Diet Diary: April 2001; Fell in love with the barista in the nearby Starbucks. Ate 100 tonnes of cabbage, drank gallons of tap water. I Never. Left. The. Bathroom. Lost 3 days, gained 4 pounds. The barista left Starbucks and I never saw him again.
‘You’re VERY fat,’ he said.
I didn’t know where to put myself.
Having worked hard all day at Caprioni’s Cafe serving up delicious ice creams with orgasmic toppings to happy customers, one of my final requests of the day was from a cute little boy with green eyes and a lisp. He can’t have been more than five years old, and as he licked his lips and lisped his way through an order of strawberry ice cream with raspberry sauce, he’d decided to supersize his order with an unsolicited comment regarding my size: You’re VERY fat.
Not just fat, but VERY fat, with the emphasis on VERY. He was a little boy, he wasn’t passing a judgement, or being mean, he was merely making an accurate observation about the lady behind the counter. It was just unfortunate that lady happened to be me, and the words had continued on a loop in my head ever since.
It had taken me by surprise, and I was hoping I may have misheard, though there was nothing I could come up with that might have been mistaken for fat. I tried, oh God I tried, desperately convincing myself he may have just said you’re VERY ‘bat’ or VERY ‘hat’ but I was kidding myself. I just wished he hadn’t said it so audibly, and the cafe hadn’t been so quiet at the particular bloody millisecond he said the ‘F’ word. In fact, for me it would have been less of an issue if he’d said the other ‘F’ word. This wasn’t the first time someone had felt the urge to share with me my body image, like I didn’t know I was at least two stone overweight. I’d spent many years of my childhood hearing the cruel remarks regarding what I optimistically referred to as ‘my curves’ – but when you’re an adult, people usually keep their comments about other people’s weight to themselves. Colleagues might have whispered behind my back, and discussed the state of my increasing arse as it left the room, but never in front of me. And shop assistants might have given me pitying but knowing looks outside the changing rooms as I handed back the small tent I couldn’t squeeze into muttering something about ‘the wrong colour’. But on the whole, being an adult is easier because people have, in theory, learned to keep their comments to themselves. But kids are different, and this one was keen to make his feelings known.
I attempted to style it out, smile and ignore what he’d said. If by any chance someone within a five-mile radius hadn’t heard his loud remark, then perhaps we could just move past it? But no, his mother had other ideas.
‘You can’t say that to people,’ she started, looking at me with guilt, embarrassment and the inevitable pity. ‘Say you’re sorry, Josh,’ she continued, while I feigned an indulgent smile and wafted my hand in the air like it didn’t matter and there was no need for an apology or a bloody inquisition that now seemed to be drawing everyone’s attention. I wanted to forget about it, but she was making quite the spectacle and people were muttering, their glances drifting across my body as my face flooded scarlet. Then everything escalated even more as she raised her voice, repeated that he mustn’t say ‘things like that’, thus alerting anyone in the vicinity who may not have already heard how fat I was, to prick up their ears.
‘Say you’re SORRY,’ she yelled, as his chin puckered and he burst into tears. I didn’t know where to look or what to do, it now seemed that whatever was going on between the VERY fat lady and the little boy had caused him to cry and not only was I corpulent I was cruel too.
‘Please, it’s fine,’ I said, aggressively squishing strawberry ice cream onto a cone and attacking it viciously with raspberry sauce. Needless to say, it wasn’t fine, and by the time I handed him the cone the little boy was in a full-on tantrum and pushed it sharply away so that it hit the counter and landed on the floor. This sent him into paroxysms of ice cream grief and I now looked like the fat, and cruel lady who made him drop his ice cream!
‘What’s going on?’ Marco, my miserable colleague said with a frown. ‘You causing problems, Dani?’ He wasn’t joking, Marco was permanently miserable, pretty monosyllabic and never joked.
