Money Can’t Buy Me Love

by

Julie Reilly

Copyright 2012 Julie Reilly

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements

• My husband, Graham, who was my insight into the male psyche and made sure my male characters were well-rounded and realistic.

• My children, who put up with not having much of a mother whilst I was writing this novel.

• My wonderful dear journalist friend Nikki who took my attempts at trashy tabloid newspaper articles and turned them into something much trashier and more tabloidy.

• The people who developed the C25K running programme that Ronan used with Linzi. I started running with C25K as did many others and, without them, I would never have gone on to run my own marathon, or write this book. If you feel inspired to run after reading this book, you can find the plan free to download here. http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml

Thank you

Part One

Prologue

Eight pints. Eight bottles of milk all lined up on the doorstep. Or two of those big four-pint bottles that she bought from Tesco. Linzi stared numbly at the pinkening water. How long would it take?

* * * *

You nearly broke my heart you know, a voice called from the garden as Aniela made her way round the back of the huge house. It was an unseasonably sunny day for December and she shielded her eyes from the sun and smiled at the young man who stood pruning the bare forsythia shrubs. His discarded jacket lay draped over a wooden bench nearby and he’d pushed his shirt-sleeves up. His biceps bulged and rippled as he worked. You’ve been ages. I thought you weren’t coming. You’ll be in trouble though. Did you get all your Christmas shopping done?

Aniela stepped carefully onto the trim lawn in her unflattering flat black shoes. Marcus paused as she came towards him. In the bright sunlight, droplets of sweat glistened on his forehead and the fine hairs on his arms looked as if they had been sprinkled like gold glitter on a child’s artwork.

Yes, I did. There was bad car crash on the way here, she said. I had to wait for long time in queue.

Have I ever told you how much I love your accent? he said, smiling into her eyes.

Many times. She smiled back. He took a step closer to her, standing within her personal space so she had to look up to maintain eye contact. She could smell him with every intake of breath, a mixture of aftershave, deodorant and soil.

Come out with me this weekend. Please? he added as she opened her mouth to demur.

You know I cannot. She took a step back. I have too much work to do.

You are allowed to have fun too, you know.

I know, but with my work here and my English evening classes, I have not time for going out or for relationships. The words stuck in her throat—kurwa, he was gorgeous. She made a sorry face.

Well, if you change your mind… Marcus kissed his finger and touched it gently to the end of her nose, before resuming his pruning.

She plodded back to the house, resisting the urge to look back at him. She did not relish the tongue-lashing she knew would be coming. Linzi would be laying into her before she even got a chance to explain why she was back from Manchester later than she’d said she would be. She would be informed that she would make up the time at the end of her shift, which she would have done anyway, she didn’t need to be told.

Aniela opened the back door, the servants’ entrance as Linzi deemed it, and hung up her bag and coat on the hook, closing the door quietly behind her. The house was silent. Her heart rose—maybe Linzi was out.

Hello, she called cautiously, moving quietly across the varnished light oak floorboards of the ground floor. Ms. Hughes? There was no answer. She tiptoed up the wood and glass staircase and stopped at the top, listening, silent and still as a kitten stalking its owner’s unsuspecting toes. She could hear no sound but her own heart pounding so, letting her breath out with a puff of relief, she smiled gleefully to herself. She had the house to herself! She pushed down the handle of Linzi’s room carefully, just in case her boss was in after all and just taking a nap.

Aniela opened the door by fractions and slid her head round when it was barely wide enough. The unmade bed was vacant and Linzi’s pyjamas lay untidily on the rumpled silk duvet. Ignoring them, she walked over to the full length mirrors that made up an entire wall of the massive bedroom. Disregarding her own tired reflection, she pressed a button and the mirrors slid silently to one side, revealing Linzi’s huge spot-lit closet. Her eyes sparkled in anticipation and she stepped over the threshold, trailing her hand along the racks and racks of designer dresses in a rainbow of beautiful fabrics. Here was one she hadn’t tried on yet. She pulled the slinky sheath out from the others and held it up in front of her. It was cream shot through with gold thread. It plunged front and back, and there was a slit from floor to hip up one side. She pulled her despised maid’s uniform over her head, took off her bra and slipped on the divine dress. Luckily her boobs were big enough to fill it without the necessity of a boob job, unlike Linzi, she thought cattily, and perky enough to get away with it, although she didn’t dare bend over. She model-walked into the bedroom, closing the button-operated sliding doors flamboyantly and twirling in front of the full length mirrors. She fell backwards onto the huge four-poster bed, fantasising Marcus was there with her, teasing her lips with his, sliding one hand inside the décolletage of the purloined dress…

