rational, it was just a coincidence. Sod’s law. Bad luck.
Call it what you want, it’s hardly reason to think it’s something more than that.
‘I know it sounds crazy, but for a moment there I was getting a bit paranoid,’ I pant breathlessly, looking across at Robyn, who’s puffing away on the exercise machine next to me.
It’s the next evening after work and Robyn and I have made the most of my sister’s free passes to her private gym and are working out on the machines. I use the term ‘working out’ loosely. ‘Near collapse’ is probably a more fitting description.
Despite my sister’s offer of free passes, she’d been taken aback by my eagerness. ‘What? You’re going tonight?’ she’d said in astonishment, to which I’d rather curtly told her that I was keen to get fit and no time like the present.
What I didn’t mention was Nate’s comment about my cellulite, which had been scorching a hole in my brain like a burning cigarette. ‘How dare he say I’ve got cellulite?’ I’d harrumphed to Robyn approximately every ten minutes, and like the loyal friend she is, she’d harrumphed right back, ‘How dare he! There is nothing wrong with your thighs!’ I was a real woman, not some gym-honed stick insect. Besides, every woman has cellulite. Even Kate Moss. I mean, I’m sure I saw some on a photograph once.
OK, so it could have been a trick of the light, but still, I’m sure it was there.
Then after my vitriolic speech – Down with Nate, up with cellulite! – in which I’d marched around the living room in my knickers, waving the remote like a banner, I’d gone into the bathroom, looked at my bottom in the full-length mirror under the overhead lighting and made a startling discovery.
Someone had stolen my bottom! Not only that, but they’d replaced it with porridge in a string bag! I dididthg balig Cdidn’t know when, or how it happened, but I did know one thing: I wanted my bottom back.
Which is why I’m at Equilibrium, a super-trendy gym uptown, complete with exposed red brick and plasma TVs, nearly having a heart attack. And not just from the exercise. I feel like I’ve been thrown into a parallel universe. A universe where everyone is wearing designer Lycra, exposing gym-honed bodies and more six-packs than Oddbins. Strutting around wearing iPods, handtowels casually thrown over their shoulders, swingy ponytails swinging, they positively glow with health and vitality. It’s like landing on Planet Beautiful.
Meanwhile I’m in my old vest and shorts, puffing like a steam train, with a face like a giant tomato.
‘What?’ yells Robyn, in the way people do when they’re wearing earphones and think they’re talking normally but they sound like the drunks who spill out of nightclubs in town centres on a Saturday night.
‘Oh, nothing. I was just thinking out loud.’
Screwing up her face in confusion, she tugs out one of her earphones. She’s listening to a portable CD player. I don’t think I’ve seen one of those since 1995. She’s also wearing tie-dye. Next to her, I feel positively trendy, which is saying something.
‘Sorry, I was miles away,’ she gasps, yanking her ponytail tighter. Her hair is tied up on the top of her head and the curly brown strands are spilling outwards like one of those fibre-optic lights.
‘What are you listening to?’ I grunt. I’m on something called a cross-trainer, which has this huge control panel with flashing lights and dials. It’s a bit like being in a cockpit. Not that I’ve ever been in a cockpit, but I’m sure it looks like this. Probably less complicated too, I muse, glancing at it now with trepidation.
After several false starts I’ve managed to set it to something called ‘interval’, as I liked the look of the little diagram at the side: high bits with lots of flat bits in between. It was the flat bits that swung it for me. It looked quite easy. After all, isn’t ‘interval’ just another word for ‘rest’?
Er, no, Lucy, I grimace, ten minutes in. It’s apparently another word for ‘torture’.
‘It’s this amazing CD,’ gushes Robyn, looking invigorated.
‘Oh, is it the new Black Eyed Peas?’
‘Black Eyed Peas?’ Robyn looks slightly baffled. ‘No, it’s all about miracles and how they can teach you the road to inner peace and enlightenment. It’s totally fascinating. Do you want to have a listen? We can have an earphone each. I think they’ll stretch . . .’ She starts tryiÍ€he startsÃtryng to untangle them.
‘Um . .