The Weigh, the Piece and the Loaf

By Fionna Sheppard

Thirty-something, unattached Carrie wants a life
– just not the one she has. Carrie believes that to
attract a man, she must change herself.
If she was thin, she would feel great and look
wonderful. Then the perfect man would appear.
Life would be blissful. So she writes a plan.
However, the journey to bliss doesn’t quite follow
the plan. The real world, events, her family
and best friends all get in the way. A reluctant
traveller, Carrie sets out on a road that takes her
places – in her mind, her thinking and around the
world - and in doing so changes herself forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris NZ
• Release date: Oct 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465304841

Fionna Sheppard

Fionna Sheppard grew up in Wellington, New Zealand, the fifth child in a family of seven siblings, all of whom are avid readers. The family joke was that the children would “read the back of the Weetbix packet if there was nothing else to read”. Her mother had a love of words and passed that on. Always keen on stories and books, Fionna’s first after school job was in the local library, although her career as an adult took a different track. In 2005, Fionna realised she was full of stories just waiting to be written, and started the transfer from heart to paper. Fionna travels as often as she can to research the background of her books with her partner and when possible, with her two adult children.

Book preview

Chapter One

What on earth are you doing? asked Mattie.

Thinking. And looking for a tree. I replied primly.

At two o’clock in your pyjamas?—which by the way need to be thrown out, they’re so tatty. Why?

Why? Because the teacher at a course I went to said ‘if you want to complain about something, go talk to a tree’. And I have a complaint.

What’s the complaint?

Why this extra weight insists on sneaking up on me in the night. I go to bed looking OK and wake up like a blimp.

Mattie laughed. Don’t be silly, Carrie, you look fine. You’ve always been a little heavy. It suits you.

I looked at her. It’s ‘fine’ for Mattie. She’s always been thin and elegant, even in her school uniform. I can’t imagine her in tatty anythings. It isn’t ‘fine’ for me. It doesn’t ‘suit’ me. Not at all.

It’s these diet books. All say one thing—or another. After rigorous research, surreptitious—and ineffective—short stays with various clubs and pay-as-you-lose organisations, and a bookcase groaning with get-thin titles, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only food items that all authors agree on are green vegetables. Excluding peas. So, if that’s all I ever eat, I’ll be thin, healthy, have a long life, more sex, perfect skin, low cholesterol, clean liver, kidneys, heart, pain free joints, everything. But how could I watch people eat a classic French onion soup and a bottle of Fabulosous Beach Chardonnay while I eat a plateful of steamed bok choi lightly garnished with out of season asparagus and not manically lean across the table and stuff food into myself?

As I finished my tirade, Mattie sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs and laughed and laughed. I thought she was going to fall off the chair. Half of me wanted her to. How dare she laugh at me when she was thin and I was so fat?

I told her I hadn’t forgotten that I was babysitting that evening, and if she’d like to drop the children off, they could stay overnight. Mattie agreed that was a good solution, and went off, still laughing.

Having ruled out the green-vegetables-only regime, and having failed numerous times to lose weight and keep it off, I determined to follow the advice given by the course teacher. No one could change this situation except me. Unless I could find a tree that was particularly enlightened and spoke English. A couple of days after the babysitting I had a cursory look around the town for a suitable tree, there being none in my garden of any height or breadth that would indicate age, understanding, shelter or enlightenment. No joy. One lone oak was being lifted from its home in the middle of town for the last 100 or so years in order to put in a main sewer—that one might have had some wisdom, but I was too late to ask.

A tree or two in the local park might have been promising, but at dusk the park closed so I was limited in my tree hugging/talking times to before work and weekends unless it was summer. Alas, right now was the middle of winter. Also, I recalled that another friend, Jeannie, once said that as a child she had been told that molesters and murderers lurked in the park; the reason why she had never been in it. I was a little nervous about strange folk jumping out at me.

That left me in charge of the entire process of changing my thinking about eating, changing my actual eating and changing everything I thought about that was related to food, body shape and exercise as well. It also obliged me to think about changing my friends—eliminating (albeit temporarily) those who: a. could eat anything they liked and frequently did with no ill effects (Mattie); b. were even more obsessive than me, as that would make me paranoid as well as obsessive (Jeannie); and c. Anyone thinner or fatter than me so I wouldn’t be tempted to continually make comparisons and either gloat or find myself wanting (my other friends Ellen and Suze. And with them it would be the finding myself wanting as they are both blonde and skinny).