A slight noise made her freeze, and then jump up in a blind panic. Was Linzi coming back? Fuck, she would lose her job over this. She ran back into the closet, pulling the dress over her head as she went. She fastened up her bra and yanked the hideous uniform up around her. Her hands shook as she fumbled the dress back onto its hanger and shoved it back among its compatriots. She paused to listen, her heart thudding, her breath coming in gasps.

Hearing nothing, she tiptoed out into the bedroom and stopped to listen again. She could hear a robin chirping outside, and then the bedroom door started to open. A gibbering apology had begun to form on her tongue even as she registered that it was only Humphrey, Linzi’s silver tabby. He prowled through the open door, rested his haunches proprietarily in the middle of the floor and regarded her with an evil yellow glare as he washed his paws.

"Don’t you tell on me, you little skurwysyn," she told him, shaking a finger. In reply, he swanned past her, flicking her legs with his tail and pushed his way into the adjoining bathroom. She followed him. He had better not bloody crap in the shower cubicle again or she’d make him eat it.

Aniela had frequently wondered just how she would react when faced with real life or death circumstances. It was one thing studying to be a doctor and wanting to help people, but quite another to know you are solely responsible for determining whether someone lives or dies. She stared for far too long a moment at Linzi lying still and ashen in the ominously pink water. For an instant, she even thought, "I should let the dziwka die," before lurching forward, avoiding a stinking pool of vomit on the floor, and instinctively feeling for Linzi’s carotid pulse. She felt a weak flutter against her fingertips, then another. She hooked her hands under Linzi’s armpits and tried to pull her out of the cooling water, but she was a dead weight and Aniela was slight. Priorities whirling in her mind, she considered what to do first: call an ambulance, get her out of the bath, bind her wrists, which were still oozing. Deciding, she grabbed the nail scissors that were on the side of the bath—judging from the rust-coloured dried bloodstains on the blades, this was the very implement with which Linzi had decided to end it all—No wonder she had made a crap job of it, Aniela thought disgustedly. She should have used a decent knife at least—and happily cut strips off one of the very expensive designer towels that Linzi favoured, tying them tightly round Linzi’s bleeding wrists.

She called the ambulance then, before opening the bathroom window and calling to Marcus in the garden below.

Hey, gorgeous, he shouted back at her. Changed your mind yet?

You better come up here, Aniela called back to him.

Chapter One

Blackpool, several years previously

Jolly. Linzi Hughes always came across as jolly. Happy, smiling, always fun to be with. She chortled when she had to have one of the nursery nurses help her up off the floor one time when she got stuck. She giggled when her generous hips got wedged in the ridiculously small chair at the restaurant at her best friend’s hen night, and she had to have the cute waiter pull the chair off her ample bottom while she hung onto the table, snorting hysterically. She even joked when Michelle had to order a different style of bridesmaid’s dress for her, as the style all the other, waif-like bridesmaids had chosen didn’t go up to her size.

It’s fine, she had told a red-faced Michelle in the wedding shop. "I’m the chief bridesmaid, anyway. I get to wear a different dress to all the others. I get a special dress," and she mock-dismissed the other, lesser bridesmaids with a wave of her dimpled hand.

Linzi had always been ample. Zaftig, luscious, voluptuous, plump, huggable, fuller-figured, BBW, buxom, fluffy—she had heard them all. The words, But she has a lovely personality, could have been written for Linzi.

Men loved her—she drank pints with them, told dirty jokes, cooked for them and mothered them. Women loved her—she was kind and generous with her time, and they knew they could trust her not to steal their boyfriends. The kids at the nursery she and Michelle owned together loved her—she was warm and funny and gave fantastic cuddles.

She had a lovely boyfriend—Adam, a young be-spectacled Maths teacher. He was slim to the point of being skinny and looked like Johnny Depp. Linzi often joked they looked like the number ten when they stood next to each other. He adored big girls and couldn’t believe his luck when Linzi agreed to go out with him. She was heavenly, all soft warm curves and bouncing pillows, and smelling of talcum powder and toothpaste. When he laid his head on her chest and she caressed his hair he could just close his eyes and go to sleep—he never wanted her to stop.

