Prime Time (22 page)

I took a deep breath. He sat opposite, fixed his gaze on me from beneath his floppy curls and gave a slow smile.

‘How about Botox?'

I shook my head. ‘No, no, I wouldn't feel comfortable with that at all. All those toxins … Who knows what damage they can do long term.' I adopted a virtuous expression and looked thoughtfully back at Cal in the manner of a woman who (Judi Dench, eat your heart out) was happy to grow old gracefully. ‘I am happy for my face to look lived in,' I said gravely.

‘I wouldn't be,' said Tanya sourly when we'd finished. ‘But thank God I've got years before I have to even think about it. All these old women with shiny faces freak me out.'

‘Shut up, Tan,' said Cal good naturedly. ‘Go and have your PMT somewhere else.'

Tanya glared.

‘Sorry,' Cal mouthed at me.

I smiled and hugged myself inside.

He called me babe …

Chapter Twenty-three

‘Botox!' said Charlotte in disbelief. ‘You said you'd never dream of doing anything like that. I thought you hated the idea of poison in your body.'

‘That's before it was free,' I replied. ‘The doctor says it's completely safe.'

‘Well, he would, wouldn't he?' said Charlotte. ‘At that price.'

‘And Cal says everybody does it these days,' I went on. ‘He said it was completely up to me but I thought about it and I thought why not? It only lasts three months or so anyway. He's very considerate of my feelings,' I finished dreamily.

‘Probably wants to shag you,' she said dismissively.

‘I should be so lucky.'

Charlotte looked at me with interest. ‘So you fancy him now, do you?'

I laughed a bit too loudly. ‘No I'm only joking. I'm old enough to be his mother.'

I looked at myself in her kitchen mirror. There was no doubt I didn't look quite so old now the lines around my mouth had been filled out and while I still had to wait for the full effect of the Botox to take hold, my forehead was already looking smoother as well as feeling strangely stiff.

‘Hmm,' said Charlotte.

She was still a bit scratchy. I presumed it was about Roger but I didn't want to ask. He was here now, but I'd had no chance to speak to him alone – in fact, he seemed to be avoiding me. Which made me think he was still seeing this Hannah and listening to her tales of woe.

I was still wishing I could find a way to meet her myself but how on earth would I do that, short of waiting outside the office, where Roger would probably come out with her on the way to their evening sojourn?

I didn't know her other name and I couldn't even be sure I would recognise her again. So how could I ever get to speak to her?

In the end it was much easier than I thought.

‘Ugh,' said Charlotte that weekend as she was tidying piles of paper on her kitchen table. She scanned the piece of card in her hand. ‘Another of Roger's firm's bloody ghastly social dos. God save us.'

‘What's that, then?' I said, casually.

Charlotte looked at the card again. ‘Senior partner's retirement drinks. Yuck. Standing around for three hours, drinking mediocre wine, being forced to make polite chit-chat with people I've nothing in common with, while they count how many glasses I've had and exchange looks every time I go for a fag.' She pulled a face. ‘And then tell Roger what a
character
I am.'

‘Could I come?' I said.

Charlotte looked at me in astonishment. ‘Er – why?'

‘I don't know. Just fancy it.'

Charlotte gave a disbelieving snort. ‘You fancy spending an evening with Jeremy who thinks he's God's gift to women and will try to chat you up, or Gordon who only ever talks about his composting club while his droopy wife – wears white cardigans, say no more – sits there simpering? Or you can be bored to death by Alan the other senior partner – short, fat, bald, halitosis – or
his
wife who's built like a tank and wears very tight satin dresses and too much blue eye shadow?' She reached for her cigarettes.

‘Then there's the secretary who always, always drinks too much and ends up in the ladies', sobbing, from which I am usually the one to retrieve her and tell her to buck up, as all the other wives are completely useless and just flap round her making sympathetic noises.' Charlotte shook her head witheringly and lit up.

I wondered if this secretary could be Hannah. ‘Well, if I came, I could do that instead,' I said helpfully.'

‘But why would you want to?'

‘Just sounds amusing. And,' I said, inspiration hitting me at last, ‘because Mike wants me to put together a dummy in-house magazine for a big law firm in the city. It's supposed to be something they can take home that will appeal to their families too. You know, a bit of corporate bonding – get the wife on side etc – and I need to know the sort of people I'm dealing with. This party could be really useful.'

Charlotte shrugged. ‘Why didn't you say so? Of course you can come. I'll tell Roger when he comes back.

‘Will he mind?'

‘He'll be thrilled.'

Roger hid his feelings of delight well.

‘Really?' he said, when he and Benson got back from their walk. He looked at me dubiously. ‘What do you want to do that for?'