‘I’m… I’m not causing anything…’ I said, close to tears and wishing I’d pushed the bloody cone in his face. Everyone was looking, the child was sobbing and the remains of strawberry and raspberry were now sliding down the side of the counter and puddling in a bright pink heap on the floor.
‘That’ll need cleaning,’ Marco observed.
‘Thank you for pointing that out,’ I rolled my eyes, now brimming with tears. When he wasn’t being rude he had a talent for stating the obvious.
I couldn’t bear the thought of now walking around the counter so everyone could see me. I felt like a circus freak, and perhaps it was my paranoia, but I swear the whole cafe was holding their breath, just waiting for me to emerge from behind my ice cream wall to see just how VERY fat I was.
I couldn’t face it, so made like I had urgent business in the kitchen and did an about-turn left centre stage, leaving Marco to handle the mess. It was bad of me to leave like that, but what else could I do? I knew I was overweight, I didn’t need reminding, and I didn’t need to stick around to watch a single scoop turned into a knickerbocker glory.
I spent the next hour in the cafe kitchen, I couldn’t face going back out there and as it was almost closing time Marco could deal with the last few stragglers. I spent the time consoling myself with various titbits and swearing I would start my diet tomorrow. But when tomorrow came I couldn’t diet because my best friend Karla was staying for a few days. I loved having Karla around, even though she was pretty and slim and clever. I should have hated her, but somehow, against all the odds, we’d become friends.
I’d met Karla twenty years before when I’d run away to London to escape my teenage love Jude. Bumping into this beautiful Tyra Banks lookalike at Paddington Station, we’d started talking and had realised we shared a similar tragic love-life history. I couldn’t believe someone as slim and beautiful as Karla could also be dumped by a man, and after several vodkas and a bag of pork scratchings our friendship was sealed. Karla, of course, didn’t eat any of the scratchings, she just sipped on vodka and looked perfect perched on a bar stool while I snaffled crispy bits of pig between gulps of straight alcohol.
I wasn’t used to drinking – when you spend your childhood with a gin-infused parent, it doesn’t hold much allure – consequently, I was a little the worse for wear and that night Karla let me sleep on her couch. Turned out she needed a flatmate, I was homeless, and we were soon flatmates and friends for life. Karla spent the next few years mopping up my tears and supporting me through the aftermath of love and tragedy, a sad, salty cocktail. Meanwhile, I cheer-leaded her on through a wonderful relationship resulting in a beautiful wedding and two even more beautiful kids. Our lives changed and became completely different – but our friendship didn’t and we were as strong now as we’d ever been.
Wind on twenty years and Karla was now perched on a similar bar stool to the one in Paddington Station Bar – only this time we’re almost forty and we’re in Devon. Karla had come to stay because she wanted to see me, but also because she felt her husband was taking her for granted. She complained of this every now and then, it was nothing serious, just the hangover from being a working mum with no time for herself or her relationship. So, she’d handed hubby the two kids, a bath-time rota and a list of after-school activities and had arrived at my place the previous evening. As I had still been working when she came to meet me that evening, we’d stayed on and had coffee and ice cream in the cafe. Marco had left for the day and I’d closed up and cleaned up to try to compensate for the earlier fracas. At least now it was closed there was no opportunity for any more five year olds to body shame me with their unasked for two pennies’ worth. After the day I’d had I finally felt calm sitting with my best friend at a window table, watching the evening come in over the sea.
‘You don’t get that in Peckham,’ Karla sighed. We looked out at a raspberry-ripple sky, a melting sun trickling into the sea like warm golden syrup. Karla was right, this was special… this was everything I’d wanted for so long, and yet… and yet the lisping little boy had said it all. And now I couldn’t get the weight issue out of my head. Had I really got so fat that random children felt the need to point it out to me?
‘You know, Karla, that little boy was right. I am VERY fat.’
‘No… you’re… cuddly,’ she tried.
I loved Karla for trying to spin this especially as she was still as thin as a rake after having two kids, but even Karla had to admit my weight was becoming more of a problem.
