The Curvy Girls Club Read online

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘But this might be the highest-rated event yet. Did you have a method in your seating plan?’

  ‘Of course not. I threw it together on the Tube ride over to you this morning based on who I knew.’

  I had noticed that more than the usual number of men had signed up for today. Maybe the high male quotient was making everyone randy. Even Arthur was talking to the woman opposite him, and she seemed to be answering of her own free will.

  While it was nice to see everyone getting along, it reminded me of an uncomfortable development. ‘Pixie thinks we should start a dating business,’ I told Rob as the wine guy poured us another red.

  ‘Remember,’ said the wine guy, who looked about eleven. ‘Swirl, swish, spit!’ He demonstrated. Everyone at the table defiantly swallowed. He didn’t know his audience at all.

  ‘She’s mentioned it a few times,’ I said quietly. ‘And again last week.’

  He nodded. ‘I can see the sense in it. We’ve got men, we’ve got women. They might like that kind of thing. Well, just look around. Maybe we should think about launching that for the anniversary.’

  ‘No way. She wants to call it Fat Friends.’ I whispered, rolling my eyes. A couple of specialist dating websites had popped up in the past few years. I wasn’t one to judge if someone got off on fireman uniforms or wearing nappies. But my gut told me that running a dating business for our clientele risked stigmatising them further. That’s the last thing they needed. ‘We’ve got to come up with a better idea than that. There must be something better we can do for the anniversary.’

  ‘What’s this?’ Amanda asked, overhearing us.

  ‘Oh, we’re trying to think of ideas for our anniversary,’ I said.

  ‘You and Rob are together? I had no idea, congratulations!’

  ‘Oh no, we’re not—’

  ‘We’re not a couple,’ Rob said smoothly.

  ‘What a shame. You’d make a lovely couple.’

  ‘I think so, but Katie won’t hear of it,’ he said as I reddened further. He grinned to let me know he wasn’t being serious. ‘We’ve got too many cultural differences. She’s a McVitie’s fan and I’m loyal to the Garibaldi. It would never work. We’ve managed to bridge the biscuit divide in friendship though. No, we were talking about an event to officially launch the Curvy Girls Club. Any thoughts?’

  Luckily the conversation turned to the launch and my face slowly returned to its normal colour. It wasn’t strictly true that I didn’t want to go out with Rob. He was such a lovely man. Who wouldn’t want to? I’d definitely had fantasies about us strolling together hand in hand along the South Bank, or being wrapped up in his big arms in front of the telly on a Friday night. But things weren’t that simple. We were working together for one thing. We were mates for another. And I couldn’t stop thinking about Alex. Nail in the coffin. Not exactly a recipe for happily ever after.

  ‘You should plaster yourselves on billboards across the country,’ the man next to Amanda said, eying her appreciatively. We didn’t need a dating website. We should just run more wine tastings.

  ‘Nah,’ said the man to my right. ‘Nobody pays attention to billboards unless there’s something really eye-catching on it.’ Eyebrows all along the table shot into the air as he realised what he’d just said. ‘I don’t mean you’re not eye-catching! You’re lovely, really! I just meant that people would stop and stare if they saw something out of the ordinary. Though you wouldn’t want them stopping and staring on the M4. Imagine. Pileups across the country from staring at four naked women!’

  ‘Who said anything about naked?’ Rob asked as the man reddened again. He was on a foot-in-mouth hot streak.

  ‘Well, that would certainly be eye-catching,’ I said, showing I had no hard feelings about the man picturing my arse above the motorway.

  ‘Like that programme on Channel 4, How to Look Good Naked. I love that one,’ said Amanda as she glanced at the wine bottle a bit further down the table. Her afternoon suitor obliged, topping up her glass. This was less of a wine tasting than an approved drinkathon. ‘Though those women don’t have anything to worry about. A few extra pounds around their middle and they think it’s the end of the world. They should feature us instead. We’d give Gok Wan a run for his money!’

