Fat Chance Ch. 01

Gavin, the very tall, slim guy we sat close to the previous week, nodded to me with a smirk on his face as he slipped his shoes back on after weighing in, I guessed he'd done well. I nodded back in acknowledgement, with a more natural smile on my part, although I was maintaining a distinct dislike to him. It must be a sixth sense, as it turned out I was completely justified in my opinion that he was trouble.

Karen, the fat young girl I had sat next to the previous week, stood patiently in the queue, smiling to all her acquaintances, including me, and then jumped off the scales with a huge grin and holding her hands aloft in joy. I held up both thumbs and grinned with my own pleasure at her success.

Emma, the slimming consultant, then went through all the results and offered help and advice to those failing to lose and further bolstering the egos of those who had done well. She emphasised that even target members needed to attend regularly to check their weight. It was a well-known fact, she warned, that those that fell off the wagon tended to end up heavier than before they started.

I won slimmer of the week the second week I attended and continued losing four or five pounds a week, sometimes more, while Maisie hovered between losing a pound and gaining a half-pound each week, despite all the extra hours of gym work she was putting in a couple of evenings after work.

I felt great, never feeling hungry and was full of energy again. I even started jogging short distances in the evening after prepping the evening meal.

By the end of February I had lost three stone, by the end of March nearly five stone and only two weeks away from May Bank Holiday weekend I was six stone lighter and within a few pounds of my optimum weight, my ultimate target.

Maisie reached her target of losing 20 pounds in the middle of April, taking her about 16 weeks. In a couple of weeks fewer I had lost four times her loss in weight and was feeling pretty damned chuffed with myself.

Everyone at work noticed I had lost weight and thought I looked healthy and glowing. Maisie meanwhile, looked gaunt, drained and worn out, I thought she looked ten years older than her 40 years. She was still rejecting my amorous advances, but I had to admit they had become half-hearted on my part, I wasn't sure if I really fancied the miserable skinny old bitch anymore.

Karen, on the other hand, the fat girl with the beautiful smile, who I sat next to on my first day, had also reached her target and looked absolutely stunning. She was happily married with a one-year-old baby who I saw when she booked her rather battered Renault Clio in for an MOT. I changed a couple of duff bulbs and tweaked the mixture a little so it got through without stretching the emissions regulations too much. In thanks I was treated to one of her magic smiles and an introduction to her baby son. I helped strap him into his baby seat for her and adjusted the belt which had become a little too tight. I couldn't help but notice that baby had inherited her mother's gorgeous smile.

I'm sure men don't actually get broody, but for the rest of that day I felt deeply resentful that, at Maisie's insistence on building her career, I had missed out on parenthood for what now looked like forever.

At home, Maisie continued to rebuff my amorous advances, using excuses that she was tired or I was still too heavy. I had no real concerns, I trusted her completely and I could be patient, oh boy, could I be patient! My middle name should have been Job instead of Andrew.

I felt so good and so confident in my new-formed shape, that I thought losing a couple of more pounds would make me irresistible to women or at least the one woman in my life. Well you know me by now, I live in a fantasy world all of my own making!

They noticed at work that I was becoming quite trim. I kept my once luxuriant hair close cropped since starting dieting, to help reduce my weight. I shaved almost every day and I was building and rebuilding my wardrobe as my shape evolved. I was looking good and dressing well, and my boss Dick offered me a promotion to the front desk, doing my old job of booking in servicing and invoicing.

Back Street Motors had branched out into buying up old bangers from the car auctions and doing them up as cheap as possible and selling them off quickly on a plot of land they rented behind the workshop. Dick, the boss, wanted me to put them up on the company website that I had designed, which I was happy to do and received a big hike in pay, as the website and resultant sales really took off.

During the winter we only used to go down to the coast once or twice a month to do essential maintenance on the caravan, repair any storm damage and repaint, spring clean etc. Then Maisie stopped coming down with me as she had too much paperwork she had brought home and, having lost some weight she felt how much colder it was at the campsite in winter. I could appreciate that because I was also suffering from the effects of the lost 'lagging', too. I continued to trundle down to the caravan regularly on my own, getting everything shipshape for our usual week's holiday in the first week of May.

Boy, was I looking forward to having Maisie all to myself without any distractions for a week. I thought I might even get lucky. You see, I enjoy looking at women, what man doesn't? But, due to my loyalty genes, I was only sweet on my better half and wasn't the least bit interested in romancing anyone else. I naturally assumed she felt the same about me. I am delusional, obviously.

In fact, after losing all that weight and eating more healthily, I found I had so much energy that not only did I prepare all Maisie's weekend meals for her to microwave back at the house, I was able to get all the planned jobs down at the mobile home on the caravan park completed in record time, too.

