The Curvy Girls Club Read online

‘I hope it works,’ Ellie said. ‘But you really should think about leaving, Pixie.’

  ‘I do, every waking moment, love, but I’d need to find work or the children and I won’t be able to live. Right, thank you for depressing me.’

  ‘Sorry!’ we all said.

  She smiled. ‘That’s all right. I know you’re just watching out for me. Now, where were we, before you convinced me to share my fashion advice with you?’

  Pixie often snapped shut as quickly as she opened up, so I wasn’t surprised to hear her change the subject.

  ‘Charging for events,’ I said. ‘I did the maths. If we’d charged two quid for each event we’ve had so far, we’d have over six hundred quid now.’

  ‘That is interesting,’ Pixie said. ‘It actually could be a business if we wanted it to be.’

  ‘Assuming people will pay,’ Jane said.

  ‘Assuming people will pay,’ echoed Pixie. ‘We could also expand the events.’

  ‘That’s what we’re saying, sweetheart.’

  ‘No, I mean we could expand the range of events we host. They don’t all have to be things we want to do ourselves. If it’s an official club now, and a business, shouldn’t we think of things that will be popular even though they may not be our cup of tea?’

  I nodded. ‘Like what?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘What about speed-dating?’

  My face told her my thoughts on that.

  ‘Why not? A lot of the people coming are single. They might like it. We could call it something fun, like Find a Chubby Hubby.’

  ‘Wasn’t that a brand of ice cream?’ Jane wondered.

  ‘Right. Copyright issues. How about Fat Friends?’ she proposed. ‘I don’t know, something fun.’

  I definitely didn’t like that idea. ‘That was a TV programme … besides, there’s nothing fun about Fat Friends. It’s insulting.’

  ‘Oh, get off your high horse. We’re fat. We’re friends. It does what it says on the tin.’

  ‘All right,’ Ellie said. ‘We don’t have to decide right now. The important thing is that we agree we’ll charge a fee, right? So we can grow the Curvy Girls Club. The sky’s the limit, ladies.’

  Everyone nodded and I felt like I’d just watched our child take her first step. How had this become so important to me? Sappy Katie.

  We’d just sat down to dinner a week later at Pixie’s favourite pizza place when Jane dropped her bombshell on us.

  ‘I can’t wait any longer,’ she said. ‘Look!’ She yanked a copy of the Evening Standard from her cavernous bag, dragging out most of her knitting in the process.

  London’s ‘biggest’ social club?

  There’s a new kid on the block in London’s entertainment industry, and it’s not for everyone. A group of fed-up slimmers have come together to launch the Curvy Girls Club, an entertainment resource for the larger lady.

  The long article went on to describe how we’d started and some of the events we’d done so far.

  ‘Ooh look, we’re named!’ Ellie wriggled. ‘I had no idea we were going to get into the newspaper!’ She said it like our names had appeared written in the night sky. ‘And Katie, you’re quoted!’

  I pulled the paper closer.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind, sweetheart. They wanted a quote and I remembered what you said at Slimming Zone. It seemed perfect so …’

  I read the line twice. The point is to learn to be happy the way we are, says co-founder Katie Winterbottom, instead of constantly worrying about how we’d like to look.

  ‘You sly bugger,’ said Pixie. ‘How did you do this?’

  Jane blushed. ‘I hope you don’t mind. It happened by accident, really. One of the mums at Abigail’s school writes for them, and one afternoon last month we got talking when we dropped the children off. Actually I was surprised she spoke to me. She’s part of the immaculate crowd who drive up in their huge sparkling clean SUVs, looking like they’ve just come from the salon. They don’t usually talk to me, just stare like I’m something they’ve accidently stepped in. They probably go off to their gyms afterwards to perfect their already perfect bodies. Meanwhile I turn up in the same tracksuit from the day before, with no makeup and dirty hair, shove the children out the door and go home to eat the remains of their breakfast. Plus all the biscuits I can find in the house. It’s depressing. If we had the money I’d hire a nanny just to do the school runs.’

  Ellie squeezed Jane’s hand.