New friends seemed to be required. But how to find them quickly? Walk up to people I didn’t know and say: Hullo, Let me introduce myself. My name is Carrie. I’m in my early thirties (OK, thirty-five). I don’t like my shape and I weigh too much. As you can see, I’m average height. Smallish feet. Largish thighs and chest. I have long red wavy thick hair and green eyes. I’m single. Very. Unfortunately. That’s another part of my life that I’m not happy about. Want to be my friend and listen to me complain? I don’t think so.

Besides, I really liked the friends I had. Especially my group from school. Mattie, Jeannie, Suze and Ellen are really important to me—they put substance in my life. So, I decided to keep them. Although we weren’t in the habit of telling each other terribly personal stuff, I realised. In fact, if Mattie hadn’t caught me in my pyjamas in the garden tree-searching, I know I would never have said anything to her. Although, on the plus side, Mattie’s profession means she keeps her mouth shut pretty well. Most doctors don’t usually blab about patients.

That meant I was left in the position of not telling my friends what I was up to and doing it on my own. With sly visits to the trees in the park on the weekend. Especially after Mattie’s response—I hate that ‘you’re fine’ thing. But I thought I might use our regular catch-up nights as a sort of time-clock, and I devised a plan and wrote it down. I’m not going to read it out loud, I’ll start sounding like Bridget Jones’s diary or any one of those women writers who churn out books that sell heaps and have titles about fruit or men or a self help book by a guru who knows it all and did it for the stars and now gets to be on Oprah or something. But the main points covered were looking at everything I ate, thinking about everything I thought about when I ate, and looking at everything I looked at when I ate.

The plan also included a health check, because everything these days says ‘check with your doctor first’. I think it’s a plot to boost doctors’ incomes even further. Whoever thought it up must be raking in the millions, well, if they get a percentage of every doctor’s earnings from women who visited them expressly to be checked up on before embarking on a bottle of supplements, an instant fake tan, or a machine that was guaranteed to get ten centimetres off your bottom in two weeks if you just followed the simple instructions and exercised for seven hours every day wearing the latest yellow and green striped lycra get-up ‘as seen on TV’.

A visit to the acupuncturist to make sure everything was flowing in the right directions; nothing was too hot, too cold, too dry or too damp or whatever it is those pulse things tell them.

An hour with the homeopath to get appropriate outrageously expensive organic supplements. I’m sure that as soon as the manufacturers of anything discovered that writing organic on the bottle upped the market value and acceptability ratings by 120% they started laughing all the way to the bank. After all, I could just nip out into the country, yank a few fennel branches off the plants growing wild on the side of the road, chew it up in the food processor and add some rhubarb, honey and half a squeezed orange including the rind and make myself some great—and cheap—brew for a quarter of the cost of the supplements. Couldn’t I?

Getting back to the plan. Next, checking out all the gyms in town. I hate gyms. They smell. They are LOUD. Skinny women with fake tans all over wearing shiny lycra and earpieces in which they scream out nonsensical things very loudly so they can be heard over the revolting thumpy music gyrate at the front of a class of tired, overweight women and self conscious men down the back and clones of themselves up at the front showing off their abs or thighs or bums or other personal bits they wish to flaunt in the mirrors gracing all the walls. I had to find a gym that didn’t do any—or at least much—of that.

A couple of weeks later I was able to tick off several items on my list. A sports doctor, so into all the right stuff I figured, weighed and measured me. She told me my current body mass index-y thing and said I was ‘borderline slightly overweight to overweight’. Great. Just what I wanted to hear. She worked out I had fourteen kilograms to get rid of. I went and hid in the loo and snuffled for a bit then gave myself a stern talking to and after paying the bill, I wandered down the road into the supermarket and idly stacked up twenty-eight half kilogram packets of butter. One of the supermarket staff watched me with great interest.

What are you doing? she asked.

This is how much weight I need to lose, I explained. I wanted to get a good look at what I was carrying around as extra baggage.

She laughed. Sounds sensible to me. Why don’t you pop in each time you lose one packet, make another stack each time and view your progress? But don’t tell anyone I mentioned it or we’ll have a queue of women and men making stacks of butter of varying heights and I’ll have to restack them all afterwards!

Then I took myself off to the homeopath. He said I’m in reasonable shape, sold me a huge stack of supplements—as I expected—and wished me luck.