I did so well with these post-winter jobs, that our plot became the best looking one on the site. We had never ever been in the running for the annual spring trophy before. The camp committee even put up a sign in front telling everybody that I won the trophy.

I was grateful there was so little left for me to do the last weekend I was there, because I was stopped by so many admiring fellow campers to receive their complimentary comments - and the nice things they had to say weren't all limited to the caravan. A lot of the members immediately saw the difference my weight loss had made to my figure. If I wasn't such a modest person, they may have gone to my head. For the first time since we had the caravan, I worked on the maintenance without a shirt on most of the time and, even though I am rather fair-skinned, I had developed a very healthy tan by the end of April.

I was happy with myself and confident that, once the weather warmed up, I would be able to worm my way back into Maisie's affections, as one of the fittest dudes around. OK, I was still ugly, you already know about the genes, but if it was really dark, I believed I could be a god.

I told you earlier that I was dumb, so you will not be surprised what happened next, will you?

It was Karen that first told me that Maisie was having an affair. I really didn't have a clue. That lovely, formerly fat girl, cared enough for my feelings that she popped down to the garage that last but one Thursday in April, two weeks before the Bank Holiday week I was so looking forward to.

This time she didn't bring little Daniel with her. She had left her car in the public car park, so it was a surprise when she walked in and asked if she could have a quiet word with me. We had an office in the showroom area where we could take customers to go through the financing and sales paperwork. Collecting a couple of plastic cups of coffee from the machine on the way, I took her into the office and sat her down. I pulled the chair round to the front so we didn't have the desk between us and sat down in front of her.

Karen fidgeted, fiddled with her plastic cup and hesitated before speaking, her usual bright smile replaced by a frown. She wore a simple light blue A-line dress, it being a warm spring day outside. Karen really was a lovely girl, her husband was a very lucky man. In the four months since Christmas she had lost all the weight she had apparently put on during her pregnancy and had blossomed into a very beautiful young woman.

Now, believe me when I tell you, I had no designs on her at all. She wasn't quite young enough to be my daughter but she was definitely far too young for a wrinkled middle-age man set in his ways and anyway, I believed, she was very content with her lot. In fact, she had already hinted in an earlier conversation that she and her lucky husband were seriously considering adding to her lovely family. I waited patiently for her to get around to what she wanted to say, while I tried to ease the tension by asking her how the cute baby Daniel was.

That brought out her wide smile again and I added:

"Go on Karen, spit it out, love," I continued, with as disarming a smile as my ugly face could conjure up, "You haven't come all the way down here to exchange pleasantries now, have you?"

She looked into my eyes, her own welling up with tears, and said, "I'm not sure you are going to like this ..." Karen hesitated and dropped her eyes to focus on her coffee. A pair of drips ran down her cute button nose and splashed into the murky brown liquid.

I didn't say anything, I think I already knew the way the conversation was headed and wasn't in that much of a hurry to hear it.

Karen took another sip from her coffee, I sipped mine too, but it was even more tasteless that it usually was.

"You know I started going down the gym a couple of times a week." She looked up at me again.

"Yes" I said, "And you look really good on it." I tried to smile.

She smiled back and continued, "I often see other group members down there, like Maisie and ... " she concentrated on the contents of her cup again, "... Gavin, among others." She paused again before blurting out, "I saw both of them making out in Gavin's car last night!"

I took a deep breath and released the air in my lungs slowly, then drawing in another breath before speaking. I wasn't sure whether my words would come out.

"Are you sure it was Maisie and Gavin?"

"Yes, I'm sure." Her eyes were welling up with tears.

"Maisie was wearing a bright yellow track suit, I think it was new, and left the gym right after Gavin, while I was halfway through my routine. I was parked right over the back of the car park under those trees where it is really dark, because the car park was completely packed when I arrived. I got to my car about half an hour after Maisie left and there was Gavin's car a couple of spaces away from mine, bouncing up and down with someone wearing a bright yellow top pressed up against the window in the back seat. All the windows were too steamed up to see any faces. I think that I have seen Gavin necking with someone in the car before, and had my suspicions who with, but now I am certain it was with your wife. They have been training together on adjacent equipment for months and don't seem concerned about who sees them, especially as you don't go down the gym and ... I don't even know what Gavin's wife looks like. I am so sorry, Jerry, but I thought you should know."

I suppose I had suppressed the feeling that something was not quite right with our marriage for a long while. If I wasn't having any loving at home then neither was Maisie. So, it was believable that she was getting her jollies off outside the home. Looks like muggin's here was the only one missing out on the knookie front in this sham of a marriage.

