chapter 3

By the time Janet was twenty, she had reached twenty one stones.
Her list of tenuous medical conditions had grown. She was now considered to be disabled. As such, she did not receive job seeker's allowance any more, but incapacity benefit. That opened up the way to other benefits that she thought she was entitled to. Alan finished work and became her carer. As such he received £800 a month. He could drive her top of the range car that social services had paid for because getting the bus to go to all of her medical treatments was too traumatic for her and brought in panic attacks.
The council installed a new kitchen for her as she claimed the shelving was too high for her and it strained her neck to try.
In total she was receiving £1,500 a month in benefits.
They had two wide screen top of the range tv's. One in the living room and one in their bedroom. They had satellite tv, a huge leather sofa with a reclining seat at each side. They had the latest top of the range x-box with all the lastest games and the latest PlayStation with games. One was kept in the living room, one was for the bedroom. They each had their own laptop and the lastest phone.
They had a king sized bed that had automatic controls to change the bed position on each side independently. It even had a massage setting on it!
In public, she said she had no idea how she was putting weight on. She said she only went out of the house when she had to because she had been criticised for being so fat.
The reality was, she had no reason to go out. They did all their shopping online and got everything delivered. Alan picked up her repeat prescriptions as her carer. All her medications were free because she was on benefits.
She didn't have to worry about everyday things because someone else saw to it.
All day, every day, she sat around, watched telly and played computer games. The only exersise she got was walking up and down stairs and walking from room to room. She did this as little as she had to. She was contemplating getting the council in to install a stair lift.
She never ventured into the kitchen. Why should she when she had Alan to do all her fetching and carrying.

Eating was her favourite hobby. After a fairly standard breakfast, with her husband in the morning, she liked to have a few snacks next to her while she was gaming.
Lunch was a moderate affair too, followed by more snacks.
But after five, the home helps had gone home. No one but Alan was there to see how much she ate or what she ate.
Every evening, she would eat plate after plate until she was stuffed full of food.
Alan did not need to encourage her, she did it all herself. She would usually get through at least four full dinner plates of savoury food before she switched to the sweet stuff. She'd eat at least one family sized cheesecake or cake, plus biscuits, chocolate, sweets, cupcakes, all washed down with copious amounts of some sugar loaded fizzy drink.
She was doing everything she could to add diabetes to her long list of medical complaints. That would open the was for even more grants and benefits.