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Lisa was so enthusiastic about the gym I almost didn’t join. Her obsession with fitness had always been so alien to me. I just could not understand what pleasure she could derive from running at 6 a.m. in the rain, as opposed to, say, eating fish and chips in front of EastEnders every Tuesday. Part of me, although envying the way she looked in jeans, was pleased not to be her – it looked so joyless, and seemed so obsessive. But now, somewhere down a sweaty road, I have joined her sisterhood.
We kiss hello and chitter-chatter down to the changing rooms, where Lisa strips off to get changed without a second thought. I manoeuvre myself so that my back is facing her as I unhook my bra, so she can’t see how deflated my breasts have become. The talk almost immediately falls to Anna.
‘She has put on over … five stone.’ Lisa whispers it with shame.
‘God, did she tell you it’s that much?’ I ask, so sad for her already.
‘And that is with the baby … out.’ Lisa pauses before the last word to give the sentence added impact and dramatic effect, and it makes her sound a little ridiculous. As if she is one of those narrow-minded, middle-aged, middle-class women who wear too much hairspray and who have honed their sensibilities to be easily shocked just so they can wallow gloriously in the outrage. I glance around the changing room to see if anybody else is listening, but thankfully they aren’t.
‘But, Lisa, a lot of that will come off with the breast-feeding. It burns up a huge amount of calories – over one and a half thousand a day,’ I say.
Lisa shrugs a hopeful ‘maybe’, but I see a delighted glint in her eye as she wonders how anybody could let themselves go so badly, indulge themselves so much. I wonder if she has forgotten who she is talking to, as we both snap on Lycra training shorts.
‘I just mean, Sunny … she ate everything!’
‘Yes, I know, but she was on that crazy diet just before she got pregnant,’ I say.
‘It was only Atkins,’ Lisa retorts.
‘Yes but she’s a vegetarian,’ I say, still baffled. I gave up all the weird and wonderful diets when I was a teenager. If the cabbage soup diet does work for somebody, it is a short-term goal, a quick fix for half a stone, not a recipe for life. Admittedly I didn’t diet much during my early twenties, I mostly just ate, but I could tell even then that counting points or drinking shakes or not eating fruit was not going to keep me occupied for the time it would take to lose half my body weight. I needed to change the way that I ate, not just cut back for a while.
‘Well, anyway,’ Lisa pulls her hair into a ponytail in front of the mirror – her jaw line is so smooth, not a wrinkle in sight, ‘she’ll have to join the gym now … I mean, how much have you lost, Sunny?’
‘About seven stone so far,’ I say quietly, and hope that nobody hears.
‘Right, and you’ve got like a stone to go or something?’
‘Kind of, maybe two …’ I say.
‘Right. Well, that isn’t that much more than Anna, and she put that all on in nine months! You took a lifetime to get that big!’
‘Uh-huh,’ I say, and nod once, turning to leave the changing room. I make a mental note to go to see Anna soon, and take her some unroasted nuts and a small bar of dark chocolate as a treat.
Lisa is, of course, oblivious to the way she sounds, so there is no point saying anything. I just never want to think like her. Of course, in the class, I become her. I am zoned and focused. I can picture my muscles flexing and stretching, I monitor my breathing, I know exactly how many calories I am burning as we roundhouse kick to the left and right, and bruise the boxing bags with our jabs and undercuts, and skip like boxers for ten minutes until my cheeks fizz with saliva. Then we hit the floor and do twenty minutes of sit-ups. Lisa and I smile at each other occasionally in the mirror, sharing the high. It’s not just chemical, it’s the knowledge that we are effectively airbrushing ourselves, refining and toning and perfecting.
Barry, our instructor, is a hard squat ex-squaddie. Lisa and I shake out our muscles after an hour and twenty minutes, and only then do I notice that we are surrounded by red-faced exhaustion. The other class members are fighting for breath, and somewhere to go to sit down.