I remembered that on Mondays we often seemed to sit near Gavin, or if we were seated first, he would make his way over and join us. Clearly I wasn't the one who was attracting him in our direction. Because of my PC prowess, I often helped out on the computer in the lobby of the village hall, booking people in. I would often find the pair of them in close conversation, sharing a private joke, when I eventually joined the meeting.

I sat there in that car sales office, dumbstruck, occupied by my thoughts, not trusting my voice to say anything.

Karen reached over and squeezed my hands. Then she got up and quietly let herself out of the office. I looked down and noticed that both of my hands were clenched tight into fists, the coffee cup crushed, the contents on the floor. I was angry and upset and I felt so foolish. What a sap I had been! All the time I had been thinking that all I needed was to get back into trim and I'd be back in my wife's favour!

Fat chance of that ever happening!

Maisie clearly didn't even want me there at the club at all, I was only cramping her style. No wonder she was always miserable whenever I queued up behind her or sat alongside. All the signs had been there, and not just recently, but I had ignored the obvious for far too long.

I tried to think of what she was going to be getting up to this evening. Tonight was Thursday, and Maisie's usual pattern was Monday slim club, Tuesday and Thursday late night meetings at the bank, Wednesday and Friday nights down the gym. In fact, Saturday and Sunday were the only nights she was at home, unless I was down at the caravan on my own, and she would be free to please herself.

Bugger! Even when I used to ring her on her mobile from the caravan - if it went to voicemail I assumed she was in the bath or watching something interesting on the box and she would phone me back half an hour or so later. She could have been anywhere. If Gavin wasn't prepared to shell out for a hotel room after the gym, then they were almost certainly using our bed at the weekend! My eyes were not only newly open, they were sticking out like organ-bloody-stops!

I was beginning to wonder whether Maisie was having sex more than one night a week, possibly a lot more than that. Rather than just sit at home and accept it, I needed to wake up and smell the blessed roses.

My own daily schedule each week was pretty straightforward. OK, it was really boring. I had become disturbingly domesticated in my early middle age. Every day I was home straight after work and preparing the evening meals. Monday night we were both at the slimming club, the rest of the week I was left at home each evening, until Friday and Saturday, during recent months, I spent once a month down the caravan, getting back home by Sunday, early evening.

Since I stopped playing football, I hadn't gone down the pub for ages, I didn't even have many of my own friends left, other than workmates.

However, my boring schedule meant that, from Tuesday to Friday, I was free to check up on her activities. Take Thursday, tonight, she worked late at the bank until about nine, or did she?

I called Maisie at the bank, from that little sales office, and couldn't get through. Nothing but a standard out of hours message from the bank. I tried her mobile and my call went straight to voicemail. That was par for the course though, so left a message that I was seeing Russ and Kev from work for a game of darts and would be back at ten. I added that I would leave her dinner in the microwave for her.

That evening, I went down to the bank at about seven and noticed that her car had already vanished from the bank car park and the building in darkness. Damn! Where was she? There was a car still locked in there behind the security fence, a Ford Mondeo with a child seat inside and a "Child Aboard" sticker on the back window, so clearly used by a family man. I couldn't get to the car as there were security cameras covering the car park.

There were only two ways out of the High Street. I opted to wait near where my wife should come by on her way home. I parked up close to the end of a side turning leading to the service area behind the shops. I waited for nearly two hours, just after nine o'clock, when saw my wife drive by, seemingly without a care in the world. I started my car and pulled right up to the turning. I didn't have to wait more than a few seconds, before the Mondeo drove past and got in the righthand lane at the junction. Maisie had already turned left towards our home.

Tailing a car is tricky for the inexperienced. It looks deceptively easy in movies. I almost got left behind at the second set of lights, squeaking through after they had changed to red. Then, keeping back so I was less obvious, a couple of boy racers filled the gap between us and I almost missed the Ford turning left onto a residential estate three or four miles down the road. I followed him around various twists and turns until he turned into a cul-de-sac, so I drove past the end of his road, parked and casually walked back. Fortunately he didn't park in his garage, he left it in his drive. I couldn't see the number on his door, it was too dark, but counting back from number 18, which was well lit, I calculated that Mr Banker-whoever-he-was lived at number 22 Fairfield Walk.

I pulled into the Cock & Pullet on my way home for a quick pint of bitter so that Maisie could smell I'd spent some time up the pub. I needn't have bothered, she'd already had a shower, eaten her meal and was in bed by the time I got in, leaving me to do the washing up. I guess even I still had my uses outside the bedroom. It was the first beer I had had since I started my diet and I no longer cared if it made me put weight on or not.

Put weight on? Mmm, that gave me food for thought, as it were.

[to be continued...]