‘She's got to write an outline for a magazine for some big law firm,' said Charlotte. ‘Thinks meeting your lot and all their old trouts will be good research.'

‘I can't see how,' said Roger, giving me a look. ‘We're only a small provincial set-up.'

‘Well, she can come,' said Charlotte decisively. ‘It will give me someone decent to talk to at least.'

‘Fine,' said Roger, with what was clearly a forced smile. ‘Yes, of course you can.'

He sat at the end of the table, ostensibly reading the paper, but I could feel the tension radiating off him. Once I glanced down the table to find him looking up at me, a watchful expression on his face. Was he worried about me meeting Hannah?

Charlotte seemed oblivious, chatting on about the rigours of having to have Roger's mother for Sunday lunch the following day. ‘And I can't do pork because crackling plays havoc with her teeth; she still goes on about mad cow disease if I give her beef – bit late for her to worry – and then she says, “Oh it's chicken again – we had this last time, dear.”'

She nodded down the table at Roger who was still reading. ‘And who goes down the pub the minute she arrives? Comes back just long enough to eat and then disappears in front of the television the moment we've finished? Ugh, Benson!' Charlotte stepped backward as the Labrador shook himself vigorously, sending grains of sand in all directions.

‘And now the kids are bigger,' she went on, ‘they're as bad. I'm the one trapped here with her. Becky will talk to her for a little while but she soon gets fed up because of the way the old dragon argues about everything …'

There was a thump overhead. As if on cue, Becky burst into the kitchen.

‘Mum, those boys are so annoying. Can you go and tell them to keep out of my bedroom?'

Charlotte rolled her eyes. I stood up.

‘I'll go and sort them out. Sorry Becky. I must take Stanley home now anyway – he's got his friend Connor coming to stay.'

I felt Roger's eyes on me as I walked past him to the door.

Chapter Twenty-four

Ten minutes at gradient five, ten minutes at gradient seven, moving up to ten minutes at …

I hit the stop button. My God, I'd only done five minutes. I clung to the bars of the treadmill, heart pounding.

I'd got up early, determined to really go for my new regime. Namely an hour in the gym every morning, working through my programme, leaving home as soon as Stanley had gone to school. Followed by a protein breakfast of poached eggs and maybe grilled tomatoes (absolutely no toast) and then a hard day's work for Mike, to get well ahead of myself in preparation for the further filming we were doing in two weeks' time.

A time by which my new silhouette would be starting to emerge and the Botox would have worked its full magic. Fuelled by visions of myself leaner, firmer, and looking at least a decade younger, I strode through the doors of the gym at 8.15 a.m. with a resolute heart.

Now I stared hopelessly at the sheet in front of me, feeling the sweat running down behind my ears, my fat bits aquiver.

‘Why do we do it, eh?' A small, rotund man in his 60s grinned at me as he walked past. I shook my head in wordless empathy and took another swig from my water bottle.

‘He doesn't,' said a voice from behind me. ‘All I've ever seen him do is wander about with that towel over his arm.'

I swung round to see a short, stocky girl in her early 30s, brown hair back in a pony tail, wearing a pink T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, with a pair of headphones slung round her neck. She smiled.

‘It's torture, isn't it?' she said. ‘I'm absolutely bloody knackered and I've still got another 300 calories to go.' She climbed onto a cross-trainer. ‘Christ, I can't tell you how much I hate this …'

Her name was Clara, and – I found out as I heaved myself onto a machine beside her – she had five weeks left to fit into a bridesmaid dress that was three sizes too small.

‘A bloody bridesmaid,' she puffed, arms and legs pumping wildly beside me. ‘I'm too old to be trailing down the aisle in cerise silk, not to mention much too fat.'

‘You're not fat,' I puffed back, every muscle in my legs already screaming. ‘Can't you just get a bigger dress?'

Clara shook her head. ‘It was the only one left. It's by some up-and-coming Italian designer, hideously expensive. Vicky got them all as a package. She's got about six of us – a couple of cute three-year-olds, two eight-year-olds, her nineteen-year-old sister – and me!'

She turned to look at me, legs still going up and down. ‘Everyone else got the right size but the one they had for me was a size eight. Eight! Haven't been that small since I was about seven. And all Vicky said was, “Well, you'll want to lose weight for the big day anyway, won't you …”'

She came to a stop, breathing heavily. ‘I can't talk at the same time as doing this.'

I stopped too and looked at my card. ‘Oh blimey, I'm supposed to do 20 minutes.' I looked back at the dial. ‘I've only done six.'

‘It's a bit much,' I said, slumping against the screen, waiting for my heart to slow to normal. ‘It's her big day, not yours. How can she expect you to drop three dress sizes for her?'

