Size Matters (2 page)

Also, Jay thought as she stretched first one leg down the bed and then the other, hoping it counted as calorie-burning exercise, Delphine's taste, interior-decoration-wise, had freeze-dried back in 1991. Or it had according to the photos she sent back for Auntie Win to show around the family. One appalled look-see at this sparkly new, huge, loft-style design-award roof job and she'd be lining up a brickie to replace most of Greg's much-loved glass and importing swags of floral chintz complete with tasselled tie-backs and gilded rose motifs on a limed curtain pole the diameter of a sturdy sapling.

Jay stared up through the sloped glass roof at the succession of planes making their way across the night sky towards Heathrow. She gave up on the book and switched off her light. It didn't make much difference, what with the light from the suspended plasma-screen TV and the orange glow from the street lights outside. Greg was still glued to his test match, headphones now considerately clamped to his ears, his hands still making barely conscious movements that indicated he was in there with the batsman, showing him how it should be done.

‘Going to sleep?' he shouted at her, reaching across and squeezing her hand. ‘Love you!' he yelled.

‘Me too,' she told him, certain he couldn't hear and wondering if he'd have accurately lip-read if she'd said ‘Sod you' instead. ‘Granny' indeed, she'd give him bloody Granny.

Detox. The word had shimmied into Jay's head as she and her internal chocolate cake had slid away into sleep the night before. It was still there, waiting, like Daffodil the cat, to pounce on her the moment she woke. Detox, she'd read many a carefree time as the hairdresser snipped or the dentist was drilling the victim ahead of her, was where you started. It was an essential pre-diet body-cleansing in preparation for the ultimate weight-loss experience. If she was going to be a ‘granny' as Greg so delightedly put it (and was it
that
hilarious? She didn't think so), she was bloody well going to be a gorgeous, slender, desirable one. No more would Greg slap her thigh as if she was a lardy pony and call her a Big Girl. Flush away the internal toxins, that was what she had to do, clear out the crap (literally, presumably, though she'd draw the line at colonic interference) and start again.

It was Monday, the ideal day for a fresh start. Now, in the early morning and an empty kitchen-stroke-family-room – if you didn't count the breakfast debris left by Rory and Ellie as they whirled through and attacked the cereal cupboard on the way out to school – she flicked through a colour supplement that had
escaped the recycling box and found what she was looking for. A mug of camomile tea now sat on the big glass table in front of her, cooling fast. It tasted and looked and smelled like wee. Not appetizing, for sure, but virtuous certainly. She'd read somewhere that people actually
did
drink their own pee as part of a detoxification process. The thought did not appeal in the slightest and surely urine was already a whole lot of rejected toxins? Otherwise, wouldn't the body have found a use for it? Not to be thought of too deeply, she decided, contemplating the fist-sized heap of chilled white grapes which sat on the wonky pink plate that had almost failed Rory his mock Art GCSE. This was it. The inadequate sum total of detox breakfast. Here was where inner purification started.

‘Mum? Got any Marmite?' Jay could hear Imogen shouting from halfway up the steps from the basement flat. Jay unlocked the long architecturally arty concertina of folding glass doors and her daughter rushed into the room clutching a pair of fat slices of toast. Melted butter dripped onto Mog's fingers and she licked at it, missing a bit that trickled down her chin. Jay inhaled slowly, eyes closed. Oh the smell of that toast. The blissful, sensual, warming gorgeousness of it. She shook her head briskly. Even if she gave into temptation, there surely wasn't time. She was due at the station in half an hour to pick up Anya and Katinka and drop them at Mrs Ryan's to do her Regular Clean. A wheel from the Henry vacuum cleaner had rolled to the back of the understairs cupboard and vanished among a pile of Christmas-decoration boxes. The van was only half loaded and it needed petrol. Jay, mindful of her job's requirements, reached into the cupboard under the sink, feeling for a new pack of J-cloths. At least down here there was only the non-alluring odour
of damp and dishwasher tablets, nothing to seduce her tastebuds.

‘Marmite?' Imogen said again. Jay backed out of the cupboard, hot and muddled. And hungry.

‘For my toast? Me and Tris haven't got any. We thought you might.' Imogen was standing in the middle of the room, barefoot and in her droopy black jersey pyjama bottoms teamed with a blue T-shirt emblazoned on the front with ‘Plumber's Mate' in rhinestones.