  ‘Oh, it’s all right, sweetheart. I’m not the only slummy mummy at the school gates. It just feels like that sometimes. So anyway, I’d accidentally boxed her car in and instead of just telling me to move, she mentioned that her daughter loves Abigail and it went from there, really. When she mentioned her work I thought I had nothing to lose by telling her what we were doing. She loved the idea and pitched it to her editor. So then we did a telephone interview about the club. She told me not to get my hopes up, so I didn’t mention anything, but then it came out tonight.’

  ‘I wonder if anyone went on the website to have a look.’

  ‘Call Rob!’ Pixie and Ellie said at once.

  ‘Okay, okay.’ My hand was already on my phone. ‘Though it’s dinnertime. I’ll text him in case he’s eating.’ I tapped the short message about the article and pressed send.

  ‘We could try getting into other papers,’ I said. ‘If the Evening Standard were interested then maybe the other local papers will be too.’

  ‘The Evening Standard isn’t local,’ Ellie said. ‘It’s national!’

  ‘No, Ellie, it’s London’s local paper.’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s not national? I just assumed.’

  ‘Spoken like a true southerner,’ said Pixie. ‘No, my love, it’s just for London. Katie’s right though, we could try other locals like the Ham & High.’

  ‘And maybe the nationals would be interested too,’ said Ellie. ‘Imagine getting into The Times or The Guardian. Jane, do you think it’s possible?’

  She nodded. ‘It’s possible, but probably more likely for the local papers. I’d be happy to write a short PR piece and send it round to the editors. I can get contact details from work.’

  ‘Then it’s official,’ I teased. ‘You’re our head of PR.’ With Jane’s connections at Channel 4, where she worked as a programme developer, I couldn’t think of a better candidate.

  It was funny how we’d slipped naturally into the roles that suited us – Rob on the website, me organising the events and now Jane handling the PR. Pixie and Ellie didn’t have as much free time as we did – Trevor resented any time Pixie wasn’t slavishly looking after him or the children, and Ellie’s time was tied up between her second job and lovely Thomas – but they came to most of the events and had become the de facto hosts.

  ‘Sure, I’m happy to be our publicist,’ Jane said, looking chuffed with her new role.

  ‘This is all starting to become official now, isn’t it?’ Ellie said. ‘I mean, the Curvy Girls Club is a going concern.’

  ‘Do we need to formalise anything?’ I asked. ‘Now that we’re charging a fee, do we need to register somewhere, or tell HMRC?’

  Pixie shrugged. ‘We’re not exactly Philip Green yet.’

  ‘No, but we should probably set up something simple,’ Jane said. ‘When my brother started his business he did have to register with HMRC, even though he wasn’t making any money at first. I can ask him about it. We’d probably just need to nominate ourselves as directors and file some paperwork.’

  ‘Does that mean we get to be on the board of directors?’ Ellie’s eyes shone. ‘And have a president and everything?’

  ‘I nominate Katie for president,’ Pixie said. ‘After all, you’re doing most of the work, love.’

  ‘I second it,’ said Jane and Ellie at the same time. ‘All in favour?’

  ‘Aye!’

  My phone pinged with a text just as the waitress set the results of our first executive decisions before us. (I chose the cheese-less seafo
od pizza.)

  Website is going nuts, Rob’s text read. As Chief Brody once said, You’re gonna need a bigger boat. Let’s talk about upping the bandwidth. Off work tmrw, let’s meet.

  I showed everyone the text. ‘I guess that means the article has worked,’ I said, grinning. ‘Maybe it’s time to think about an official launch.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was after eleven the next morning by the time I met Rob. He’d suggested an address in Hackney that I had to use my iPhone to find. Not that I felt particularly comfortable waving it around in the desolate neighbourhood.

  Come through the red door under the arches, he’d said. Yeah right. That was how sadistic horror films started. Tentatively I knocked, ready to spring into the road if necessary.

  ‘Hello!’ Rob said, looking at his watch. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘I’m really sorry I’m late. I didn’t sleep well again last night.’ I stifled a yawn, which sparked him off.

