Jemima J. (18 page)

I leave the gym and, crazy as this may sound, I’m convinced that already my step feels lighter, my frame seems somewhat smaller, and in my mind’s eye I can already see myself as I’m going to be. Slim. And beautiful. As I once was, I suppose, when I was a child, before my father left, before I discovered that the only thing to ease the pain of being abandoned by an uncaring father was food.

I hop into a taxi
‌
—my, my, Jemima, you are being extravagant these days
‌
—and instruct the driver to take me to Whiteleys, where I ignore the clothes shops, the shoe shops, even the bookshop, and go straight up the escalator to the sports shop.

Half an hour later my arms are being dragged down to the floor with shopping bags. I’ve bought a tracksuit, two pairs of lycra leggings, three pairs of socks, and a gleaming pair of Reeboks. I have spent so much money today that there’s no way now I can change my mind. That was the idea.

And as I walk out of the shopping mall I stand for a few minutes looking at the bustling crowds, listening to the mix of voices from every part of the world. I could go straight home, that is what I would have done a few weeks ago, but look at this street, look at the last rays of the sun. It’s a beautiful
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evening and I’m not ready to go home and sit watching television, not just yet.

And as I wander down Queensway, pushing through the crowds of tourists, I start to feel like I’m on holiday, and what better to do on holiday than to sit at a sidewalk café and enjoy a drink.

Normally I’d order a cappuccino, and eat the chocolate off the top before adding three sugars, but things are about to change, and I find a small round marble table outside a patisserie, and order a sparkling mineral water.

She doesn’t have anything to read, nor does she have anyone to talk to, but Jemima is feeling happier than she has felt in a long time. Happier, perhaps, than she has ever felt in her life. She sits in the fading sunshine and without realizing it she has a huge smile on her face because for the first time she starts to feel that life isn’t boring. Life is the most exciting it has ever been.

Jemima Jones’s life has been rumbling for a while now, but today is the day it finally turned over.

Ben Williams has just got home to find the answering machine winking three messages at him. Two are for his roommates, and the last one is from Richard, his oldest friend.

Ben picks up the phone and calls Richard because (a) he wants to talk to him as it’s been a while, and (b) he has to tell someone about his interview today or he might possibly burst.

“Rich? It’s me.”

“Ben! How are you, boy?” This is the way they talk to each other.

“I’m fine, Rich, how ’bout you?”

“Rolling along, Ben. Rolling along. I haven’t seen you for ages, what have you been up to?”

“Actually, I’ve got some news.”

Richard’s voice drops to a whisper. “I know a good doctor.”

“What?”

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“You’ve got some bird pregnant.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Ben starts laughing. “I haven’t got anyone pregnant, chance would be a fine thing! No, I had a job interview today.”

“That’s great, what for?”

“Come on, Rich, you can do better than that. What’s my dream job?”

“No! You had a job interview as a newsreader? No way, that’s serious.”

“It wasn’t for a newsreader, but it is for television. I went for a job interview with London Daytime Television as a reporter on a new show.”

“Good work. When d’you hear?”

“I’m not sure. They seemed keen but I have to do a screen test.”

“Good luck, I’d like to see my best mate on television. Think of the women you could date then.”

Ben just laughs, because Ben wants to tell Richard everything. He wants to tell him about walking in and sitting in the huge domed glass atrium of the TV company. He wants to tell him how it felt sitting surrounded by pictures of the stars of the company, and how a very famous presenter of the morning show came and sat next to him.

He wants to tell Richard about going up in the lift, about stepping out feeling sick with nerves, and waiting just outside for the secretary to come and get him. He wants to tell him how friendly the secretary was, if anything slightly too friendly, but how he assumed that is how they all are in television.

He wants to tell Richard about walking in to meet Diana Macpherson. About her micro miniskirt and high heels, about how she kicked her shoes off after a few minutes and put her feet on the desk.

He wants to tell Richard how Diana fixed him with a cool gaze and said, “Well, fuck me, Jackie was right, you’re even prettier in the flesh.”