Clara shrugged. ‘Everything's got to be totally perfect – she's always been like that. She's really tall and a size eight herself. We look like Little and Large,' she said ruefully. ‘I've lost six pounds so far. When I first put the dress on, I couldn't close the zip at all – now I can get it up about an inch. But that's taken me weeks. The more I come to the gym, the more I want to eat!'

I suddenly realised I was starving myself. ‘How much longer have you got to go today?' I asked.

I had lemon and ginger tea instead of coffee and one slice of brown toast with Marmite – this was an emergency, I didn't think I could get home without fainting – and Clara had a smoothie and a cereal bar. Everyone on the tables around us seemed to be eating bacon.

‘I did read an article,' said Clara glumly, ‘saying that research has shown people who go to the gym actually consume a third more calories after each session than they would usually.' She sighed. ‘And the smell of cooked breakfast doesn't help. Who's going to have the low-fat fruit and muesli bowl when you can have two fried eggs and a sausage? Look at this,' she said, breaking off the end of her oat and nut bar and glaring at it. ‘It's like cardboard. I do want to lose weight obviously but I really can't … Oh hi!' She broke off as an enormous bloke in jogging bottoms and a rugby shirt came into the café area. ‘How you doing?'

He stopped by our table, towering over us. He had dark hair and amazing blue eyes. Clara gave him a big smile. ‘This is Laura – a new recruit to the torture chamber. Laura, this is Alfie. And hey! You look like you've shifted a few more pounds.'

He grinned. ‘Can almost touch my toes now. Still can't see them, mind you.'

‘He was a lot bigger before,' said Clara, as Alfie went off, swinging his kit bag. ‘He really was absolutely vast. The doctors told him it was getting dangerous and there was talk of him having a gastric band fitted but he's been coming here and he's on this special diet – one of those awful ones where you drink nasty soups all day. He's lost about three stone. He's got another five to go, I think.'

‘Bloody hell,' I said. ‘I want to shift ten pounds and that seems hard enough.'

‘You don't even look like you need to lose that much,' said Clara supportively. She rolled up her sleeves. ‘This is what I need to work on.' She grasped her upper arm with the other hand and shook it. ‘And this,' she added, patting her midriff. ‘Just got to stop drinking wine, keep eating this crap –' she poked the half eaten cereal bar ‘ and keep coming here. Up for it tomorrow?'

Clara, it turned out, was a radiographer at Margate hospital where she worked shifts. This week, she told me, she was “on lates”, so was coming early each morning when she finished work, before going home to bed.

‘It's supposed to be easier with a gym buddy,' she said optimistically. ‘If we do half an hour on the treadmill, half an hour on the cross-trainer and then some weights and power plate, it will fall off.'

‘I haven't had my induction session on the power plate yet,' I said. ‘I suppose I could ask …'

‘I'll show you tomorrow,' said Clara. ‘And bring your iPod.'

I'd have to wrestle it off Stanley first, I thought, as I drove home.

‘Music is what you need,' Clara had said. ‘Get your son to put on some good dancing stuff – then you just think of the treadmill as five songs. If they're four minutes each, that's twenty minutes gone. And if you get into the beat, it goes in no time.'

But Stanley was surprisingly amenable to spending his evening on the computer with my credit card and the iPod Nano he and Daniel had bought for me the previous Christmas and that he had used almost exclusively since. Especially when I agreed he could download five songs of his own choice too.

‘The new iPhone is so cool,' he said longingly, between mouse clicks. ‘If I had one of those I could put all my music on it and wouldn't have to use yours. Can I have one for my birthday?'

‘We'll have to see,' I said, although I'd already decided he could. I might have come back from the cookery programme with a hamper full of high-class soups and dried truffles instead of hard cash, but the work Mike was piling on me daily would pay for it, and Stanley deserved something lovely.

I'd already told Daniel I'd stump up for the phone if he paid for the contract each month. To my amazement, he'd agreed without argument – obviously realising that a) it was the least he could do and b) it would save him a shopping trip and give him more time to stay home eating tofu and nutritious seed mix with The Twig instead.

‘There you are,' said my son proudly, handing me the iPod an hour later. ‘I've made you a special playlist called
Gym Songs for Mum
. I've put the songs you wanted on, and some other good ones I think you might like. They might be a bit young for you,' he added doubtfully, ‘but they should be all right to jog to.'

‘I'm not sure I'm going to be jogging just yet,' I said. ‘I'm doing fast walking uphill at the moment. But thank you very much.' I kissed him. ‘I'm going to go every morning this week.'

‘Right,' he said, looking at me cynically. Then he grinned. ‘Bet you don't.'

‘Oh yes, I will!'

