The Curvy Girls Club

‘Ouch. Still, at least you know it’s not personal. She’s never met any of us.’ He leaned forward. ‘So all you want for Christmas is a deal with Jenny. I wonder what else Father Christmas will put in your stocking this year, eh? Have you been a good girl?’

Was he actually flirting with me? I could barely breathe. Maybe my support pants were too tight. We sat awkwardly facing each other in the booth.

‘I’ve been pretty good,’ I said, leaving room for interpretation.

‘Oh? Have you been a little bit bad, too?’ He leaned closer.

I wasn’t sure where he was going with his line of questioning, but tonight, I was going to find out. I took a deep breath and raised the stakes. ‘I’m so bad that I’m sometimes very good.’

He smiled. It was a filthy smile, full of the kind of promises I dreamed about. He leaned still closer. He closed his eyes. I closed mine too, leaning in to meet him. Our lips met. His were warm, soft and as perfect as I imagined. We stayed like that for a second, two, three … five, six … ten. He didn’t move. I peeked. His eyes were still closed. Slowly I broke our kiss. He remained motionless. Then, slowly, he leaned forward until his head rested on the edge of the table.

Frantically I looked around to see if anyone had spotted us. But they were too drunk. As was Alex, apparently. He slept peacefully on the table. With humiliation flaming my cheeks, I fled the party. I could only hope he really had been too drunk to remember anything.

CHAPTER THREE

‘Do I look okay?’ asked Ellie, making a face at her electric blue jersey dress.

‘You look lovely. Now please hurry, we’re late as it is!’ We had less than an hour to get to the theatre to meet Pixie and Jane.

‘Don’t the leggings look funny with these shoes?’

‘How about boots then?’

‘Ah, of course!’ She rushed off to find her boots.

It was useless trying to rush Ellie when she got like this. She approached dressing like Sir Edmund Hillary approached Everest. I was her Tenzing Norgay, there for critical support.

Eventually we emerged from Piccadilly Circus Tube into a swirling throng of people. Girls in various states of undress despite the frigid January air teetered in shoes that would keep chiropodists in business for years. The boys swaggered with bravado and lager. Excitement coursed through me at the thought of the night ahead.

‘There’s Pixie and Jane,’ Ellie said, quickening her step as we approached the red-brick-fronted theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. It was mobbed.

‘You look pretty!’ I said, admiring Pixie’s striking eye makeup and sheer lips. I was glad to see her making an effort. She rarely bothered any more.

‘Well, it’s not every night we get to go out on the town. Will you look at this? It’s a proper Saturday night out! I’m well excited.’

We joined the buzzing crowd to make our way inside, where the usher directed us to the stalls.

‘Wow,’ whispered Jane as we walked down the side aisle toward our seats. ‘This is grand.’

‘I’m glad we’re not up there,’ Ellie said, nodding to the three ornately painted gold and burgundy balconies above us. ‘It looks cramped.’

‘I’m not sure this is much better,’ I said as I realised where our seats were. It was pretty clear that four large ladies weren’t going to be able to squeeze past the theatregoers already in their seats. ‘Erm, excuse me,’ I said to the couple on the end. ‘It might be easier if you …’

The older woman took a split second to take in the situation before her eyes slid away and she shifted into the aisle with her husband.

‘Oh,’ said Pixie behind me, a look of uncertainty flashing across her face.

The next couple realised they’d need to come out into the aisle too. Apologetic murmurs escaped us as we shuffled along. Then, again, we were at an impasse.

‘What should we do?’ Ellie asked with dismay.

‘Should we see if there are seats at the back?’ Jane wondered. She hated making a scene.

‘At the back?’ Pixie said. ‘We paid sixty bloody pounds for these tickets! I’m not sitting at the back.’

She was right. Of course she was right. That didn’t make the situation any easier.

‘I’m really sorry,’ I said to the couple who were shuffling along the row towards us. ‘Could you possibly ask the people next to you to come out too? And maybe ask them to tell the people next to them? We’re seats eleven, twelve, thirteen and fourteen.’ In other words, directly in the middle of the blooming row.

I felt my face go hot. Of course everyone around us noticed the commotion. How could they not? Some avoided eye contact. A few whispered. Others smiled in commiseration. Those embarrassed looks of sympathy were the worst.

