The Desperate Bride’s Diet Club (6 page)

Glancing at the kitchen clock, she realised it was nearly half past nine. Only an hour until the interview. She hurtled upstairs in a panic about her outfit and then
had to spend ten minutes sitting on the bed, trying to get her breath back before opening the wardrobe door.

First things first. She needed to put on the control pants. She had bought a pair for the Christmas party at work but had bottled out of going, saying that she had the flu. Violet had never been a party kind of person, especially since she had put on so much weight in the past couple of
years.

She got the knickers out of the packet. Great big ugly beige things that looked like bicycle shorts. She heaved and toiled and eventually got them over her
fat
knees, but there was no way they were going to make it past her thighs. She lay on the bed, yanking at the knickers but only succeeded in breaking a couple of nails.

It was no use. She was too fat. She gave up and spent the next
five minutes trying to get the damn things off.

Still huffing and puffing from the exertion with the underwear, she squeezed into her black trousers. The waist button was straining but if she didn’t breathe too deeply it should stay put. She regretted not getting a bigger size of the magic knickers but even they were a size twenty. Her stomach bulged through the trouser material. She would have
covered up the rolls of fat by doing up the matching jacket but the buttons wouldn’t meet in the middle so she gave up.

Heading downstairs, she glanced in the hall mirror and sighed with self-pity. (It was only a small one. She had no need for full-length mirrors.) Her long, black hair had gone impossibly fluffy from a quick wash and blast with the hairdryer. As normal, she’d only bothered with
a sweep of mascara. Her cheeks were rosy from the heat and Violet could feel the beginning of sweat patches appearing under the jacket.

So she had the window down in the car on the way into town to cool down, even though it was only the beginning of May and the temperature wasn’t that high yet.

She hovered outside the office, trying to pluck up the courage to go in. In the end, apathy won over
her desire to run away. What was the point in fretting? She wasn’t going to get the job. So she went inside, not caring either way.

Mason & Mason was a large company, which
appeared
to be doing rather well, if the office decor was anything to go by. It was all glass and mirrors. Violet had to keep averting her eyes to avoid seeing her own reflection.

She was given a visitor’s pass by the receptionist
and told to wait. The interview was with Mark Harris and someone would come down to collect her.

A fierce-looking blond woman appeared. ‘You here for the interview?’ she barked.

Violet nodded, a bit scared.

‘You’d better come with me.’

They both stepped into the lift.

‘You’re the fifth one he’s seen today,’ the woman snapped.

‘Sorry,’ muttered Violet.

‘Not your fault,’ she said. ‘But I’ve
got better things to do than show people in and out of the building all morning.’

On the third floor, the doors opened and they went through the office. It was bright and modern, full of smoked-glass panels, streamlined beech desks and brightly coloured chairs, all fighting for space amongst the exotic plants. The walls were adorned by fake Monet prints and motivational photographs of a man running
up a steep mountain towards his goal and a possible heart attack.

They entered a messy department, which seemed at total odds with the rest of the building. The desks were strewn with paper; computer magazines were piled high on top of filing cabinets; and boxes filled with the insides of various computers were littered all over the floor.

Amongst the debris were the staff, all with their heads
down and looking very busy. The woman showed Violet into an office.

‘He’ll be here in a minute,’ she informed her and then left.

Violet stood inside Mark Harris’s office, trying to compose some witty answers to the normal interview questions. Where did she herself in five years’ time? What assets could she bring to this secretarial role? But her mind drew a blank.

‘Right,’ came a male voice
from the doorway. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

Violet spun round and stared. It took her a moment before she realised where she had seen him before. She couldn’t believe it. It was the handsome man from Marks & Spencer. The man whose cake she had snatched.

Mark Harris’s eyes had widened as well. ‘It’s you!’ he said, pointing. ‘The phantom cake thief!’

Violet gulped, the tears filling her eyes.
She was so embarrassed. Of all the dumb luck, this was the worst. She waited for him to start shouting at her to get out. But he didn’t. He stared at her for a beat and then handed over a plastic cup.

