Louise Kean - The Perfect 10

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A controversial, throught-provoking and witty novel about the pursuit of perfection – the perfect appearance, relationship and life, from a young, hot talent.Sunny Weston is bright, breezy and fun. She is also fat.Well, less fat that she was. In her pursuit of the perfect figure – and the life to match – Sunny has lost seven stone, with two to go. Yet as her thighs shrink her problems grow. When gorgeous Adrian at work decides that the new streamlined Sunny is the girl for him, she should be thrilled. But then she realises that Adrian loves her looks, not who she is.The only perfect thing about Cagney James are his put-downs. Cynical funny and old-school cool, he runs an agency that specialises in catching cheating lovers – something he has plenty of experience of.When Sunny and Cagney meet it’s loathe at first sight. Their hearts are too hard to see that they might have met their match, so they declare war instead. But sparks of anger have a habit of becoming flames of passion …

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‘Of course, you must bring your partners, or somebody, of course you must, but do please say you’ll come. Next Friday?’

I turn to face Cagney, who at least looks equally as appalled.

‘I just … I don’t …’

‘Please do say you can make it.’

‘Well then, I guess, I suppose … I can make it.’ I shudder as I accept.

‘That’s fantastic. Thank you. And you?’

‘Cagney James. I can make it on Friday.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name. I’m Deidre Turnball.’ She offers her hand for me to shake and, as anticipated, she just rests her fingers in my palm for a few moments before offering it to Cagney as well.

‘Sunny Weston.’

Deidre scrambles for a pen and paper in her bag, and scrawls down ‘The Moorhouse, 12 Wildview Avenue’ for us both, and offers us separate scraps of paper. She has written ‘7 o’clock’ as well. I stare at it with disbelief.

‘See you then,’ Deidre says, flicking her hair from her eyes, turning quickly and striding elegantly away.

I look down at the paper, and hear a car toot its horn, and an old man leans out of a minicab and shouts my name.

‘She hasn’t left her phone number,’ I say numbly.

‘Probably ex-directory as well,’ Cagney replies, reminding me he is there.

I look up at him, and he looks baffled, and embarrassed as well. And then I remember that the last thing he had said to me, before Deidre appeared, was some kind of insult. I try to speak, but when nothing comes out, I exhale loudly in his direction, and walk away.

I sit in the back of the cab, close my eyes, and go over what has happened.

I can’t believe the morning I have had.

I can’t believe I have to have dinner with Deidre, and Dougal, and the whole Turnball family, next Friday, at 7 p.m.

I can’t believe I have to see Dougal again so soon. I can’t imagine what it will do to him to see me again so soon.

I cannot believe I have to sit at a table and play polite with a man as offensively archaic as Cagney James.

And I bet it won’t be low fat.

TWO

An inspired puff of air

I meet Lisa for Box-a-fit at midday. It will clear my head before this afternoon. Unless there is a natural disaster I always see my therapist on a Monday at three. I have known my two closest friends, Lisa and Anna, for over twenty years – we practised Bucks Fizz dance routines in the playground together at eight, and attended Duke of Edinburgh sessions as a teenage triumvirate, if only to go to the discos, and not the hikes.

Lisa is married now, of course, as is Anna. They both settled down aged twenty-five with university boyfriends, who had quickly replaced sixth form boyfriends in the girls’ freshman year. Anna isn’t a member of this gym, or any gym now, as far as I am aware. She is still trying to breast-feed her first child, Jacob, who is eleven weeks old. Both Anna and Lisa have failed to recognise me on a number of occasions when we have agreed to meet outside tube stations or cinemas. They are used to seeing the old me.

