chapter 2 a borgeoise breakfast

Screwing up her eyes in the pale sunlight, Jennifer groaned groggily and rolled onto her back. Beneath the feather-soft pillows and deep mattress, the vast four-poster bed creaked ominously. At some point in the middle of the night, the bulging brunette beauty had managed to haul herself off the couch and upstairs to the plush and sumptuous softness of the master suite.

"Good morning Miss Jennifer," said the chipper maid who was responsible fo releasing the morning into the room.

From her lustrous sheets, the buxom brunette fixed her sleepy deep brown eyes on the scrawny servant.

"Rosie. Where's my breakfast?"

Rachel the maid sighed gently. She had faithfully served her mistress for over two years, watching her grow from spoilt pot-bellied princess into bulging goddess of wanton overindulgence. At Lady Jennifer's snappish whims, the skinny maid had served up unimaginably massive and luxurious meals; and as the lady of the mansion had gluttonously gobbled her way through them (and demanded seconds) Rachel had spent whole nights letting out piles of designer gowns, jeans, and undergarments that she and the other maids had been chided for shrinking in the wash.

And she couldn't even be bothered to remember her name.

Then again, thought Rachel, there were a lot of maids. At the beginning of her reign, Jennifer had been merely too idle to do anything herself. Nowadays she was too fat as well. Still, her vanity demanded that she have the very best of everything - clothes, cars, holidays, and most of all food. Which was where the maids came in.

"Si. It's here, Miss Jennifer." Rachel popped outside, and then returned pushing a huge gold-rimmed trolly, brimming with a breakfast that could easily give a greedy family chronic indigestion. The trolly entered slowly, Rachel's skinny frame neither designed nor fuelled for such intense manual labour.

This fact was entirely lost on Jennifer who, having seen and smelled her breakfast, simply couldn't wait any longer. She clapped her plump hands together loudly, causing her gigantic bosoms to quiver in her nightdress. "Come *on* Rosie!" she bellowed exasperatedly. "I'm HUNGRY!"

"Si, Miss Jennifer!" puffed the poor serving girl. The master bedroom was vast and adorned with all kinds of opulent antiques and fineries, all chosen by the self-indulgent Empress who now sat up in her enormous bed, squirming in greedy impatience.

Eventually Rachel rolled the trolly over to the bedside. Ignoring the pain in her back, she hurridly piled up a gold-rimmed plate with six thick rashers of bacon, four over-easy fried eggs, three fat sausages, and two pieces of French toast. The moment is was full, the bone China plate was snatched unceremoniously out of her gnarled young hands by her swollen mistress's plump and pampered ones. Jennifer held her mountainous meal close to her mouth and dug in hoggishly. While her mistress munched and gobbled noisily as if she hadn't eaten in a week, Rachel quickly prepared the next course. It was ready just in time. Another vast plateload of fried food was devoured in seconds, followed by a 10-inch stack of pancakes swimming in chocolate sauce and ice cream, and then a platter of syrupy waffles, and then another stack of pancakes, this time coated in honey, for good measure. Jennifer swiped the embroidered napkin offered by her maid, patted her lips daintily and belched richly.

"Aaaaaahh". Eyelids fluttering with sleepiness, the bulging brunette lounged back into the stuffed pillows and cushions to digest the most important meal of the day, raising a lethargic hand in signal for Rachel to remove the remnants of her excessive breakfast. Nodding deferentially, the maid departed, pushing the (thankfully lighter) golden trolly.

As she departed, Rachel thought about the feast her mistress had so carelessly and remorselessly gobbled down. It was probably worth twice what the maid would be paid for the whole day. And that was only breakfast. There would be at least three more feasts before sunset, topped up with regular snacks and treats. And Jennifer never left so much as a crumb on any of her plates, lest the servants should get it. She reasoned that it was far too good for them - and after all, she couldn't have the maids putting on weight: it would take them even longer to serve her!

While outsiders were shocked at how stupendously fat Jennifer had grown in just three short years of marriage, the servants at Maurice Mansion harboured no such suprise. When she had first moved in, buxom but slender and stunningly beautiful, the maids had been amazed at just how much their master's picture-perfect bride would consume. It was as if she was determined to get her money's worth. Her appetite seemed to be matched only by her laziness, and perhaps her vanity - the new Mrs Maurice would host frequent and oppulent dinner parties to flaunt her wealth to her friends, summoning the maids to perform the most ridiculously simple tasks, such as passing the pepper pot a few millimetres or even wiping their mistress's mouth between courses.

Yet Jennifer's lazy gluttony didn't seem to bother David, who doted on his new wife, coaxing her to eat just one more piece of fudge brownie, encouraging her to finish off the cheesecake, even popping profiteroles between her dainty lips while rubbing her engorged belly as she lounged on the couch after a decadent five-course feast.

In fact, the one small saving grace for the maids was that when David was around, Jennifer was far less unpleasant to them. Unfortunately he had been away on a business trip for the last two weeks, during which time his wife had become increasingly demanding and rude.

Rachel returned to the kitchens and slumped exhaustedly in a hard chair. After just 20 minutes of sleep, she was awoken by the bell ringing again - constantly. Fortunately, two other maids were on hand, and they hurried out and up the stairs. The mistress must be rising - or hungry again. Rachel frowned. It was unusual for there to have been such a brief wait. Usually such a heavy breakfast would induce Jennifer to snore away for at least two hours.

Then Rachel remembered, with a groan of dismay, that Jennifer's sister was visiting them today. Closing her eyes, she leaned back in the chair.

As if one wasn't bad enough.