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No one understands this misery. They tell you to be content with yourself. They tell you that natural beauty shines out from the soul and magically lights up your face. They tell you that beauty has many disguises. They’re wrong. Beauty is always size ten.
My body has always been a problem. When I was a child my mother said that I had big bones. At school they called me clumsy. Other women seek me out and preen themselves in my company. I make them look lean and graceful. I make them beautiful. They use me as a scapegoat and trust me with their secrets.
Men have their own vocabulary, a secret language that masks disgust. They flirt with me but they sleep with skeletons, seeking the mortification of flesh. My excess excites them to loathing. At a party last Christmas one of Jack’s friends caught me in the kitchen with a bowl of Russian salad. He said something to me. He slapped my rump like a butcher smacking a side of beef. He expected me to laugh. He expected me to feel flattered by his attention. His wife is so thin that it hurts.
I know Jack loves me. But I don’t let him look at me in the bath. We undress in the dark. I’ve tried to protect him fro the truth. Since he brought me to live in this house I've gained more than thirty ponds. Sometimes I can sense the house mocking me with its prim little rooms and staircase. These windows magnify the sunlight. The walls shudder against my weight. It’s a size-ten house.
I’ve tried to lose weight but I get so hungry. Sometimes I think I’m addicted to food. And when I eat I can feel it poison me.
Throughout the first winter they had felt squeezed and uncomfortable. Escaping from the city with its gloom of towers and buttresses, retreating into the green open suburbs, they had found themselves entangled like strangers from a tribe of giants in a shrinking world. The old apartment, they knew too late, was huge compared with the cramped quarters of the smug little town house with its shingled roof and stunted garden.
Jack has gradually learned to adjust to the surroundings. He seems to thrive on challenges. He leaves for the office each morning and returns at dusk, bringing with him news of old friends, rumours, speculation and gossip. She remains trapped in the doll’s house. A large and clumsy child.
A dog barks. A water pipe ticks behind a wall. Sunlight, splintering through the curtains, turns the floating dust into sparks. She shivers, stands up and abruptly removes her night-gown, bunching it against her breasts before letting it spill to her feet. She hesitates, turns slowly towards the pine wardrobe and stares at herself in the glass.
I’m fat. I’m thirty-five years old and I’m fat. I raise my eyes to the glass and a fat, hopeless woman stares back at me. She follows me everywhere, watches me from the mirrors, stalks my shadow on the street. She wears those stupid Mothercare frocks and big, shapeless sweaters. She doesn’t even fit her shoes - she wears an old pair of Reeboks to give her ankles some support. She looks ridiculous in her clothes but she’s most disgusting when naked. Look at her pinching those thighs. Look at the size of that stomach! Her legs are too short. Her knees are wrong. Her buttocks quiver when she walks. Disgusting. Grotesque.
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