  ‘Come inside,’ he said, throwing open the big metal door. ‘I got you a coffee but you probably want to heat it up.’

  It took me a second for my brain to register what my eyes were seeing. ‘What the heck is this place?’

  ‘It could be your bigger boat,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Technically it’s my cousin’s studio, but it’s huge and he only uses a little bit. He said we can use it for meetings whenever we want.’

  We were in a damp, strip-lit space with a very unusual décor. I stared at the seven-foot-high grizzly bear wearing a jaunty bowler hat.

  ‘That’s Pete,’ he said, making introductions.

  ‘And your cousin does what exactly?’

  ‘Taxidermy. I’d have thought that was obvious. Should we warm up your coffee? Come on, I’ll show you around.’

  I followed Rob to the makeshift kitchen as he explained about his cousin, David. He liked to work at night, he said, so we’d probably never see him. David’s clients usually picked up their newly stuffed pets quickly but every so often they’d fail to return for their dearly departed. Which explained the menagerie around the place. A rather angry-looking Pekingese wearing a tiara stood guard on one of the desks.

  I shifted a tiny mouse orchestra to the side with my now-too-hot coffee cup.

  ‘I didn’t expect you to have a cousin who stuffed animals for a living.’ Rob looked warm-blooded, for one thing, with thick brown, lively looking hair and sparkly blue eyes. ‘Don’t you find all this a bit ghoulish?’

  He laughed. ‘I’m used to it. You should see my cousin. He looks like Marilyn Manson. But he’s a nice guy and I thought this might work as an office space for the club. As you can see there are loads of desks and David is fine with us being here. He just asks that we replace the teabags if we use them.’

  I couldn’t argue with a bargain like that. ‘Well thanks, I think it’s great. And I suppose I’ll get used to the dead animals eventually. Lucky none of us is vegetarian.’ Still, I didn’t think Ellie would be crazy about this place.

  I stifled another yawn as we brainstormed PR ideas for the club’s official launch in a few weeks. It would soon be six months since we went to see Thriller together.

  ‘Fireworks?’ Rob suggested.

  ‘Mmm. Maybe with something else. It needs to be big, something that’ll draw in new clients from the whole of London.’

  ‘Unlimited free doughnuts? We’d have a stampede on our hands. Or maybe a concert?’

  ‘We don’t have any money,’ I said. ‘We could serve day-old doughnuts or maybe get some Morris dancers for free.’ I shook my head. ‘But we need to think big.’

  ‘With no money.’

  ‘Right.’

  We stared at each other, willing inspiration to come.

  ‘We might need to spend some money,’ he said eventually. ‘You’ve got the chance to grow the club into something huge. The website had nearly seven hundred unique visitors this week.’

  ‘You’re talking IT again. I don’t speak that language.’

  He laughed. ‘It’s the number of actual people that went on your site. Seven hundred, all looking at the events. Do you want me to send you weekly stats?’

  ‘Only if you translate them first.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t blind you with science. I can text you the number of unique visitors and the number of people who’ve signed up for events each week.’

  ‘How many people signed up this week?’

  He held up his finger, took out his phone and started texting.

  My phone pinged.

  196 signups, 700 unique views. Next update in a week. Rob

  ‘You couldn’t just tell me?’

  ‘If this is a business, we should follow protocol.’

  ‘What does protocol say about more coffee?’

  ‘I’d need to check the handbook but I think it says we should have lunch if we’re going to go to the wine tasting at three. I’m pretty sure that section was amended after what you told me about last time.’

  I knew I shouldn’t have told him the details about the club’s first wine tasting last month, when I’d made the mistake of not eating beforehand. The hotel’s sommelier, a dapper Frenchman with handlebar moustaches, had poured me a glass of bubbly when I arrived. I’d felt very Continental, swanning around the grand rooms to check on the arrangements. But planning events for the club was a little trickier than doing it for ladies-who-lunched. London socialites demanded low-GI food or a certain brand of bottled water. Our clients needed wide doorways (for the occasional mobility scooter) and sturdy chairs. We didn’t want anyone crashing to the ground amidst the splinters of Louis XVI furniture.

