The Fat And The Thin Of It Read online

drinker, and red wine wasn’t the best of drinks as it made me feel like this; shitty.

  Just as well I had come back downstairs as all the lights were on, and the TV. I switched everything off, checked the front door was locked and carefully clambered back upstairs to bed.

  When I woke up, I knew exactly what I would do with my bin bags.

  It was seven-thirty and still quite dark and gloomy, but I could do what I had to indoors until it got lighter outside. Mark would be asleep until noon at the earliest, so I had enough time to get two of the boxes into the attic.

  I put on a tracksuit and sensible shoes as I’d have to climb that pull-down ladder thing with pretty heavy bags in my arms, and I never did feel safe on that thing. It didn’t feel as if it could take my weight, and after three days of stuffing my face it could give up the ghost and send me tumbling.

  I got them up there, though, and rummaged round looking for old suitcases that I knew Bob had put up here in the past. With more than just a little trepidation, I gingerly opened the three cases I’d found in case a rat flew out and lunged for my throat. I managed to get one bin bag in each case, and then placed the cases on top of the rafters to keep them off the floor in case of a leaky roof or whatever, and finally made for the daylight and safety of the hallway.

  After that, I took the remaining two bin bags down to the kitchen and dragged them through the utility room and out to the garden. I stood at the bottom of the garden and looked back and at the houses that surrounded mine. The Garrisons’ upstairs windows looked onto my garden, but I knew no-one was home. Mrs Simms now had everything set up downstairs, with her bed in the dining room and a walk-in shower where her utility room used to be. She was frail, but hadn’t completely lost her independence, and she had a cleaner come in once a week on Mondays and her daughter brought her shopping in every Friday. Today was Thursday, so I could consider myself to have relative privacy. The house that backed onto mine was hidden by high, healthy bushes on our side, so… yep; I could do what I wanted.

  I went to the shed, pulled out a pack of heavy-duty gardening bags and pulled off three. I stuck one inside of the other, then put one bin bag inside. The hardest part was digging a hole in the frozen earth. It was hard and heavy, and I kept hitting the thick roots of the bushes and had to work my way round them as best I could to go deep enough. Finally, I’d got the hole dug and the stash buried.

  Oh, did my back ache when I’d done! I really should do more exercise, and I thought of Jill and her little gym in the attic. I had Wii Fit, but hardly used it. The first time I tried it out I fell off that silly little board and twisted my ankle, and did less exercise than ever while I was laid up for two weeks! Bloody thing… ouch, my back.

  I was very pleased with myself though. I thought by splitting the cash up and stashing it here and there was quite clever. I took the last bin bag up to my bedroom and put it on a shelf in the wardrobe which was laden with woollies. I covered the bag with the woollies and surveyed the pile; yep, no-one would think there was a stash of thirty grand under there. I cleared what was left in Bob’s side of the wardrobe and pushed the coin box inside, then arranged the left-over clothes on and around it.

  Ooh! My sodding back!

  Right, a bath was what I needed.

  I went to the bathroom and ran the water, then found some scented candles and plugged in my CD player just outside the bathroom. The cable would reach round the door so I could close it, and then Mark wouldn’t be bothered by my Luther Vandrosse Greatest Hits.

  While the bath was running, I called Jill and invited her round for lunch, but all she wanted was tea; typical. She’d be able to help me sort out the bill thing. I knew Bob kept everything on the computer, but I wasn’t that great at IT.

  Besides, I felt like having her round for a little comfort and girlie-time.

  Jill

  Terry and I spent a wonderful weekend together.

  On Saturday morning, we went for a drive down to Brighton, and even though it was too cold to walk on the promenade, we had a fantastic lunch in a tiny little pub in the old part of town. We stayed in the pub until it got dark, and as we’d both had a fair amount of wine, he suggested we find a hotel and stay the night.