‘You should have put shoes on.' Jay looked at her daughter's grubby toes with the chipped lilac varnish. ‘You'll catch a chill.'

‘God, Mum, it's only up the steps. So have you got any?'

‘What? Oh the Marmite. I don't know. Have a look in the fridge, in the cupboards, wherever. I'm in a rush, haven't got time . . .'

‘Great. Cheers. Thanks a lot,' Imogen growled, opening the fridge and taking out a can of Coke. ‘Just cos I've got a
craving
, you'd think my own
mother
would want to spoil me a bit.'

‘A craving? Good grief girl, you're only a few weeks gone. You wait till you're . . .' Jay ran out of steam, suddenly feeling her taste buds being overcome by the scent of Imogen's breakfast. She would kill to be sitting down for a long slow trawl through the newspaper, a cup of hot strong coffee in front of her along with a heap of lush toast, saturated with marmalade . . . Thick, lustrous peel-strewn marmalade. Sugar-sodden, a hint of bitterness, the tang of utter, utter pleasure.

But no. According to this article you definitely couldn't detox on toast and marmalade and the kind of coffee that made you think of Mediterranean mornings. She returned to her chair and sipped miserably at the tepid herbal tea. She thought of the chocolate and
strawberry cake from the day before, hoping to shame herself back into firm resolution. The thought only made her want to shove Imogen aside from the fridge and see if there was a sliver of the cake, a scraping of cream, left on a plate.

‘Found it!' Imogen hauled a Marmite jar out from the back far reaches of the fridge, opened it quickly and plunged a knife into it.

‘Maybe you should look at the “best before” date,' Jay warned.

Imogen paused in her toast-spreading and sniffed into the jar. ‘Smells all right. Smells delish,' she shrugged, carrying on.

Jay munched dejectedly on the grapes, reading through the list of foods that were, for the next few days, utterly banned from her life. These included wheat, dairy products, eggs, fish, meat, coffee, tea, alcohol, sugar, cakes, biscuits. It didn't leave much. It left, as far as she could work out, grapes and apples and lemons and brown rice. Oh joy. Food to commit suicide by. Still, it wasn't for long. A limited amount of proper food (as she'd define it) could be introduced soon, gradually and with care. (Why? What digestive disaster would occur if she ate, say, a bacon sandwich, very fast and in quite reckless spirits?) Only six days in and for supper she could look forward to a small salad of citrus fruits with pumpkin seeds.

‘Got any more bread?' Imogen clattered the top off the big old earthenware breadbin without waiting for an answer. ‘I just fancy one more slice . . .' She turned to her mother, eyeing with pity the few remaining grapes and the sad tangle of scrappy stalks. ‘Shall I do one for you? And wouldn't you rather have some proper coffee?'

Jay prodded her left thigh. The flesh gave beneath her finger, pleasingly soft and squishy beneath the
denim of her favourite old jeans. Her resolve, as well as her plumpness, was dented.

‘OK then, just one. And marmalade.'

Well she needed it, Jay thought as she took a long, languorous bite and savoured the fleshy chunks of fragrant peel and the gorgeous gluey orange ooze. There was a hard day's work ahead. Running a cleaning company wasn't exactly a sit-down doddle. Every single client seemed to think Monday was the ideal day for getting the housework done and then complaining about whoever had done it. After delivering the girls to do Mrs Ryan's Regular there was the Dachshund Man who wanted an Upstairs Blitz and two new clients who needed a go-see and a quote. Plenty to do. And anyway, Jay reassured herself, surely it was hardly worthwhile starting on a serious detox if you were already running on empty.

Rory was in trouble. He'd copied Hal Clegg's French essay on ‘
L'après-midi d'un chat
' pretty much full-on word for word. At the time he'd have said it was definitely Hal's fault, the loser; he shouldn't have left his bag on the bus. Rory had done him a favour really, picking it up off the seat, lugging it home, taking care of it overnight, phoning Hal to say he'd got it safe for him and then dragging the thing back into school (in his mum's Dishing the Dirt van, embarrassing or what?) the next day. Hal couldn't have expected there not to be some kind of reward in it. He couldn't really be surprised that Rory had had a good scrabble through its contents and selected various items that could be of personal use. These had included a packet of Marlboro (only two gone), Samantha Newton's new mobile number (result!) scrawled on a bit of paper and decorated with little hearts (you as well, Hal?) and the French essay.

