The Desperate Bride’s Diet Club (16 page)

Trudie looked up at her in genuine amazement. ‘You’ve lost five pounds!’ she said, aware that her tone was high and screechy.

Violet gave a start and took a quick look at the screen. It was true. She was now 14 stone 9 lbs.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she said.

Nor do I, thought Trudie.

Violet went back to the chairs in a daze
whilst everyone congratulated her.

Well, don’t let it go to your head, thought Trudie. Your body’s still such a disaster that the UN have set up a helpline.

Besides, the wretched woman would probably put it all back on within a week.

THE WHOLE GROUP
was nearly at bursting point as they staggered through Violet’s front door after the class had finished.

Violet closed the front door behind her, trying to make sense of it all. She had lost five pounds. How? Well, she knew how. But that much? So soon? She couldn’t believe it.

‘Well done!’ said Maggie, sinking on to the sofa and still trying to catch her breath
from the ruthless aerobics session.

Trudie had been severe in her punishment and they were all trying to calm their hammering pulses.

‘How did you do it?’ asked Kathy, her face bright red.

Violet was still in a daze and stared around at everyone as she sank on to the sofa.

‘But I had an Indian takeaway,’ she stammered.

‘Every night?’ asked Lucy.

‘That’s the diet for me,’ said Edward with
a grin.

Violet shook her head. ‘It was only on Sunday.’

‘So what did you eat the rest of the week?’

‘Yeah, spill the beans,’ said Kathy. ‘Five pounds off! That’s bloody amazing!’

They were all looking at Violet with eager anticipation.

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I just counted calories. It wasn’t very exciting but at least I wasn’t starving hungry.’

‘Did you have carbs?’ asked Kathy.

Violet nodded. ‘I had pasta one night. Oh and a shepherd’s pie on another night.’

‘That’s what I should have done,’ said Kathy, rolling her eyes. ‘Instead of trying to cope with yet another faddy bloody diet.’

‘Just think what we could have lost if we’d done the same thing,’ said Maggie, looking at Lucy.

‘Except we did that stupid juice diet,’ said Lucy with a grunt.

‘It was a complete nightmare,’
said Maggie.

‘In what way?’ asked Kathy.

‘We worked out that the reason everyone loses weight so quickly is because the juices are so disgusting that you don’t want to drink them. So we went back to eating all the bad stuff again.’

‘And I had a McDonald’s yesterday,’ said Lucy, also looking glum.

Kathy sighed. ‘I failed too. Carb-free, my arse. I can’t do without bread or potatoes. It’s just
not physically possible.’

She looked at Edward who gave a large sigh.

‘I had eight pints on Saturday night,’ he told them. ‘And then a chip kebab. Maybe two.’ He then looked at Violet. ‘You did really well.’

Violet was a little uncomfortable at all the praise
being
heaped upon her. It wasn’t as if she had found the secret to the universe.

‘I’m going to be so good this week,’ said Kathy. ‘No
cheating.’

‘Me too,’ said Lucy. ‘But there’s always something naughty to eat at home. I’ve got no willpower.’

‘What do you suggest?’ asked Maggie.

Violet realised that Maggie was talking to her, asking her for advice.

‘Well, I cleared out my cupboards,’ she told them, somewhat embarrassed. ‘I thought it would be easier if there wasn’t any rubbish in the house for me to eat.’

‘Right!’ said
Kathy. ‘That’s what I’m doing too.’

‘What else did you do?’ said Maggie, leaning forward and eager to learn.

‘Well,’ said Violet, clearing her voice and growing pink. ‘I tried to stick to fifteen hundred calories each day.’

‘What did you eat?’ asked Kathy.

‘Fruit or cereal for breakfast and a readymade sandwich under three hundred calories for lunch.’

‘What about for dinner?’ asked Maggie.

‘Only ready meals. You know, the low-fat ones.’

‘Which ones?’

So they wrote down the meals she had eaten.

‘They’re not very exciting,’ Violet told them.

‘Who cares?’ said Kathy. ‘I’m desperate.’

‘So just fifteen hundred calories,’ said Lucy.

Violet nodded. ‘It is actually quite a lot of food if you’re not eating rubbish.’ She glanced at Edward. ‘I read that men are allowed two thousand calories,
especially if they’re active.’