On the surface, Linzi had it all, a successful business doing something she loved, a loving, gorgeous boyfriend, she was happy and confident about herself, and she had a lovely personality. Oh, and good hair. Okay, she was overweight. Very overweight. Or, if we’re being honest, obese. But it didn’t bother her, her boyfriend, or her friends. So it didn’t matter.

It is said that reformed smokers are worse than non-smokers about smoking. The same could be said about former fatties—or at least, one particular former fattie. Linzi’s mother Marjorie was a reformed fattie. She was five-foot-three and had lost eight stone ten years ago, from seventeen stone down to nine. Then she had taken up running at the age of forty and lost another stone. And without the aid of weight loss surgery, Marjorie would brag to anyone who would listen. She would curl her lip derisively whenever some minor celebrity appeared on a magazine cover having lost four stone. I’ve lost twice that! More than twice that! she would say. And without having to pay some personal trainer to help me—I did it all myself.

Yes, Mum, we know, Linzi would retort when particularly exasperated although mostly she would just agree and smile. Nod and smile, nod and smile. It wasn’t that she wasn't proud of her mum’s achievement. Nine stone was an incredible amount to lose. She had done really well. But sometimes it just got a little, well, old. The first time Linzi had taken Adam to her parents’ house in Manchester to meet them, Marjorie had got out all her old fat photos to show him.

Eight stone I lost. In three years. And then I started running and lost another. I ran my first 10K after only three months of running, and my first marathon a year after that. Look! She jumped up and all but dragged Adam over to the wall to show him a framed glossy photograph of her finishing the marathon, a medal hanging by a tack from one corner. I did my first in four and a half hours. Not my best time though—I’ve managed to get it down to just over four since then. She was ecstatic to have someone new to tell it all to.

Adam was suitably polite, nodding and smiling and saying, You did really well, at appropriate moments. She beamed with every drop of praise, like a toddler doing her first wee on the potty. After half an hour of hearing Marjorie talk about her life-changing weight loss journey, Linzi’s father, George, had mumbled something about a deadline and gone back to his study, nodding at Adam as he left.

There had been cake after tea that day. Linzi could remember a time, pre-slim Marjorie, when there was always cake after tea. Big thick chunks of it, filled with chocolate butter cream. Now cake was reserved for very special occasions and Marjorie never partook. She served Adam a generous slice. You need feeding up, lovey. George got a decent chunk also—Well, he’s a man, isn’t he?—but Linzi stared at the miserable sliver sitting desolately in the centre of her gleaming white plate. Marjorie patted her own flat belly as if to imply that she was absolutely stuffed and couldn’t fit in another morsel and eschewed the cake with a smug martyred air. Linzi ate her morsel of cake in one mouthful and miserably watched everyone else chomping through theirs. Adam offered to share his but after glancing at Marjorie’s pursed up face, Linzi refused.

On the way home that night, Linzi had been quiet.

So, what is it with you and your mum? Adam had finally asked.

"It’s obvious, isn’t it? Since she lost weight, I have been a constant disappointment to her. She thinks that because she did it all by herself, and Linzi had mimed quote marks in the air, everyone should be able to do it also. So the fact that I haven’t means that I am somehow weak, or lazy, or something. I don’t know. She never says it, but she…she looks it at me, if you know what I mean. And she always gives me smaller portions of everything. Told me once she refused to be an enabler, whatever the hell that means." Linzi sighed and was quiet.

I think you are beautiful—just the way you are, Adam had said, putting his hand on her knee as he drove.

Thank you—you’re not so bad yourself.

Seriously, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks—you are a beautiful, amazing, wonderful, gorgeous person and you always will be, no matter what size you are.

Sod ’em. That’s what I say.

Absolutely. Sod ’em and Gomorrah.

Linzi had giggled. Then they had gone home and had cake. Big, thick chunks of it filled with chocolate butter cream.

* * * *

Is there anyone in the world who is truly happy being overweight? Does anyone really enjoy not being able to cross their legs, not being able to go upstairs without getting out of breath or having to book two seats on an aeroplane? Wouldn’t they like to be able to wear a bikini on a beach and not have everyone stare at them, or shout out comments to them? Or rather, to be stared at, and shouted at for the right reasons, and not the wrong ones? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to buy clothes in more than the two shops that carry plus-sized clothing? Wouldn’t they like to be able to wear floaty, sexy summer dresses with bare legs without having two big patches of sore, red, chafed skin on the inside of their thighs?