‘Good effort, girls. Ten out of ten.’ Barry puts a hand on each of our arms, anointing us with a fitness blessing. We give him a suitably reverent smile, stopping just short of genuflection.
We head to the bar upstairs with wet hair after long hot showers. Lisa’s spot has grown bigger with the heat, swelling to a dangerous level: if it were a volcano I’d be evacuating about now.
Two guys stand in suits by the bar, with fresh pints of lager, and squash rackets poking out of their gym bags. One of them smiles at us as we squeeze past, and apologises for his bag, which barely sticks out at all.
Lisa sighs and says, Thank you!’ in an exasperated tone.
He looks confused and a little insulted, and I mouth ‘It’s fine, thanks’ at him and smile a little weakly as we walk past.
We order two black coffees and the girl behind the bar says that they will take a few minutes and she will call us when they are ready. We settle ourselves in a corner away from the plasma screen showing men’s tennis on clay courts somewhere hot.
‘Have you thought about yoga, Sunny? It would help with your definition,’ Lisa says as she reads the back of a gym pamphlet, eyeing up the new classes on offer.
‘I could do. I guess I am still concentrating on the fat burning at the moment, the high impact cardio stuff, but I know that yoga is supposed to be good.’
‘I mean, it doesn’t appeal to me as much, but I’ve been working my muscles for longer, so they are in better shape. And you never know, it might help with your loose skin.’
‘Maybe,’ I say, and look over to the bar to see if the drinks are ready. They are just being poured, so I grab my purse, saying, ‘I’ll get these,’ beating a hasty retreat before I actually start to cry.
I pay, but the cups are a strange shape and they burn my fingers, so I carry Lisa’s coffee over to her, and pop it down on the table as she thanks me. I turn to go back and grab the other cup, but the guy with the squash racket from earlier has followed me over, carrying the second cup.
‘That’s what I like to see, black coffee, not undoing all your hard work, not like us boozers. Where do you want it?’ he asks with a smile.
‘Oh, you didn’t have to do that, thank you. I can take it from here,’ I say, thinking, how lovely! How chivalrous! How unusual!
‘No worries. I’ll pop it on the table,’ he says with a cheerful grin. He has an Australian accent and thinning hair. He is equal parts muscle and fat, and I think his chest looks welcoming, and I decide he must give good hugs.
‘I’m sure she could have managed,’ Lisa mumbles under her breath, but both the Australian and I hear it and I give her a strange look.
‘That was my pleasure,’ he says to me pointedly, smiling, and walks back to the bar.
‘Lisa, that was a bit rude. Do you know him or something?’ I ask.
‘No, thank God! I mean, could he have been any more obvious? Jesus! And look at him – he’s all fat! Like you want some huge fat guy hitting on you.’
‘He was just being nice, I think,’ I say, blowing on my coffee, embarrassed.
‘Well, if you flirt with guys like that, Sunny, you only have yourself to blame,’ she says, and flicks her hair, picking up the leaflet again, not making eye contact with me.
‘I wasn’t flirting … I was just … being polite …’
‘OK, if you say so.’ She throws the pamphlet down and smiles at me with quite apparent disbelief.
‘What’s wrong?’ I say, confused.
‘Just don’t be so naïve, Sunny. I could have every guy in here hitting on me if that’s what I wanted, but it’s just about respecting yourself. I know you aren’t married yet, so it’s different, but … don’t be too obvious.’
I am sure my mouth falls open.
‘Are we still running on Thursday? I know the weather report is bad, but it would be such a shame to miss it. I love that we can jog together now. It’s so much nicer having somebody to run with in the week. I’m so happy for you, Sunny – and for me too, of course, because I get you to run with!’ She lifts her coffee cup and toasts it in my direction. It’s her way of apologising but still I feel hurt.
I check my watch. ‘I’m really sorry, Lisa. I have to dash. I have a delivery at three.’
