; odd bits of school stationery; and, Starla noted, there was that electronic tablet book thing that hadn’t been seen since Christmas, peeping out from beneath a magazine.
Starla frowned, recognising the magazine as this month’s Femme Fanfare. She picked it up and flicked through. Sure enough, there was the article written by Steven Kelly. Billie had scribbled across her photo with angry strokes that had partly torn through the page. Starla felt her throat constrict; she hadn’t expected this kind of reaction when she had agreed to that stupid interview. Starla’s cheeks paled as she noticed the sub-heading for the first time: “Positively Obese!” How had she missed that? And how had she missed the use of their full names? Had she been too busy studying the statistics or turning the magazine this way and that to get a good look at the photos? This wasn’t a fluffy article translating the positive thoughts from someone trapped in their own body. It was… taunting… hurtful… damaging…
Starla laid down on Billie’s bed to think hard about the repercussions. Why hadn’t she thought this through before? She’d been so desperate for attention, so flattered that a journalist was coming to write about her wonderful family, that she hadn’t given a moment’s thought to the consequences.
Something hard under the covers made Starla lift her backside up in an inverted crab and she felt around beneath the bedding. It was Billie’s laptop. Starla pulled it out on top of the bed and sat crossed-legged to open it. Perhaps Billie had written something about the Femme Fanfare article online. Seen a funny side to it perhaps? Although the hard biro strokes slashed over her picture would seem to suggest otherwise.
Starla pressed the laptop’s ON button and was asked to type in a password. She wasn’t very good with computers although Guy had saved a number of forums to ‘Favourites’ and she could send an email if Jakey reminded her how to find the recipient.
This was going to be harder than she thought: what could the password possibly be? It could literally be anything. She looked around the room and selected Johnny Depp’s first name, last name and a combination of both with dots and dashes between. No joy. She went on to try some of the band names splashed over various posters around the room. Nothing. ‘Billie_Jackson’ was her next guess, followed by ‘Billie_Depp’. Nothing again. Think Starla, think, she told herself desperately, as if finding this password were a key to saving the planet. What would she have typed in aged fifteen? Of course! Easy! After a few combinations, the laptop immediately burst into life. ‘Johnny4Billie’ had done it!
Billie’s social networking accounts appeared on a number of different tabs at the top of the screen. Starla didn’t recognise many of the logos but she understood the concept of social networking. She also understood the concept of cyberbullying. And she was looking at it right now! Certain phrases stood out:
“Ugly, fat, spotty biatch…”
“Fattest muvva & daughta eva…”
“Why, yo mummas so fat, shes on both sides of the family…”
“Like this if u h8 Billie Jackson…”
The cruel words seemed endless. Starla slammed the laptop lid shut and unplugged it. Who could be doing this, saying these spiteful things to her beautiful daughter? Who? And, more to the point, why? Was this because of one magazine article?
With a sob and a sudden need to get out, Starla shut her brimming eyes and vigorously rubbed the Celtic ring. She immediately felt herself falling… falling… falling back into the body of Clara.
8
Tuesday
CLARA
Clara woke in her chair with her eyes moist.
“Hey you,” said Jakey affectionately to her, “I’ve been keeping your porridge warm in the pan. Are you ready for it now?”
Without waiting for an answer, Jakey moved from the dining table where he sat with Skye and Billie. Skye was dripping golden syrup into her porridge in a long, thin spiral, chatting about the day ahead. Billie was still pressing buttons on her phone, her body hunched over; blonde hair screening the sides of her face like a hood. She hadn’t touched her porridge and seemed disinterested in Skye’s chatter.
“Is everything alright Bills?” Clara asked her daughter.
“Yeah.” Billie didn’t even look up.
“You don’t seem your usual self, love.”
“I’m fine,” snapped Billie, jumping up from the table and spilling her orange juice. “God, what are you like Mam? I can’t even sit here without the flamin’ Danish inquisition. Leave me alone will you!”
She fled from the room and stomped loudly upstairs. Clara could hear her trying to slam the bedroom door but failing miserably, due to the overly fibrous carpet.
“Spanish.” Jakey muttered, coming into the room with Clara’s porridge.
“What?”
“It’s the Spanish inquisition.”
“Jakey, for the love of god. Not now.”
“For the love of god. Not now, not now,” parroted Skye.
“You’ll be sorry when Skye’s teachers complain about the way she talks to people,” whispered Jakey to Clara as he bent to put her porridge on the side table, before wheeling her dining board over and adjusting it to the right height.
“Sorry, but I’m worried about Billie,” Clara whispered back to him. “She’s never behaved like that before. Did you hear wh
at she said?”
“I did but I have to worry about getting Skye to nursery and catching a train right now. Can we try to have a chat later, do you think? Marnie should be having Skye tonight so it’ll just be the three of us.”
“OK,” Clara sighed, wishing she could run upstairs after Billie and give her some loving hugs. As usual, however, she was confined to being downstairs, practically immobile.
Jakey made light work of cleaning up Skye. She’d managed to dribble golden syrup down her clothes and across the table. He stacked some tins with various Jakey-bakes next to Clara along with a flask of tea and several cans of pop, then whisked her dirty pots away into the kitchen.
Eventually, he lifted Skye up to her Grandma for their customary goodbye kiss, collected his laptop, gathered some boxed up Jakey-bakes for his mother and remembered his wallet, mobile phone and railcard. He then fastened Skye’s shoes and buttoned her coat, grabbed a bag of spare clothes for the nursery and blew Clara a kiss. They had both managed to miss Billie, who must have sloped off to school without a sound.
The front door slammed shut and then there was just the low hum of the television and Clara’s breathing, always so very laboured.
Clara fervently wished she could fall asleep and dream once again about being strong and sinuous. She wondered if the events of her last dream had anything to do with Billie’s outburst this morning. She could recall the details clearly, despite the fact that she’d been asleep. In her dream state, she’d gone upstairs as Starla and found a load of hateful messages written to Billie about her weight, her spots, and her family. The sort of nonsensical comments you could only dream about reading, for goodness’ sake!
On the television, the morning chat show cameras panned to their in-studio kitchen. Clinton Montague-Scott was the featured celebrity chef and the ingredients of the stuffed porchetta he was making later in the programme made Clara salivate. She reached for her tub of coffee cake on the dining board beside her and the flask that stood next to it. The flask was heavier than she expected and it dropped into her lap by accident. Bending her head down slightly before retrieving it, she caught a flash of purple reflected in the flask’s stainless steel surround.
Dying to Be Slim Page 5