Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [134]
‘Haven’t what?’
‘You haven’t murdered Thomas?’
Tara laughed. ‘Not yet. No, it was my old trouble. Looking for a magic solution to my great girth.’
Katherine burned with shame. ‘I’m so, so sorry for what I said about you being… er… not thin.’
‘But it’s the truth,’ Tara admitted, ruefully.
She’d put on so much weight during the three weeks that Fintan was sick that on Friday morning, as Tara looked at herself in the mirror, the familiar panic took hold. She had to do something. She was constantly uncomfortable, everything was too tight, shirts stuck to her, jackets were so inhibiting she couldn’t lift her arms, waistbands cut into her so much that they hurt, she was always sweating. Clothes were her enemy.
Lots of people lost tons of weight, she consoled herself. Look at Oprah Winfrey. It can be done, but she needed it to be achieved quickly. After the toning-tables shambles, she’d been off snake-oil salesmen for a while. But desperate measures were called for. Again. ‘If there was such a thing as a back-street liposuctionist I’d have gone,’ she admitted.
Instead, she suddenly remembered a beautician’s near her work, which had a sandwich board outside, urging, ‘Perspire away those unwanted inches with a mud wrap.’ She almost wept with relief. She knew about mud wraps, and she liked what she’d heard. Being coated neck-to-toe in a warm, luxurious, chocolate-type substance, so that she became a human Bounty, all her fatness sweating away effortlessly, jumping ship from her lardy body into the thick, creamy mud sounded like heaven. Weight-loss and pampering all in one. What could be nicer?
She rang the beauty salon as soon as she got into work and they said they guaranteed a minimum loss of eight inches. Eight inches! Starry-eyed, thinking of losing four inches from her stomach and two from each of her thighs, she made an appointment for that lunchtime. And if it all worked out, she could go again on Monday and lose another eight inches and again the day after. And keep on going until she was as thin as her new friend Amy.
‘The old Chinese proverb springs to mind,’ Ravi said gravely, when she hung up the phone. ‘No pain, no gain.’
‘Mind your own business. This office is like a goldfish bowl.’
‘I was going to ask if you’d like to smell my Yorkie paper, but I won’t bother now. Have you got down on bended knee and proposed to Thomas yet?’
‘I was kind of hoping that if I de-larded myself enough he might propose to me.’ Then she laughed so Ravi wouldn’t think she was pathetic.
At twelve thirty, Tara bounded along to Poppy’s with a spring in her step. There she met a racehorse-thin white-coated beautician called Adrienne, who was so heavily made-up that if someone had hit her on the back of her head, her foundation would have fallen off like a papier-mâché mask.
‘What do you work at?’ Adrienne asked, brusquely, when she’d marched Tara into a bare, chilly room.
‘Computer analyst,’ Tara answered.
‘You know, this isn’t my real job.’ Adrienne quivered with displacement. ‘I’m an actress, really. If there was any justice – but take it from me, there isn’t – I wouldn’t have to do this beautician stuff.’ At her bitterness, Tara’s mood dipped. It dipped even further when Adrienne ordered her to undress to her bra and knickers. The shame. ‘A bit like being strip-searched,’ Tara observed with a weak, nervous laugh, trying to deflect attention from her great wibbly-wobbly belly. Adrienne ignored her and pulled hard on both ends of her tape-measure, with barely suppressed resentment. Three years in RADA to end up doing this!
Then the measuring began.
‘Is this necessary?’ Tara asked anxiously. The disgrace of someone knowing her vital statistics.
‘How else will we know how many inches you’ve lost?’ Adrienne asked. Stupid!
‘OK, but don’t tell me how many inches my bum is. Or my stomach,’ Tara said, frantically. ‘Or my thighs. Or the tops of my arms. Or my –’
‘I won’t tell you anything,’ Adrienne cut in, wondering if the tape-measure would be long enough to do Tara’s hips. What was wrong with these fat girls? All they needed