I grab my bag, and peck her goodbye. She looks slightly baffled as I run off, and I’m completely unable to make eye contact with the big Australian as I dash past.
‘It might help if you talked about the incident in a bit more detail – the emotional impact you feel it may have had on you.’
‘No.’
‘Not yet?’
‘Never.’
‘But you understand that it will need to be confronted, at some point?’
‘Not really. It’s over. It’s done. I’ve told you what happened. I don’t want to think about it. You could do with some new rugs.’
‘All you’ve told me is that a child was snatched and you helped get him back – there must be more to it than that.’
‘It wouldn’t kill you to co-ordinate in here. It would make it easier.’
‘Make what easier?’
‘Focusing. Your books aren’t even in height order. I can see one shoe poking out from under that chair. That’s off-putting.’
‘Try and cut off from that. What do you want to talk about today, if not the incident?’
‘Where’s the other shoe?’
‘What do you want to talk about today?’
‘My life is too spotless. I want romance!’
‘Do you feel we may have covered that already?’
‘No.’
‘We have gone over it in most of your sessions.’
‘It’s not resolved. In my head.’
‘Which parts?’
‘All of it. I’m still having the daydream.’
‘Which is perfectly healthy. Daydreams aren’t necessarily harmful. They can simply be a manifestation of our hopes, harmless wish fulfilment. It is only when we find them disturbing that –’
‘Maybe if I told you again?’
‘Is it the same one as before?’
‘No, it’s different.’
‘Has Adrian made a reappearance?’
He sees me bristle like some old hen at the sound of the name.
‘Why would you ask that?’
‘I’m just trying to work out how is it different, Sunny.’
‘Let me just tell you. I’m having an argument with my tall, handsome husband – who doesn’t exist – and we are bickering about unimportant things, but he can’t be mad at me for long. It’s a fight about who will drive to the dinner party we are going to. He is wearing a chunky-knit sweater. It doesn’t descend into any real kind of nastiness. It’s not one of those kinds of arguments, the way that people can be to each other, spitting out unforgivable venomous spite … You know. We don’t do that. Because my husband – my imaginary husband – loves me too much, and I him. I know he will never leave me, with a coward’s note about his lust for his secretary. And he knows that I will never get drunk and perform a sexual indiscretion on his brother – he has a younger brother, reckless and attractive, possibly bisexual, always off trekking in the Himalayas, or skydiving. The point is this: we just can’t be unfaithful to each other, in my mind, because unfaithful is for other people with weak relationships, common relationships, relationships that stream past me daily. We don’t score points, I don’t demean his manhood – he is average in length but has great girth – and he doesn’t take food out of my hands for my waistline’s good. We don’t want to trade up or trade down or trade each other in. We are in love.’
‘I see. How exactly is that different to the previous daydream?’
‘We never fought about who would drive before. Because in my daydream I hadn’t passed my test. But I passed it last week in my dream. Really, I’ve been driving for years.’
‘Congratulations anyway.’
‘Thank you. Parallel parked.’
‘Why do you think you still want to talk about this? Why do you think this daydream is in any way unhealthy?’
‘Because I don’t think I understand love! And, seriously, it’s becoming more pressing! I think I have a picture of it in my head that isn’t real, and that is going to stop me ever actually falling in love, or even recognising it! I thought I was in love with Adrian, and that was five years of my life … but now …’
‘Do you think that you might know love when you find it, and that it will replace the daydreams?’
‘No! I think that while my perception of love stays the same I won’t be able to see it in reality. I think I am emotionally unhealthy in that respect.’
‘And what would you say your perception of love is?’
‘Love is the thing that keeps you safe at night. Love doesn’t hurt.’