I gave her a look; we both knew I’d put on at least a stone since I’d arrived in Appledore merely a few weeks before, and I’d already been overweight when I’d arrived, I just couldn’t get a grip. ‘My weight’s yo-yoed all my life, but recently I’ve found I just can’t stop eating,’ I continued. ‘I planned to lose ten pounds this summer, I’ve only got eighteen to go.’
She giggled, then looked serious and touched my hand. ‘I think it’s coming back here… the memories and… then there’s all the ice cream.’ She glanced over my shoulder at the fridge display of different flavour ice creams – from Tropical Tease to Chockabocker Glory – all of ice cream life was there. And in case you’re in any doubt – I’d tasted them all.
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ I had to smile, becoming assistant manager at an ice cream cafe wasn’t perhaps the best career move for a girl with weight issues. But I had my reasons, and weight wasn’t the only issue I was working through back home in Appledore.
Ever the optimist, Karla desperately searched for the positives of a fat girl working with ice cream; ‘But it’s lovely here,’ she said. ‘Yes, you have temptation, but you also have the beach… you could take daily walks first thing every morning!’
‘It’s not a bloody boot camp, Karla,’ I said, thinking how close but how different we were. Where Karla saw an opportunity – I saw a challenge.
She laughed; ‘Oh Dani, a walk on the beach is hardly boot camp.’
‘Mmm, it is to me. And anyway, I can’t go on the beach in case someone harpoons me,’ I sighed.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she giggled. ‘You’re still smarting from what that little boy said, but you know what kids are like, they say the first thing that comes into their heads. Only yesterday Archie wanted to know if there were dinosaurs when I was a kid,’ she laughed. ‘So stop taking it to heart, and either do something about it or embrace it. You are gorgeous,’ she smiled, lifting her spoon to tackle a scoop of vanilla ice cream; ‘Cuddly…’
‘I’d rather be curvy… cuddly sounds… fat.’
‘Yes, that’s it, you’re curvy. You just need to be a little…’ Karla did something with her hands that went long instead of wide.
‘Taller? You’re saying if I was 7 foot I might be the right weight for my height?’
‘No,’ she rolled her eyes; ‘you know exactly what I mean, stop eating huge ice cream sundaes and doughnuts and exercise a bit more.’
‘Huge? I don’t eat huge sundaes, just because you eat three Smarties and you’re full.’
She laughed.
‘And do I look like the kind of girl who likes to spend her evenings pounding the treadmill? I’d much rather pound a box of Krispy Kremes.’
‘I know, but if being… erm… full-bodied is making you unhappy…’
‘FULL-bodied? You sound like my mother. “My daughter is ‘full-figured’,” she used to say… I was ten years old and FULL-figured,’ I said, incredulously. I recalled my mother’s sparrow-like arms and her inability to finish a whole crispbread and my heart sank like a stone.
‘Look, I don’t care what you weigh, you’re my best friend and I love you whatever you are,’ Karla smiled, taking another spoonful of ice cream that in my view was far too small.
‘You’re very kind and sweet and lovely – and skinny and I hate you,’ I said, ‘now finish that quickly because I’ve been doing something fabulous with lavender sprigs and I want you to taste it.’
‘I couldn’t fit any more ice cream in,’ she sighed, sitting back and patting her washboard stomach like it was huge. She just wasn’t trying. ‘I know you love working here in the cafe, but joking aside, I’m not sure it’s the right place for someone who’s addicted to sugar,’ she raised her eyebrows.
‘Spoilsport. I love it here and not just because I can pretend eating ice cream all day is research… though that is a big part of it,’ I smiled, brushing over the truth. Yes, I did love whipping up a batch of new flavours and tasting them, but I didn’t need a couple of large scoops of each. The ice cream wasn’t the problem, it was me – and we both knew it.
