Diary of a Dieter Read Online Free PDF Page B

but fine. The house looks great as always, Mrs W. And dinner smells amazing.”
    She patted him on the arm and gestured toward the lounge, where I was now deeply engrossed in the latest edition of The Cotswolds Weekly . My mother and her dreams of a country cottage were clearly still in full swing. The woman had Harrods taste and a purse full of mothballs, but she had held onto that dream for years. It was probably the reason she had gone through so many husbands. I’d had two stepfathers growing up. The first was the man I called Daddy. Henry was my world. A city banker, he met my mother through a mutual friend, and they married when I was three. I adored him. We were as close as any normal father and daughter could be, and I was smitten. When he was diagnosed with cancer, I was devastated. I watched as my mother ignored the problem one moment and then wailed and howled the next. I attended countless family therapy sessions at the hospice and Dad had even sat me down to talk about what to expect. We made a plan, and together we composed a memory book filled with pictures, stories he wrote about us, and mementos from places we’d been. But nothing prepared me for losing him. He died the following spring, just after my twelfth birthday, but my mother soon got over her loss and married his brother. Uncle Tony had been a great comfort to her while she cashed in my father’s life insurance. The holiday in the Bahamas probably didn’t do much harm either.
    Unfortunately, Uncle Tony decided that the merry widow of his dead brother was bringing him a lot of unwanted attention, and he was open to gossip wherever he went. The pressure of his celebrity status in our small town became too much to bear, and he soon divorced my mother and moved to London. Last I heard, he had re-married and had a couple of kids. I still got a Christmas card every year, and this year’s was a simple message: Happy Holidays. Best Wishes. Tony . It was brief and not what you would expect from someone who had raised me through my teenage years, but it was perfectly acceptable for the two of us. We weren’t close, and we certainly weren’t family in my eyes.
    Slumping down at the other end of the sofa, Adam gave me a knowing look as I rested my feet in his lap. He nodded toward the kitchen where my mother was busying herself with every tray, pot, and pan in the house by the sound of the clanging echoing through.
    “You need to tell her. Better to do it now than when your brother and his wife get here.”
    I groaned and threw the magazine on the floor. “I don’t want to do this. If I tell her, that makes it real, and I like being in denial right now. Denial is safe, and it doesn’t hurt like a dagger through my chest.”
    Taking my right foot, he began to massage it gently. “Denial is not safe. It’s dangerous, and if you stay there too long, you’ll drown in that river. Get your arse in there and tell her. What are you going to do? Wait ‘til you’re at the church in three weeks and happen to mention it? Hey, Mum, guess what? Brad isn’t coming. Do it now, Charlie. I know it hurts, but it’s just like mending a dislocated arm. A quick and painful shove in the right direction, and it’s done.”
    I winced at the thought. The sound of bones crunching and visions of limp limbs being shoved into a socket filled my mind. Yuck. Adam always did have a stomach for the gruesome. I was pretty sure it was one of the reasons he became a surgeon. Blood and guts were an afternoon treat for him. For me, they were a horror movie that would leave me keeping every light in my apartment turned on all night.
    The last horror flick we’d seen had been particularly disturbing. Poltergeists and crazed murderers in masks were not my idea of an evening in. It was hell. We’d turned the lights out, snuggled under a blanket and watched the two-hour long blood fest. By the time it was done, I was adequately terrified of the dark; I was also on red alert. The