Michele Gorman - The Curvy Girls Club

Andy’s future was no less clear, and just as clearly focused on having a family. He was an IT programmer, weekend rugby player, and the friend that everyone trusted with their spare keys. Within a month, he had Jane’s keys too, and she had his. They were deliriously in love with each other and tried their best not to be smug about it. They spent the next two summers taking most of their holiday to go to music festivals and on Jane’s twenty-fifth birthday, they married in a small summer ceremony in Jane’s hometown. Her birthday party cum wedding reception was a huge BBQ in a muddy Suffolk field. Jane wore wellies with her dress. Her wedding photos, which she kept all over the house, looked like they were ordered straight from beautifulbohemianweddings.com.

Children were always part of their plan and they didn’t waste time. Andy knew Jane would be the most perfect mother, and told her constantly how excited he was to see her holding their very own baby one day.

Unfortunately though, nature wasn’t taking direction from Andy. As the months passed and her periods remained regular, Jane started to suspect something was wrong.

Of course, being Jane, she read every book, article and blog she could find. There had to be a way to fix what was clearly broken. She’d always been fit. She ate healthily, took her vitamins, avoided preservatives and mercury-laden tuna. Was she too healthy? Maybe the body functioned best in the middle of the range rather than at the extremes.

Everyone around her seemed to be getting pregnant. Even the teenage daughter of the corner shop owner was knocked up, the stupid girl, and her cousin, the hen weekend raver, was already pregnant with her second child.

At first Jane loved seeing her cousin, but as the months passed it got harder to smile convincingly when she held her cousin’s tiny baby. With every sniff of that delicious little head, Jane felt more despondent, and surer that her insides weren’t functioning like everyone else’s. She didn’t tell Andy about her fears. She wasn’t about to blow his illusion of her perfection so early in their marriage. So she kept it to herself, and it festered.

Andy was the first to bring up the ‘I’ word.

‘But we’re young,’ Jane said, panicking to hear her biggest fear from Andy’s lips. ‘We can’t be infertile.’

‘I’m sure we’re not,’ he said, smoothing the hair from her face. ‘There’s probably a very simple explanation.’ His IT-programming brain knew there must be an answer for this run-time error. ‘Maybe we should just get checked out to make sure everything’s okay. If you like, I can make appointments for us.’

Dear Andy was willing to wank in a cup for the love of his life. But Jane kept putting off the appointments, and hoping, until finally Andy confronted her.

All her fear tumbled out in a wave that threatened to wash away what they had together. But Andy wouldn’t let it. He held on, anchoring them both, and convinced Jane to go for tests with him.

‘You’ve lost two pounds. Well done, Katie,’ gushed Pam the next week at Slimming Zone as she updated my chart. Pam was a gusher, which made her the perfect slimming coach. She acted like we’d found a cure for PMT every time we dropped a bit of weight.

The last time I’d lost two pounds was when Jane made us do the Caveman Diet. It was no compensation for the eggy burps. Thankfully, womankind then left the caves and evolved to discover baked goods.

I grinned at my friends. Ellie pulled a face. Sore gainer.

‘That’s fantastic,’ Jane said when I joined them. ‘How did you do that?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘I didn’t do anything unusual. Ellie, you know I had at least two do-over days last week.’ I wasn’t gloating too much. Two pounds is a drop in the sea when you’re a woman of larger proportions.

Besides, I was starting to see Pixie’s point. If we spent as much time and effort actually losing weight as we did talking and thinking about it, we’d all be size eights. I’d never noticed how much our conversations revolved around weight. It was just a normal part of my life with my friends.

But something had begun to shift in my head over the past month. Each time we went out together, I found myself becoming less conscious of my size. For those few hours I forgot I was Fat Katie. I was simply a normal woman having fun with her best friends.

But as we were at the meeting to talk about weight, I couldn’t begrudge Jane her congratulations when Pam announced that she’d dropped three pounds, even if her methods were suspect. She’d been pill-popping her way to weight loss.

‘Do you know I can actually imagine getting back to my goal weight?’ she said. ‘Two and a half stone to go. I can do this. Alli, I love you!’

‘But isn’t it making you poo all the time?’ I asked, knowing the answer. ‘I wouldn’t be as unconditionally in love with something that made me incontinent.’

‘And it’s not just the frequent poos, is it?’ Ellie raised her eyebrow. ‘I looked it up too. It sounds like there can be some other nasty shocks. Jane? Would you like to tell everyone what’s really been happening?’

That got my full attention.

Jane’s peaches-and-cream complexion reddened. ‘Well, you really do need to eat a low-fat diet or there are problems. The warnings are all over the instructions. So it’s no magic pill to make up for going overboard. In fact, it’s the opposite. You definitely shouldn’t take them when you’ve eaten too much fat. I didn’t believe that, until it happened …’ She shook her head. ‘I shat my pants. I thought it was just wind. It was more.’

‘Oh god, that’s disgusting!’

‘Did you shart ?’

Her shoulders shook as she covered her face. ‘I sharted!’ she said through her fingers. ‘Thank god I was at home so I could shower and change.’ She lowered her voice. ‘The pills keep you from absorbing fat. If it doesn’t get absorbed, it’s got to go somewhere. That means the poos are more … juicy than normal. A bit greasy.’

‘Jane, are you sure about this?’ I said. ‘Slippery bowel movements can’t be worth the weight loss.’

‘I think they are,’ she said quietly. When I saw her expression I let the topic drop.

Rob hurried into the meeting, shrugging his coat off as he headed for Pam. His face lit up when he saw us at the back. ‘I’ll be right with you,’ he said, loping to the scales for his reckoning.

I wasn’t sure why Rob came to the meetings. He was one of those men well-suited to his size – big and comfortingly solid. He always wore jeans that flattered his long athletic legs and favoured band tee shirts with linen jackets, and Converse trainers or those brown leather bowling shoes. Because of his height he had the look of a gentle bear. A friendly, handsome, gentle bear.

‘You’re the talk of the meeting, you know,’ he said as he flung himself into a chair with all the grace of a walrus on land. ‘Rumour has it you’ve started some kind of club.’