  As we continued to chat, my tummy started fizzing. I had an idea. An incredible idea. An incredible long-shot of an idea that, if it worked, could literally give us all the exposure we ever dreamed of.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘I’m really sorry to make you all meet me at such short notice,’ I said as Jane returned to the table with more sugar packets for our coffees. ‘And for being so cagey on the phone. I just can’t wait till next week to tell you, and I think we should talk about it all together.’

  ‘You’re scaring me,’ Pixie said. ‘Is everything all right, love? Are you ill?’ She grasped my hand as the lunchtime horde milled around us.

  ‘Oh, no, no nothing like that. This is good news. At least I think it is. Maybe great news, in fact.’

  Jane searched my face for signs of brave mendacity. Then, satisfied that the risk of crisis was behind us, she resumed her knitting.

  ‘What are you making?’ Ellie asked her, touching the soft blue yarn.

  ‘Hats.’

  ‘It’s May,’ Pixie pointed out. ‘Are you that pessimistic about summer?’

  Jane smiled. She didn’t even look at her stitches when she knitted. She was completely at peace lap-deep in yarn. She’d knit her own shoes if she found a waterproof stitch.

  Pixie shook her head. ‘You take all the fun out of gift-giving when you make them in front of us.’

  ‘That’s not true! I love my jumper.’ Ellie smoothed the front of the delicate Fair Isle Jane made for her birthday last year. ‘Anyway, Katie, sorry, we interrupted. What’s your news?’

  ‘Well, I have an idea for our launch. What if we were able to do that show, How to Look Good Naked?’

  Pixie was the first to speak. ‘You are bloody joking, right? You mean the one where they plaster your arse on the side of a building and invite strangers to talk about it? Thanks, but no thanks, love.’

  ‘I’d die of embarrassment,’ Ellie said. She started to redden just thinking about it.

  ‘But Ellie, you of all people! You’re beautiful. And you’d get to meet Gok Wan …’

  That made her stop and think. Ellie loved celebrities. She once saw Rupert Everett in a Costa Coffee. When he left she snatched the half-eaten muffin from his tray. It’s in a box frame in her bedroom.

  But then she shook her head. Not even the allure of celebrity would sway her.

  ‘And you know it’s all tastefully done,’ I continued. ‘Ellie, I’m not proposing that you be the one to do it, but wouldn’t the publicity be amazing?’ I could hardly contain my excitement yesterday, and actually dragged Rob away before we’d finished our wine to tell him about my scheme. He loved it. Of course he did. He didn’t have to get his kit off on national television.

  ‘I couldn’t,’ Jane said quietly. ‘Maybe before I had the children, when I was thin.’ She looked so sad. ‘But not now.’

  I’d known Jane for many months before she told me about their fertility problems. I knew the memories still made her uncomfortable.

  The doctors had run a series of fertility tests on them both to try to figure out why they weren’t populating their nursery as planned. Jane hardly believed her doctor when he told her all the results were normal. She’d spent so long blaming her uterus that she’d worn a rut deep into her self-confidence. Her body’s acquittal was hard to accept.

  Andy’s diagnosis wasn’t as good. He had lazy sperm, said the doctor. Most of the little fellas just couldn’t muster the enthusiasm for the long swim. ‘I’m so sorry,’ Andy kept saying to his wife. ‘All this time you’ve been thinking that it was you, when it’s been my fault. Don’t worry, though, I’ll do whatever it takes to get them moving.’

  ‘Maybe they need some dan
ce music,’ Jane had joked.

  What they needed was a good wash. So after Andy spent some more time in a private room with a stack of magazines and a cup, the doctors spun his spunk to weed out the dozy ones. Those that were left were probably a bit dizzy, so the doctors helped them along their route with a giant turkey baster. It wasn’t the romantic candle-lit conception Jane had dreamed of but after a few tries, she was pregnant.

  Sometimes she wondered if it was possible to be too happy. Every morning when she woke with Andy’s hand on her tummy or his sleeping face next to hers, she let a few joyous tears leak into her pillow. A religious person would have said she was blessed. Jane said she was lucky.

