Sweet Temptation by Lucy Diamond Read Free Book Online

niceties though, I was trembling with shame and mortification, still reeling from the things Jacob had said to me.
Oh dear, Madeleine.
You’re overweight and very unfit.
We’ve got some work to do with you, haven’t we?
    The words stung like barbs under my skin for the rest of the weekend. I couldn’t concentrate on anything because the experience was replaying endlessly in my mind, like a torture loop. I tried to watch the TV on Saturday evening, but I kept seeing the scorn in Jacob’s eyes, the way he’d joked about me having a heart attack. Morbidly obese , he’d called me. It sounded way scarier than plain old fat .
    ‘Silly sod,’ my best friend Nicole had said when I dropped in to see her at her tapas restaurant. ‘Don’t let him get to you.’ But even one of her big hugs, a cold San Miguel and a dish of green olives couldn’t snap me out of the glums. Nicole was beautiful, confident and successful. However much she tried, I don’t think she could understand what an ordeal it had been for me.
    I’d met Nicole on our first day at primary school. She was crying in the playground after David Streetley had bounced his football at her, and I’d put my arm around her and called him a smelly poo-head. And from that moment on, we were best mates, even though we were completely different. I always wanted to get married and have a family, whereas she was more driven by her career, working her way up through the restaurant world with breathtaking speed until she’d opened her very own place, Nicole’s, not far from the cricket ground. The big thing we had in common was that we were foodies, but the thought of dieting would never cross her mind – probably because she ran half-marathons in her spare time (for fun!) and could therefore eat like a racehorse if she felt like it (which she usually did).
    ‘You could always come for a run with me one day,’ she said, taking my hand over the table and squeezing it. ‘Much nicer to be out getting fresh air than stuck in a gym, I reckon.’
    I smiled wryly, remembering the godawful mums’ race with a shudder. ‘Nicole, I love you, but we both know that’s never going to happen,’ I told her, popping another olive into my mouth. ‘I guess I just have to write off today as a bad experience never to be repeated.’
    It was Ben who delivered the clincher. I was kissing him goodnight on Sunday when he tightened his arms around my neck. ‘I don’t want you to die, Mum,’ he said in a tiny voice.
    ‘What do you mean? I’m not going to die!’ I told him, smoothing his hair. Where had this come from? ‘Well . . . I mean, everyone dies at some point, but hopefully I’ll be here for a long, long time yet. You don’t need to worry about that.’
    He sniffed and wouldn’t look at me, and my head was full of Jacob, suddenly, carrying a long scythe like the figure of Death, a black cloak draped around his six-pack, pointing at me. You are MORBIDLY OBESE! Enjoy that heart attack, mwah-ha-ha-ha!
    I blinked the disturbing image away. ‘Ben?’ I said, taking his chin and turning his head so that I could look at him properly. ‘What’s brought this on?’
    He was seven years old but seemed much younger all of a sudden, his eyes big and scared-looking, his voice uncertain and wavering. ‘It’s just . . . I heard Dad and Granny talking about you, and they said . . .’ His lower lip wobbled. ‘I don’t want you to die, Mum!’
    ‘Oh, darling .’ I wrapped my arms tight around him, cuddling and rocking him. I had tears in my own eyes now. ‘Don’t you worry. I’m not going anywhere – and that’s a promise.’
    Once I’d comforted him and got him settled, I locked myself in the bathroom and burst into sobs. It felt like the world was on at me to lose weight – Collette, Mum, Jacob, Mrs Gable and her megaphone and now my little boy. I don’t want you to die, Mum , Ben had said. Well, I didn’t want that, either.
    I slumped onto the edge of the bath and blew