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I decided that now was the time to ask the question that I’d been wanting to ask all day. ‘Hey, listen guys. I need you to tell me something and I want you to be really, really honest…’
‘Sounds serious,’ said Nesta.
‘It is. I want you to tell me, do you think I’ve put on weight?’
Nesta, Lucy and TJ looked at each other.
‘No,’ said TJ after a moment too long. ‘Not really. Well, we all did a little. So no more than the rest of us.’
‘Is that a yes or a no?’
‘You look great, as always,’ said Lucy, ever my ally. ‘Don’t even think about it.’
‘Well, I have to. My jeans don’t fit.’
‘OK…’ said Nesta. ‘Seeing as no one around here is telling the truth, yes you have put on a little weight. I noticed in Italy, actually, and didn’t want to say anything but…’
‘Nesta,’ interrupted Lucy. ‘You are always putting your foot in your mouth. In fact you only ever open your mouth to change feet.’
‘Hey, that’s not fair,’ said Nesta. ‘You didn’t even let me finish. Yes, Izzie, you have put on a little weight but no big deal. You can carry it. You’re the tallest of us all, so no biggie.’
‘Hmph. I’d say it is a biggie. And I’m the biggie, to be precise. Tell me honestly, do I look fat?’
‘No way,’ TJ and Lucy chorused.
‘Am I as big as Angela Roberts in Year Eleven?’ I stood up and stuck my stomach out for them. ‘See, I look pregnant.’
‘No way,’ said TJ. ‘That’s a huge exaggeration.’
‘OK, so is it my bum or my tum or my legs that look biggest?’
TJ and Nesta exchanged a look and the next thing I knew, they had pulled a pillow out from behind Lucy, wrestled me to the floor and shoved the pillow over my face.
‘For heaven’s sake, shut up about being fat,’ said Nesta. ‘Not fat, not fat, not fat. You are curvy.’
Curvy? I thought as I tried to fight them off. Curvy? That’s just a polite way of saying fat. Curvy. Oh dog doo.
Suddenly I wished I hadn’t asked.
I got home later to the alluring smell of garlic and onions. Mum had been doing pasta in a tuna and tomato sauce with parmesan cheese. Calorific and a half. No way could I eat that even though I was hungry. I’d hardly eaten all day. As Nesta and TJ had tucked into their sandwiches at lunch-time, I had binned mine and just eaten my apple. Then, later at Lucy’s when her mum brought us up tea and cookies, I hadn’t had one.
I quickly checked that Mum and Angus (my stepdad) were busy watching TV then went back to the kitchen. This is how it has to be, I thought, as I binned my supper and hid it under some newspaper so that Mum wouldn’t notice. Then I made myself two ryvitas with a scraping of marmite. I have to accept that I have to suffer to be beautiful.
When I went to bed a couple of hours later, my stomach was rumbling and all I could think of was food. The song from the musical Oliver! began to sing in my brain, ‘Food glorious food… hot bangers and mustard… While we’re in the mood, baked apple and custard…’ Or something like that. Plates of steaming pasta, baked potatoes with lashings of butter, slices of toast and peanut butter, chocolate cake and blueberry muffins began to play across the screen of my mind. I am starving, I thought as my body seemed to rise of its own accord from the bed like a sleepwalker and make its way down the stairs and into the kitchen where it began to raid the fridge. I’ll start properly tomorrow, I thought as I made myself a hot chocolate then ate my way through a huge chunk of wholemeal bread with peanut butter and damson jam, two cookies and a piece of marzipan-covered cake.
Phew, that feels better, I thought as I went back to bed full of good resolutions for the morning.
---Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow, we may diet.---