I went in search of a gym that was bearable. I inspected eleven awful ones. And then I found one that I thought I could keep going to. It wasn’t too full, even at lunchtime. Most of the users wore tatty old gear and they threw in two free sessions with a personal trainer who gave me a full assessment, wrote out a work plan, then showed me how to do it all. People seemed pretty friendly, and there was a sauna as well so that was a deciding factor. The lack of very loud thumpy music, no Lycra in sight and a complete absence of aerobics classes gave this one the tick.

Finally I reached step three, the inspection of the contents of my pantry and kitchen cupboards and removal of everything that looked tasty: fatty, sweet, floury, yeasty… Everything went. Mind you, that wasn’t a bad thing. Lots of the stuff in the pantry had expired in 2008. I kept a bar of sugar free ‘no carb’ chocolate that gives one a good dose of diarrhoea if you eat the whole thing at one sitting, two bottles of Evian water, teas, decaffeinated coffee… and the jar of Cadbury’s Instant Hot Chocolate which came with a free bag of Cadbury’s marshmallows. The marshmallows had long gone; it was just the hot chocolate left. I threw out four city council garbage bags worth of unallowed products.

And that was before I emptied out the refrigerator and the freezer. I found some amazing stuff in the back of the freezer that I thought I had lost about four years ago. Almost all the refrigerator contents went, which included the almost-empty jars (except for the two centimetres of puffy white mould) of chutney, pickle, jam and olives. I’d never have a problem with infections and bacteria—I threw away three plastic bags containing the crusts of various breads all beautifully decorated with the makings of perfect penicillin specimens. I drank the bottle of 2003 chardonnay. Tasted foul.

Then I cleaned everything. The refrigerator hadn’t looked so good in years. With the new modern frost free models, I don’t think I had ever cleaned the freezer before—there was always something in there needing to remain frozen.

I added up what I had spent so far.

Doctor visit—seventy-five dollars. Supplements—one hundred and sixty dollars. Gym fee—five hundred and forty-two dollars for six months. Four bagfuls of pantry stock—must be four hundred dollars. Refrigerator and freezer stocks, oh easily three hundred dollars plus the wine. Total: around one thousand, five hundred and two dollars this exercise had cost me so far and I hadn’t lost a gram. Well, maybe one gram hauling all the city council yellow bags down to the footpath for the rubbish collection.

Funny thing though, I was already feeling better about myself. Not only had I written a plan and had carried out the initial steps of it; I had a spotlessly clean pantry, and I had started taking the supplements. Just doing that seemed to have cleaned up my eating style a bit. Not a lot mind you, but you know, less sugar. More protein and vegetables. I had even cut back on the alcohol voluntarily.

And, I was registered at a gym with a wonderful sauna and did I mention there was also a spa with massage therapy? That had to be worth extra points. I had used my two personal trainer visits, had been assessed and given my own programme for flexibility and strengthening. The trainer hadn’t said a word about flabby hips and saggy stomachs or even mentioned wobbly upper arms. My sort of man entirely. Pity he was ten years younger than me… I decided to keep the trainer on.

All that was left was will power.

That’s where it got hard. Things kept getting in the way. Meeting my friends for food and wine got in the way of watching what I was eating. I didn’t want to ask for a salad while they ate super supreme pizza with everything.

Addictive weekend TV on dark wet winter days or choosing to work in my garden on a sunny day got in the way of going to the gym. Well, in my favour, gardening is exercise. And I like digging and weeding and getting sweaty in the garden. So I discounted that one.

So then I decided to write down all the things that got in the way of me achieving my goals. Except I hadn’t really got any goals sorted out. I mean, there was this lose weight so clothes fit and I meet a man who fancies me goal but it wasn’t really, well, specific, was it? Maybe I could just buy bigger clothes and give the old ones to the Salvation Army? And if a man didn’t like me the size I was, then why would he like me more if I was thinner?

Ha. That one is such a joke. Fact of life Number One—men look at the package before buying. The package has to fit their view of how women should look. And everyone knows women should look like Rachel Hunter or Kate Moss or Elle Macpherson. Or at least have similar proportions. We don’t have to be so tall. We need long, luxuriant hair. Breasts that support themselves splendidly and are still on high beam, not on dip. And a job that supports our lifestyles splendidly. Men don’t want to have to support women anymore. That chivalry, respect and looking after the little woman stuff is not the way men operate these days.