‘As I said, it doesn’t matter to me what you weigh, but please don’t stuff yourself silly then call me at two in the morning telling me how greedy and disgusting you are. Sleep has become precious and rare with two kids and a snoring husband, so if you’re going to eat, then eat, just don’t be whingeing at me with strawberry sauce round your mouth and guilt in your heart.’
‘As if I’d call you in the middle of the night to talk about myself…’ I said, knowing this to be the case, poor Karla had been the sounding board for my whole life since we’d met.
‘You did it last night, and I was in the same bloody room.’
‘Ha, I forgot you were staying,’ I said, shaking my head at my own mistake and getting up from my seat to waddle over to the counter. I ran the scoop across my freshly made lavender ice cream, shiny lilac heaven curling softly onto my silver scoop, finding it hard to resist putting the loaded scoop straight to my mouth. It wouldn’t have looked pretty, especially as people were walking past. I could only imagine the faces as they spotted that vision through the windows of Caprioni’s Ice Cream Cafe. ‘The thing is, Karla, I’m almost forty and it’s not about vanity any more, it’s about my health.’ I was feeling like this a lot at the moment. I’d initially put this down to the insecurity of leaving London and coming back to where I’d spent my childhood. Change always unsettled me, but as I’d been here a few weeks and was actually very happy why the hell couldn’t I stop inhaling ice cream?
‘You’re not thinking too much about the past are you… I wouldn’t blame you after everything that happened here?’
I shook my head, by now my mouth was full of lavender-flavoured ice cream, not too sweet, just creamy and aromatic, tasting of lavender fields and sunshine. I’d discovered many years before that the best way not to think about the past was to fill my mind and my mouth with lovely things – like this sublime ice cream. And with this in mind, I added one more scoop to my bowl; one more wouldn’t do any harm, would it?
‘Have you seen anything of that Jude guy since you came back here?’ Karla asked, as I put down her bowl of ice cream and settled down with mine.
‘Not sure I can eat all this, I already ate one bowl,’ she sighed. For God’s sake she’d only had a thimbleful! She played around with it and tasted it, said all the right things then gently pushed the bowl away. Was she really going to leave that? I ate mine quickly wondering if it would be so bad if I finished hers off, after all it was wicked to waste food.
‘No. I heard “that Jude guy” moved to Barnstaple, and that’s miles away,’ I said, through lavender ice cream, wafting my hand in a dismissive gesture like he was nothing. Though once he’d been everything, and back here I was reminded of him too much. The memories weren’t all bad, we started out like Romeo and Juliet, that’s what they called us in the cafe; ‘Romeo’s here, Juliet,’ my friends would cry as he swaggered in. But that was a long time ago, and it wasn’t good. Perhaps we were a bit too much like Romeo and Juliet, minus the stabbing and the poisoning of course.
‘Dani, you might bump into him,’ Karla said, and I gratefully dragged myself away from the bittersweet memories. ‘I hope you have your armour ready, girl. You know how weak you are in the face of a man with intentions… and sweet treats.’
I put down the scoop and broke a wafer in half in what I hoped was a slightly threatening ‘leave it alone’ kind of way. This, of course, left me with a problem, a handful of homemade wafer, buttery, crisp and sweet – so I did what any decent human being would do, I popped it in my mouth.
‘So, you haven’t stalked his Facebook or googled him?’
‘Hell no.’ I had.
‘So, you’re completely over him?’
‘Hell yes.’ I wasn’t.
I averted my eyes, and mounted a full-on attack on my bowl of lavender ice cream. It was the only way to avoid answering Karla’s questions, this woman could see into my soul, she knew when I was happy, sad and when I was telling fibs. Okay, so I may have casually glanced at my teenage boyfriend’s Facebook page and inadvertently googled him when I was bored. I also may or may not have been checking births, deaths and marriages in North Devon and surrounding areas for the past twenty years since I left here. Obsessed? Moi?
