Girls Under Pressure (9 page)

I leave the cheese. I eat the tomato and the little leaves of basil and I drink my fizzy water and I’m so hungry watching Magda and Nadine I even fish out the lemon from my glass and chew up every little bit.

“Yuck, don’t
do
that,” says Magda, stuffing her face with pizza.

“Honestly, Ellie, you are a prize nutter,” says Nadine, biting on a huge piece of garlic bread.

“Quit nagging me, both of you.”

“But we’re
worried
about you.”

“You’ve got obsessed with this
stupid
diet.”

“Look, I’m fine. I’m just not very hungry, actually. Don’t keep
getting
at me, both of you.”

I can’t help feeling hurt. I was so supportive to Nadine. I was so supportive to Magda. Why can’t they give me a bit of support for a change?

I feel so upset my tummy ties itself into a knot and I truly do lose my appetite. I put down my knife and fork and wait for Magda and Nadine to finish. They take a long time. They talk with their mouths full, their lips greasy, cheeks distorted, throats convulsing as they swallow.

“Ellie! Pack it in,” says Nadine.

“What? I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re staring at me like I’m a boa constrictor and I’m eating a little bunny alive.”

“Well, come
on
. Let’s do the presents.”

“When we’ve finished eating.”

“You have, almost.”

“Pudding!” says Magda. “I want an ice cream, don’t you, Nadine?”

It is exquisite torture. I have always
adored
ice cream. Maybe they’re just doing this to be mean to me. The waitress brings
three
bowls of strawberry ice cream.

“Not for me, thanks. It was only two,” I say quickly, not daring to breathe in the sweet strawberry smell.

“I signaled to her to bring three. Eat it, Ellie. Don’t be such a spoilsport. You’re stopping us having fun, sitting there all po-faced and plaintive,” says Magda.

“Well, if my presence bothers you that much then it’s easy, I’ll make myself scarce,” I say, getting up.

“Sit
down,
Ellie-phant,” says Magda.

“Don’t go all snotty on us, Ellie-Belly,” says Nadine.

“No
wonder
I have a complex about my weight,” I say.

But I sit down again—and I have just one lick of the strawberry ice cream.

It’s as if a strawberry firework has exploded in my head. Another lick, another, another . . . and in less than a minute it’s gone. It’s so good. I can still taste it all over my tongue. But my heart is hammering. Four hundred calories? Five hundred? Plus the sauce and the whipped cream?

“Relax!” says Magda. “Here, have your Christmas pressie. Open it now.”

She gives me this pink parcel tied with purple ribbon. It’s soft and flat. I open it up—and it’s a T-shirt with a picture of the famous statue Venus de Milo gorging chocolates. She’s armless, so she’s being fed by little fat flying cherubs. She’s got a speech bubble above her head saying “I’m the most beautiful woman in the world and I’m size sixteen—so eat up, babe!”

I laugh and give Magda a hug.

“Have mine, too, Ellie,” says Nadine.

Her present is wrapped in black crepe paper tied with silver ribbon. It’s very little. When I open it up I find a tiny silver elephant charm on a thin black velvet ribbon.

“It’s beautiful,” I say, and I give Nadine a hug too. “You’re the two best friends in all the world. Oh, God, you’ve both given me such super things and I’ve reverted to type and done you my stupid handmade junk again.”

“Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Ellie’s amazing handmade junk,” says Magda. “Come on, gimme, gimme.”

“Me too,” says Nadine.

I hand over their presents with immense trepidation but, thank goodness, they actually seem to
like
their toy animals. Magda gives her cat a big cuddle and Nadine makes her lemur climb all over the table and chairs.

Magda and Nadine swop presents too—one has an ultra-posh Chanel lipstick and the other has Wolford black glossy tights—a perfect choice for each.

We all end up having a big big big hug when we say goodbye. I wish more than ever we weren’t going to the boring old cottage for Christmas.

It takes forever to load the car up the next morning. It’s not just our clothes—there’s all sorts of boxes and baskets full of food and drink—and
then
there’s the special big box of presents. I have a little peer and prod to see what my presents might be. Looks like books, though there’s a little soft parcel too, and a bigger one that rattles.

“Hey, leave that alone, Ellie!” says Dad. “You’re worse than Eggs.” He gives me a quick kiss on the cheek.

