The Seed Collectors (43 page)

‘I suppose you’ve put on a bit of muscle,’ he says. ‘But . . . Well, I would have expected a more impressive result by now.’

How is this not impressive? SHE IS IN THE THIRTIES!

‘How have you been getting on with the diet?’

‘I’ve stuck to the calories. Fifteen hundred a day.’ Give or take the odd egg or handful of nuts here and there. Oh, and croissants on trains, because what you eat on trains doesn’t count. And all the nibbly things she has when she is drunk. And lunches with Emmy at the Black Douglas. And all the bits of James’s cakes that she doesn’t really eat, but sort of really does. And all the times that she stops looking at the kitchen scales because she doesn’t want to know what they actually say, especially when weighing butter. Oh, and that time the battery was running out and would not go beyond five grams however much stuff you put on it. Bryony had a lot of five-gram portions of things that week.

Rich frowns. ‘I think you’ve gone into starvation mode.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Your body thinks it’s starving and so hangs on to fat.’

‘But I’ve actually
lost
. . .’

‘You need to take your calories up a bit.’

‘Right.’

‘Eighteen hundred a day.’

‘Eighteen hundred?’

‘Yep. You getting enough carbs?’

‘Ah. Well, actually, that’s one thing I have changed. I’ve gone, well, a bit, because of my cousin who . . . Well, basically sort of primal.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Like a low-carb diet, but with . . .’

‘Don’t do that. Your body needs carbs.’

‘But that’s not what . . .’

‘People give up carbs on these extreme programmes, but they don’t realise that for a balanced diet you need them. Without carbs all you lose is water.’

‘But what about all the fat that the scales . . .’

‘Go and get yourself some wholewheat bread. And some pasta. Are you losing energy in workouts?’

How can anyone do a workout without losing energy? Bryony can now do eight minutes on the rowing machine on Level 6, and can go up to 8.5kmph on the treadmill at an incline of 1.5 for a total of five minutes. But she does feel a bit knackered afterwards.

‘I suppose so,’ she says.

‘You’ve hit the wall. No glycogen in your muscles.’

‘Right.’

‘You need pasta.’

Everything Bryony has read in the last three months would suggest that she does not need pasta, that pasta is the very last thing she needs. But Rich’s voice is drowning it all out.
Your body needs carbs. Your body needs carbs
. When she leaves the gym she goes straight to Sainsbury’s and buys a French stick, a large bar of milk chocolate and a jar of strawberry jam. And also a packet of six large jam doughnuts. And a family bag of sea salt and balsamic vinegar crisps. Oh, and a loaf of wholewheat bread and some wholewheat pasta.

Gym Playlist

If You Let Me Stay – Terence Trent D’Arby

Sweet Little Mystery – Wet Wet Wet

I Luv You Baby – The Original

We Got A Love Thang – CeCe Peniston

Out Of The Blue (Into The Fire) – The The

Angels Of Deception – The The

This Is The Day – The The

Yes – McAlmont & Butler

Your Woman – White Town

Bonnie And Clyde – Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot

On Your Own – Blur

Give It Up – KC and the Sunshine Band

Time To Pretend – MGMT

They finish the Everyman crossword in about an hour. Skye Turner had never done a cryptic crossword before coming to stay with Beatrix, but it turns out she has an uncanny ability to see anagrams in her head. And to get those amazing clues like
Of of of of of of of of of of (10)
, which of course is ‘oftentimes’, a word that Skye Turner is somehow aware of, despite never having used it. Perhaps she has read it somewhere, in some old-fashioned schoolbook. Now she is scanning the
Radio Times
to try to find something for their evening viewing.

‘
Downton Abbey
’s on. New series. Do you like that?’

‘Vulgar,’ says Beatrix. ‘Too much about the servants.’

‘I’ve never seen it.’

‘It’s far too twee for you, dear.’

Skye Turner keeps scanning. What’s that thing that Tash and Karl are obsessed with? It seems to involve a group of mild-looking people trapped in a tent with a lot of carbs. Skye has tried not to watch it, partly because it’s for old people. Beatrix is an old person. But then again . . .

‘I think I might like to look at
Game of Thrones
,’ says Beatrix.