Linzi didn’t know, but she knew she wasn’t one of them. She still blushed with horrified mortification at the disgusted revulsion she was sure lurked behind that cute waiter’s polite smile when he had to pull that chair off her huge round bottom. When Adam was out, she would sometimes pull the gigantic purple tent of a bridesmaid’s dress out of the wardrobe where it lurked, spread it out across the bed and cry.

Why couldn’t she be naturally thin? Why was it such hard work? It was so damned unfair! She would give anything to just click her fingers and have all the fat magically vanish. She had started a new diet every Monday of her adult life, only to be starving hungry by Wednesday and demolish everything in sight. Which of course meant that she had then ruined her new diet so she may as well not bother for the rest of the week and just start again next Monday.

Linzi wanted to be thin. She really did. She wanted the magazine body, lean and tanned with smooth shapely thighs and perfectly round anti-gravity breasts thrusting out of a minuscule bikini.

She also wanted to eat food that was tasty and yummy and very, very bad for her. And she didn’t want to exercise at all. No way—uh-uh! Memories of horrific forced cross-country runs at school, wobbling around in the snow and freezing wind, at the back, out of breath, sneered at by the slim, fit girls, jeered at by the boys, even the ugly spotty ones, ambushed by the class bully and her cohorts in the woods and coming back bloody of knee, mottled of thigh, blue with cold and feeling like her heart would just explode out of sheer exhaustion, had put her off exercise just a touch. Add in the raging humiliation of communal showers where the ogress of a games teacher would check for wet footprints to make sure you really had had a shower, thus forcing you to wrap the towel firmly around yourself, skip in and out long enough to wet your feet, and dash back to your peg to try to get dressed without any of the other girls noticing your giant rolls of fat, veiny stretch-marked breasts, and a backside so huge it had its own time zone. She remembered the huge relief at the end of Year 11 when they finally broke up and there was never going to be any PE or Games ever again. Ever! The idea of voluntarily putting yourself through the sheer torture of exercise was so patently and mind-blowingly ridiculous that surely people who actually chose to get dressed up in shorts and skimpy tops and run for miles must have something severely mentally wrong with them.

When Linzi’s mother lost half her body weight and took up running, Linzi was in her teens. Suddenly the family went from a happy, sugar-sprinkled and fat-soaked diet of chips with everything, cake for afterwards and sweeties as a reward for anything from doing your homework to helping with the washing up; to diet sheets, weekly weigh-ins, salads and unsweetened yogurt. Out went greasy fried pork chops with the fat poured over to dip your chips in, in came grilled fish with a tiny portion of plain brown rice and a mountain of steamed vegetables. Vegetables! Grown in Satan’s own garden as far as Linzi was concerned.

When Marjorie had started to lose weight, Linzi was twelve and weighed ten stone. Her body suddenly deprived of its daily fix of sugar and fat, she started spending all her pocket money on sweets. She would spend her bus fare on chocolate in the newsagents and walk home. When she was thirteen she got a paper round and spent her entire wages in the supermarket every week.

She would buy family packs of mis-shapes, big bars of budget chocolate, and cut-price cakes meant to serve an entire family. She would smuggle them home and hide them in her wardrobe. Later on she would eat them lying on her bed, whilst reading a book, with the food under a flipped-back corner of the duvet so she could quickly flip it over and cover her forbidden treats if she heard a footstep outside. All the rubbish was squirreled away until bin day, then she would sneak outside and push the packaging right down to the bottom of the bin so no one noticed. When her supplies ran out and she had no money that week to buy more, she would furtively raid the pantry of what little food there was in the house, getting on a stool to reach the cornflakes her father preferred for his breakfast, and eating them dry by the handful. Soon stolen handfuls were not enough, and she would pour out huge bowlfuls of the dry cereal, tiptoeing up to her room with them, and taking care to return and wash the purloined bowls so Marjorie never found out. Every week Marjorie would make her get on the scales, and write down her weight in a little book. And then tut and shake her head with disappointment and puzzlement. By the time Marjorie had reached her goal, Linzi was fifteen and weighed twelve stone. Marjorie could never figure out just how Linzi had managed to gain two stone eating what she was served at home.