He’s so happy to be off to the cottage. It’s annoying but it’s also kind of endearing too. He gets us singing all the crazy old Christmas songs on the journey, awful ancient things like “I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus” and “Jingle Bells” and “Rudolph” and we bellow our way through all those corny Christmas hits of the seventies and eighties too. Eggs interrupts every five minutes to ask if we’re nearly there but by the time we
are
there he’s sound asleep. He doesn’t even wake up when Anna lifts him out of the car and staggers along the path with him to the front door.

It’s raining, of course, and blowing a gale too. Wonderful Welsh weather. The cottage looks exactly the same. Worse. When Dad unlocks it this damp smell oozes out as if our faces are being rubbed with an old wet flannel. Dad breathes in deeply, a great smile on his face.

“Home sweet home,” he declares, without a trace of irony.

It’s not home and the smell certainly isn’t sweet. Even Dad recoils from the kitchen. We forgot to throw out a bag of potatoes from last time and now they’ve grown so many tentacles they’re like something out of
Alien
. Dad has to hold the bag of rotting spuds at arm’s length as he throws it out.

Anna tries to get the stove going, hampered by Eggs, who whimpers and clings like a limpet every time she tries to put him down. We have to work hard for
hours
to restore all the ordinary necessities of life to our holiday hovel—heating, hot water, warm food and drink, aired beds—and then when we’ve got rid of Eggs at last and Anna and Dad and I settle down in the dreary living room with cups of stale instant coffee we find the telly’s completely on the blink. There’s just a roaring noise like a waterfall and a surge of little starry dots.

“Great,” I say, sighing heavily. “And I bet there isn’t a TV repair place for a hundred miles or more or if there
is,
then it’ll be closed for Christmas.”

“Old gloomy-guts,” says Dad, refusing to be fazed. “I’ll soon fix it.”

The set remains seriously unfixed.

“Oh, well, who needs boring old television anyway? We’ll play games and chat and make our own amusement. We’ll have a really old-fashioned family Christmas––”

“I’ll look in the Yellow Pages in the morning,” Anna mutters to me.

“Of course it might not be the set at all,” says Dad. “It could be the transmitter. The line might have gone down in the heavy wind.”

“So we might be in for a total power failure,” I say. “No telly. No heat. No light. No food.”

“Well, no food will suit you. You’ve hardly eaten anything for weeks,” says Dad.

He suddenly sounds serious. Anna’s looking at me too. Oh, God, I can’t face a Spanish Inquisition on my Eating Habits, especially not now. It’s an immense relief when the phone starts ringing. I rush to answer it. It’ll be Dan. I wonder when he arrived with all his family. I can’t wait to catch up with all his news. It’s really been ages. I wonder if his ridiculous haircut has improved any. It couldn’t look
worse
.

But it isn’t Dan at all. It’s some sad person trying to sell double glazing over the phone. They rabbit on before I can stop them, though it’s pointless, because the cottage windows could be
triple
glazed and it wouldn’t be near lukewarm and there’s no point them banging on about less noise from traffic because there’s only the odd passing tractor that manages to make it halfway up this moldy muddy mountain.

“Sorry, you’re wasting your time,” I say, and I put the phone down.

“Playing hard to get with Dan?” says Dad, looking surprised. “I thought you were getting kind of keen on him. I thought that was maybe why you’d gone into this dire droopy decline. I thought you’d chirp up as soon as he called.”

“Well, you thought wrong, didn’t you,” I say. “And as a matter of fact that
wasn’t
Dan. It was someone selling double glazing, OK? Right, as there’s no telly I think I’ll have an early night.”

I stomp out of the room. I hear Anna groan and say, “Why do you have to be so tactless?” and Dad moan, “How was I to know it wasn’t Dan? Why hasn’t he phoned Ellie, anyway?”

I don’t
know
why he hasn’t phoned. I thought he might try first thing Christmas Eve—but no. When Dad and Anna and Eggs are upstairs I quickly lift the receiver just to make sure the phone hasn’t packed up as well as the telly. No, it’s still working, and Anna does her best later on, phoning all over the place to find someone to come out and repair the television. With no luck.

“Do not despair. I’ll call on Father Christmas,” says Dad, and he jumps in the car.

“I want to see Father Christmas too,” Eggs clamors, but Dad makes him stay with us.

