‘I’ve some mango facemasks to endorse! How do kalesmoothies sound? Followed by Pilates and a binge-watch of this totes amazeballs new lifestyle show?’
‘Oh wow!’ said Pat. ‘I’d love to! That soundsbrilliant.’ She smiled the awkward smile people use when getting out of something they don’t want to do. ‘The only thing is, I promised Liz and Thelma I’d go to this village festival thing with them.’
The table fan turned and ruffled the image of courgettes and hazelnuts anew. ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you join us for supper? There’s always plenty – it’s nothing spectacular, just some salads.’ She had a sudden vision of her, Rod and Tiffany, sat round the table, laughing, clinking glasses in an impromptu toast or two.
‘Pat, I’d love to,’ said Tiffany. ‘Only the thing is, Justy and I are seeing some friends over in Harrogate.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Pat. She was aware Tiffany was beaming the exact same awkward smile she had just used herself.
‘Et voila!J’accuse!’ cried Harvey, pulling from his plastic crate a packet of chocolate digestives, with the air of Hercule Poirot unmasking a villain. There was an audible gasp of dismay from the pre-diabetes awareness group.
‘Just two of these bad boys gives you overhalfyour daily recommended amount of fat and sugar!’ said Harvey, smiling eagerly round the stuffy room.
‘Fookin’ hell,’ said Zippy Doodah in an undertone. The two women flanking her – ‘the coven’ as Liz privately called them – nodded in grim sympathy.
Liz stared sadly at the offending packet. Not because she was such an ardent fan of chocolate digestives, but to be told by someone so young in such bald tones how potentially damaging such things were to those with elevated blood sugar levels left her with the bleak feeling of mortality closing a clammy hand round the back of her neck.
Of course, it was nothing short of miraculous that thebeleaguered NHS was still able to provide such sessions – but miraculous or not they were undoubtably something of a trial. Liz was obviously not the only one to think so. The group, which had started out with some thirty-plus members, had steadily dwindled over the past three months to a hard core of six or seven. It probably wasn’t helped by the fact that Harvey (or ‘Happy Harvey’ as Zippy had dubbed him) addressed the whole question of ageing, weakening bodies in the same way Liz used to emphasise to her six-year-olds the importance of cleaning one’s teeth.
She tore her gaze away from the biscuits, recalling far-off staffroom days when a plate of them would appear on Friday breaktimes, marking the glorious start of the countdown to the weekend.
Get a grip, Liz!Things with high fat and sugar were to be avoided and that was that.
The group seemed similarly deflated – even Zippy Doodah and the coven, who could normally be relied on to find a riotous reaction to everything, were looking glum – a marked contrast to their raucous, almost rude laughing earlier on when Harvey had attempted to demonstrate the process of sugar absorption using sock puppets.
‘I can’t do without me choccie digestives,’ said one sadly.
Harvey smiled a bright restorative smile of salvation. ‘Yes, but there’s always a low-cal substitute to find!’ he said. ‘Captain Carrot Sticks coming to a fridge near you!’
‘Fookin’ hell,’ said Zippy Doodah again.
Liz regarded the wide-mouthed woman sitting across the table with her usual feelings of irritation. It was bad enough she had to cut all these things out of her diet without all this incessant commentary from Zippy and her coven. The usual feelings of unfairness welled up inside her. Why shouldshe– Liz – have to watch her blood sugar levels? She who had remained a steady eight and a half stone these past thirty years? And there was Zippy Doodah at least twice her weight, whose idea of five-a-day seemedto consist of potatoes and cider. And that ridiculous name! Well, to be fair, half that ridiculous name. She’d introduced herself in the first session as Zippy, a childhood nickname due apparently to a resemblance to that wide-mouthed puppet offRainbow. It was Pat who added the ‘Doodah’ and the name had stuck indelibly in Liz’s mind ever since.
‘Okay, peeps!’ said Harvey. ‘That’s a wrap! Keep up those steps—’ Here he brandished his NHS Fitbit. ‘But remember to keep well-hydrated in this scorchio weather and I’ll see you at the next sesh when we’ll be immersing ourselves in the intriguing world of food triggers! I’d say maybethemost important session so far.’
‘More bad news,’ said Zippy Doodah in an undertone.
Stepping outside Thirsk Library, Liz had to shade her eyes. Despite the fact it had gone eight thirty, the sinking sun was still strong, casting long, lazy shadows; the sky above the rooftops was an unburnished pale pink, fading into a seashell blue. It was an evening to feel mellow, but Liz didn’t feel mellow, she felt unremittingly flat as she always did after these sessions. Plus, despite the lateness of the hour, she could feel what she termed a ‘pollen throb’ behind her eyes and in her sinuses. Checking her phone, she saw there were no calls so presumably Derek had survived his evening run without succumbing to the heatstroke he had been fearfully predicting. She needed to text Thelma to let her know definitively she wouldn’t be accompanying her to Hollinby Quernhow tomorrow. What was her friend playing at, talking to DS Donna like that?
Across the still evening she could hear the marketplace clock chiming eight. Just time, she supposed, to nip to Tesco to replace yet more things with low-sugar substitutions – though no doubt she’d need to make another visit after Jacob’s planned blitzkrieg on her food cupboard. Plus, she needed to pick up a new paintbrush for treating Billy’s bench at the allotments. She sighed again and without enthusiasm fished for her car keys.
‘It’s still fookin’ red hot.’ Zippy Doodah appeared, peering suspiciously at the sunset and clutching a thick cardigan round her in a way that made Liz break out into a sweat. ‘I’ll need to sleep with the windows open again.’
Liz smiled thinly and unlocked the white Fiat. ‘My forsythia’s crying out for some rain,’ she said.
‘Anyway,’ said Zippy, ‘it was a good do I thought.’
Liz felt puzzled; this seemed a rather odd way of referring to that evening’s session. (Sugar: one lump or several?) ‘What Harvey said about salad cream really made me think,’ she said politely.
Zippy Doodah gave a grim bark of laughter. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not Happy Harvey. I mean Nev Hilton’s funeral! I saw you and your friends there in church.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Liz in genuine surprise. ‘I didn’t see you there. I’d have said hello.’ Which she would have. Probably.
‘I was at the back.’ Zippy’s tone held a curious qualification, as if she’d been there but only on certain terms. ‘I live in Hollinby and wanted to pay my respects like.’ She gave a dour chuckle. ‘I saw you trying to get out of the way of the hearse.’
Liz’s lips thinned in embarrassment and annoyance at the memory.
‘You weren’t at the wake,’ said Zippy.