‘I took a guess at white coffee. Hope that’s OK.’

She watched him walk around to the other side of the desk and sit down. Normally good-looking people flustered her. And Mark Harris was definitely
a man to fluster women.

She wasn’t sure what made him so attractive. His black hair was too wavy, and slightly too long as it curled around his neck. His face was creased with too many lines for his relatively young thirty-odd years. But beneath that olive skin he had a kind of sensual magnetism.

Violet, however, was beyond being flustered. She was humiliated. She didn’t know what to do. Or
how
to
get out of there quickly. This was terrible. Awful. Her cheeks burned with mortification.

‘Look, sit down,’ he said, gesturing at the chair on the opposite side of the desk from him. ‘Please.’

She sank into a chair and stared down into the coffee. Beam me up, Scotty. If the ground could swallow her whole right now, that would be the answer to her prayers.

‘So, it says here you’re Violet
Saunders,’ he said, looking at the paperwork in front of him. ‘Is that right?’

She nodded, still staring down at the coffee.

‘I just need to get it right for the police when they come.’

Violet whipped her head up and found his green eyes twinkling at her.

‘Well, at least I can see your face now,’ he told her. ‘I was only joking about the police, by the way. Shall we get on with the interview?’

She stared at him, trying to figure out what he had just said. He was joking about the police. He really did want to interview her. The agony would have to last a little longer. She simply needed to fluff the meeting, fail to get the job and get the hell out of there.

‘I’m sorry about the cake,’ said Violet, finally finding her voice.

‘PMT, was it? Least of my worries, to be honest.’ He shrugged
his shoulders. ‘Anyway, you did me a favour. It was a leaving present. But I’m not sure Felicity ever ate anything anyway so you saved me wasting a tenner.’

Violet didn’t reply. The humiliation was still rushing through her body.

‘So you’re out of work at the moment?’

She nodded.

‘It says here you got made redundant before Easter.’

She nodded again.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any IT experience,
have you?’

This time she shook her head.

Mark Harris stared at her for a beat. ‘Are you always this quiet?’

She thought about it and nodded once more.

His rumpled face split into a warm smile. ‘Are you sure you’re going to be able to answer the hotline if you’re always this quiet?’

Violet blinked at him. ‘The what?’

‘You know, the job you applied for. The Hotline Assistant job.’

She had
no idea what he was talking about but he didn’t seem to notice.

He leant back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head. ‘Basically, you’d be answering the phone to our sales force when they are having trouble with their computers,’ he told her. ‘You log the call on the computer and then field the calls on to the rest of the department. Not exactly a laugh a minute but that’s probably why
the pay is so low.’

Violet finally plucked up the nerve to string a sentence together. ‘I was sent here for a secretarial position.’

‘You were?’ He frowned and picked up the phone. ‘Cecilia? Mark Harris here. I’ve got a Violet Saunders in front of me. Says she’s a secretary, nothing to do with IT. Right. God, they are useless. I see.’

He hung up and muttered a few words in a language Violet
didn’t recognise.

Then he blew out a sigh. ‘Your agency is bloody hopeless. Turns out there’s a secretarial post in the
marketing
department that you should have been sent for. I should warn you, though. They’re not as much fun as us nerds. A right bunch of smarmy slimeballs.’

So the humiliation could have been avoided if her useless agency hadn’t messed up. Violet sighed and shook her head.

Mark Harris was watching her. ‘You should think about swapping agencies. They’re rubbish. You should have seen the bunch of weirdos they’ve already sent me today. All thought they were the next Bill Gates. Far too over-qualified for this role.’

So it had all been a complete waste of time. Like everything in her life. Except Sebastian.

Suddenly aware of a long silence, Violet looked up to find
Mark Harris studying her. He stared at her for a long time until she was so uncomfortable that she shuffled in her seat.

He broke out of his reverie and smiled. ‘So? What about it?’ he said. ‘Think you can handle it?’

She was shocked. ‘You’re offering me the job?’

Despite the cake thing. And the complete lack of experience.