  She was also terrified. The fear gripped her as tightly as her happiness did. What if she did something to lose the baby? Just the pain of thinking about the possibility was almost too much to bear. She knew she’d never forgive herself if it actually happened. And she wouldn’t blame Andy if he didn’t forgive her either.

  It seemed that everything she loved to eat could harm a foetus – sushi, stinky cheeses, rare steaks, smoked salmon, pâté and eggs benedict. Within weeks of seeing the little plus sign on the wee-soaked stick, she knew more than some biologists about listeria, salmonella and toxoplasmosis. One ill-advised mouthful and the little life could be extinguished.

  ‘You need to relax, Jane,’ Andy had said. ‘You’re making yourself sick with worry. Everything will be fine.’

  That was easy for him to say. It wasn’t his sole responsibility to carry their child.

  Jane knew she was being over-cautious, but it was such a small price to pay for a few months. She’d have put herself on complete bed rest if she hadn’t had to go to work every day. So she did the next best thing. She made the most comfortable, least exertive environment she could for the little foetus.

  Jane bloomed, quite literally, as she carried her first child to term. That was perfectly normal, she thought. Everyone had some baby weight to lose after a pregnancy. She’d just have to work a little harder than some. The important thing was to give the baby the best possible start in life.

  And that’s exactly what Jane did. When Matthew was born, hale and hearty at just over eight pounds, Jane thought she’d explode with love for that child. She wanted to spend the rest of her life holding him in her arms. Actually, she wanted to gobble him up and keep him safe inside her until he was of pensionable age.

  Unfortunately, all that mooning over Matthew meant that Jane’s physique remained buried under the baby weight. At first she was too besotted with her first-born to care very much but as he started to walk, then toddle and then run, it became clear that her fitness wasn’t what it once was. She wheezed up the stairs and puffed even when she walked on level ground. The pregnancy clothes she continued to wear were starting to look a bit tired. Though, thanks to them, she did still sometimes get a seat on the rush-hour Tube.

  But no sooner had she started to think seriously about shedding the pounds when Andy’s sperm got their groove on. She fell pregnant again, this time without any help from the doctors. So the diet flew out the window while she concentrated on bringing their daughter into the world.

  Throughout the whole period Andy couldn’t have been more wonderful, but he was worried. His father had died young of a heart attack, and he wanted to grow very old with Jane. ‘Darling, why don’t we start walking together? We could take Matthew in the pram and walk around the park when we get home from work.’

  ‘We can’t take Matthew out at night, in the dark!’ she laughed.

  ‘Well then, I could watch him if you wanted to go for a walk.’

  She stared at Andy. ‘Why would I do that?’

  Naturally he looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, you have mentioned wanting to drop a few pounds. I just thought … this could help,’ he finished lamely.

  ‘You think I’m fat?’ Jane knew she was just picking a fight. She knew she was fat. It could hardly have escaped Andy’s notice.

  ‘No, darling! I think you’re perfect. But you’ve mentioned several times … Never mind. Come here.’ He gathered her into his arms and tried to push his worry aside. ‘The important thing is for you and the baby to be healthy.’

  That conversation stuck with Jane. She told us about it when we first met at Slimming Zone.

  So I knew exactly what she meant about not wanting anyone to look at her. At first I couldn’t imagine strangers staring at my puckered thighs and undulating tummy. Then I started to wonder: why not? What, exactly, was it about strangers looking at me that made me so uncomfortable? After all, I went out in public every day, didn’t I? People watched me eat my lunch, sit on the Tube, go up the stairs on the bus. I knew that some judged me as deficient, lacking the self-control, the motivation, the determination not to be fat. Yet still I went out.

  Then I pictured that judgement multiplied across the country. Me, Katie Winterbottom, available for scorn in living rooms across the land. They wouldn’t even need to leave their sofas to do it.

  I thought about the women I’d seen on the show. It couldn’t have been easy for them either, and yet they did it. Their reasons were probably as varied as their bodies were. But the end result seemed to be the same. They showed the rest of us that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. And they seemed happier with themselves.

