Size Matters Read Online Free PDF Page A

their effects do.’
    â€˜And
don’t
tell me you ever went in for competitive swanking about your own children’s attributes!’
    Jay laughed. ‘Not at championship level, no, not like Win, but I’d have stuck up for them if anyone else had pitched their daughter against mine so they were in no doubt they were gorgeous – or at least I would have when they were that small. They deserve the odd boost to their confidence. Though just lately Ellie is sogrumpy and foul-tempered that if anyone compared her unfavourably with their own thirteen-year-old I’d probably agree wholeheartedly and offer to swap.’
    â€˜So you’ll be pleased to see her then, this Delphine. Personally I can’t wait.’ Barbara laughed. ‘I want to meet this woman who can still get you so rattled.’
    â€˜Gee thanks! Yes, I’ll be pleased to see her, of course I will. Though only when I’ve had my roots done, lost a stone and we’ve got some more reliable staff so it won’t be a complete lie about you and me running the business rather than it running
us
.’ Jay looked down at her middle and poked it hard. ‘You know there must have been a time, maybe only a day or a week or two sometime, when this body was just perfect, size-wise, not shamingly skinny any more and not wodgy like this either. I wish I’d appreciated it at the time and taken more trouble with it.’
    â€˜What you need is grapefruit,’ Barbara said, tumbling another heap of Hobnobs onto the plate. Jay, with great difficulty, managed to resist helping herself to yet another one. Barbara, who was blessed with the shape and height of Joanna Lumley, took two, one in each hand.
    â€˜Grapefruit? Why?’ Somehow, Jay was still thinking of her first 30 AAA trainer bra and imagined shoving fruit down her front, padding out her teen flatness just as she had with tissues, in the days when she’d raced into the changing rooms after school games to get safely back into her uniform shirt before anyone could catch her in her underwear.
    â€˜You eat half a grapefruit before every meal. I was reading about it,’ Barbara told her. ‘It’s full of fat-burning enzymes.’
    â€˜Hmm. Are you sure? I mean they said that about cabbage soup. It’s not true. And pineapple too, and they’re full of sugar.’
    â€˜Well anyway, it’s got to be worth a shot. You just have the grapefruit three times a day, oh and cut back on the carbs and the alcohol and drink lots of water. At least it’s not antisocial like the cabbage soup.’
    â€˜Right – I’ll get some on the way home. Before I go though, can I just have a peek at the kittens?’
    Barbara laughed. ‘Weakening now?’ she teased. ‘I did say when you got Daffodil that you should have got two of them. Burmese need company. Come on, they’re in here. It’s time for them to come through to the house anyway, for a bit of socializing playtime when the boys get home from school.’ She opened the kitchen door and Jay followed her through to the old garage which Barbara had converted into palatial safe accommodation for her champion cats and their broods.
    â€˜Their colours are really showing now. Two lilacs, three blues and one chocolate.’ Barbara picked up a kitten that was scrambling up the ragged back of a discarded velvet armchair. The nut-brown mother cat looked up from dozing on her cushion, blinked at Barbara and settled back down again, sure of her babies’ safety.
    â€˜This one’s almost pink!’ Jay said, stroking the tiny creature’s leathery nose.
    â€˜Potential champion, I’d say. A lilac. I’m thinking of keeping her, letting Bluebell retire from breeding. I’ve taken to calling her Lupin.’
    Jay picked up another kitten, rolled it onto its back and tickled its broad plump tummy. The rattling purr sounded far too big and raucous for such a