He nodded thoughtfully. ‘That’s what I’ll aim for then.’

‘How much do you think we’ll lose?’ said Maggie, who now had a gleam in her eye.

Violet bit her lip. This wasn’t really her area of expertise. But she managed to recall a few things from her search through the internet and magazines.

‘There’s no quick fix,’ she told them. ‘I think we’ll all have an initial
big loss if we stick to fifteen hundred calories but then it goes down to a loss of one or two pounds a week. We’ve got to be patient.’

‘But I want to be thin!’ whined Lucy. ‘Now!’

‘If you lose two pounds a week, it will only take two months to lose a stone,’ Violet found herself saying, before wondering where all this was coming from.

‘That’s all right,’ said Maggie, nodding her head.

‘I’ve
been this fat for so long,’ said Kathy. ‘I can wait a bit longer to be thin.’

‘Those crash diets are rubbish,’ said Maggie. ‘I always put on far more weight than I started with.’

As everyone nodded in agreement, Violet realised that perhaps she hadn’t been alone in her healthy-eating troubles.

‘Anything else?’ said Kathy.

Violet hesitated before speaking. ‘I also read that we should take our
measurements. Now, at the beginning. Chest, hips and waist. Not here!’ she said quickly, as the women in particular looked horrified. ‘But it should give you a boost to see the tape measure go down as well as the scales.’

Everyone nodded. And Violet felt a little proud of herself that she had managed to give them some advice.

‘What about alcohol?’ asked Edward, but inside he knew what the advice
would be.

Violet shrugged her shoulders. ‘I guess it still counts as calories. Everything does. All food and drink has some kind of calorie.’

And so they went away, planning to copy her meals for the following week to see how they all got on.

She still couldn’t quite believe it. She, Violet Saunders, giving advice on healthy eating and living. She nearly snorted at the irony.

KATHY HAD BEEN
really determined that this would be the start of a healthy regime. Violet had lost five pounds. She must be able to do the same thing, surely? Wednesday was a blank canvas just waiting to lead her into a new and exciting life.

Unfortunately, fate threw a spanner in the works. Kathy had been left alone in the shop for the past week while Mavis was off with a flu
bug. She was now better but Kathy woke up on Wednesday morning feeling rough. She was running a temperature and coughing like a smoker on eighty a day.

Kathy felt dreadful, with barely any energy to drag herself into the kitchen. What if she really deteriorated and nobody knew that she was lying on the floor with a high fever, unable to move?

She called in sick as she could barely stand up,
let alone be on her feet all day in the shop. Then she fell back on to the sofa and growled at daytime TV.

There was nothing worse than being ill when you lived on your own. No one to put a cool flannel on
your
forehead and make you a cup of tea. Nobody to get you a boiled egg and soldiers or a nice soothing cold drink for your sore throat.

Kathy felt even more lonely than usual. What would
she give to have a lovely boyfriend fussing over right now? Kissing her fevered brow? The only man she spoke to on a frequent basis was Mr Perkins, who came into the shop on a Thursday morning and flirted with her. Unfortunately Mr Perkins was in his late eighties and had so many bristles coming out of both ears and nostrils that he could fill a duvet with them.

The only other man that Kathy
came into regular contact was Edward from the class. He was kind and funny, not too shy to talk in front of a bunch of women. He had nice eyes too. Plus he also had those wide shoulders that could protect you from anything. But he was out of her league. Once he got slim, he would never look at a woman like her. Especially as she would probably fail the diet and stay fat.

She rubbed her forehead.
She didn’t know why she was thinking about Edward in a romantic capacity. It must be the fever.

If Kathy had had any energy, she would have been really cross. Why did she never get any of those horrific stomach bugs which sounded awful but where most people seemed to lose half a stone in a day? No, she had to catch proper flu which entailed lying prostrate on the sofa and eating ice-cream to
soothe her throat whilst watching old films on the TV.

Feed a cold or starve a fever. She had both so she had better keep eating. Maybe she would sweat a few pounds off with the high temperature but she didn’t think so. Not when she discovered how comforting cheese scones and butter could be.

Afterwards, she felt even more depressed. It was ridiculous. She ate too much because she was depressed
about her weight. And she was depressed because she ate too much.