I thought about the list for a few days before starting it. I headed it up:

Things to overcome

That didn’t seem right so I scratched that out and began again.

Limiting factors for weight loss

No, that wasn’t it.

Then I wrote in capital letters on a clean page:

What stops me from reaching my goals?

That was it. But getting round to actually do the writing down of what they were took a lot of effort. This part was really hard. I had to look at a lot of stuff that I did without even realising I did it.

The only way I was going to achieve this was to work out why I wanted to look different from the way I do now. Why I thought I had to look different, be different to attract someone or even in order to feel that I was OK?

This is where the self analysis got a bit scary. I was starting to look beyond the surface desire for the size twelve.

I put down the piece of paper and did a Scarlett O’Hara, you know, ‘I’ll think about this tomorrow’. Called up Jeannie to see if she wanted to see a movie at the local cinema down the road and have a coffee and cake beforehand. She did, so we did. The movie was great and I managed to spend three hours not thinking about the list. The coconut and lemon cake was excellent too. Plus the chocolate dipped hokey pokey ice cream that is an essential part of any movie experience.

Jeannie and I discussed cake. Why it tasted so good. Why things that tasted good had a lot of calories. Why we both felt guilty eating sweet yummy stuff.

I wanted to mention to Jeannie about the re-creation of my life through being thinner plans, but lacked enough courage. I wondered if I’d tell my friends at the next girls’ night that I was planning to get thin and meet a man but knew I wouldn’t. We’ve laughed about people who go to McDonalds and have a double whopper burger with large fries—and then ask for a diet coke. But in a way, don’t we do something similar every day? The muffin, but a long black when we would really rather have a cappuccino bowl with chocolate fish and marshmallows? Then, we calculate the number of calories we just ate and work out that we’d have to spend two weeks everyday at the gym or walk uphill for six hours, or something equally awful—and just give up.

I must have done all those things a million times. And I wanted to stop it. Was this process I was embarking on going to be the answer? I didn’t have any answers and so I put the thoughts aside—along with the list.

After the movie, I was busy getting ready for another work week, sorting out the papers I had planned to read over the weekend for the meeting on Monday but had not got round to, ironing, trying to find a pair of tights without runs… so that used up another few hours of not having to deal with the list.

I fell into bed exhausted. New decision. I’ll just start the diet and work on the list in a leisurely fashion over the next couple of weeks. Second decision—I will get the courage to tell Jeannie, Mattie, Suze and Ellen about my plan to get thin and meet a man. I really will.

Chapter Two

In my quest for the new thinner inner me, I started getting out books from the library on body shape, weight, exercise. I’m an analyst—I expect that’s partly why I’m also an antiquities specialist, I love to study things in depth. So forgive me if I ramble and analyse too much.

I used to sit at night in front of the TV, reading books and drinking wine and eating the odd cookie or a whole bag of hard jubes. Jubes have been my downfall. So, as part of my new routine, I stopped buying hard jubes. That took real effort I can tell you.

Cookies aren’t so much of a problem. I can take one or two from the bag, and then put the packet away and make them last a week. Except pink wafer biscuits. Everyone knows they don’t keep crisp more than one day after the cellophane wrapping has been broken, even in airtight plastic boxes. I have trained myself not to buy hard jubes and pink wafer biscuits at the same time. The few times I did buy them together the results were not a good look.

The get-healthy-and-fit books didn’t satisfy me. I learned all about carbohydrates, high and low Glycemic Index foods, BMI’s, negative calories, proteins, arguments for and against food combining.

I had a great read about changes in body shapes over the last two hundred years. I learned about what our ancestors ate, depending on where they came from, and why we had particular blood types. Also why we should eat according to said blood types. When we should eat. What we should eat at what times. What we shouldn’t eat at night but should eat in the morning…

I was absolutely full of useless information. But I hadn’t lost any weight and I wasn’t feeling much better about myself, even though I’d been going to the gym. I was more flexible and I didn’t ache so much afterwards, so obviously there was some improvement, but it didn’t register on the scales as such.

I was eating better though, and I had eliminated the bags of hard jubes that had suddenly sneaked their way back into the pantry. I left one packet of pink wafer biscuits in the pantry for emergencies.

I kept thinking there was something I was not getting. What was it? I wasn’t totally plain. I had long, thick, wavy red hair, a nice red, not carrots or scarlet, more in the strawberry blonde range I guess, and was reasonable to look at, I thought. I went out with some of the people from work one night, and looked around at the men on offer, but none of them attracted me, and none of them tried to chat me up, so I guess I didn’t attract them either.