  Did I need to be happier with myself? Was that why I was willing to bare all for the cameras? I hadn’t realised it until the club came along, but yes, I needed a mind makeover as much as anything Gok could dream up. I wore my skin comfortably when I was out with my friends, and I wanted to feel that way all the time. Hell, I’d been quoted as saying as much in the Evening Standard, so it must be true.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said, instead of contemplating my potentially damaged psyche. ‘What if we tie in the How to Look Good Naked part with some kind of makeover segment for curvy people? It could be a real feel-good programme. Everyone would love that, right?’

  Jane nodded. Being a television executive, I knew she’d see the possibilities. ‘I could check to see what they’ve got planned,’ she said. ‘We might be able to pitch something for Love Your Body month.’

  Only Jane would know such a thing existed. ‘I love it! Could we really pitch something, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. It’s not my side of the programming but I can find out who to talk to. The worst they can do is say no. You haven’t answered the question though, sweetheart. Are you willing to go on the show and strip for the cause?’

  ‘I am,’ I said with more conviction than I felt. ‘What do you think? Is this a good idea? It probably wouldn’t be in time for the anniversary but in a way it’s so much better, don’t you think? And would you consider doing the makeover part if I do the naked part?’

  ‘I do feel like we’ll need to offer them a bit more to cement the proposal,’ Jane said, clearly happy to be on familiar (clothed) ground. ‘There’d need to be least two of us for them to consider commissioning something, and we’d have to go to them with the idea fully formed. How it would work, what we’d need in terms of staff, format, length, intended audience, differentiation.’

  ‘Jane,’ I said. ‘Can we work together on a pitch? I could come to your house on Friday afternoon.’ If I didn’t combust from excitement first. ‘Then you wouldn’t have to worry about getting someone to mind the children.’

  If we pulled this off … it was such a long-shot but if we could … wow.

  Jane laughed. ‘Oh, Katie, it’s kind of you to offer but sometimes it’s really clear you live a blissfully child-free existence. I promise you, as a parent you’d jump at any excuse to get out of the house.’

  ‘Bring them round to mine,’ offered Pixie. ‘Trevor’s on a job down in Kent all week. He won’t be back until teatime, so the house will be peaceful. We’ll do some baking and the girls can practise their dance routines.’

  We grinned at each other. We knew we had a whopper of an idea for getting the Curvy Girls Club all the publici
ty it could hope to have. We just needed to convince one of the biggest television stations in the country to spend the time and money making the programme. And I’d just need to stand naked in front of a nation. I didn’t even like getting out of the pool in my swimsuit. As Ellie and I rushed back to work, I practised holding in my tummy.

  Perversely, the more success the Curvy Girls Club enjoyed, the more worried I became about my job. It always made me nervous when things seemed to be going really well. Cressida had said my review was no big deal, but what if I got fired? I had to get myself out of that Needs Improvement box. And fast.

  ‘Ellie, have you got a minute?’ I asked as she ended her call.

  ‘Sure, is everything okay?’ Her forehead creased with concern.

  ‘Oh yes. I just need a quick word. In the conference room?’

  I hadn’t told her about my review. I know I should have. We were best friends after all. If we could talk about period cramps and nipple hair, we ought to be able to talk about this. But I was too embarrassed. She was always Superior and I knew she’d feel terrible for me. I didn’t want her above-adequate pity.

  She listened as I told her all about my meeting with Cressida. A few times she interrupted to ask if I was okay.

  ‘I’ve got to get out of that box,’ I told her. ‘And I think I’ve figured out a way. If I can get meetings with clients where nobody else has them, then Cressida has to let me go, right? There’ll be nobody else who can do it. Will you help me?’

  ‘Of course. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I need you to get the whole client list from lovely Thomas, with their office addresses. He sends out all the marketing materials to them. He could probably print it off in about two minutes … but he can’t tell anyone what I’m doing.’

  She suddenly looked upset.

  ‘Oh, it’s not against company policy or anything like that,’ I rushed to assure her. ‘Thomas won’t get into trouble, I promise. I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise your relationship! I’m already planning my speech for your wedding.’