He wants to tell him how he made her laugh, how they
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ended up talking about the nightmares of being single, about how he pretended to equal her horror stories with stories of his own, because he really felt there was some sort of a bond.

He wants to tell him that they didn’t really talk about television, or about work. That she seemed far more interested in him, and that it didn’t feel like an interview, that it felt more like having a chat with a friend, and did Richard think that was a good thing or a bad thing.

And he wants to tell Richard how, at the end of their “interviews,” Diana shook his hand and said, “All right then, Ben Williams. I won’t say you’re in ’cuz I don’t know what you look like on screen, but our viewers would fucking love those pretty-boy looks of yours, and I want you in on Thursday to have a screen test.”

But of course he can’t say any of this, because Richard is a bloke, and as well we all know blokes don’t
do
detail, they do facts, and Richard would probably fall asleep with boredom.

So they sit and chat, and all the time Ben’s mind is far away in the land of London Daytime Studios, and as soon as he says goodbye to Richard, he picks up the phone and dials Jemima, because who better to listen to the details than Jemima Jones, his newfound friend.

“Hello, is Jemima there, please?” Listen to how well spoken he is.

“Sorry, she’s out at the moment. Can I take a message?”

“Um, yeah. It’s Ben from work. If I leave my number could you get her to call me?”

Sophie nearly drops the phone. “Oh hi, Ben!” she says enthusiastically. “It’s Sophie, we met the other night.”

“Were you the one with the face pack or the one with strange things in her hair?” Ben’s laughing.

Sophie groans. “Please don’t remind me. We both looked awful, but for the record I was the one with the strange things in her hair.” Lisa looks up from the magazine she’s reading on the sofa. Her eyes widen as she mouths, “Is it him?” Sophie nods.

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“Ah,” says Ben, who can’t think of anything else to say.

“But I don’t usually look like that,” adds Sophie, who wants to keep Ben talking, who wants this conversation to develop into the sort of hour-long conversation women always try to have with men they have only just met, and who they fancy madly.

“I should hope not,” says Ben. “I wouldn’t have thought Curve would appreciate it.”

“Jemima told you where I work?”

“She mentioned it,” says Ben, wondering why this message is taking so long to deliver. “Look, can I give you my number?”

“Sure. Sorry. I’ll just get a pen,” she says, flying back to the phone in an instant. “Okay, shoot.”

Ben leaves his number and asks if Jemima could call him back as soon as possible, and they say goodbye.

“Guess what I’ve got,” she says to Lisa, waving the piece of paper in the air then clutching it to her chest.

“You bitch,” says Lisa, who sort of does mean it, but sort of doesn’t. “You can’t keep that, you have to give it to Jemima.”

“I will,” says Sophie, “but first I’m going to copy it down for myself.”

“But what excuse will you use? You can’t just phone him, and he wasn’t exactly on the phone with you for long,” she says triumphantly. “It didn’t sound like he was that interested.”

“Not yet,” says Sophie. “But I think we should invite him somewhere, maybe a party or a club, and if we have to we’ll invite Jemima too, but we are going to see him again, and this time we are going to look better than we’ve ever looked before in our lives.”

Lisa grins, happy now that she has been included, and confident that, given the choice, Ben would opt for her tumbling curls.

The girls hear the front door slam, and Jemima comes upstairs, dumping her bags on the living room floor.

“Oooh,” say the girls in unison. “You’ve been shopping. Show us what you’ve bought.”

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“It’s not very exciting,” I say, when in fact I’m very excited, I’m so excited I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight. “I just bought some gym stuff. I joined a gym today.”

“You’re kidding,” says Sophie, looking completely shocked.

“I kid you not,” I say happily.

“But what for?” says Lisa.

“To get fit, what do you think. I am going to lose all this weight and get fit, and in a few months’ time you won’t recognize me.”

“Is this for that guy at work, Ben?” says Sophie slyly.

“No,” but of course it’s for that Ben at work, although now it’s also for Brad in Santa Monica. “It’s for myself,” I say, and you know what? As I say it I realize it’s true. Sure, Ben and Brad are the catalysts, but I’m going to lose weight for me.

“Oh by the way,” says Sophie, just as I’m walking upstairs. “Ben called. His number’s by the answerphone.”