Are men so shallow that they will only talk to women who are thin? Why would anyone think thin women are more interesting or better prospects for a relationship than larger women?

And then as I looked around the bar, I saw some quite large women, bigger than me, who had men all around them. Perhaps it wasn’t the size after all. Perhaps it was personality? Did that mean I had absolutely no personality? Maybe it was that I wasn’t sexy? I didn’t look beddable? Or was it that I looked unapproachable? I wanted to ask some of the girls from work for advice—or even one of the men, but I didn’t have the courage.

It was all very depressing.

I left the bar early and went home to Fluff the cat and she and I ate pink wafer biscuits in bed.

Before I went to sleep though, I resolved to myself, this has to change. Somehow, I’m determined to find the way through all this stuff to a life that is fulfilling, with a man who is everything I want and I’ll feel great about myself and look wonderful.

I got up and searched for the list I had started. It wasn’t where I expected it to be, in the office desk drawer. It was in the kitchen by the phone. I wrote on it

I am determined to create a life that is fulfilling with a man who is perfect for me. I will feel happy about myself.

Then I went back to bed. With Fluff. Actually, Fluff had made herself a little kitty-burrow down by my feet under the quilt and was pretending she wasn’t there. I let her keep pretending. It was company. More than I had been getting, for sure. This plan better work I vowed. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my days with a cat for company and pink wafer biscuits for excitement.

Chapter Three

The next week sped by. I was far too busy to write anything on the list. I did go to the gym, once, and I thought about eating less pizza when I was out on the town on the Friday night with Jeannie and my other old school mates. We meet once a month for a pizza-wine-and-gossip girls’ night and it’s really good fun. Ellen always gets drunk and falls over, and for the first time instead of just laughing and saying oh, that’s just Ellen, I started thinking about why she got drunk and fell over so regularly. Was it just with us, or more often? And Suze kept on meeting new men but they never stayed around for long. Jeannie had a great job in Television advertising, a real career—girl type role, but had only been in one relationship and this with a married man who had worked in her department. She finally told him that she wasn’t going to be in a three person relationship for the rest of her life and ended the affair about two years ago. Jeannie just seemed to avoid all men after that and she never spoke about Gareth. She never spoke about how she was at all, really I suddenly realised.

Mattie seemed to be the only one of our group of five who had sorted her life out. She had a lovely husband, two gorgeous kids, worked part time as a paediatrician, had a great figure… why do some of us just seem to have everything fall into place in our lives and some of us keep missing the mark? Here we were, five well educated, attractive women in our mid thirties—and something was missing. Perhaps not from Mattie’s, but definitely from everyone else’s life.

We always sit in one particular booth at Nicotelli’s Pizzeria to discuss the events of the last month. Nicotelli’s has. It’s a great place, not too noisy, and has candles stuck in raffia covered chianti bottles on the tables. This particular Friday night, I nodded to a couple of tables of people I recognised as I came in, said hullo to Nicotelli himself—he must be in his seventies now but still fit and active and managing the front of house—and was starting over towards the window when Nicotelli gestured to me to come across to him.

Your friend is unwell, he whispered. She’s been in here everyday, for most of the day, drinking ginger beer and hardly eating. She won’t talk to anyone, so we have just let her sit. Did you know something was wrong?

I looked across to see which friend. It was Ellen. That’s very odd, I thought.

No, I answered. She seemed fine when I called to remind her that tonight was our girls’ night, didn’t mention anything.

Nicotelli gave me a hug. You girls have been patrons for a long time, he said. We look on you as family. Let us know if we can help in any way.

Thank you so much, I replied, I’ll let you know.

I went across to our table by the window. It was a surprise that Ellen was there first—she’s usually the last one in. She was staring out the window, with a tumbler glass and a half full bottle of ginger beer.

Are you OK Ellen? I queried, feeling a little concerned. My stomach had that little knot just around the middle that you get when you know something isn’t quite right.

No, she said, still looking out the window.

What’s happened?

I got fired.

When?

Two weeks ago. I’ve come in here every day since.

What on earth would they fire you for? I asked. Ellen is the very brightest one of us. She was dux our final year at school, did an honours degree in geophysics—would you believe—and works, rather had worked, as a senior scientist in a development company where she travels the world looking at possible oil sites and stuff like that.