Dad is gone
ages
. Practically long enough to get to Iceland and back.

“Your dad is supposed to cook when we’re at the cottage,” says Anna crossly, whipping up omelettes.

It’s way past lunchtime and Eggs is driving us mad wailing that he’s starving to death.

I feel I’m starving to death too. I managed to go without breakfast altogether, simply slipping my toast in my pocket when no one was looking and then secretly chucking it in the wastebin. But Anna’s omelettes are runny. If I try pocketing mine it’ll seep right down my leg and into my sock. Anna makes superb omelettes—and eggs aren’t
too
fattening. Though there’s the milk and the butter and the cheese—and the crusty bread to go with them. Two slices.

Dad comes back at last, red in the face and ho-ho-hoing like a real Father Christmas. He’s bought a brand-new portable television. And four portions of fish and chips.

“But we’ve already eaten lunch, you silly darling,” says Anna, giving him a hug.

“I’ve had lunch too—a pint and a meat pie down at the pub. But it’s Christmas. Let’s eat two lunches,” says Dad.

Anna sees my face.

“It’s all right. You don’t have to, Ellie,” she says quickly.

But takeaway fish and chips have this amazingly pungent smell. My mouth waters as Dad opens up the steaming parcels. Fish and chips from the shop back in London are frequently a disappointment, limp and greasy, but the chippy down the valley is marvelous. The fish is snow-white with wonderful crispy batter and the chips are golden and salty. I try just one—and it’s fatal. I end up eating my entire portion of fish and chips, and half of Eggs’s too when he tires. Two and a half lunches.

As soon as I’ve finished I feel terrible. Utterly disgusted at my own greed and weakness. The waistband of my jeans cuts into my full-to-bursting stomach. I wish I could slice it right open so I could scrape all the food out. Well . . . I
could
get rid of it. As long as I don’t hang about too long.

I can’t risk the bathroom upstairs. The cottage is so small everyone’s bound to hear. But there’s an ancient outdoor privy we used while Dad was still organizing an indoor bathroom when we first bought the cottage. I’ve always been frightened of the outside toilet. There isn’t a light so you have no idea if there are spiders about to scuttle all over you and you can’t properly see the horrible wooden seat and its disgusting smelly hole. I’ve never dared sit on it properly in case any stray rats splashing around down there might suddenly want to come up for air and bite my bottom.

There’s one advantage of such primitive plumbing. When I fight my way through the weeds and get in there the smell is so foul it’s easy enough making myself sick. I’m heaving even before I stick a finger down my throat.

It’s horrible horrible horrible while it’s happening. My heart is hammering and the tears are pouring down my face. Even after it’s all over I don’t feel much better. I stagger weakly out into the open air and splash dubious water on my face from the old rain butt. It’s not raining at the moment but the vicious wind is hopefully bringing some color back to my cheeks.

I go indoors again, though the smell from the fish and chip papers Anna’s bundling up makes me want to puke again.

“Ellie? Are you all right?”

“Mm? Yeah. Fine.”

“Where have you been?”

“I just went to use that horrid outside loo. Eggs was in the proper toilet and I was desperate,” I say. “Has Dad got the new telly working, then?”

I try to edge past her and go into the living room but Anna takes me by the arm.

“Ellie, you look awful.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You’re as white as a sheet. Have you been sick?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? You smell a bit sicky.”

“Oh, this is really Let’s Flatter Ellie time. First you say I look awful and then you say I smell. Terrific.” I’m trying to joke but I feel ridiculously tearful and my mouth is starting to burble of its own accord. “I
know
I look awful, you don’t have to rub it in. I’m just a flabby fat fright, I know. No wonder Dan’s gone off me, can’t even be bothered to come and see me when he’s just the other side of this stupid mountain, he was the one meant to be mad about me but that didn’t last five minutes, did it, and now . . .”

“Now?” Anna repeats urgently.

There’s a burst of cartoon music from the living room and Eggs yells triumphantly.

“Wallace and Gromit!”

“Hey, come on, you girls, come and watch the telly!”

“Come on,” I say, sniffing. “Seeing as he’s gone to such trouble to get it.”

“No. In a minute. Let’s have this out now,” says Anna, hanging on to me. “Ellie.” She takes a deep breath.

“What?”

“Are you going to have a baby?”

“WHAT???”