  Little did I know that he’d already booked the hotel the day before we’d patched things up with the intent to do just that; patch things up. He’d booked a beautiful suite with a four-poster bed and a Jacuzzi in the en suite. When we entered the room, there was a bottle of champagne chilling on the night-stand and a plate of bite-sized delicacies of caviar and salmon and an assortment of cheeses and pâtés. I hadn’t felt so relaxed and so in love with Terry for a very long time, and the fact that Terry had planned all of this brought a lump to my throat. It showed that he really did like me, after all. I have to say that one bottle left us short and we ordered another, but we drank it while lying in the Jacuzzi and it made us feel quite sea-sick, what with being pissed and the bubbles and all. We practically fell out of the bathroom, giggling like kids, and finished on the bed what we’d try to start in the Jacuzzi.

  The drive home was slow and pleasurable, and we stopped off in Midhurst for lunch, but we didn’t linger as we wanted to get home before nightfall. Once home, I grabbed a bottle of Pinot from the fridge, made some sandwiches and we took it all up to the spare bedroom as I hadn’t had time to change the sheets on our bed and air the smoke out of the room, and we stayed there cuddled up and watching TV for the rest of the evening. Eating in bed was something neither of us liked, but it was the spare bed and I’d sort it out the following day.

  The weekend had been absolutely perfect, but for one thing; all the food. Every meal made me worry that I’d make my Chipie’s tight again, and although I tried not to eat too much, Terry would give me the raised eyebrow look which said ‘are you worrying about weight?’, so I had to smile and chew and ‘hm-m-m’ and a-h-h’ at every mouthful, but it did worry me, all those calories and carbs. Even so, I decided that the weight gain was outweighed by sticking a plaster over the rift in our marriage and I’d eat only once a day and work it all off the following week.

  Terry left at his usual time on Monday morning, and I lay in bed running my hands over my stomach; definitely more there to pinch than the last time I’d done the ‘bed test’. I rolled one knee over the other and checked the hip bone; still protruding, but the hip pad felt spongier.

  This really was not good, not good at all.

  I sat up and scrunched over, checking the rolls under my boobs. Oh, bugger; the rolls spread right round to the sides and I could most definitely grab something just under my armpit. . I could also feel the sensitive part on my thigh tingling, too. I’d stored my Chipie’s back where I’d found them as soon as I’d got home the evening before and I wouldn’t put them on again until I felt all this excess had disappeared.

  Right, there was only one thing for it, girl.

  I climbed up to the gym once I’d had breakfast, but with only half a slice of toast. With all that food to work off I considered giving myself a step class as well as an hour on the machine. If I was going to be a stay-at-home housewife, I couldn’t carry on eating like that or I’d end up as big as…

  No; that was not a fair comparison at all. We’d always had different figures and it wasn’t just down to eating badly on her part. It was also down to genes and metabolism, if a person was active or not… there were a lot of factors that made Jackie and me different. For instance, my stomach went on strike when I was depressed or worried about something, whereas Jackie couldn’t keep her nose out of the fridge.

  And, I also had a dread of getting fat, whereas Jackie didn’t seem to mind. She’d start a diet, then break it, then start again, and so forth. My figure, on the other hand, was the most important part of my makeup, because it appeared to be so to other people. I felt that, if I lost my figure, then I’d lose my identity, because no-one seemed to care about what I did in life just as long as I stayed slim. So, that’s what I had to do then, wasn’t it?
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  I finished on the elliptic and did forty minutes on the step bench, then I had a shower and hid myself under the baggy pair of jeans I’d found the Friday before and one of Terry’s sweat-shirts. I went downstairs and collapsed, exhausted and full of aches, on the sofa. Sod it, I had a cigarette in the living room, and I didn’t feel guilty. I’d hardly smoked all weekend because Terry didn’t like it and it had been impossible to smoke in the places we’d been to. I smoked the cigarette while watching Homes under the Hammer, but I felt as bored as a beaver in a desert before they’d even sold the first piece of property.

  I didn’t want to call Jackie as Bob had only just got home. She’d be walking on clouds, shopping for his favourite food and preparing dinner all day, and making sure she looked absolutely gorgeous for when he got home from the estate agency that he shared with Richard.

  I’d never thought to ask, but it struck me as strange that Richard never went to the Spanish agency. I presumed they had shared interests in both agencies, but it was always Bob who travelled to Spain. Of course, from what Richard told me, I could see the reason, but I wondered if Jackie ever thought it strange as well.

  Still, each to their own…

  But I was bored! Was this what being out of work held for