I dropped the corkscrew into a drawer and shut it, taking another sip of my delightfully fat-free water. If Clara had already lost six pounds and the cheery Alfie a whole three stone, then what was stopping me doing it too …

I didn't feel quite as enthusiastic as I dragged myself from bed the next morning, and I was positively exhausted after Clara not only put us through our paces on treadmill and cross-trainer but insisted we did five minutes on the more punishing of the two step machines.

‘Sadist,' I gasped as I tottered across the floor to the water fountain.

‘Power plate now!' she said, undeterred. ‘You'll love this.'

It was a strange-looking machine shaped like old-fashioned weighing scales with a vibrating platform that you stood on to perform various squats and stretches.

‘The idea is,' said Clara, as if reciting from the brochure, ‘that the vibrations cause your muscles to contract zillions of times a minute and that tones them up. They say ten minutes on here is worth an hour of ordinary press-ups and stuff. Here – try.'

She pressed the start button on mine and leapt onto the machine next to me. ‘Like this,' she said, thrusting her backside outwards like a pregnant duck and bending her knees. ‘Feel the vibrations?' I nodded mutely as I juddered from head to foot. ‘Hold that for a minute and you'll be toning your buttocks and inner thighs. Or–' she said wickedly, when we'd come to a merciful halt ‘ you can forget all that and just sit on it. It's a step up from the washing machine.'

I buckled gratefully at my weak knees, plonked myself down on the plate, and pressed the repeat button. ‘Mmm – it's got definite possibilities …'

We collapsed in giggles.

‘Hey, you're not supposed to be enjoying yourselves.' Alfie loomed over us, a towel around his shoulders. ‘I daren't get on that – not sure it would take my weight.'

I looked at him as he chatted. He was quite good-looking under all the extra flesh. He had a nice face and those lovely bright blue eyes.

‘He's doing ever so well,' said Clara, as he headed off to other machines. ‘He's here every morning without fail.'

And so would I be. I did two more mornings with Clara till her shifts changed and then made myself go alone. She was right about the music. Listening to The Proclaimers declare that they would walk 500 miles, I could stride along quite happily myself on the treadmill, while a spot of Take That was brilliant on the cross-trainer.

I had Stanley put some more Madonna on the iPod for me too, and a selection of my favourite Oasis songs. ‘It makes all the difference,' I told him. ‘Do you think I'm looking thinner yet?'

Stanley screwed up his nose. ‘I can't really tell,' he said, ‘but I told them at school you let me use your credit card and they thought it was cool.'

‘Oh good.'

‘I've told them you're going to be on TV too.'

‘Really – what did they say?'

‘They thought that was cool too. Danny said did that mean we were really rich? I said no, we weren't, but that I thought I might get the new iPhone for my birthday.' He looked at me hopefully.

‘No promises,' I said. ‘They're a lot of money.'

‘Not if you go on a contract – then the phone isn't so much or it's even free sometimes.'

‘Nothing is free – if you don't pay for the phone, you have to pay loads for the contract and you wouldn't use the minutes, so it would be a waste.'

‘I could phone you and phone Connor and I could have all my music on it and it's got really cool apps.' Stanley looked more animated than I'd seen him for a long time.

‘We'll see. So is everything OK at school now – better than it was?'

‘It's OK.'

‘Shall we have Connor round again soon?'

‘OK.' Stanley suddenly remembered. ‘And Mr Lazlett asked how you were and if you were going to the gym. He went this morning before school.'

‘Oh – I didn't see him.'

‘He says he's got to get thin too, or his wife will be cross with him.'

There was no danger of me being cross – well, not visibly anyway. The Botox had taken a grip and I could no longer frown or raise my eyebrows. It felt very odd at first and there was something different about my expression – I was somehow wider-eyed and my eyebrows were higher, which was strange.

But for the first time, I could understand people who had shedloads of money spending it on their faces. The fillers worked too. The corners of my mouth had plumped out and the tram lines coming down from either side of my nose were now hardly visible. I was beginning to wonder what I'd look like with an eye lift. And my wrinkly knees – shame I couldn't do something for them.

Really, I needed to win the lottery or marry somebody hugely rich, so I could be one of those ladies who lunch, and spend my days having treatments, and seeing my personal trainer. There was one at the gym called Marco, Eastern European with dark eyes and a moody expression. Clara spent a considerable amount of time watching his bum as he stalked about the floor, and bemoaning the fact that she couldn't afford a one-to one with him.

‘He's supposed to be a complete slave driver,' she said dreamily.

‘You're a complete slave driver,' I grumbled back. ‘Can we stop now?'

‘Two more of these.' Clara sat on the power plate with her knees tucked up toward her chest, wobbling precariously, an agonised expression on her face. ‘Hit start,' she gasped.