The Perfect 10 by Louise Kean Read Free Book Online Page B

that will come off with the breast-feeding. It burns up a huge amount of calories – over one and a half thousand a day,’ I say.
    Lisa shrugs a hopeful ‘maybe’, but I see a delighted glint in her eye as she wonders how anybody could let themselves go so badly, indulge themselves so much. I wonder if she has forgotten who she is talking to, as we both snap on Lycra training shorts.
    ‘I just mean, Sunny … she ate everything!’
    ‘Yes, I know, but she was on that crazy diet just before she got pregnant,’ I say.
    ‘It was only Atkins,’ Lisa retorts.
    ‘Yes but she’s a vegetarian,’ I say, still baffled. I gave up all the weird and wonderful diets when I was a teenager. If the cabbage soup diet does work for somebody, it is a short-term goal, a quick fix for half a stone, not a recipe for life. Admittedly I didn’t diet much during my early twenties, I mostly just ate, but I could tell even then that counting points or drinking shakes or not eating fruit was not going to keep me occupied for the time it would take to lose half my body weight. I needed to change the way that I ate, not just cut back for a while.
    ‘Well, anyway,’ Lisa pulls her hair into a ponytail in front of the mirror – her jaw line is so smooth, not a wrinkle in sight, ‘she’ll have to join the gym now … I mean, how much have you lost, Sunny?’
    ‘About seven stone so far,’ I say quietly, and hope that nobody hears.
    ‘Right, and you’ve got like a stone to go or something?’
    ‘Kind of, maybe two …’ I say.
    ‘Right. Well, that isn’t that much more than Anna, and she put that all on in nine months! You took a lifetime to get that big!’
    ‘Uh-huh,’ I say, and nod once, turning to leave the changing room. I make a mental note to go to see Anna soon, and take her some unroasted nuts and a small bar of dark chocolate as a treat.
    Lisa is, of course, oblivious to the way she sounds, so there is no point saying anything. I just never want to think like her. Of course, in the class, I become her. I am zoned and focused. I can picture my muscles flexing and stretching, I monitor my breathing, I know exactly how many calories I am burning as we roundhouse kick to the left and right, and bruise the boxing bags with our jabs and undercuts, and skip like boxers for ten minutes until my cheeks fizz with saliva. Then we hit the floor and do twenty minutes of sit-ups. Lisa and I smile at each other occasionally in the mirror, sharing the high. It’s not just chemical, it’s the knowledge that we are effectively airbrushing ourselves, refining and toning and perfecting.
    Barry, our instructor, is a hard squat ex-squaddie. Lisa and I shake out our muscles after an hour and twenty minutes, and only then do I notice that we are surrounded by red-faced exhaustion. The other class members are fighting for breath, and somewhere to go to sit down.
    ‘Good effort, girls. Ten out of ten.’ Barry puts a hand on each of our arms, anointing us with a fitness blessing. We give him a suitably reverent smile, stopping just short of genuflection.
    We head to the bar upstairs with wet hair after long hotshowers. Lisa’s spot has grown bigger with the heat, swelling to a dangerous level: if it were a volcano I’d be evacuating about now.
    Two guys stand in suits by the bar, with fresh pints of lager, and squash rackets poking out of their gym bags. One of them smiles at us as we squeeze past, and apologises for his bag, which barely sticks out at all.
    Lisa sighs and says, Thank you!’ in an exasperated tone.
    He looks confused and a little insulted, and I mouth ‘It’s fine, thanks’ at him and smile a little weakly as we walk past.
    We order two black coffees and the girl behind the bar says that they will take a few minutes and she will call us when they are ready. We settle ourselves in a corner away from the plasma screen showing men’s tennis on clay courts somewhere hot.
    ‘Have you thought about yoga, Sunny? It would help