Girls Under Pressure Read online

  “Yeah, I reckon half of them were semi-professional anyway, which isn’t fair,” says Magda.

  They natter on about it endlessly. I listen hard when I go in the loo. Are they whispering about me? Are they raising their eyebrows and shaking their heads over poor plain plump Ellie? My eyes smart. Tears spurt down my cheeks and I have to take off my glasses and dab my face dry with loo-roll. I don’t want to come out and face them. I don’t want to face anyone ever again.

  I could be Ellie the reclusive loo-squatter. I could set up home in this tiny cubicle. It could be quite cozy if I had a sleeping bag and my sketchpad and a pile of books. In medieval times troubled young girls locked themselves away in tiny cells in churches and no one thought it strange at all. Nowadays there might be an initial flurry of media interest: THE LASS LOCKED IN THE LADIES’ . . . SCHOOLGIRL ELLIE STAYS SITTING ON THE LOO FOR THIRD DAY RUNNING! But eventually people would take it for granted that the end cubicle on the right in the Flowerfields Shopping Centre ladies’ room is permanently engaged.

  “Ellie, are you all right?”

  “What are you doing in there?”

  I have to come out. I try to chat as if I’m perfectly OK. I traipse all round the shopping center looking for Christmas presents. It’s no use. I can’t make up my mind about anything. I could buy Magda the red knickers and Nadine the black, tiny wisps of underwear, size small. They wouldn’t fit me. I am not medium. Soon I won’t even be large. I shall be outsize. Ellie the Elephant size.

  I keep catching glimpses of myself in windows and mirrors. I seem to be getting squatter by the second. Magda drags us into Stuck on You, this new ultra-hip clothes shop that’s just opened at the Flowerfields Shopping Centre. It’s agony. I’m surrounded by skimpy little garments, skirts that would barely fit round one of my thighs, halter tops I’d have to wear as bangles. The assistants are staring at us. There’s an eighty-pound girl dressed in black with short white hair and rings in her nose and navel, and a slender black guy with a diamond ear stud in a tight white T-shirt to show off his toned body.

  “Let’s go,” I beg.

  But Magda is eyeing up the boy and wants to try stuff on. Nadine is gazing enviously at the clothes and is happy to hang around too. So I have to wait for them both, feeling more and more like a guinea pig in a ferret’s cage.

  “Don’t you want to try anything on?” the white-haired girl asks.

  That’s what she says, but she’s smirking as she says it. It’s as if she’s underlining the fact that nothing in the shop would fit me anyway.

  “Hey, Nadine, Magda,” I whisper through the changing-room curtain. “I’m going home, OK?”

  “What? Oh, Ellie, don’t go all moody,” says Magda. “We’ll only be a minute. Can you ask that guy if he’s got these jeans in another size?”

  “You ask him. I really have to go.”

  “Are you feeling sick again, Ellie?” asks Nadine.

  “Yes. I want to go home.”

  “Well, wait, and we’ll take you home,” says Nadine.

  “I can’t wait,” I say, and I make a run for it.

  They’re still in their underwear so they can’t come after me. I rush through the Flowerfields Centre. Up at the top the lights are still flashing and the queue is even bigger and all around me there are girls much taller than me, much prettier than me, much much much thinner than me.

  I really do feel sick. It’s no better when I’m out in the open air. The bus going home lurches so much I have to get off several stops early. I walk through the streets yawning with nausea. I catch sight of myself in a car window. Yawning-Hippo Girl.

  Thank God there’s no one at home. Dad has taken Eggs swimming. Anna’s gone up to London to have lunch with some old school friend. I go straight upstairs to my room and throw myself on my bed. The springs groan under my great weight. I rip my glasses off and bury my head in the pillow, ready for a long howl. I’ve been fighting back tears for hours but now that I can cry in peace they won’t come. I just make silly sniveling noises that sound so stupid I shut up.

  I roll over onto my back. I feel my body with my hands. They mountaineer up each peak and descend each valley. I pinch my waist viciously to see if I can grab a whole handful of fat but my clothes get in the way. I unbutton my sweater and pull it over my head. I struggle up off the bed. I remove everything else. I can see my reflection in the wardrobe mirror but it’s just a pink blur. I put on my glasses.

  It’s like I’m looking at my own body for the first time. I look at my round face with its big baby cheeks and double chin, I look at my balloon breasts, I look at my flabby waist, I look at my saggy soft stomach, I look at my vast wobbly bum, I look at my massive thighs, I look at my round arms and blunt elbows, I look at my dimpled knees and thick ankles, I look at my plump padded feet.

  I stand there, feeling like I’ve stepped into a science fiction movie. An alien has invaded my body and blown it up out of all recognition.

  I can’t believe I’m so fat. I’ve always known I’m a bit chubby. Plump. Biggish. But not fat.

  I whisper the word. I think of greasy swamps of chip fat stagnating in the pan. I look at my body and see the lard beneath the skin. I start clawing at myself, as if I’m trying to rip the flesh right off me.

  The girl in the mirror now looks crazy as well as fat. I turn away quickly and pull my clothes back on. My jeans feel so tight I can barely do up the zip. My sweater strains obscenely over my breasts. I brush my hair to try to cover my great moon face. I keep having one more look at myself to see if I might have changed in the last two seconds. I look worse each time.

  I’ve never exactly liked the way I look. I suppose it was different when I was a little kid. I can remember my mum brushing my wild curls into two big bunches and tying them with bright ribbons, scarlet one day, emerald green the next. “You look so cute, Ellie,” she’d say, and I felt cute. Maybe I even was cute in my dungarees and stripy T-shirts and bright boots to match the ribbons. I was cuddly, that was all. I was definitely cute, with my happy hairstyle and big dark eyes and dimples.

  But then my mum died. Everything changed. I changed too. I felt empty all the time so I couldn’t stop eating: doughnuts and sticky buns and chocolate and toffees. The sourer I felt inside the more I had to stuff myself with sweets. So I got much fatter, and then Dad noticed I frowned whenever I read and I had to wear glasses and Anna my new stepmother tried to dress me in conventional little-girly outfits that made me look like a piglet in a party frock.

  I knew this but somehow I still stayed me inside. I could still act cute. People still liked me at school. They thought me funny. They wanted to be my friend. Even at Anderson High School I still fitted in. I wasn’t the most popular girl in the class, I wasn’t the cleverest, I wasn’t the most stylish or streetwise, I didn’t come top in anything apart from art. But I was still one of the OK Girls. I wasn’t a swot, I wasn’t a slag, I wasn’t a baby, I wasn’t covered in spots, I wasn’t fat. Not really fat, like poor Alison Smith in our year, at least two hundred pounds, waddling slowly up and down the corridors as if she were wading through water, her eyes little glints inside the huge padded cage of her head.

  I give a little gasp. Another stare in the mirror. I know it’s mad but I’m suddenly starting to wonder if I’m actually as fat as Alison. Fatter??

  If I don’t watch out I could become an Alison. I’m going on a diet. I’m going on a diet right this minute.

  It’s lunchtime. Magda and Nadine will be sitting in the ice cream parlor sharing a chicken club sandwich with crisps and little gherkins, and sipping huge frothy strawberry sodas.

  My tummy rumbles.

  “Shut up,” I say. I punch myself hard in my own stomach. “You’re not getting fed today, do you hear, you great big ugly gut?”

  It hears but it doesn’t understand. It gurgles and complains and aches. I try not to pay it any attention. I get out my sketch pad and draw myself in elephantine guise and then I pin the picture above my bed.

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