Fat Girl Slim Forever: The truth will out..., page 1
Copyright © Marina Johnson 2023
Tamarillas Press
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, locations, businesses, organisations and situations in this publication are either a product of the author’s imagination or used factiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is written in British English.
This book is only available on Amazon, both ebook and paperback. Any other copies are illegal.
Cover Design: © Marina Johnson/CJ Mayes
Chapter One
Doris stares at me with a puzzled look, her botoxed brow struggling to furrow. She’s also had her lips inflated with some sort of filler and honestly, I think she may be going a bit far with her ‘improvements’, as she calls them. I consider asking her if it’s painful to talk but decide not to in case I offend her. She is doing me a favour, after all.
‘Say that again,’ she says, giving up trying to frown. ‘I don’t fink I get it.’
‘I’m looking for a job,’ I repeat. ‘I have an interview at an agency this afternoon.’
‘Na, not that bit,’ she says, waving her hand dismissively. ‘I mean the bit about Blake wanting to give you loads of dosh and you saying no.’
I sigh. I wish I hadn’t told her about it now. There was no need for her to know and it wouldn’t even be lying, it would just be not telling her.
‘Blake offered to pay me an income every month so that I could stay at home and look after Bonnie and not have to worry about working,’ I say slowly.
‘Yeah, that’s what I fort you said but I fort I must be ‘earing fings.’ Doris stares at me intently. ‘You’re sure he didn’t want nuffin in return, like sex or somefing?’
‘No,’ I say, for what feels like the twentieth time. We’ve been having this same conversation since she arrived and I’m wondering if all the Botox and fillers have addled her brain. ‘He just wants to help and to make sure that I don’t have to worry about money for Bonnie. He says he has more money than he knows what to do with and is quite happy to give me some.’
‘Fuck me,’ Doris says. ‘I wouldn’t have fort Blake would ever do somefing like that. He’s defo not the same bloke I used to know. Just shows what winning the lottery can do to yer. Did he say how much he was gonna give you?’
‘No,’ I say, impatiently. ‘And please don’t swear in front of Bonnie, you know how she copies you. He simply asked me how much I wanted. Said that I should think about it and give him a figure.’
‘Sorry Al.’ Doris pulls an apologetic face and glances down at Bonnie who thankfully hasn’t noticed. ‘I’ll try ‘arder, it just slipped out. Blimey, though, wish I had a bloke like that. I’d even frow in a bit of sex now and then if he wanted it. Now Blake’s having regular barfs and cleaning ‘is new teef it wouldn’t be no hardship, neither. He’s quite hot in a poncey sort of way.’
‘He is not my bloke,’ I say firmly, picking up my jacket and handbag from the back of the sofa. ‘And he never will be, no matter how much money he has.’
‘Whatever.’ Doris says, breezily. ‘I’d snatch his fu... flipping ‘and off if it was me. He wouldn’t ‘ave to ask me twice.’
‘I have to go,’ I say, ignoring her. I stoop down and kiss the top of Bonnie’s head, who’s so busy feeding her teddies with wooden bricks that she barely notices me.
‘I shouldn’t be too long.’ I go out into the hallway. ‘It’s all done by email these days. I think the interview is just a formality to make sure I haven’t got two heads or something. Thanks again for coming at such short notice. I do appreciate it.’
‘No problem,’ Doris’s voice calls after me. ‘But you still ‘aven’t told me why you said no.’
✽✽✽
Why indeed? I ask myself as I settle into the driving seat and start up the engine. Since I came back from Special Forces Celebrities, Blake and I have settled into a comfortable routine of shared custody of Bonnie. There has been no more talk of custody battles or going to court and even though there is no formal arrangement, things seem to be working out well. Bonnie spends half of the week with Blake and the other half with me, and we take turns on alternate weekends. I have to admit that it’s all ticking along nicely and Blake has been surprisingly amenable. I was immediately suspicious when he first made his offer of money. I was certain that he must have a hidden agenda, but it appears that he doesn’t; he simply wants what’s best for Bonnie. He wants us to be comfortable with no worries about money. There is still a small part of me that’s not completely convinced that he’s changed - because he has tried to blackmail me in the past. But I’m trying to accept that I have to move on, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. It’s quite possible that he’s not the man he used to be because am I not trying to become a different, better person myself?
I am; besides, Blake is well aware of the consequences should he try to come between me and my daughter in any way. I’ve dropped massive hints to him about the lifelong friendships that I forged with my fellow inmates whilst in prison. I may have given him the impression that I have only to say the word and a contract on his life could be arranged within minutes. Vague statements about the hatred of men that most women prisoners hold, together with a flagrant disregard of the law, have ensured that Blake is too terrified to cross me. I have slightly exaggerated the crimes of my fellow inmates but needs must, as they say. I’m not actually in contact with anyone – although Gina would happily defend me should I track her down and ask – so I’ve sort of lied, but as it was a completely necessary lie, I’m not going to beat myself up about it.