‘Isn’t that all blood and guts and swords and stuff?’

‘Have you seen it?’

‘No.’

‘I read about it in
Vogue
.’

‘OK . . . I can’t find it though. Is it definitely on?’

‘I think I managed to video the series.’

Beatrix does not ‘Sky+’ things, and would never involve Sky, a company with whom she has an uneasy relationship due to its share price falling from 850p to 692p virtually overnight just last month, in any kind of verb formation. Even though she insists on calling what it does ‘videoing’, she is pretty nifty with Sky+. When Skye looks, she finds, as well as
Game of Thrones
, several nature programmes, a documentary about perfume, and four episodes of
Midsomer Murders
.

‘And I’ll have a cup of tea and a date. But only if you’ll join me.’

‘Pranayama’, Fleur says to the tennis player.

‘You what?’

‘It doesn’t matter what it’s called. It’s just different ways of breathing.’

Ever since she came back from the Isle of Lewis Fleur has had the ability to see what people need; well, more than usual anyway. She knows that Georgina from the Tuesday morning Rise and Shine class needs to drink more water. She knows that Martin, the only man in the Wednesday afternoon group, needs to stop online gambling. In some odd way that she can’t explain she also knows that she can’t change what will happen to them. But the tennis player has come to her and asked for help, which is different. If Martin asked her for help what would she say? Probably the same thing. Breathe. Sit still, and breathe. It really is the only way. But Fleur somehow also knows that Martin will give up online gambling after his wife dies, and that he has needed to go through this experience in this lifetime, that
although it has been incredibly, horribly shit, in some ways it has helped him grow, and he sort of – whisper this bit if you like – kind of
chose
it.

‘It doesn’t matter where you sit, as long as your spine is relatively straight.’

‘Well, you’ve seen me try to sit cross-legged. That was a fucking joke . . .’

‘Can you kneel?’

‘What about a chair?’

‘No. Let’s try you in the Hero pose.
Vajrasana
.’

‘I certainly ain’t no hero.’

‘Yes. Well. We’ll see about that.’

‘It’s certainly no fucking wonder she is so obsessed with food.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘You obviously have an eating disorder. Kids pick these things up.’ Eyebrows. ‘What, from a second cousin, once . . .’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Anyway,
I
have an eating disorder? That’s rich. I have nine per cent body fat.’

‘You know what percentage of your body is fat! I repeat:
you have an eating disorder
.’

‘My blood pressure is a hundred over sixty . . .’

‘For God’s sake.’

‘I am about as healthy as it gets.’

‘Physically, maybe . . .’

‘What is that supposed to . . .’

Bryony sighs. ‘Come on, surely there is more to life than . . .’

‘Anyway, you know your body fat percentage too. What was it? Forty . . .’

‘It’s thirty-six and a half now, actually.’

‘Why does me knowing my body fat percentage mean that I have an eating disorder, and you knowing yours mean you don’t?’

‘Because you don’t need to know yours! You’ve basically got a perfect body.’

‘Maybe Holly wants that too. What is so wrong with . . .’

‘SHE ALMOST DIED.’

Charlie is quiet for a few seconds.

‘Maybe we’ve all got some level of eating disorder.’

‘Maybe we have. But the point is that Holly isn’t following
my
example.’

‘Thank God.’

‘This isn’t going to get us anywhere.’

Bryony goes to the fridge. ‘Let’s sit down with a glass of wine and talk about this properly.’

‘Look, Bry, there’s not much to talk about. Basically if you don’t tell her, I will.’

‘It’s not the right time.’

‘It is the right time.’

‘But James . . .’

‘What about James?’ says James, coming in.

Think of a substance you’d like to give up. Perhaps it’s a drug. If it’s a drug, it’s likely to be a plant. Perhaps it’s a food plant that acts like a drug? Decide on your substance now, and visualise it in its processed form, or in the form you take it. Think of all the other people who indulge in this substance. See them walking around. Now imagine the plant (or plants) from which this substance is made. See them growing. What do they look like? What nourishes them? Are they attractive or not? Now think again of all the people who also take this substance.
How many of them do you think would like to give it up? Imagine yourself walking among them, the only one who has broken free of the substance. How do you feel?