chapter 9

When she had cooked her own pancakes, she sat down beside and picked up her fork. She put it down and then picked it up again. Finally she said: “Marina, I’m so sorry about what happened last night.”

“It’s OK. We don’t have to talk about it.”

I picked up my cup and took a mouthful of too hot coffee just to do something other than meet her eye. I told myself that the burning sensation in my mouth was why my eyes were suddenly stinging.

“It’s not OK. It was selfish of me to invite those guys over just to feel better about myself,” she said. “But you have to believe me, I would never have asked them if I knew they were going to be like that... if I knew they were going to say those things.”

Knowing that she heard everything only makes me feel the pain of the humiliation afresh. “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.”

I picked up a white napkin from the table and smoothed it out on my lap. I imagined it was a white sheet of paper and the words “It’s fine.” filling it up until there was no white left. No space for anything else.

I heard her make an strange strangled noise of annoyance and out of the corner of my eye I saw her hand curl into a fist on the counter. I didn’t know who she was angry with anymore: me, herself or them. “Please don’t say that.”

Of course the casual savagery with which those guys had humiliated me hurt. How could it not? But the truth was they were just part of a multitude of voices I had heard in my life that all started to sound the same after a while. I wasn’t really upset with them, I wasn’t even upset with Alex. I was angry with myself for indulging in the pathetic fantasy that I belonged somewhere in her life.

“Look, I’ve got a pretty thick skin so you don’t have to feel bad or sorry for me or whatever.” I looked down at my hands and realised that I had folded the napkin in on itself so many times that it was a small, tight square.

I dropped the napkin onto my plate. I still couldn’t look at Alex and yet I felt minutely aware of every tiny movement she made, every slight change in her breathing and I knew that she was watching me closely.

Alex seemed at a loss for words. “I just... you seemed really upset last night. I just thought you really liked that guy.”

At that I couldn't help but snort with genuine amusement. “Yeah, he seemed like OK company while you were off with Mumford and Sons but I’m really not interested in any guys.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. She was silent for a moment and then she reached across and nudged my leg gently, her knee nestling into the crook of mine. “You know, it really is true what they say: it’s always the quiet ones. I bet there’s a lot that people don’t know about you.”

“I’m really not that interesting,” I said, keenly aware of the heat and gentle pressure her leg still resting against mine.

“Well, I’m interested,” she said with a look of such sincerity that it made my heart lurch painfully against my chest.

“There’s really nothing to tell.”

“You mean you’ve never...?”

I shook my head.

“Not even...?”

“No.”

“Huh,” she shook her head in disbelief and then she smiled. “You should have said at the bar, I could have found you a cute girl.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

“Hey, you need to stop doing that.”

I rolled my eyes. “OK.”

“I’m serious. You need to stop putting yourself down. You’ve got all those curves and swerves. Plus you’ve got a killer rack. I bet I could get you laid in an instant,” she said with a snap of her fingers as if it was that easy.

I didn’t really know what to say. Of course I received compliments from my friends in that general sort of way that women did but they were strictly limited to the neck up and even those had become rarer and rarer as my weight had continued to soar and my extra chins had become a permanent feature and my cheeks had become bloated and puffy.

“... but if you did want to lose weight I could help you, you know.”

I wished the way I felt about my body could just be one simple thing. Alex had been right about one thing at least: there were a lot of things about me that people didn’t know. I thought of the way Alex had confided in me at the bar with a certain longing, how close it had made me feel to her, as if we existed in a space only for us where we might do or say anything, even awkward or difficult things, and no one else would ever know. But I knew a conventional sort of girl like Alex could never understand that nothing made my heart pound, my head spin or my clit throb like indulging my gluttony by gorging on fattening foods and feeling my body grow softer and rounder with each bite. I couldn’t explain the hours that I had lost fantasising about being fattened up to obscene levels of obesity or why sometimes just the jiggle of my own belly was enough to make me gasp with pleasure.

I had had these desires for as long as I could remember wanting anything but they were becoming so overwhelming that it frightened me a little. Eating and getting fatter, the ecstasy I felt as I stuffed myself fuller and fuller was becoming less a want and more an all consuming need. Sometimes it was all I could think about - friends, school, hobbies all seemed to shrink away into insignificance while I grew ever bigger.

Even before the simple temptation of greed had been complicated by desire, my weight had seemed to me like a runaway train that I had no control over. I had become so used to gaining weight every year and going up clothing sizes that I felt helpless to stop it.

I didn’t know anything else other than being the fat girl. I wondered what it would be like for my size not to be the thing most people noticed first about me. I wondered what it would be like to go out in public and not feel constantly uncomfortable and embarrassed about how much extra space I took up and how poorly I fit into the world, to not constantly feel like I had to wedge my ass into seats that could barely handle my weight or spilling into the space of strangers. I wondered what it would be like to not have to pretend that it didn’t bother me that I couldn’t shop at the same stores as my friends or to not make excuses to avoid any remotely physical social event because I knew that my young body, already so wrecked by obesity, was too slow and lazy to keep up with anyone else my age.

“You know you don’t owe me anything, right?” I said.

“I know. Look, I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t want to,” Alex said and then she gave me a sheepish smile. “I don’t think there’s anyone who knows better than you that I’m not that nice a person.”

I couldn’t help but smile at that. “Ok, let’s do this.”

“Believe me you’ll be doing all the work,” she laughed but she clapped her hands together and I could tell she was pleased to have me as her little project. “Right, first things first: we need to get your weight and measurements.”

I felt my jaw drop. “We’re starting now?”

She gave me an impatient look as if that should have been obvious. “Yes, of course now.”