Perhaps we should have turned at the first hurdle and cut our losses. But how were we to know that the theatre’s seats couldn’t accommodate a sixteen-stone woman with curves like Pixie’s?

She called them her saddlebags, and joked that she liked to keep her weekly food shopping in them. But it was no joke when she lowered herself into her seat.

‘Bloody hell, I don’t fit!’ she whispered. She tried angling in sideways. There just wasn’t enough room. Or, to be precise, there was just too much Pixie. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have to see if they’ve got another seat at the back. This is going to be too uncomfortable.’

‘You can’t leave!’ Ellie whispered.

‘I’m not leaving, love. I’ll just find a more comfortable seat.’

‘We’ll go with you,’ Jane said.

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort, you lovely daft cow,’ Pixie smiled, shaking her head. ‘There’s no need for all of us to go. I’ll meet you in the bar at the interval, okay?’

She smiled brightly, but I wasn’t fooled. I saw the flush creeping across her cheeks before she turned away.

‘’Scuse me, love,’ she said to the man next to her. ‘I hate to disturb you again but I just got a call from George Clooney. He’s dying to take me to dinner. That man just will not take no for an answer. ’Fraid I’ve got to go. Can you maybe ask the others to scoot out again? For George’s sake?’ That raised a chuckle from the man as he passed the message down the line.

A few minutes later the lights went down and Jackson’s best-loved hits washed over us. But I kept thinking about Pixie. I wasn’t sure we would see her at the interval. If it had been me I probably would have sneaked away.

But Pixie wasn’t about to let a little thing like mortal embarrassment get her down. She was there by the bar during the break, chatting amiably with an old couple wearing matching purple jumpers that made them look Starburst.

‘Isn’t it fantastic?’ she said as we approached. ‘Though I couldn’t see if he actually looks like Michael. You lot are closer. Does he?’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Where are you sitting?’

‘Oh, just at the back. One of the box office ladies found me a chair. We just drag it out into the aisle after everyone has sat down. I’ve got VIP seating … Will you stop looking at me like that?’

‘Like what, sweetheart?’ Jane asked.

‘Like I’ve got terminal cancer and don’t know it. Like you feel sorry for me.’

‘Sorry!’ we all said at once, knowing how that look can undermine a poorly constructed façade.

‘Drink?’ I said, pulling out my purse.

By the time the bells rang for us to sit again, we’d nearly forgotten the seating difficulties. Pixie had been right – it felt wonderful to be out like normal people instead of confessing our chocolate transgressions to one another.

We were all in high spirits when the theatre doors disgorged us into the cold night. There was no question of us heading for the Tube yet. None of us wanted the evening to end.

The bar we settled on, close to the theatre, was heaving with noisy drinkers.

‘So what should we see next?’ Pixie shouted when we found a spot to huddle with our drinks near the men’s loos. Every time the door opened, our night was perfumed by the whiff of urinal cake.

‘Or do? We could do something next time,’ I said. ‘Maybe go somewhere nice like Kew Gardens? Or Windsor or Bath on a weekend?’

Ellie nodded. ‘I’d love to go to Windsor. Could we do a tour of the palace?’

‘I’m not sure in the winter, but we can check,’ Jane said. ‘As long as we don’t go back to that theatre.’ I knew that Jane would hold a grudge on Pixie’s behalf for a long time. She was a good friend like that.

‘There should be a way to know beforehand whether seats will be comfortable,’ Ellie said. ‘A nice easy rating system like they do with the food in restaurants.’

‘Maybe we should make one.’

‘No way,’ said Pixie, laughing. ‘I don’t fancy jamming my arse into seats all over London.’

‘Okay, so we don’t jam our arses into that theatre’s seats,’ I said. ‘We just need to find some that are more accommodating for the larger lady.’

‘That would be useful information to have,’ Jane said. ‘Not just for us – for lots of people.’

‘I guess we could ask when we book the tickets,’ I said. ‘Send someone down from the box office with a measuring tape. Get him to bounce on the seats, assess springiness, see if his knees hit the seat in front.’

Jane wasn’t laughing with the rest of us. ‘Jane?’

‘That’s a really good idea,’ she said. ‘Seriously, why don’t we ask these things before we book again? After all, we want to have fun, and it’s not fun when one of us has to sit on an office chair at the back.’

This reminder sobered us. ‘So we’ll ask next time,’ said Pixie. ‘Cheers, ladies. To us.’

