Michele Gorman - The Curvy Girls Club

‘Pixie, you can’t let him do that to you!’ Ellie said. ‘I mean making you feel bad about your weight, not the other thing.’

‘He’s not hurting me.’

‘Maybe not physically,’ I said. ‘But mentally he is. Ellie’s right. You can’t let him do that.’

She sighed. ‘I pick my battles, love. He’d never dare lay a hand on me or the children. Believe me, that would be going too far.’ She chuckled. ‘And now I think I’ve got a way to keep him from laying anything on me …’ Her eyes glinted as she dug her mobile phone from her bag and scrolled through a few screens. ‘Look what I’ve just bought!’

‘Oh my god,’ Jane said, as we all looked at the photo. ‘Are you planning to wear that?’

‘I got three of them. They arrived in the post today. I’m going to try one tonight. Sexy, eh?’ She grinned wickedly.

Pixie seemed to be suggesting wearing a puke-green, thick terrycloth onesie around the house as birth control. The one she showed us had a hood and feet and zipped up the front. She was right. I didn’t imagine Trevor would unzip that unless she was going into cardiac arrest.

‘I hope it works,’ Ellie said. ‘But you really should think about leaving, Pixie.’

‘I do, every waking moment, love, but I’d need to find work or the children and I won’t be able to live. Right, thank you for depressing me.’

‘Sorry!’ we all said.

She smiled. ‘That’s all right. I know you’re just watching out for me. Now, where were we, before you convinced me to share my fashion advice with you?’

Pixie often snapped shut as quickly as she opened up, so I wasn’t surprised to hear her change the subject.

‘Charging for events,’ I said. ‘I did the maths. If we’d charged two quid for each event we’ve had so far, we’d have over six hundred quid now.’

‘That is interesting,’ Pixie said. ‘It actually could be a business if we wanted it to be.’

‘Assuming people will pay,’ Jane said.

‘Assuming people will pay,’ echoed Pixie. ‘We could also expand the events.’

‘That’s what we’re saying, sweetheart.’

‘No, I mean we could expand the range of events we host. They don’t all have to be things we want to do ourselves. If it’s an official club now, and a business, shouldn’t we think of things that will be popular even though they may not be our cup of tea?’

I nodded. ‘Like what?’

She thought for a moment. ‘What about speed-dating?’

My face told her my thoughts on that.

‘Why not? A lot of the people coming are single. They might like it. We could call it something fun, like Find a Chubby Hubby.’

‘Wasn’t that a brand of ice cream?’ Jane wondered.

‘Right. Copyright issues. How about Fat Friends?’ she proposed. ‘I don’t know, something fun.’

I definitely didn’t like that idea. ‘That was a TV programme … besides, there’s nothing fun about Fat Friends. It’s insulting.’

‘Oh, get off your high horse. We’re fat. We’re friends. It does what it says on the tin.’

‘All right,’ Ellie said. ‘We don’t have to decide right now. The important thing is that we agree we’ll charge a fee, right? So we can grow the Curvy Girls Club. The sky’s the limit, ladies.’

Everyone nodded and I felt like I’d just watched our child take her first step. How had this become so important to me? Sappy Katie.

We’d just sat down to dinner a week later at Pixie’s favourite pizza place when Jane dropped her bombshell on us.

‘I can’t wait any longer,’ she said. ‘Look!’ She yanked a copy of the Evening Standard from her cavernous bag, dragging out most of her knitting in the process.

London’s ‘biggest’ social club?

There’s a new kid on the block in London’s entertainment industry, and it’s not for everyone. A group of fed-up slimmers have come together to launch the Curvy Girls Club, an entertainment resource for the larger lady.

The long article went on to describe how we’d started and some of the events we’d done so far.

‘Ooh look, we’re named!’ Ellie wriggled. ‘I had no idea we were going to get into the newspaper!’ She said it like our names had appeared written in the night sky. ‘And Katie, you’re quoted!’

I pulled the paper closer.

‘I hope you don’t mind, sweetheart. They wanted a quote and I remembered what you said at Slimming Zone. It seemed perfect so …’

I read the line twice. The point is to learn to be happy the way we are, says co-founder Katie Winterbottom, instead of constantly worrying about how we’d like to look.

‘You sly bugger,’ said Pixie. ‘How did you do this?’

Jane blushed. ‘I hope you don’t mind. It happened by accident, really. One of the mums at Abigail’s school writes for them, and one afternoon last month we got talking when we dropped the children off. Actually I was surprised she spoke to me. She’s part of the immaculate crowd who drive up in their huge sparkling clean SUVs, looking like they’ve just come from the salon. They don’t usually talk to me, just stare like I’m something they’ve accidently stepped in. They probably go off to their gyms afterwards to perfect their already perfect bodies. Meanwhile I turn up in the same tracksuit from the day before, with no makeup and dirty hair, shove the children out the door and go home to eat the remains of their breakfast. Plus all the biscuits I can find in the house. It’s depressing. If we had the money I’d hire a nanny just to do the school runs.’

Ellie squeezed Jane’s hand.

‘Oh, it’s all right, sweetheart. I’m not the only slummy mummy at the school gates. It just feels like that sometimes. So anyway, I’d accidentally boxed her car in and instead of just telling me to move, she mentioned that her daughter loves Abigail and it went from there, really. When she mentioned her work I thought I had nothing to lose by telling her what we were doing. She loved the idea and pitched it to her editor. So then we did a telephone interview about the club. She told me not to get my hopes up, so I didn’t mention anything, but then it came out tonight.’

‘I wonder if anyone went on the website to have a look.’

‘Call Rob!’ Pixie and Ellie said at once.

‘Okay, okay.’ My hand was already on my phone. ‘Though it’s dinnertime. I’ll text him in case he’s eating.’ I tapped the short message about the article and pressed send.

‘We could try getting into other papers,’ I said. ‘If the Evening Standard were interested then maybe the other local papers will be too.’

‘The Evening Standard isn’t local,’ Ellie said. ‘It’s national!’

‘No, Ellie, it’s London’s local paper.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not national? I just assumed.’

‘Spoken like a true southerner,’ said Pixie. ‘No, my love, it’s just for London. Katie’s right though, we could try other locals like the Ham & High .’

‘And maybe the nationals would be interested too,’ said Ellie. ‘Imagine getting into The Times or The Guardian . Jane, do you think it’s possible?’

She nodded. ‘It’s possible, but probably more likely for the local papers. I’d be happy to write a short PR piece and send it round to the editors. I can get contact details from work.’

‘Then it’s official,’ I teased. ‘You’re our head of PR.’ With Jane’s connections at Channel 4, where she worked as a programme developer, I couldn’t think of a better candidate.

It was funny how we’d slipped naturally into the roles that suited us – Rob on the website, me organising the events and now Jane handling the PR. Pixie and Ellie didn’t have as much free time as we did – Trevor resented any time Pixie wasn’t slavishly looking after him or the children, and Ellie’s time was tied up between her second job and lovely Thomas – but they came to most of the events and had become the de facto hosts.