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Excerpts

Chapter 1

Sometimes the cosmos goes to a lot of trouble to help shift a life from its rut. On this occasion, for instance, it held up the dental technician on the M1 roadworks, gave the Practice secretary some tricky double bookings to cope with, and lumbered the dentist, Mr Swiftly, with a particularly awkward extraction that made his appointments run over by more than half an hour. All this so that the ante-room would be extra packed with bored people whiling away the time with the magazines in the rack, leaving just one tatty copy for Mrs Elouise Winter. And not just any mag, but Women by Women - the mag for women whose once-young and carnal energies were now ploughed into studying variations on hotpot and various crafts which were a bit too fuddy-duddy for Lou, despite the fact that, at thirty-five, she was starting to edge dangerously close to the chasm of middle age. Still, it was better than staring into space or reading posters about plaque. So she grabbed it and slotted herself into the only vacant seat, between a woman nervously tapping her foot and a pensioner who looked like Ernie Wise.

Lou turned to the recipes first but there was nothing to excite. Five delicious ways to serve a leg of lamb. She shuddered. Not even a naked Marco Pierre White carrying a sheep limb in on a platter with a red rose between his teeth could make that sound attractive to her. She could never think of lamb without picturing rubbery seams of fat and mint sauce and being six years old, sitting alone in the school dining room, pushing it around her plate, willing it to get smaller and disappear so she could join the others and go out to play. She remembered how Lesley Jones's mum had written to the school demanding that her child should not be forced to eat butter beans, but Lou's mother Renee had refused to do the same for her with a lamb-avoiding note. Tagged onto the end of that memory was the still-fresh feeling of relief when she discovered a kindly dinner lady who would scrape away the odious lamb into the slop bucket and release her from the sad agony of the impasse.

Lamb was her husband Phil's favourite, although she had hardly ever cooked it for him before things went wrong between them, before his affair. Since those dark days, three and a half years ago, it had appeared quite a lot on her menu, as it would this very evening as a direct result of that little comment he had made last night about her putting some weight on. Lou had tried to shut it out of her mind, but it had continued to rotate in there like a red sock in a whites boil wash - destructive and unstoppable. Just when she had started to believe that she was on rock-solid ground, he had to go and make a comment about the size of her bottom.

Lou carried on flicking through the mag, desperate to find something to divert her thoughts, because she would go half-mad otherwise. There was a pattern for a crocheted lampshade that had a certain kitsch charm - except that Lou's crocheting foray had begun and ended on the same afternoon when, aged eleven, she had made a succession of long tapeworm-like chains from some white wool. She never could work out how to do the turn onto the second and subsequent lines required to make the intricate tea-cosies or granny-square blankets that her sister Victorianna (or 'Torah' as she referred to herself these days) could so effortlessly make. Then again, Victorianna could always turn her hand to anything, as their mother boasted to unfortunate visitors when showing off her younger daughter's accomplishments. 'Except to ringing home when she doesn't want something or to asking you to visit,' Lou had wanted to snipe. But didn't. It wouldn't have made any difference anyway. Victorianna had been on her pedestal for so long, not even a nuclear explosion would nudge her off it.

Top ten dressing-gowns. Write your own will. Spring-clean your life! Jeez, is this what is waiting for me around the age corner? thought Lou. It was looking more and more as if, one day, her interest in shoes and nice handbags would suddenly be diverted to mastering the art of laughing safely without causing a small Niagara Falls in the knicker area, or dislodging one's false teeth. The dressing-gowns were dire, unless you liked the sort of nylon quilting that could give you a free perm if you happened to brush past something metallic, and she had already written her will - not that she had any Picassos to leave to anyone. Nevertheless, there were at least three people in front of her to see Mr Swiftly, so there was nothing for it but to try and be interested in having a good clear-out.

The article explained how unburdening your cupboards of those unwanted and unused knick-knacks will lighten your spirit to a degree you would not think possible. How liberated you will feel, burning all those recipes you cut out from magazines and never tried, not to mention throwing away those garments in the wardrobe which are four sizes too small - the clothes you hoped you'd slim into and never did.

The clothes bit in particular struck a chord with Lou. How long had those grey check, size eight trousers been waiting for her super-slim bum to rematerialize? She did a quick tally and was horrified to discover they had clocked up twelve years on both pre-marital and post-marital coat-hangers. In fact, she had gone up nearly two stone since deciding once and for all that she was going to slim down into them, and if Phil was to be believed last night, she was getting even bigger.

She had lain awake in the wee small hours, thinking how she needed to throttle back on the calories - she didn't even dare to imagine what would happen if Phil's eyes started wandering again. To thin women. She needed to get a grip. Quickly.

Clear your house and clear your mind. Don't let life's clutter dictate to you. Throw it away and take back the control! the article cried, and some blind, lost part within Lou Winter lifted its head as if sensing light. She couldn't remember the last time she had thrown anything out that wasn't everyday wheelie-bin rubbish, and yet her cupboards were full to bursting. At worst it would give her something to do that might divert her thoughts from where they had started to go.

Wearing her best 'nothing to declare' face, she slipped the magazine into her bag when it was her time to be called. It wouldn't be missed, she decided, and it wouldn't have withstood another reading. To compensate, she had a huge pile of magazines at home that she would bring over and donate in its place, when she began her so-called 'miraculous' clear-out.

If only she could start by clearing out her husband's comment from her head...

© Milly Johnson 2009