Fat Chance (3 page)

Then Elise reminds me of the one thing that counterbalances my argument. ‘It’s for
fifty grand
, Zoe. Fifty bloody grand!’

I stir the hideous skinny latte with a spoon, staring down into its bland beige contents. ‘That is a lot of money.’

‘It is! And how many times have you said you need an incentive to lose weight?’

‘Greg will never go for it.’

‘He will if you make him. He dotes on you.’ Elise flashes me one of her copyright dazzling DJ smiles. ‘He’ll do anything you tell him to . . . within reason.’

‘You really think you could get us in?’ I can’t believe I’m even contemplating this, but fifty grand is an awful lot of money. I also don’t want to find myself trapped in a dress again anytime soon. These two things are combining to make Elise’s madcap idea seem almost sensible.

‘Oh yes! Me, Will, and Danny will be making the final decision on who’s picked. I’ve already spoken to them, and they think you’d make a great contestant as well.’

Well, that sews it up then. Will does whatever Elise tells him to, as he knows damn well that he’s part of the most successful breakfast show in local radio history thanks to her, and Dan, the station controller, would cheerfully cut off one of his legs for a chance to have sex with her.

‘I’ll have to speak to Greg about it,’ I say.

‘Yeah, no problem.’ Elise waves this off like it’s inconsequential. She may think I have my husband wrapped around my little finger, but I’m not so sure. ‘So you’ll do it, then?’ she asks expectantly.

‘Er . . . if Greg’s up for it, I suppose so.’

Elise gleefully claps her hands together. ‘Brilliant!’ Her excitement is palpable.

I, however, am not excited.

What I am is a combination of terrified and deeply apprehensive. This may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

But . . . is that a faint glimmer of hope I sense under all that negativity?

Why yes, Zoe, I do believe it is.

This might just be the kick up the arse I need to finally drop some of this weight and start living life again.

If only I can convince my husband to do it with me.

GREG’S WEIGHT LOSS DIARY

Friday, March 7th

20 stone, 2 pounds

T
his is the single dumbest idea in history. I can’t believe I’m
sitting
here at 7.30 on a Friday evening writing this.

I would get up and turn the laptop off, but Zoe is sitting on the couch watching ‘EastEnders’ and if I stop typing I’ll never hear the end of it.

Why the hell does the radio station need us to keep a diary like this anyway? Can’t they just interview us? Or send some menial
dogsbody
over here to write down everything we say? I spend enough of my day chained to a desk at work; I don’t particularly want to spend my evenings chained to
another
one writing about how fat I am.

I know I’m fat.

I’ve been fat for years.

Twenty stone looks back at me every time I get on the scales (which isn’t often).

I can hear how much I wheeze when I walk up the stairs, and the number of extra notches I’ve had to cut into my belt doesn’t bear thinking about.

My size has stopped me enjoying the things I love like rugby and energetic sex.

I
wish
I was thinner . . . but if wishes were horses then beggars would ride them.

Until they were made into burgers.

Which I would then eat.

I don’t feel the need to put all this down on paper, but Zoe and Elise say I
have to
, so here I am on a Friday night—when I could be down the pub—writing about how fat I am. How colossally,
massively
,
stupendously
fat I am.

Elise says these diaries are supposed to be the ‘windows into our lives’ during the course of the competition, so the audience will get to know us and understand what we’re going to go through in the next six months.

This is a
complete
waste of time, as I can tell them what we’re going to be going through in one word:
misery
.

Dieting is bloody miserable.

It’s really no fun at all.

I know: I tried it once and really didn’t get on with it.

There’s only so many times you can eat salad and walk five miles on a treadmill before your will to live starts to dribble out of your ears.

But here I am . . . on a fucking diet.

I’ve agreed to do it for two reasons. One, fifty grand would pay off a big chunk of the mortgage and we could finally have that
holiday
in the Seychelles I’ve always wanted. And two, Zoe won’t give me a blow job ever again if I don’t do it.

‘That’s not bloody fair!’ I moaned at her when she threatened this punishment the first time this ridiculous idea came up.