‘Here’s to many more nights like this!’ Ellie said. ‘With comfortable seats.’ We all clinked to that.

Later we walked towards the Tube feeling very merry. I offered to find the next performance with roomy seating and I knew I’d book it as soon as possible. I hadn’t felt this good in ages. It was so much better than stepping on the scales every week.

‘Hang on,’ Ellie said, steering us towards the cash machine. ‘I need to get some money for tomorrow morning. It’s my turn to buy the office treats.’

Jane was getting her groove on while we waited, singing one of Jackson’s hits while she danced in place.

Two young men passing by glanced over. Then one of them started singing, ‘I’m fat, you’re fat, come on, you know, woo!’ They laughed as they carried on up the road.

‘Beat it!’ Pixie shouted, catching my eye.

‘You don’t wanna be starting something!’ I said.

‘That’s all right, it doesn’t matter,’ Jane said. ‘They’re out of my life anyway.’ But she slouched into her coat with her hands in her pockets and we didn’t talk much on the walk to the Tube.

CHAPTER FOUR

I wasn’t about to lose momentum with our girls’ nights out, and spent most of the next morning between work phone calls googling theatres with roomier seats. I was quickly able to whittle down my list. To my surprise, people did take the time to gripe about their bad experiences online. Unfortunately there was no centralised whingers’ repository, which made the process a bit slow.

I kept watch for Cressida. She had a knack for popping up over the cubicle wall like a censorious jack-in-the-box whenever I faffed around. As my boss, I suppose she had the right to do this but given that most people didn’t even want to do my job, she should really have been grateful that I was there at all. Calling up strangers with money-saving offers put me just above a Jehovah’s Witness in the social acceptability stakes. Sure, I called pharmacies, nutritionists and health food shops, not people in the middle of dinner. But that still meant I got hung up on. A lot.

Even so, I liked my work, though I’d had my doubts when they first hired me. They sent us on a week-long training course to learn the science behind the nutritional supplements we were selling. Men in white lab coats explained everything in mind-numbing detail. Luckily I had a head for mind-numbing detail. It didn’t take long to start managing my own client list, but it wasn’t always easy. Oversharing clients sometimes admitted to heinous bodily irregularities before I could remind them that I wasn’t a trained professional in that sense. Then I spent weeks worrying about their health.

Eventually I got used to being tethered to my desk by the sleek headset that made us all look like Justin Bieber’s backup singers. It took some practice to learn to ignore the other sales reps’ patter, to concentrate only on my own call. But now it was completely normal. What a funny word that was: normal. It was all a matter of perspective.

I spotted Alex before he reached my desk, and used those few milliseconds to remember I hadn’t plucked the chin hair I noticed in the mirror that morning.

‘Hiya!’ he said, oblivious to my chin. ‘Want to try that new Japanese place for lunch?’

‘That depends. Are you buying?’

‘I’ll spring for the green tea if you’ll consult on the sushi. I never know what to get besides California rolls.’

‘Well, I do know my way around a bento box.’ What was I saying? There’s no sushi in a bento box.

‘One o’clock?’

‘Make it twelve-thirty.’

That still gave me enough time to nip to Boots for tweezers.

It wasn’t unusual to go to lunch with Alex, which meant I’d had ample opportunity over the past month to feel awkward about the Christmas Kiss. He never let on that he remembered, but he could be cagey like that and I was constantly alert for clues. If we were proper friends I’d have just asked him, but as things stood I didn’t want to spook him. It had taken me six years to get to the friendly acquaintanceship stage with him. Given enough time and luck, we might just become something more exciting one day. I lived in hope.

The restaurant was packed. We wedged onto a cramped table in one corner. The large plate-glass window at the front ran with condensation and the menus were already spotted with soy sauce. The prices were good and if the food was even mediocre, it was the kind of place that’d do a brisk lunchtime trade amidst the sea of sandwich shops in the area.

Alex closed his menu. ‘I won’t pretend to know what I’m looking at,’ he said with a grin that loosened my insides.

‘You just asked me here to order for you.’

‘I did warn you. And I’m paying you handsomely in tea, don’t forget.’

I sighed dramatically. ‘I’m not just brains you know. I’m also a pretty face.’

‘Of that,’ he said, raising his tiny tea cup, ‘there’s no doubt. Now order quick, I’m starving.’