‘If only to keep you out of prison,’ he said, still smiling.

‘But
I can’t do it,’ stammered Violet.

‘You can answer the phone, can’t you?’ He leaned forward on the desk, staring at her with his green eyes. ‘Look, I’m desperate. Felicity left yesterday. Gone to be a footballer’s wife or something. Vacant position for a vacant girl. She didn’t even pick up the phone when it rang. Too busy painting her nails. Surely you can improve on that?’

Violet didn’t know
what to say. But she was
desperate.
She needed a job to pay the mortgage. And the food bill. And the giant credit-card bill for the stupid New You! diet club as well. Surely just sitting there answering the phone wouldn’t be too bad?

‘You want to start tomorrow?’

She looked up at him and, after a brief internal struggle, finally nodded.

‘Great. See you in the morning at nine o’clock sharp.’

And that was it. Interview over. Violet had a new job.

She just needed the new body to go with it.

KATHY WAS FED
up. She’d had one shake for breakfast. Make that one disgusting, undrinkable diet shake for breakfast. Now it was mid-morning and she was desperate for something to eat with her coffee. Like a danish pastry. Followed by an iced bun. And a doughnut.

‘Was it one sugar?’ called Mavis from the kitchen.

Kathy rolled her eyes. ‘Two, please.’

She had worked in the shop
for over a month and they had had coffee every morning. But then, Mavis was about one hundred years old, so perhaps she was entitled to be a little vague.

‘There you are,’ said Mavis, making her slow way back across the small shop.

Kathy took the mug from her. ‘Thanks.’

She took a sip and winced. There was no sugar in the drink. And it didn’t taste like coffee either. The fact that the charity
shop raised funds for the Alzheimer’s Society was, perhaps, rather apt.

Luckily, it was a subject close to Kathy’s heart. Her
mother
had suffered from dementia for many years. Sadly the strain had got too much for her dad, who had passed away a few years previously from a heart attack.

In the end, Kathy had to move in with her mother and take charge. As the years passed, whole weeks went by
when she didn’t recognise Kathy. Her mother lived in her own world, quite content.

But Kathy wasn’t. She was an only child and the strain of losing her dad and the slow decline of her mum was overwhelming. So she began to comfort eat – and had never stopped.

Not even when her mum had looked at her one day and said, ‘You’re a bit fat, aren’t you?’

Kathy had sobbed herself to sleep that night.
And most nights since.

She had expected to feel a little relieved when her mum passed away from kidney complications at the end of the previous year. But the only relief was that her mother was no longer in pain. Now, the pain was all Kathy’s. There was no focus in her life. And no family either. In the end, she couldn’t bear the solitude and moved away. A new start and hopefully a new life.

She sold the family home and rented a cheap flat on the edge of town while she decided what to do with her life.

But she’d been in the area for a month and was desperately lonely. She thought the job would help her socially but Mavis wasn’t exactly party central. And the weight-loss club was terribly quiet too.

Now that she no longer had her mother to take care of, Kathy’s life was empty. As
empty as the shop she found herself working in. No company at home; no
customers
to chat to during the day. Some evenings, Kathy felt like screaming at the unfairness of it all. But instead she bottled up her desperation and found comfort in food. Glorious food, which was always available, always there to soothe her pain.

Kathy sighed and took another sip of her drink. The shop was too quiet
to make any money. It needed a complete overhaul to drag it into the new century, let alone the new decade, but Mavis was apt to be offended by any suggestion of change. So Kathy turned up each day, smiled at the infrequent customers and then went home.

‘Would you like a chocolate digestive?’ asked Mavis, fishing a packet out of her handbag.

It was the first sensible thing she’d said all morning.

Maggie was bored as well. She’d opted for a cereal bar for breakfast. It had needed two cups of tea to wash away the taste and to get some moisture back into her mouth. And there was no way she could have a cup of tea without a little something on the side.

So it was only ten o’clock in the morning and she had already eaten her way through the packet of cake bars that she had bought earlier in
the week.