  The hotel had followed our instructions to the letter – sturdy banqueting chairs surrounded the enormous polished wood table. Armless and indestructible, they were the overweight person’s friend.

  So there hadn’t been much to do in the hour before the guests arrived except flirt with the sommelier, whose accent was pant-strippingly sexy. By the time everyone turned up we’d finished most of the first bottle.

  I fell off my chair some time around the Loire Valley Chenin Blancs. I’d hardly felt the bump on my head when I hit the table. One minute I was eye-to-eye with thirty people. The next I was giggling on the floor. It hadn’t been my finest hour.

  Rob and I made our way to the wine tasting after a stomach-lining lunch. It felt like a typically dreary January morning. Which would be fine except that it was mid-May. The dank, stained arches and industrial rubbish bins blocking the narrow pavement felt better suited to Dickensian London than East London.

  Rob and I saw the problem as soon as he held the restaurant door open for me.

  ‘We’re all ready for you,’ said the manager, gesturing to the long table in the middle of the narrow restaurant.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, preparing my diplomatic approach. ‘There’s just one thing. There’ll be eighteen of us.’

  He looked at the table, bobbing his fingers as he counted. ‘Yes, eighteen, that’s right. We’ve arranged enough chairs.’

  Well done on being able to count to eighteen. ‘It’s just that they’re a little close together. Could you add a couple more tables to the end?’

  ‘I don’t see how I could.’ He looked around the room as if he couldn’t imagine where he might find another table in a restaurant full of them. ‘It’s a very small restaurant.’

  ‘Yes, but we’re not very small people. I’m sure you can see the issue.’

  ‘There should be enough room.’ His manner turned chilly. For someone whose restaurant wasn’t usually open between lunch and dinner, who didn’t even have to pay any chefs or waiters, and who was pocketing our wine tasting fees as pure profit, he could have toned down the attitude.

  ‘Fine, then I’ll show you what I mean,’ I said. ‘Rob, please sit here.’ He did as he was told. I sat beside him, scootching my chair close to his. ‘Now,’ I said to the manager. ‘Why don’t you sit beside us?’

  Being
no mere slip of a man himself, his position at the table put him halfway between two place settings. ‘Do you see our problem? We’re the curvy girls … and boys club. We need a bit more room. I’m really sorry about that. We did mention it in our emails.’

  He reluctantly hauled over two more tables, clearly put out that we really did live up to our name.

  Everyone arrived within half an hour. A few were Slimming Zone regulars, and felt like old friends. A few others, like Arthur, were regulars and felt like pains in the neck.

  ‘Katie! This should be a fun afternoon. Although it would have been better perhaps to concentrate on the lesser known French regions. But never mind. You did the best you could. Shall I sit here next to you?’

  This was Arthur’s idea of a compliment. He could make me cry when he wanted to be mean.

  ‘Thanks, Arthur. And I’d love for you to be next to me, really, but I thought you might like to sit next to, erm,’ I looked quickly at my list, ‘Jade. You remember her from the book club meeting?’ I felt bad (momentarily) about inflicting him on a perfectly nice woman like Jade, but I’d put a lovely man on her other side. One hand giveth, the other taketh away.

  Despite what Arthur said, the wine tasting proved almost incidental to the afternoon. I’d noticed this over the past months and at first it bothered me. I lost sleep over the plans I concocted. They bloody well should appreciate them. It took some time for me to realise that they did appreciate them, very much.

  Sometimes being fat was isolating and sometimes isolated people got fat. It didn’t matter which was chicken and which was egg. The end result was that for some of our members, these outings were their social life. They were just as happy to taste wine in the company of others as they were to watch a film or listen to music in the company of others. People naturally focused on the curvy part of our name, but it was a social club at the end of the day.

  I sneaked a glimpse at Jade. She didn’t look too angry about Arthur. In fact, she looked …

  ‘Rob. Are you noticing what I’m noticing?’

  Rob was staring down the table. He smiled, then quietly started a passable Barry White rendition.

  Everyone was talking to, nay, flirting with their neighbour. ‘Is it the wine? What have we started?’