I’m trying to be sensible and look to the future and hold good to one of the promises that I made to myself on the station platform when I arrived home from Special Forces Celebrities. That promise was to find some sort of proper, permanent employment for myself. Fortunately, childcare will not be an issue and I’m sure that I’ll be able to find something part-time to fit in with my life. It’ll give me something to do on the days when Bonnie is staying at Blake’s, as the hours seem to crawl by without her here. And although I have the payment that I received for Special Forces Celebrities and have barely spent any of it in the weeks since I’ve been back, it won’t last forever. Regardless of the offers that have come in since the show aired, I have absolutely no intention of taking part in any more reality television shows. I want a normal life for Bonnie, which means a proper, normal job for me. I don’t want my daughter growing up with the idea that I’m a layabout who’s barely done a day’s work in her life and lazes around doing nothing all day.
In other words, someone just like Mother.
So I have to get a job. I mentioned this in passing to Nanny Pam one day when she dropped Bonnie off and she must have returned home and relayed our conversation to Blake. This resulted in his offer of money to me. I was astounded when he pitched up, unannounced, at my house later that evening and offered to pay me ‘wages’. Like Doris, I immediately assumed that he wanted something in return, but he insisted he didn’t. He said that his lottery winnings had actually grown, despite having spent lots of it because once you have millions, it generates more money without even trying. After I’d got over the shock of his offer, I told him I needed to think about it. I mulled it over for a few days and eventually calculated a figure that would enable Bonnie and me to live comfortably. I settled on an amount that didn’t seem too greedy a sum, especially not for someone who’s won nineteen-million-pounds on the lottery. Perfect, my brain kept telling me, a life of comfort without the tediousness of having to actually work for a living.
And yet, try as I might, I couldn’t bring myself to actually accept his offer.
I’ve worked out that it’s because I don’t want to be beholden to anyone. Blake and I are on perfectly civil terms at the moment, but should the occasion arise when I needed to be nasty to him, how could I if he was funding my life? Would I have to force myself to be nice to him so he’d continue to pay me a ‘wage’?
No, it would never work. I had years of having to being nice to Mother although I detested her and I simply can’t bring myself to do it again.
But that wasn’t the main reason I turned down his offer.
It’s time to stand on my own two feet and grow up; I need to be normal and have a normal job and a normal life, and I can’t do that if I take the easy way out all the time. How can I look Bonnie in the eye when she’s older if I’ve been a kept woman for all of my life?
I can’t; therefore, I have to get a job and stick at it no matter how boring it might be.
Blake was astounded when I phoned him to tell him the answer was no. At first, he thought I was joking and when he realised I wasn’t, I detected the faintest suggestion of annoyance in his voice. I think he’d assumed that I would snatch his hand off and also, he rather enjoys playing the grand benefactor. I kept the conversation brief and told him thank you, but no, and left it there. There is no need to justify my reasons to him or to anyone else.
Having a normal job will do me good, take me out of myself a bit. I don’t even need to earn very much because my house is paid for and realistically, Bonnie wants for absolutely nothing as Blake provides her with the very best of everything. He can’t stop buying clothes and toys for her and I already generate a healthy income by selling on some of the surplus stuff that he gives her. There’s simply not enough room to store it all in my house and he buys so much that she never misses it. Obviously, I won’t be able to do this when Bonnie is of an age to notice because she’ll have something to say about it, so I may have to tell him to curb it as she gets older. I don’t want her turning into a spoilt brat and I have no intention of moving to a bigger house to fit it all in.
I’m thinking a three-day-a-week job would be about right and Blake will be happy to fit around my hours, so childcare won’t be a problem. There are gazillions of part-time jobs being advertised and I think you can pretty well choose your own hours for a lot of places. I don’t have any actual job experience aside from cleaning, but I’m sure that won’t be a problem. When I completed the online form, I put a preference for admin/office work as I think this will suit my personality and not be too taxing. Working on a reception desk would be do-able; I can do a welcoming smile and I speak nicely, so it should be a breeze. It would also be an opportunity to dress up for a few days a week and get out of my mummy attire of jeans, leggings, and comfy jumpers. I wonder if people still wear suits? I shall have to ask what the dress code is these days. Not that I ever knew, of course, never having actually worked in an office, but really, how hard can it be?
I had a bit of a dilemma when I had to detail my previous employment history, as it was scant to say the least. Somehow, I’ve reached the grand old age of thirty-two and the only job that I’ve had was as a cleaner and that wasn’t until I was twenty-eight. I debated this issue for quite a while and finally decided that honesty was the best policy as I’m doing my best to tell the truth. Besides which, there’s no point in lying because they’ll check, anyway. I was truthful and put that from the age of eighteen to twenty-eight, I was a full-time carer for my mother and then worked briefly as a cleaner before having a child. Hopefully, Poppy-the-recruiter will never have heard of The Travis Way, or if she has, she won’t have heard that it was a cut-and-paste job off the internet. If she has heard of it, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that she’ll be impressed that I’ve had a book traditionally published.