I gave a sidelong look at slim, beautiful Karla with the figure to die for and I swallowed a mouthful of cold, sweet ice cream; ‘I told you, I was over him twenty years ago when I last saw him, why would I ever want to go back to a teenage fling? Anyway, I think he might be married.’ I knew he was married, but there were no photos of her on his Facebook page, which in my book said estranged, at the very least.
‘What makes you think he might be married?’
‘I just… heard… on the grapevine.’
‘Facebook?’
I nodded shamefully.
‘Oh, Dani, I told you, leave it all behind.’
‘I couldn’t resist. It doesn’t make me a bad person, I was just… curious.’
‘Well, I’m glad he’s married, it means he’s ruining someone else’s life and not yours.’
‘Karla, I’m a grown-up now. You’re so sweet to worry about me, but honestly, I’m good. God, I was just a girl, a nineteen-year-old child; I’m a fierce woman now.’
‘Mmmm well that fierce woman has ice cream dribbling down her chin,’ she said, with raised eyebrows like she was talking to her kids. ‘I hope you’re not heading back in the Jude direction.’
I assured her I wasn’t, said I didn’t want a difficult conversation about my first love, so wiped my chin and suggested we move on.
‘Let’s speak no more of my long-gone ex – he’s just the first of many dickheads I’ve had to suffer over the years.’
‘He started a pattern, that’s for sure.’
Karla was a child psychologist – she said her work had made her realise we didn’t change even when we grew up. She said that, emotionally, adults were merely children with pubic hair and a mortgage. This seemed rather cynical to me, but for her third year at uni she’d worked in men’s prisons and said she defied anyone not to be cynical after that. Anyway, as my best friend she gave me free impromptu therapy ‘sessions’, whether I wanted them or not. Given my background, Karla said I was a brilliant case study; ‘an accident waiting to happen’ was the phrase she’d used. She’d also been heard to remark that after my childhood, she was surprised I wasn’t a serial killer, which was nice.
She agreed that my weight was probably a result of my upbringing, which gave me the excuse to avoid any responsibility for my burgeoning waistline. I tried to blame everyone and everything, including my mother’s drinking, my father’s desertion and the feckless person who created the concept of doughnuts. Apparently blaming others was something people like me did. I was ‘textbook’, according to Karla.
Now, over fresh lavender ice cream and frothy coffee with Karla, it was my dad’s turn to take the blame, and why not? When he walked out on my perfect, beautiful skinny mother thirty years ago, I grieved for the rest of my childhood. First came the tears, then comforting my mother by pouring her gin and the Sunday-daughter guilt when I left her alone as he came to collect me. This was all followed by a good long ride on the doughnut train, a journey I was still on at almost forty years old.
‘The thing is, that my problem is out there, for everyone to see and judge. I’m a constant reminder of my own weakness, my lack of control – and when someone – even a little kid ‒ points it out, I just want to run away and hide, it’s like being bullied all over again. Alcoholics ruin their families’ lives, sex addicts hurt their partners and smokers fill the air with cancer – but they can at least attempt to hide their addiction. I’m not hurting anyone but myself, but it’s there for everyone to see, comment on and judge. I can’t hide my body…’ I said, taking a final mouthful of lavender ice cream.
‘You shouldn’t have to hide your body. Stop being ashamed, Dani, you’re not fat, I told you, you’ve got curves…’
‘Mmmm. Thanks sweetie, but “curves” is just a nice word for fat as far as I’m concerned. I wish I was more like you, and I could eat anything and everything without putting on an ounce. I just have to glance sideways at an ice cream sundae and I put on half a stone.’ I lowered my gaze and looked at her; ‘I mean, who in their right mind could sit in the Ice Cream Cafe in Appledore, home of Thee Chocolate Heaven Sundae, the Rocky Road Horror and the Elvis is Dead Long Live the Peanut Butter Explosion, and eat only one scoop of vanilla?’
I’d been through the whole ice cream menu here already – three times to be precise. Always thorough in my work, I felt it was my duty as assistant manager to know my product – but it was hard to convince Karla th. . .
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