When Marjorie took up running, she offered to take Linzi out training with her. Linzi just looked at her—sheer horror emanating from every fibre of her body.

It might help you lose a bit of that puppy fat, Marjorie said, poking at Linzi’s muffin top.

I don’t want to lose it, Linzi snapped back, moving away. I’m fine as I am! Men don’t like bags of bones anyway, she said nastily, pointedly raking her eyes up and down Marjorie’s newly slim figure. Marjorie raised her eyebrows and never offered again.

Once she was sixteen, Linzi got a Saturday job. Paying more than a paper round, this gave her more money to spend on illicit food, but she also discovered clothes at the same time. Somewhere in her subconscious, the realisation kicked in that if she spent all of her money on the cakes and biscuits she wanted, not only would she not be able to afford that cute top, it wouldn’t look as good on her. Otherwise she would have ballooned rather more than she did. As it was she ended up only putting on a stone before leaving for university in London.

Keen to avoid the misery of being bullied as she had been at school, Linzi decided to be the life and soul at university. She sparkled, discovered a talent for comedy, was friendly with everyone, helped out those who needed it, got a job at the Student Union bar, wore low cut tops and flirted shamelessly. She was popular for the first time in her life. The throwaway remark she had made to her mother was happily true and she found there were men who liked bigger girls. Plenty of them. Especially bigger girls with spectacular boobs.

Her first was a young theology student called Donald. He came to the bar every night, nursed half a pint of lager for hours and ogled her tits. He stuttered when she talked to him and blinked at her nervously. After two weeks of this, she ambushed him at the end of her shift and almost frogmarched him back to her room.

The sex was disappointing. He was in awe of her breasts and came all over her hands almost as soon as she touched his dick, apologising between groans. Half an hour later he was ready to go again. Both virgins, they had a theoretical knowledge of what went where, but putting it into practice was something quite different. Eventually Linzi climbed on top and managed to force it in, somewhat akin to trying to poke a broomhandle through a carrier bag, she thought wryly. Two minutes later, all was over. He wiped her blood off his limp penis with her discarded knickers, kissed her embarrassedly, thanked her and scurried out of the room.

The next day he came to see her. He had been wrestling with God and his conscience all night, he told her woefully. Sex before marriage was apparently a sin. It wasn’t that he wasn’t grateful and he would be happy to be her boyfriend, but it could never happen again until they got married.

Linzi politely instructed him to go forth and multiply and that was the end of Donald.

She met Adam while she was in the third year of her Early Years and Childcare Studies degree, and he was doing his teacher training qualification. He was frighteningly clever and studious—had got a first in Maths. Maths of all things! Linzi had managed to get a B for her GCSE Maths but had struggled hard for it. She remembered being slightly in awe of people like him at sixth form. The quiet, nerdy, bespectacled group who were all doing Maths and Further Maths A-levels and made obscure intellectual jokes that no one else understood.

She was working when he came into the SU bar one rainy Saturday night in September with a group of other trainee teachers. He was very down to earth, friendly, with kind blue eyes behind his rain-spotted rimless glasses, and eyebrows that danced at her underneath a tangle of damp dark curls. Since Donald there had been a few boyfriends and a few one night stands but this one was different. He was a complete gentleman. He didn’t once look down her top and he politely asked if he could sit with her when she had her break. She didn’t want to go back to work after her break ended, they were having such an interesting conversation. He was so far removed from the Phwoar, great tits, love male stereotype, she didn’t know what to make of him. He talked to her like an equal, he asked her opinion, he respected her and didn’t try to grope her. He didn’t even try to kiss her.

They had their first date in a nice restaurant. He picked her up in his car and didn’t drink. They talked non-stop all evening. At the end of the meal he walked her back to his car. She was shivering in the cool October air. He took off his coat and put it around her shoulders. It was warm and smelled of him. He slid one arm tentatively around her waist. It felt nice. He dropped her off at her door and didn’t expect to be invited in.

The next morning there was an email from him, time stamped ten minutes after he had dropped her off. It read—

I had a wonderful time last night—can’t wait to do it again

Love, Adam

xxx

Linzi had once read that if a guy really likes you, you don’t have to wonder why he’s not calling you—because he is. Substitute emailing/texting for calling and the saying was still true. Used to game players who made her wait days sometimes to make contact after a first date, Linzi was totally blown away by Adam. He actually seemed to like her.