Being drunk at work, Ellen said.

What?

Yes, she nodded. I just got to the point where I couldn’t survive without a drink in the morning to stop the pain.

What sort of pain? You never mentioned you were in pain! That was my third ‘what’ in the space of two minutes.

I’ve been in pain for over two years. Mental anguish, in fact, said Ellen. You just never noticed.

Well, we did notice you got drunk every month when you were with us but I never thought it was anything much.

I started drinking irrationally when Mum and Dad died in that car crash, Ellen looked up at me finally.

Ellen is tall and lean. Her hair is naturally fair and unnaturally helped to be silver blonde. Ellen can eat whatever she likes and still manages to willow her way around the place. Ellen puts on clothes and they obediently fall perfectly just where they’re meant to. Me, I put on clothes and they immediately rush to the wobbly bits and get stuck. Men fall over their feet to talk to her, and don’t even notice that I’m standing with her. That day, though, she had no makeup on and her face was red and blotchy and her eyes swollen. I love Ellen, really I do. But I had this dreadful desire to feel good that she looked ghastly for once—and I actually looked better than her. I stifled the thought.

I always thought that Dad was at fault because he usually drove, she said. Even though the police said the other car came across the centre line, I thought why didn’t he swerve or something? I was so angry at him, the anger covered all the grief and hurt. I cleaned up their house, put all their papers and such that the lawyer didn’t need into a box which I put in the attic, got stuff sold, got the house sold, and all the time I was drinking two or five glasses of brandy and ginger a day, just to make it through the day.

We all offered to help you, I said astonished. You said you didn’t want help. We went round; you said you didn’t need any assistance. In fact, you shut us all out. We knew your parents too.

That was because I would drink the brandy for breakfast and I didn’t want you to smell it on my breath, Ellen said, sadly. When it was all over, I managed without the alcohol most of the time, but I always felt safe with our group so it was OK to drink. Then about two months ago, I decided to go through the personal papers of my parents that I had put away in the box. There were photos and some letters, and I started reading them. It turns out that my mother had been having an affair for years and years with another man. And then I found out that my father wasn’t my father at all. Someone else was and Mum had married Dad because my real father had run off when Mum told him she was pregnant. I don’t know if Dad knew Mum was pregnant when they married. And then it turned out that my Dad couldn’t have children. There was a letter from the doctor to them, some years after my birth, saying the results of the tests showed that Dad was infertile. So my Dad knew then for sure that he wasn’t my birth father. But he still loved me, I’m sure! Ellen started crying again. I’ve thought so badly of him, when really it was my mother I should be cross at. So I started drinking again in the morning because I felt so awful about believing that Dad wasn’t watching what he was doing, that he caused all the problems and the worst thing was I couldn’t tell him that I was sorry and that I loved him. He helped me so much, all through school, teaching me to ride a bike, drive the car, grow things in the garden. He did all that for someone who wasn’t his child and yet I’ve been so angry at him. Ellen sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve!

I passed over some table napkins and she blew her nose vigorously.

So what happened at work?

I had been coming in late for about a week and must have smelt of alcohol, though I was sucking breath mints all the time. But I was drinking at lunchtimes, I had a bottle of brandy in my drawer and I’d put some into my coffee even. And I got caught by my boss. She’s really had it in for me for some time, because the chief executive had instructed her to give me a big bonus for my last piece of investigative work, and she didn’t get one at all. She marched me into the human resource department and just said I was finishing up that day and to make up my pay. I was so embarrassed I didn’t even think of saying this isn’t OK. She didn’t follow any of the procedures the law requires—although I didn’t know that at the time—and so I took my cheque and left. And now I don’t know what to do, I’m so ashamed.

First off, I said, a counsellor. Then an employment lawyer. And then maybe AA meetings. That’s a start. And you could come and stay with one of us till you feel stronger. And no more alcohol.

I added, And I think you need to tell the others when they arrive so we can all support you. And not shut us out.

Ellen started crying again but in a happier sort of way.

I feel so relieved at having told you, she said. I wanted too, every time I’d pick up the phone to call and then put it down again. I thought you would all be so upset at me; you wouldn’t be my friends anymore.

I just looked at her, horrified. You can’t really believe that! I exclaimed. After all these years? I’m more upset that you didn’t tell me before it got so messy. Anyway, it’s out now, and Suze is bound to know the best lawyer to represent you, even if it’s not at her law firm.