My therapist adjusts his glasses. He looks as if he is in his late fifties, but he is sixty-two, with dark brown hair smeared in grey. He wears a jumper and jeans. The jeans are old man jeans – they don’t really fit, in any acceptable way. His jumper is navy and cream and claret, diagonals and squares and lines. It doesn’t really fit either. His clothes just sit on him. He doesn’t write things down often, although he has a pad and a pen on the desk behind him in case of emergencies. He doesn’t have a deep or soothing voice. It’s quite bland. Some days I find it annoying. He sounds like a bank clerk, or a travel agent, or any of those faceless voices at the end of a phone line who just want to put you on hold. He crosses his legs. He always sits in the same position, and rubs his left elbow with his right hand every few minutes. He is divorced, but has a long-term girlfriend now, although they don’t live together. I have been seeing him for eight months. It costs me eighty pounds a session, and I come once a week, on a Monday afternoon, for an hour and a half. The ‘incident’, as I am now referring to it, was yesterday, but I’m feeling fine about it already.
I talk with my hands. I grab my knees and pull them up close to my chest. I do that a lot now that I can. I always sit in the big low chair, although there is a sofa. I scrape my fingers from the front to the back of my head when I am really thinking. Not hard, just to feel my hair. Today I am wearing jeans that fit, with a feint line that runs vertically down the middle of each leg, which is slimming. My black shirt is soft but has a large stiff collar that sits slightly away from my neck, avoiding foundation smears. I wear clear lip-gloss. I apply my mascara heavily at the roots of my eyelashes to give a lengthening effect without clogging the tips. When I see photos of myself I never look the way I think I might. My nose is slightly longer than I imagine it to be, my cheekbones slightly higher. I think of myself with a big round face, but it is actually quite angular now. I have the ‘first signs of grey’ in dark brown hair, but I colour them out so you wouldn’t know, but then the world is turning grey these days. I look anywhere between twenty-six and thirty-two, depending on who you ask. I am actually twenty-eight. Everybody says I look younger now I’ve lost the weight, but in my head at least, I look exactly the same.
I don’t think I have ever been in love, which is the reason I started seeing my therapist. He doesn’t seem to think it’s a problem, but at twenty-eight I beg to differ. Of course, previously, when I hadn’t taken control of the fat situation, I couldn’t have seen him, for fear of the criticism. But now that I can say, no matter what he throws at me, I’m not hiding any more, I’m working hard, I’m being a good girl and I’m on a diet, we can talk about the possibility of fat being the problem. Now I am winning this battle I can consider dropping those walls of defence. He thinks I have bigger issues to confront, but he won’t tell me what they are exactly. We have to ‘find them’ together. I enjoy our time, though. It’s nice just to blurt it all out – things that you can’t say to the people in your life, who would be upset, or concerned, by the rubbish in your head.
‘Do you feel under pressure to fall in love, Sunny?’
My therapist is trying a new tack today, it would seem. Good for him. He must be so bored with me by now.
‘No. It’s completely the opposite. I have never had any pressure, from anybody, to date or to marry. Nobody. Which is a relief, of course. I think they are all just too embarrassed to say anything. My mother doesn’t even meddle – how are you, still single? Why aren’t you seeing anybody? Your standards are too high! None of that. No pressure at all.’
‘Do you see her often?’
‘My mother? She comes to visit every couple of weeks, and vents about my father, and his obsession with the car parking spaces in Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose … I think all men of that generation eventually become obsessed with supermarket car parks. Are you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you’ve got a couple of years yet.’
‘We were talking about your mother.’
‘Yes. She comes to see me, on the train because my dad doesn’t like her driving the car – she mounts kerbs like a crazy woman – and she asks me to make her a cup of milky tea and then we chat about other people’s lives really. With a feigned interest, at best. We don’t mention mine.’
‘Do you feel that she is interested in your life?’
‘Well, sometimes she’ll ask about work, but only how I am getting on financially, whether it makes me happy working for myself. She doesn’t like to talk about the nature of my business – not that she officially disapproves of sex toys: she watches Channel Four.’