Between Adam’s teacher training and Linzi’s third year level degree work, they didn’t have an awful lot of spare time, but during what little time they had, they were inseparable. It turned out that Adam’s lodgings were within walking distance of Linzi’s. Not a day went by that they didn’t either see each other, or speak to each other. After Christmas they rented a bedsit and moved in together. Linzi sometimes wished they didn’t have to sleep so they could just lie in bed all night talking to each other. Some mornings she would wake up before Adam and just lie there gazing at him whilst he slept, wondering just how she had managed to attract such a cute, genuine, intelligent guy.

After training Adam managed to find a teaching position in his home town of Blackpool. There was no question—Linzi moved there with him and got a job as a nursery nurse. She was promoted after a year to supervisor and when the nursery owners told her they intended to sell up and retire, she and one of the other supervisors, Michelle, decided to buy it together.

What will you use for a deposit? Adam queried when Linzi excitedly came home to their rented flat with the news that night. Linzi’s face fell.

What deposit? she asked, worriedly.

If you intend to get a business mortgage to buy the nursery, the mortgage lenders will expect you to pay probably about a twenty to twenty-five percent deposit of the nursery’s value, just as they would for a private property, Adam told her, raising an eyebrow. How much do the owners want for it?

A hundred and twenty-five grand, Linzi glumly replied. Adam raised his eyebrows.

That’s not a bad price at all, he said.

I know, said Linzi. They offered it to us cheap as they know us, and they’d rather sell to us than strangers. And it saved them advertising. It was valued at a hundred and thirty-five. She brightened up. So, if they are selling it to us at less than the actual value, then we won’t need to find as big a deposit. She stopped as Adam was shaking his head.

Doesn’t work like that. If the purchase price is less than the mortgage lender’s valuation, then they will base their percentage on the purchase price—so you would need to find at least twenty percent of the purchase price, which is twenty-five grand. You’ll also need money for a survey and a solicitor if you’re doing it properly—which you should, even if they are giving you mates’ rates. Linzi was looking more and more despondent as he talked.

I didn’t realise it was so complicated. She slumped back on the sofa. Adam sat next to her, looking thoughtful.

On the other hand, you’d make far more as a nursery owner than you are at the moment, which would be better for us in the long run. It would be an investment. People always need nurseries, especially good ones.

It makes no difference—I don’t have that kind of money.

Does Michelle?

Not all of it.

Does she have half of it?

Linzi shrugged, sulky with disappointment.

Listen, if you’re serious about this, and are willing to go on a course to learn the basics of running a business, which is not the same as being in charge of a nursery, then…you can use the money in our savings account.

Linzi sat up. But we’ve been saving that for two years. That’s our house deposit money!

Yes, and if you become self-employed, you’ll need three years’ accounts before you can apply for a mortgage, so it means putting off buying a house till then anyway.

But half that money is yours, Linzi protested.

"No—all of that money is ours! And I think you are a good investment." Adam smiled, taking her hand. Linzi hugged him tightly.

I love you so much—you have no idea!

It can’t be half as much as I love you!

Six months later, Linzi was the proud owner of half a nursery and a National Vocational Qualification in Business and Administration.

She had continued to steadily put on weight since Donald, and refused to get on the scales. She had no idea what she weighed and when her clothes got tighter, she blamed it on shrinkage in the wash. When she had to buy new clothes in a bigger size, she blamed it on poor sizing in the shops. It’s ridiculous, she would say. I have friends at nursery who have clothes in three different sizes in their wardrobes, and they all fit. You can’t go off the labels these days.

* * * *

Adam didn’t care about Linzi’s size. He loved her big or small. She was everything he ever wanted, warm, caring, loving—she felt like coming home. He did care about her health though, and he cared about her feelings, and he knew, even if she would never admit it, that she didn’t actually like being the size she was.

He had tried to broach the subject once—disastrously. His concern for her health, and desire to help her attain what he thought she wanted, was quickly twisted in Linzi’s mind into him wanting to control her and hating her body. You’re worse than my mother, she had told him through her tears. I thought you loved me!

I do. Adam had felt tears gather at the corners of his own eyes at her distress. I love you more than anything.

"Then why do you want to change me? This is who I am—this is what you get. If it’s not good enough—if I’m not good enough, then you’d better go and find yourself some skinny cow to fuck because this is me."