‘I mean it, Greg. I want to do this. We both
need
to do this. If you’re not going to go along with it, my mouth is staying closed for the foreseeable future.’

See?

It’s just not bloody fair, is it?

Mind you, the blow job threat wasn’t really necessary. Zoe knows there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her. It’s irritating in the extreme, but we’ve been married for so long now that there’s no way I can hide it.
I lo
ve her to pieces and she uses that fact at every opportunity to manip
ulate me into doing things I would otherwise avoid like the plague.

For instance, there was the time she made me go with her to see ‘Cats’ in London.

What self-respecting straight man would go near a musical about bloody cats, were it not for the love of his other half? By the time the Magical Mister Mistoffelees started singing about how magical he was, I was ready to open a vein.

Then there was the holiday to Egypt.

I hate cruises, I don’t like the heat, and history bores me, so you can imagine how delighted I was to spend a week on the Nile in forty degrees, looking at a never-ending series of beige ruins while my skin cooked slowly in the scorching sun.

Finally, I can’t help but remember the salmon-pink jumper she made me buy in Burton’s. I wore it to the Rugby Club annual ball, and didn’t hear the end of it for months. My nickname became Fancy Doris.

It’s the smile on Zoe’s face, damn it. I just can’t get enough of seeing the look of pure happiness. The one that makes her eyes twinkle.

When she’s
really
happy, the smile gets even wider and her top lip curls up a bit, showing off her teeth. This may sound like I’m describing a horse about to get a sugar lump, but trust me, it’s a lot more adorable to look at than it is to describe on the page. Even when you’re being forced into a fucking pink jumper.

I’d put up with pretty much anything to see that smile.

Even being entered into a weight loss competition. A competition that will probably encourage the resurrection of ‘Fancy Doris’ as far as my rugby club mates are concerned.

I don’t even
care
that I’m a bit chunkier than I used to be. Not that much, anyway.

Sure, the lads at work have started calling me Porkins in the past few months, and I haven’t played rugby for years thanks to that wheezing when I walk up stairs, but I’m pretty happy with myself, all things considered. I certainly get to eat all the food I like, anyway.

I may get the piss taken out of me, and I might not be able to take part in much sport, but frankly I don’t care as long as I can have Kung Po chilli chicken with rice, a Domino’s Texas BBQ pizza, or a Big Mac whenever I like.

It’s my body, after all; I’ll do what I want with it!

But then Zoe comes home from work one day before
Christmas
and tells me all about this idiotic competition Elise has cooked up in that bleached blonde barnet of hers (yes, I know you’ll read this, Elise. I just don’t care) and now I’m not allowed to eat anything brown and fried any more.

For poor old Gregory Milton, the foreseeable future consists of heavy sweating, starving to death, and feeling astronomically
miserable
.

Right, that’s it. I can’t be arsed to write any more. What the hell else am I supposed to say anyway?

Apparently my rant above isn’t good enough, according to my wife. She’s just made that fact very clear to me in an hour-long screaming argument. My eardrums may never recover. Zoe’s now taken herself off into the bedroom and is refusing to speak to me again until I write something a bit more constructive in this stupid diary.

‘You’re not happy being fat, you lying git!’ she screeched at me. ‘Stop talking bollocks and be honest!’

‘People are going to read it,’ I pointed out to her.

‘That’s the reason we’re doing it!’

‘But I don’t
want to
.’

I hate squirming. It’s something five-year-olds do.

Nevertheless, here I am—sitting at the dining room table, squirming like a worm in the clutches of a particularly psychotic child—under the baleful gaze of my irate wife.

‘It’s part of the deal, Greg,’ she says. ‘If we don’t write these diaries, we don’t get to stay in the competition.’

‘S’not a problem with me,’ I mumble.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ Squirm. Squirm. ‘What am I supposed to say, then?’

‘They told you what to write about. Your emotions, Greg. How you feel. Stuff like that.’

‘Right now I’m feeling extremely bullied.’

‘About how it feels to be fat, I mean.’

I cross my arms. ‘You mean how bad I’m supposed to feel about myself? Is that it?’