Rory had had a quick look in his own homework diary. The essay title he'd written down was ‘
L'aprèsmidi de Jacques
'. He must have got it wrong. Rory wasn't too keen on French (in fact what was French for understatement?) and would be the first to admit he probably hadn't been paying attention. Hal was ploddy and studious and the kind of boff that got roped into those evenings for Prospective Parents, so they could admire this prime example of the best a state school could turn out. French Jacques, on the other hand, or perhaps not now Rory came to think of it, was the dreary spoon whose sad life they'd been reading about in
Nos Amis Francais!
. Jacques lived in
une petite village
up
la montagne
with his
maman
and
papa
and
petite soeur
Marie. He was keen on his pet
chien
, on
le football
and
le skiing
and on playing
la trompette
. Coming up with even fifty words' worth of stuff of the remotest interest that Jacques could get up to in one afternoon was surely beyond anyone's creative range.

So Rory had copied the cat essay, because Hal was a swotty div and must have listened right. Hal had written some quite funny stuff about a cat called Celine who chased a mouse into a bar and drove the customers nuts by leaping at the TV screen when they were trying to watch a World Cup final. Hal's French vocab was quite impressive. Rory had to look up lots of the words and because of the differences in their basic language skills had changed the story a little bit, obviously, simplifying it down to somewhere closer to his own level. He wasn't completely stupid. He'd sent his personal cat (Fleur – neat touch that, even Hal hadn't come up with a pukka French name) chasing its mouse into a shop where David Beckham was trying on shoes (and did his dad – Rory's, not D. Beckham's – have to find it so hilarious when he'd asked what was the French for Prada? Like were you supposed to know
everything
at sixteen?). He'd thought he'd done OK and forgotten about it till the work had been handed back oh-so-publicly that morning. What a sodding way to start a week. Hal Clegg had got away with it, no question. Course he had, the blue-eyed boy who could do no wrong. ‘Sorry, I must have misheard,' he'd said, all big smarmy grin, not that it mattered. ‘Not a problem, Hallam; a highly inventive and entertaining effort,' Ms Lofthouse had cooed at her number one A-star dead cert. ‘But as for you, Rory Callendar, what was your excuse?'

Detention. Two lunch hours. He'd looked at Samantha Newton, hoping for a glimmer of sympathy to raise more than his spirits, but she was doing nail comparison with Shelley Caine. Worse, during the detention he'd still got to come up with three hundred words on what Jacques did with his
après-midi
. So unfair. What, he wondered, was French for wank?

Katinka hadn't turned up again. When Jay picked Anya up at the station she had tapped her nose and sniffed hard, by which Jay gathered Katinka had caught a cold. It was her third in a month and somehow each time she'd managed not to let Jay know by the more usual means of phoning rather than by just not being there. OK, granted there was a language problem here (rustic Polish v English), but surely she had just one friend who spoke a tiny bit of English? This meant Jay now had to join in with the cleaning rather than getting on with some admin. Otherwise Anya would be at Mrs Ryan's for twice as long as she should be and they wouldn't get to the Dachshund Man before twelve.

It wasn't supposed to be like this, Jay thought as she lugged the vacuum cleaner up Mrs Ryan's plush-carpeted stairs. She was supposed to be the boss. She was supposed to sit in her little home office next to
Ellie's bedroom, to feel important and businesslike and Do the Accounts. She was supposed to take the bookings, hire and fire the staff, advertise, promote and generally motivate and organize. She was not supposed to be feeling hot, fat and sweaty, clad in itchy rubber gloves and shoving Harpic down the clients' skiddy lavatories. When Jay and Barbara-with-the-cats had set up Dishing the Dirt, investing serious money in their four little vans, the logos, the advertising, insurance and materials, the idea had been that their personal involvement should entail as little that was hands-on as possible.

Obviously they trained their staff on site, demonstrating the domestic arts and adapting them to any picky personal preferences of the clients. They made a point of settling in all their cleaners – working alongside even the most reliable, experienced ones – at any new bookings, partly to reassure clients that they took their requirements seriously but mostly so they were familiar with the premises and could fend off any unjustified complaints (such as the very many who assumed that by booking a Regular they'd be somehow getting a Blitz, including all books off shelves and all overcrammed kitchen cupboards emptied, scrubbed out and restocked tidily). But essentially Jay and Barbara would
administrate
.