Just then Suze, Jeannie and Mattie arrived together, laughing about something, waved at us and hurried across the room. There was a period of removing coats, hugs all round, ordering drinks—but not Ellen, she nursed her ginger beer—before we started on the usual round of ‘what’s up girls?’.

I intervened and said Ellen’s on first, she has something important to discuss with us.

Ellen looked grateful—and also a little tentative—then repeated the story to the others. Suze took charge straight away, as I knew she would. It’s always handy to have a tame lawyer around.

Brent Middleton at Cooper, Brown and Cooper is the best employment lawyer around, she said. I’ll call him over the weekend and get him to see you Monday. He owes me one.

One what? I asked demurely.

Suze looked at me and grinned. Are you feeling a little warm tonight? she asked. Would you like a cool down with this nice chilled wine?

Everyone laughed, and the atmosphere was lightened.

The waiter came over to ask if we were having our usual pizza order.

Yes, we chorused. It’s always the same—one meat lovers, one vegetarian with everything and extra cheese and one with just everything, including lots of olives and anchovies. Five fries, all three varieties of dipping sauce, and a big bowl of salad. The salad is so we pretend the rest of the meal is healthy. It works for us.

The rest of the updates from everyone were a bit of an also-ran after Ellen’s story. Suze reported on a big case she was involved with—Suze is a corporate litigation lawyer. She wears the black robes and strides around the court with one hand in the pocket of her trousers, just like the men do, looking absolutely splendid. She wins, usually. It’s well known that if you are on the other side from Suze you are not likely to come out feeling happy. Suze might be blonde and tiny in stature but she makes up for it in the courtroom. Before other lawyers meet her, they all get the idea she’s tall and dark! I expect her strength in arguing her case came about because she was so small—she had to be larger than life for the judge to listen to her.

The latest man on her scene was dark, handsome (a bit too swarthy for my taste), Michel from Paris (of course) who was here on a six month secondment with her firm, but for some reason or other was leaving next month, before his term was up. No he hadn’t asked her to go with him. In fact, he’d been a bit busy this last month and so she hadn’t seen much of him. But that was fine, because the big case she was on was taking up all her time and most of her spare time too.

Mattie had some new photos of her two children, Ben and Lizzie. She bubbled on about her work and how her husband Howard was trying to work out a way that they could spend more working time together. Howard is a plastic surgeon. He specialises in the repair of birth defects in children. He’s so good you wouldn’t believe it. The kids are doing perfectly at school. Ben is seven and Lizzie is five. I’m Lizzie’s godmother so I get to buy all kinds of neat girly presents for her birthday and Christmas.

Jeannie had been in Argentina for two weeks, filming some sort of adverts for a new show that was expected to be going to air early in the New Year. She said the Argentinean men were rather nice, but far too involved with sports, and extremely macho and chauvinistic. As soon as they heard Jeannie was from New Zealand they immediately wanted to talk about the All Blacks and how we were improving at soccer. Jeannie is the worst person to talk to about sports. She was always the one who would think up excuses to get out of sports at school. Her stories became legends after we left.

Ellen and Suze would do wonderfully in Argentina, Jeannie said. The men absolutely love blondes. Apart from sports, they weren’t interested in me at all! I look more Spanish than anything else, with this dark hair, dark eyes and olive skin and they see that look every day.

Not surprising, really, since your mother was Portuguese. Suze remarked.

Jeannie was leaving for a week in Tahiti on Tuesday, to film a luxury holiday resort for a new series.

I thought you were in the advertising part of telly? I queried.

"Carrie, do you ever listen? Jeannie asked. I got a new job in programming about two months ago."

"Did you ever actually tell us? I replied. Usually all we hear is some story about someone on the telly. You never talk about what you have been doing. Or who you’ve been doing it with.

Usually there’s nothing to tell. said Jeannie. Oh, and I have to tell you the story about the news reader who was dancing on the cafeteria tables at the studio party last week! She fell off, seriously drunk and was observed by many to have no knickers on! The look on everyone’s face was priceless! Especially the boss—his face was like a children’s book it was so easy to read. Oh, I really want to look at this, oh no I mustn’t! I think he was funnier than the woman.

We laughed at the way Jeannie described the scene. If I told you who it was, you would laugh too.

Jeannie looked across at Ellen. I’m so sorry Ellen, that was insensitive of me!

Ellen kept laughing. "Don’t worry, I didn’t take it personally. Besides, have