Everything stops, only for a few seconds, but in those few seconds all I can hear is my heartbeat thundering in my ears, and when my world starts again it goes spinning into overdrive. I pick up the phone, and when Ben picks up the receiver at the other end I
‌
—ridiculous creature that I am
‌
—am almost completely breathless.

“Ben?” I try to calm myself, to take deep breaths. “It’s Jemima.”

“Hi!” he says, and I start to relax, because I never expected Ben to sound so happy to hear from me. Please let him ask me out, please let him have phoned me because he can’t stop thinking about me.

“Aren’t you going to ask me?” he says.

Ask him? About what? I remember. “I forgot, oh I’m so sorry, I forgot. How was it, how did it go, did you get the job?”

Ben settles back into his sofa and tells Jemima Jones everything. He tells her all the things he wishes he could have told Richard, and he can hear from her gasps of amazement and
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sounds of encouragement that she is glued to the phone, one hundred percent completely rapt.
This
is the kind of reaction you only get from women. This is why Ben phoned Jemima.

“I can’t believe you’re going to be on television!”

“I don’t know if I am,” says Ben, but of course he does know, he’s always known.

“So when’s the screen test?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“So soon!”

“Yup,” says Ben. “They’d like someone to start in about two weeks, so if I gave in my notice on Monday I’m owed two weeks holiday so that would be it, I could start in two weeks.” He pauses. “If I get the job, that is.”

“You’ll get the job,” I say.

“Do you really think so?”

“Yes,” I say again. “I really think so.”

When my alarm goes off at 7:15
A.M.
I groan, roll over, and decide that this is madness. I’ll go another time. But no, says a little voice inside my head, if you don’t go now you’ll never go and think of the money you’ve spent.

So I crawl out of bed, half asleep, and go to the bathroom, where I splash my face with cold water to try and wake up. I throw my clothes for the day into a bag, and pull on an old T-shirt, my new tracksuit bottoms and the new sneakers.

Stumbling out the door, I walk to the bus stop in a complete daze, amazed at how quiet London is at 7:30 in the morning, so when I reach the gym, I can’t believe how many people are already there, puffing and panting through their pre-work workouts.

“Hi,” says a big brawny bloke in reception, walking over. “You must be Jemima. I’m Paul, and I’m your fitness instructor.”

Paul takes me upstairs, through the gym where I look straight ahead, trying to ignore the bodies beautiful, and into a
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small room designed specifically for the purposes of fitness assessment.

“Right,” he says, putting a form on the table. “You have to fill this out, but first I have to check your blood pressure.” He does this, and then I wince as he pulls out what looks suspiciously like a surgical instrument.

“Don’t worry,” he laughs. “This isn’t going to hurt. This,” he says, pointing to the pincer-like instrument, “is to measure your fat ratio. That way we can keep track of how much fat is turned into muscle.”

Shit! This is a mistake. This is my biggest nightmare. No one’s ever measured my fat before, Jesus, no one even knows how much I weigh, and my eyes suddenly fall upon the scales in the corner of the room. Shit, shit, shit.

But what can I do? I can’t run away, so I just pretend I’ve left my body, I’m somewhere else, as Paul measures the fat on my arms, my waist, my stomach, and my hips. He doesn’t say anything, just writes the results on the form.

“Okay,” he says when he’s done. “If you slip your shoes off I’ll just weigh you.” Shit.

I stand on the scales looking miserably at the wall as Paul juggles with the scales until he has my exact weight. 204 pounds. He writes it on the form, as I try and control my embarrassment, the only relief coming when I remember that had I come a month ago, I would have been nearer 217 pounds, because somehow I have managed to shed almost 13 pounds in the last few weeks.

“So,” he says, sitting down and gesturing for me to sit down too. “That wasn’t too painful, was it?” I smile at him gratefully, because he didn’t shrink with horror at my size, he’s being so matter of fact that at last I’m starting to relax.

“What are your aims?”

“You mean apart from getting fit?”

Paul nods.

“I want to be slim. I want to lose all this weight and I want to be fit. And healthy.”