‘Yes, Greg! We’re both miserable. You know we are.’

‘I’m not miserable. I’m perfectly okay, thanks.’

‘Oh really?’ Zoe’s arms also fold across her chest and she shoots daggers at me. ‘What about Roger’s barbecue last week?’

‘I don’t want to talk about that.’

‘No, you wouldn’t, would you? You weren’t happy about what happened there, though, were you?’

‘There’s no way I’m writing about it.’

‘Yes, you are! That’s the point of all this!’ Zoe lets out a weary sigh and sits down next to me. ‘Come on, Greg. Stop lying to
yourself
. You’re no happier than I am. We’ve spent the past ten years eating far too much and moving about far too little.’ She shakes her head. ‘Too many takeaways in front of the telly. Too many hours spent sitting on the couch. It’s just piled up and piled up, until we’re at the point where I can’t look at myself any more, and I’m pretty sure you can’t either.’ Her eyes go wide. ‘I wheeze, Greg. A woman of my age should not bloody
wheeze
! We need to make a change in our lives, and if this competition is the only way to do it, then that’s what we’ll do.’ She puts her hand on my shoulder and squeezes it. ‘Something’s got to change, baby. We’re not getting any younger and we can’t keep rolling around like a couple of Weebles.’

‘Weebles?’

‘Yes Greg. Weebles.’ Zoe gets up again. ‘I’m going to read in the bedroom. Sit here and write about what happened at Roger’s . . . the same way I did with the incident at M&S.’

‘I can’t write as well as you can. You’re a lot funnier than me.’

‘Bullshit, Gregory Milton. You write for a living.’

‘I’m a technical writer for an electronics company, woman, not a journalist.’

‘Well, just treat this as a user manual for being fat.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes! Get writing, Greg, and stop making excuses!’

And with that, Zoe turns around and marches out of the
living
room, leaving me sitting here at this computer, trying to avoid
having
to spill my guts, but knowing that if I don’t I’ll face a verbal crucifixion from my enraged spouse.

You wouldn’t expect an invitation to a barbecue in the first week of March, would you? Especially not in the South of England.

It’s no more than five degrees outside, and a raw, bitter wind blows across the whole country. Not exactly the ideal conditions for standing around outside eating a burnt beef burger.

‘Don’t worry!’ Roger assures me in my office a week before the barbecue. ‘I’ve hired these bloody great big heaters and we’re having a gazebo put up. Seriously, I can guarantee it’ll be like the Bahamas under there!’ He gives me a friendly poke in the ribs with his elbow. ‘Besides, you’re a big lad. I’m sure you’ll keep warm,’ he finishes with a grin.

Why do people automatically think that because you’re carrying extra weight you don’t feel the cold? I’m not a fucking walrus. My blubber is not that beneficial when it comes to staving off cold temperatures.

‘Okay Roger, we’ll come along,’ I tell him.

At least the food will be good. Roger has a two-thousand-pound barbecue he bought for less than half price when the local garden centre went out of business last October. I know he’s been dying to use it ever since. His impatience is most probably the reason for the event’s ridiculous timing.

It helps that his wife is a chef, which will at least lessen the chances of us coming away with food poisoning.

‘Great!’ Roger says, and turns to leave. Just as he reaches the door, he drops the bombshell on me. ‘Oh, Eileen wants it to be a fancy dress party.’

‘What?!’ I say, failing to hide my horror at the prospect.

‘Yeah. It’ll be fun!’

‘No it won’t, Roger, it’ll be
awful
.’

‘Eileen wants it,’ he says and picks at an imaginary piece of fluff on his jacket.

I’ve known Roger enough years to know that what Eileen wants, Eileen gets. He and I are very similar in that respect. ‘Oh, fuck a badger, alright,’ I say in disgust. ‘I’ll just do what I always do. Stick on my funeral suit and come as John Travolta in
Pulp Fiction
.’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s themed.’

‘Themed
?’

‘Yes.’ Roger looks like someone’s wafted something unpleasant under his nose.

I know I look like someone’s just shot my favourite childhood goldfish. ‘What’s the theme, Roger?’