There seemed to be just one waitress in the restaurant, a gangly young woman with long blonde hair tied haphazardly into a loose bun so that tendrils escaped to frame her pretty face. When I tried to do that I looked like I’d been in bed with ’flu for three days. Finally she approached our table.

‘Are you ready to order?’ she asked, looking at Alex, who nodded to me.

‘Yes, please may we have two orders of spicy tuna roll, one California roll …’ I stopped talking when I noticed she wasn’t looking at me. ‘One soft-shell crab roll and one salmon nigiri … did you get all that?’

She nodded, finally looking my way before heading for the kitchen.

‘Thanks for ordering,’ Alex said, oblivious to the waitress’s rudeness. ‘Everything sounds great.’

‘Now you know what to order for next time.’

‘Nah, I won’t remember,’ he said.

‘Will I have to come with you every time you want sushi? That might be awkward on a date.’ Even as I joked my heart skidded at the thought of Alex on a date. Steady on, girl, I told myself. You’d think I’d be able to look at the man without wanting to lunge over the table. Not even Rory had this much hold over me. And that was at least based on a solid friendship.

I glared at the waitress for the rest of the meal but she remained unaware of my loathing, not even once glancing in my direction. She was all smiles for Alex though. She must have thought he was paying. Or else she had a crush on him. Or … as I suspected, I was Invisible Katie.

The worst part about being a fat woman isn’t that people look at you with judgement in their eyes. It’s that most don’t look at you at all. You cease to be a person for whom they need to account. They look over your shoulder, or at the ground in front of you, or they glaze their eyes and look directly through you. It’s like being a ghost, but with none of the fun of haunting. That waitress wasn’t ignoring me. I was simply inconsequential.

Alex and I went back to the office and straight into our meeting together, as if lunch hadn’t just happened.

I made it sound nonchalant, didn’t I? Our meeting together. Like I had them all the time and hadn’t taken nearly an hour to dress this morning.

Our company was always on the lookout for ways to get more work out of us without breaking EU employment law. So instead of just asking, they liked to make it look like overworking was our idea. We’d had personality tests that told us it was okay to be a workaholic. We’d been given motivational tee shirts and posters. There was a weekly prize for Awesomeness. We were on a slippery slope, one group hug away from going on retreats together to chant affirmations and weave everlasting friendship lanyards.

When Alex asked for a volunteer last month to help implement their latest improvement (vision boards stuck with aspirational magazine images to help us reach our goals), I had to fight the urge to shout Pick me, Pick me with my hand in the air.

Of course it was a stupid idea. But it was our boss Clive’s stupid idea, so everyone had to show willing, at least to his face. My face didn’t garner the same respect. I was now known as Karma Katie around the office.

In the conference room, I tried to shake off that henchman feeling as I double-checked my notes. Yes, Herr Commandant, everything was carried out as you instructed.

Alex pointed to his steaming cup. ‘No coffee for you?’ The very idea baffled him.

It smelled delicious. ‘I’d love to but I’m off coffee at the moment. My heart’s been doing something funny lately.’ As I hadn’t dropped dead from it I wasn’t overly worried about a heart attack. It was more of an unusual rhythm – da-da-da-da-da-da-kerthunk! Sometimes it made me out of breath.

‘It’s not dangerous, is it? You should get it checked.’

‘Oh, I’m sure there’s nothing really wrong.’ I tried not to get carried away with fantasies of him kneeling at my bedside, holding my hand to declare his love.

He nodded, unaware of the role he was playing in my imagination. ‘Let’s try to make this quick. I’ve got another meeting at two.’ He rolled his eyes.

This was his way of letting me know that he might be on the board, but he wasn’t one of The Establishment. He was far too cool for that. He windsurfed, for goodness sake. Just imagine him emerging from the sea, streaming with water, sun glistening …

The vision popped as he opened his notebook to get down to work.

‘Yep, agreed,’ I said. ‘Let’s make it a quickie. I mean … well, I didn’t mean that.’ Well done, Katie. Cool as usual. I pushed a thick lock of hair out of my face, accidently sticking myself in the eye as I did so. ‘Ouch.’

‘Are you all right?’ he asked. I waved away his concern, squinting attractively. ‘So, tell me then. Have you made your vision board? Are all your darkest desires pasted on cardboard for the universe to fulfil? It only accepts paper requests you know.’