It was a cycle that had taken years to perfect. And Kathy wasn’t sure it could ever be broken.

Edward was also feeling awful but not because of summer flu. He was sitting in a traffic jam but could feel his heart racing again. He knew it wasn’t because of any exertion because he’d been in the car for half an hour.

He glanced
at the clock on the dashboard. Quarter of an hour had gone by and his heart was just starting to calm down. He had tried not to panic, determined to ignore it. This time he wasn’t giving in. He was on medication for the angina and that would just have to do.

Talking to his mother at the weekend hadn’t helped.

Yet again she had gone on and on about how grey he looked until finally he had confessed
to his angina attack. Prepared for a hysterical outburst, he was surprised that none came. Instead, she snatched the packet of biscuits from the table in front of him and dumped them in the bin.

She held up her hand to his protests.

‘No!’ she told him. ‘I’ve lost your father. I’m not going to lose you too. And I certainly won’t be encouraging you to eat any more. No more cakes, biscuits or rubbish
when you come here. If you can’t take care of yourself, then I’m going to.’

He placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘It’s all right, Mum. I get it.’

Her lips begin to tremble and her eyes filled with tears.

‘It’s OK,’ he told her as he pulled her into a hug. ‘I’m going to lose weight. I promise.’

At the time it had been a small white lie but he knew it was time to get serious about his health.
After the weight-club meeting the previous evening, he had gone straight to the twenty-four-hour supermarket and picked up a whole load of fruit and low-fat ready meals. He then went home and threw out everything fat-laden in the house.

He was now on two thousand calories a day and he would just have to learn to exist on it. In actual fact, it was quite a large amount of food. More than enough
to feed him each day. So it was in with the healthy cereals for breakfast and out with the fry-ups.

He had already decided not to hang about at the cricket club that week. He wasn’t going to drink any alcohol for a fortnight to see if that made a difference. Edward knew he’d get some stick from his mates but he had to do this.

But he also knew that just eating healthily wouldn’t be enough. On
the way home from work, he was making a detour. His stomach was rumbling, desperate for its dinner, but he knew it had to be done. If he was going to get healthy, he’d do it the right way.

His pulse was beginning to calm down as he drew into the car park. He got out and lumbered his way towards the front door. He knew what to expect. And he was right.

The skinny receptionist fixed on a Hollywood
smile. ‘Hi. Welcome to Grove Gym. Can I help you?’

He knew what she was thinking but he had to start somewhere.

So he smiled back and said, ‘I’d like to join the gym, please.’

Lucy grabbed a piece of toast before going to college. But unlike every other morning, she didn’t smother it in butter and chocolate spread. A quick slick of marmite was enough. It was a little dry to eat but Lucy didn’t
care.

She grabbed a banana and an apple from the fruit bowl and stuffed them in her bag. No more chocolate. No more crisps. Her moment of shame on the bus had been a turning point and the split denim skirt was hanging up outside her wardrobe to remind her.

‘Are you going to the supermarket later?’ she asked her mum.

Maggie nodded. ‘Healthy ready meals all round.’

‘What about Dad?’

‘I’ll buy
him the full-fat versions. He won’t twig.’

Lucy swung her bag on to her shoulder. ‘I’m grabbing a salad from the canteen for lunch.’

‘Watch those calories!’ shouted her mother as she swung the front door closed.

Lucy smiled as she walked down the front path. This was a new beginning, of that she was sure. She just had to be strong and not succumb to temptation.

Unfortunately, the guy in front
of her on the bus had bought his breakfast from McDonald’s and the smell drove her so crazy with lust that she had to move seats. As she left the bus, she also tried not to inhale the delicious aroma wafting out of the bakery near the bus stop.

On automatic pilot, she found herself in the newsagent’s and reaching out for a chocolate bar to keep
her
going until lunchtime. Just in time, Lucy remembered
her fruit. So she picked up some sugar-free gum instead. If she needed something to chomp on, that would have to be it.

She was queuing up to pay when she glanced at the young guy who had just bought a can of Red Bull and was leaving the shop. They locked eyes briefly before he looked away and hurried out of the shop. It was Robert, the guy whom she had slept with the previous summer.