Anna says, ‘You don’t even look like you any more, Sunny. Even your smile isn’t as wide …’

Lisa strides towards me confidently as I wait outside the gym, her long blonde curls swinging naturally down her back, pulled off her face with two clips at the sides. She has a slight fluffy hair halo, because she doesn’t use any product on her hair. She never has. Natural is Lisa’s defining characteristic. Her broad face is clean and shiny. I can see a couple of tiny red veins on otherwise smooth cheeks, and she has the finest of lines playing with the corners of her eyes. She does, however, have a large angry swollen spot on her chin that glares at me menacingly as she gets closer. Lisa has never worn make-up during the day, and even on a big night out she will apply one lick of mascara to each set of eyelashes, and a hastily slicked streak of lipstick to each lip. I always admired how she looked so healthy and clean, but now I wonder whether a dab of Touche Éclat here and there would be such a sin.

Lisa ran everything, from the 100 metres to cross country when we were at school, and she is still super fit, of course – naturally fitter than I am. But that would only show in a half-marathon, not in a class like today’s, with just over an hour’s worth of fitness needed. You wouldn’t be able to tell, if you glanced through the window to the fitness studio on a tour of the gym, that she had been in training her whole life, and I had been in training for just over a year. Lisa’s husband, Gregory Nathan, is a very slim man who was the 5,000 metre steeplechase champion at her university. When he laughs I think he looks like a dog. He works in the City now. He is some kind of underwriter, big in insurance, apparently. Big enough that Lisa was able to give up her job in publishing eight months ago, to really think about what she wanted to do, and hasn’t decided yet. She keeps threatening to open a boutique of ‘lovely knick-knacks, candles, and linen, and cushions, and beautiful glass vases’, but hasn’t quite managed to bother just yet. Thankfully for the lovely knick-knack market, one hundred other shops selling exactly that have opened in that time in and around West London. Lisa and Gregory live in Richmond, and they run by the river, together, every Saturday and Sunday morning.

Lisa was the first person to realise I was losing weight, when I had officially shed one stone and four pounds, and she was the first person to notice that I had changed my eating habits. We met for brunch one Saturday, to have a girls’ catch-up, and I ordered a tuna salad with red onions and walnuts, instead of a burger and chips with coleslaw. Anna hadn’t realised, but Lisa came right out with it.

‘Are you having salad, Sunny?’

‘I just fancied something green,’ I said with an innocent smile. I wasn’t ready to get into it with them, and at that point was unsure whether I would even be able to see it through. One stone down but eight more to go didn’t feel like something to shout about. Plus the first stone had fallen off, but now the reduction was slowing up. I realised that I was going to have to do something drastic, and join a gym, and the thought scared me. Not because I wasn’t any good at sport, but because I thought I would look like the worst kind of deluded fool, in my billowing T-shirt and tracksuit trousers, walking on a running machine, red-faced and out of puff. Now, if I see anybody even close to my old size in the gym I try and give them a big smile, if they will meet my eye, but invariably they don’t.

‘But you look like you’ve lost weight, in your face.’ Lisa eyed me with a smile, trying to get me to admit it.

‘Diet?’ Anna asked, picking up a piece of bread and soaking it in olive oil.

‘Kind of,’ I said with a small grin, admitting that maybe I was a little pleased with myself. ‘But more of a health kick, than a diet. I’m just trying to think about what I’m eating,’ I said, adjusting the napkin in my lap.

‘God, who can be bothered? I never thought it worried you!’ Anna said, staring at me intently, trying to get me to admit a lifetime’s worth of bad feeling to her soberly and over a casual lunch.

‘Of course it bothers me, a little bit. I just want to be healthy,’ I said, and then I was embarrassed.

‘Are you doing any exercise?’ Lisa asked with a smile, interested.

‘I’ve been walking a lot, but I think I might need to join a gym,’ I grimaced, as excitement swept Lisa’s face.

‘Join mine! Then I can help. It’ll be fun!’

‘OK, maybe, but I’m not ready for anything too major. It’s been a long time since I have done any real exercise. I have to work my way up to it …’

Lisa mouthed, ‘It’ll be great’ across the table, and toasted her glass of lime and soda in my direction.

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