‘Every single one is documented for the Fates to act on,’ I said. ‘I even stuck the Philips Pharmacy logo on there. If I could find a photo of Jenny, I’d add it. Maybe with a lock of hair and a voodoo doll.’ Jenny’s latest objection was that we tested the products on animals. We didn’t, but once she was on a roll it was hard stopping her. ‘And I used staples on the really important ones … calorie-free cupcakes and world domination.’

‘Lofty goals. I’m glad you didn’t waste time on trivial things like cancer cures or filthy riches.’

‘Without calorie-free cupcakes, what’s the point of the rest of it?’

His throaty laugh gave me bedroom visions. ‘You always brighten my day, Katie Winterbottom. ’

That’s me, the day-brightener. If I’d had a quid for every time I’d heard that from someone I fancied, the calorie-free cupcake research fund would be nearly full. I suppose being appreciated for my conversations was all right, if he wasn’t going to love me for my body.

‘I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to make our last meeting,’ he said. ‘A good mate got us last-minute tickets to the rugby. Promise not to breathe a word of it to the higher-ups. They think my mother needed a ride to her chiropractor.’

I held up my hand in oath.

‘Your email was very thorough though. I didn’t expect graphics.’

I knew I’d gone overboard when I found myself in the office after eight p.m. trying to animate tiny pencils to march across the presentation.

‘You must let me take you out for a drink,’ he continued. ‘You’ve saved my arse once again. And I suppose you’ll have to save it today too. We need something to show the board. We can’t really monitor progress, can we? I mean without violating HR policy. The damn things are probably supposed to be confidential.’

‘I suppose I could ask everyone if they’ve done it. That’d give you something to report back on. Maybe a few people would be willing to show theirs to the board.’

‘Would you be willing to show me yours?’ he asked.

I’d show him mine right there on the conference table. ‘I, erm.’

‘That sounded rude, didn’t it?’ He smiled, not making any effort to correct it. Did he mean what he’d said?

Then he laughed a deep, rich chuckle that made my reproductive system wobble with glee.

‘Don’t you need to get to your next meeting?’

He ran his hand through his gorgeous hair, blowing out his cheeks. ‘In my next life please remind me to study architecture or film-making, not finance. Honestly, Katie, I don’t know what I did in my past life to deserve this.’

‘You must have been very naughty,’ I said before I could stop myself. Oh. My. God. I sounded like a MILF from some nineties porn movie. ‘Karma, I mean. Bad karma transformed into a career in finance. You should watch yourself or you’ll come back as something even worse next time. Maybe an ambulance-chasing solicitor. Har har.’

‘My parents are both solicitors,’ he said. ‘Personal injury.’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean it! I’m sure they’re very nice people and they probably didn’t do anything horrible in a previous life to deserve to be solicitors. I mean, it was just—’

‘Katie, relax, I was only joking. My parents are doctors. Shall we get on with this?’

I left the meeting in a muddle. He didn’t mention anything about the Christmas party. Still no hints that he might remember more than he was letting on. No lovely innuendos. I’d carried a torch for this man for six years, which hadn’t dimmed one iota. I must have used extra-long life batteries. It couldn’t go on like this.

CHAPTER FIVE

Our overdrafts wouldn’t survive sixty-quid theatre tickets for very long, so our girls’ nights were interspersed with thriftier options.

‘I’ve never seen so many skinny jeans in one place,’ Jane said, shifting in her chair to tuck her legs further beneath the table in the cinema’s foyer. ‘Have we walked into a Topshop advert?’

‘They’re hipsters,’ Ellie whispered, as if observing them on safari. Maybe she was afraid they’d stampede if spooked. ‘They all dress like this in the East End. It looks good on teenagers but I could never wear jeans like that.’

‘Oh, but Ellie,’ Jane said, ‘of course you can, you’re only twenty-five! I’m the one who’s probably too old to be trendy.’

‘You make yourself sound like a granny, Jane,’ I said. ‘You’re only thirty-five. And a young-looking thirty-five at that.’

‘She’s right,’ Pixie said, smoothing her hands over her thighs. ‘I’m thirty-five and I’m wearing them. I am! You don’t have to be a size zero you know. Skinny just means they fit your body … whatever body you’ve got. I can’t stand those baggy ones they always stock in big sizes. They make me look like a postie. My calves aren’t too bad. I may as well show them off.’