Matthew came home in the middle of the afternoon. Naturally, he’d had no lunch. Without Michelle to look after him and coax him, he’d never eat at all. But he looked well, very nearly a normal thin man. The recording for the television program had been highly enjoyable. “I loved it,” he said, just like the old Matthew she’d married. “I didn’t really expect to. I was full of gloomy forebodings.”
“You should have told me, darling.”
“I know, but I can’t unload all my burdens on you.”
She said in an unusually bitter voice, “You could. My shoulders are broad enough.”
He looked at her with concern, sat down next to her, and took her hands. “What is it, my love? What’s wrong? You’re pleased for me, I know that. This program may be the start of many. We’ll be richer, though I know you don’t care about that. What is it?”
She came out with it. She could no longer keep it to herself. “Why do you never say I’m fat? Why don’t you tell me I’m gross and bloated and hideous? Look at me. I’m not a woman, I’m a great obese balloon of flesh. I said my shoulders are broad enough-well, I hope yours are for what I’m saying. That’s my burden: my size, my awful, huge, revolting size.”
He was looking at her, but not aghast, not in horror. His poor, thin, wizened face was softened and changed by tenderness. “My darling,” he said. “My sweet, dearest darling. Will you believe me when I say I’ve never noticed?”
“You must have. You’re an intelligent man, you’re perceptive. You must have noticed and-and hated it!”
“What’s brought this on, Michelle?” he asked seriously.
“I don’t know. I’m a fool. But-yes, I do know. It’s Jeff, Jeff Leigh. Every time I see him he makes some sort of joke about my size. It was-well, this morning it was ‘stoking up the boilers?’ and the other day he said-no, darling, I can’t tell you what he said.”
“Shall I speak to him? Tell him he’s hurt you? I will, I shan’t mind doing that. You know me, aggressive bastard when I’m roused.”
She shook her head. “I’m not a child. I don’t need Daddy to tell the boy next door to stop it.” A little smile transformed her face. “I never thought I’d say this about anyone but I-I hate him. I really do. I hate him. I know he’s not worth it, but I can’t help it. Tell me about the television.”
He told her. She pretended to listen and made encouraging noises, but she was thinking how deeply she disliked Jeff Leigh, how certain she was that he was a petty crook and she wondered if she could find the strength to warn Fiona. As if she were her mother. Did people ever heed that kind of warning? She didn’t know. But she wasn’t Fiona’s mother and that would make a big difference.
When she had made a meal for Matthew (milkless tea, a Ryvita, two slices of kiwi fruit, and twelve dry-roasted peanuts), she went upstairs, of necessity holding on to the banisters with both hands, puffing at the top as she always did, and entered the bathroom. The scales were for Matthew. She had never stepped on them. How delighted they both were when Matthew weighed himself last week and the scales registered 100 pounds instead of the needle quivering on the 84-pound mark as it once had. Michelle kicked off her shoes, looking down at her legs and feet. They were beautiful, as lovely in shape as any of those models’, if not as long. Taking a deep breath, she stepped onto the scales.
At first she didn’t look. But she had to look, that was the point. Slowly she lowered her closed eyes, forced herself to open them. Her breath expelled in a long sigh, she took her eyes away from what it came to in kilos, in pounds. She weighed three times what Matthew did.
What had happened to her to make her do what she’d just done? Jeff Leigh had happened. That made Michelle smile. It was absurd to think of the person you hated as doing you good. For he had done her good. She put on her shoes, went down to the kitchen again and tipped the food she’d prepared for her tea, a big bread roll (in the absence of doughnuts) with strawberry jam, two shortcake biscuits, and a slice of fruitcake, down into the waste bin.
Chapter 12
THE HORRIBLE THING was that she’d begun to fancy Jims. Really to fancy him, a different matter altogether from the feeling she’d had when they were both teenagers. In those days it had been just an itch, coupled with resentment that here was one boy among all those she knew who wasn’t attracted to her. That in itself was enough to make her try to seduce him. But now things had changed.
Paradoxically, as she started to want to go to bed with him, so she liked him less. When they’d just been seeing each other every few weeks, having a drink together, talking over old times, Zillah would have said Jims was her best friend. Sharing a home with him made a huge difference. His peevishness was apparent, his selfishness, and, when there was no one else present, his absolute indifference as to whether she was there or not. If anyone called, one of his parliamentary pals, for instance, he was all over her, holding hands, looking into her eyes, calling her darling, pausing as he passed the back of her chair to drop a kiss on the nape of her neck. Alone with her he barely spoke. But this coldness, along with his appearance, his grace, his dark slenderness, and those large, dark eyes, fringed with black lashes like a girl’s, contributed to his appeal. Every day, it seemed, she sank deeper into wanting him very much.
In the Maldives it was worse. They shared a suite in which there were two bedrooms and two bathrooms, but Jims was seldom there, spending his nights in suite 2004, where Leonardo was. Ever cautious, he would sometimes return at eight in the morning, to be sitting opposite her at the glass table on the balcony, both in their white toweling robes, when the waiter brought their breakfast at nine.
“I wonder why you bother,” she said.
“Because you never know who else may be staying here. How do you know that redheaded woman we saw on the beach yesterday isn’t a journalist? Or that the very youthful couple, the topless girl and her boyfriend, aren’t media people? Of course you don’t. I have to be ever vigilant.”
Most women would be overjoyed, she thought, if their husbands could talk about a young girl going topless without a flicker of lust in their eyes, without the least deepening of their tone. In the mornings Jims lay on a sun lounger on the silver sands and Leonardo lay on another sun lounger beside him. But Zillah was there too on a third one. When she protested, saying she’d rather go in the pool or take a look at the village, such as it was, he reminded her of his reason for marrying her. And for giving her two homes, almost unlimited spending money, a new car, clothes, and security. He’d also, he said, become a father to her children. Zillah was beginning to understand that she’d taken on a job rather than a husband, while in exchange for all those worldly goods she’d abandoned her freedom.