I don’t want anyone else. I love you! Adam had tried to reassure her.

They had managed to come back from that but Adam had never dared to bring up the subject of her weight again. He watched her start a diet every Monday, starve herself for two days—then order pizza on Wednesday to ease the growling of her stomach. He watched her apply Sudacrem onto the sore patches of skin on her inner thighs in the summer after a tip an overweight mum at the nursery had given her. He watched her drop £2.50 a pair on control top tights in an effort to hold in her belly.

He wanted so much to help her but it seemed all he could do was watch her be miserable.

Chapter Two

Linzi and Adam got engaged six months before Michelle and Charles. On the first anniversary of buying the nursery, Adam took her out for a celebratory meal and pulled out a beautiful three-diamond twisted white gold ring.

Ecstatic, Linzi happily accepted but, two years on, Adam still couldn’t pin her down to a date.

We’ve talked about this before, she said, exasperated, when he brought the subject up yet again during a celebratory night out to mark the second anniversary of their engagement.

I know—but it’s been two years. Now that you’ve got three years of accounts, and we have our deposit, the house purchase is ready to go. Isn’t it time to take the next step and start thinking about our wedding now? he almost pleaded.

We don’t have the money—we can’t afford a wedding yet. She pulled her hand away.

We managed to save twenty grand in three years for the house, Linzi, Adam reminded her.

We only managed to save that through living in the tiniest, grottiest flat we could find, she argued. Our mortgage is going to be quite a lot higher than our rent. Weddings are expensive. Michelle and Charles are spending twenty thousand on theirs!

I start as Head of Department in September. Adam would not be dissuaded. I’ll be on an extra three grand a year. We can do it. You don’t need to drop twenty grand on a wedding; you can do it with three or four. If we think about getting married next summer that gives us a year to plan and save—we only need to pay deposits up front, most of the bulk of the money doesn’t need to be paid off until a month or so beforehand.

You’ve done your homework.

"Yes I have. I love you, Linzi. I want to be your husband. I want to spend the rest of my life with you—you are my life. He reclaimed her hand and tried to catch her eye. Don’t you want this?"

* * * *

Linzi stared down at the tablecloth. Tears dropped from her eyes onto the crisp white linen. She had detected a note of panic in Adam’s voice. How could she make him understand? It wasn’t him. She had seen Michelle in her wedding dress—she looked beautiful—waif-slim in her size eight gown. Linzi was a giant purple heifer next to her. She would be a laughing stock. Who was she trying to kid? people would say. Linzi couldn’t get married the size she was. She probably wouldn’t even be able to get a dress in her size. Why couldn’t they just carry on the way they were instead of putting on this huge circus just for people to come along and laugh at her? She did want to be Adam’s wife. She just didn’t want to be his bride.

* * * *

Linzi looked at him, the tears on her cheek reflecting the candlelight like tiny stars. He leaned over and wiped them away tenderly.

I love you so much, she said, her voice trembling. I do want this. I was just putting it off as I couldn’t see the point in planning anything yet. Now I see that we can do it, of course we can set a date. She smiled at him.

Then why the tears? Adam frowned, puzzled.

I don’t know…just happy tears I guess. She squeezed his hand. Come on, let’s order.

* * * *

I’ll start on Monday, Linzi found herself thinking the next morning. No! She ruthlessly squashed the thought. It has to be now. If you don’t want to be a fat bride, it has to start now. She stripped naked in the tiny bathroom, and stepped onto her ancient analogue scales. The numbers whizzed and she fancied it creaked under her bulk. Linzi had to lean forward and squash her stomach in to see the dial, which had settled just over the eighteen stone mark. In shock, she stepped off the scales, moved them to a different location in the bathroom, and stepped back on again, shutting her eyes till she was sure the dial would have settled. Still eighteen. Surely that couldn’t be right. That was a full stone more than Mum had been. Off and on again—she moved her weight around on the platform to try and make it settle somewhere lower. It wobbled a bit but refused to go below that horrifying number. She exhaled. So. She was eighteen stone. At least it was a nice round number.

It had taken Mum three years to lose eight stone. How much could she lose in just one? She dug out the calculator.

Eight stone into three years—Marjorie had managed an average of 0.72 pounds per week. At that rate she would still be just over fifteen stone after a year. It wasn’t enough. Even if she lost a full pound a week, that would still only get her to just above fourteen stone.

The internet became a source of