I’ve omitted my stints on Special Forces Celebrities and TellyTalk as they’re not employment in the true sense of the word and more to the point, I don’t want Poppy to think that I’m some sort of air-head, Z-list wannabe celeb. There is the possibility that she may have watched the programmes but unless she paid attention and remembers my name, I’m fairly sure that she won’t recognise me, because people don’t. The camera may not lie but people can never quite place where they’ve seen your face before. Unless you’re a world-famous actor or actress, your face may look familiar, but most people just assume that they’ve seen you trawling around Tesco’s. I’m fairly confident that she doesn’t know who I am, even though Special Forces Celebrities only ended a few weeks ago because she would have mentioned it. From the tone of Poppy’s emails, she sounds super confident that she’ll have me fixed up with a job in no time at all. It’s sounds as if it’s definitely a job hunters’ market at the moment. I may have hardly any proper job experience, but I have some excellent GCSE and A-level results and they’ve got to count for something.
I park up in the precinct and carefully feed the meter. I decide to err on the side of caution and pay for three hours to ensure that I don’t suffer any annoying clock-watching anxiety whilst I’m in the agency. I take a short walk through the precinct and onto the High Street and arrive outside Radwell’s Employment Agency exactly five minutes before my appointment time.
My first impression of the agency is not good; I’m a bit surprised at how small and shoddy looking the place is. All of my contact with them has been online, and I was expecting something larger and more professional looking. The frontage is small, the dark green paint is peeling slightly from the windowsills and it all looks rather run down. It reminds me of the Moppers office. I’m almost certain that this place was a fish and chip shop at one time, and I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but I can detect the faintest hint of vinegar in the air. I only hope that the office isn’t an indication of the calibre of jobs that they have on offer, although they seemed to have a long list of wide-ranging vacancies online. Swallowing down my disappointment, I push open the door and enter the premises, an old-fashioned bell that would wake the dead clanging above my head as I walk in.
I close the door behind me and stand uncertainly in front of it; there are three desks arranged around the room with no one sitting at any of them. There’s a door at the back of the room marked private and I assume Poppy is in there. I stand and wait; surely the clanging bell will have alerted Poppy to my arrival. After several minutes, the private door opens and a middle-aged blonde woman emerges.
I fix a smile on my face as she walks towards me.
‘Alison?’ she asks, as she reaches me.
‘Yes,’ I answer, holding out my hand. ‘Poppy?’
‘Alas, no,’ she says with a grimace as she takes my hand and shakes it limply. ‘I’m the manager, Grace Roberts. Unfortunately, Poppy has been called away on urgent business. But not to worry, our assistant manager is going to step in for her. He’s been fully briefed on your work requirements.’
I can’t help feeling disappointed; although I haven’t actually spoken to Poppy, I feel as if I’ve built up a rapport with her even if it was just via email. I’m considering asking Grace if I can reschedule my appointment for when Poppy’s available when the door at the back opens again. An extremely tall, gangly youth in an ill-fitting suit ducks his head under the door frame and lollops towards me.
Surely not.
‘Ah, Marlon, there you are. This is Alison Travis, who I was telling you about. She’s Poppy’s two o’clock.’
Marlon skids to a giraffe-like halt in front of us and peers down at me. His eyes are magnified and owl-like behind huge black-rimmed glasses, which he pushes back up his nose with fingernails bitten to the quick. I struggle to choke down a laugh. Assistant Manager? He looks barely old enough to shave. Which is comforting, actually, because if he can become an assistant manager at his age, it can mean only one thing.
This job hunting lark is going to be a doddle.
Chapter Two
The longer I sit here, the more confident I am that if Marlon can be an assistant manager, then I must surely be company director material.
If there was a prize for slowness, Marlon would most certainly win. Going through every single detail of my application in laborious detail, he has questioned every single thing I entered on the form. He would also win prizes for being annoying. In between tapping away furiously at the keyboard and squinting at the screen, Marlon has repeated aloud everything that is on my application. You wrote a book, he spouted, in a slightly disbelieving manner, and it was a bestseller, he added – with a snort. I’m not sure if the snort was a laugh or not, but it seemed to say, as if. Best of all, however, was you want to work in an office environment? When he got to my previous work history, you’ve only had one job, was uttered in a tone of complete disbelief with raised eyebrows, and a nodding of the head.
At one point, I opened my mouth to tell him I’d spent four months in prison on remand just to relieve the boredom. Luckily, I reminded myself just in time that I actually want a job, so I closed it again, firmly. Wondering how much longer he can drag this out, I swallow down my annoyance and congratulate myself on having the foresight to put a ticket for three hours on the car. I must have been sitting here for nearly that amount of time already. I sneak a look at my watch and am astounded to see that I’ve actually only been here for forty-five minutes.
‘Alison.’
The keyboard tapping has stopped, and I look up from my watch to see Marlon staring at me expectantly through the thick lenses of his enormous glasses.
‘Marlon,’ I mimic.
‘Okay.’ He shuffles several sheets of scribbled-on paper together whilst trying to look important.
