Excerpt from chapter 3

In this chapter Janey, Gina, Trish and Pam have the inaugural meeting of their own diet group.

Janey and Gina loitered at the end of the aisle pretending to examine the goods displayed gaudily on the shelves.

Enchante. The words on the label glowed as if it they were plugged in.

‘Yeah right’, Janey said cynically, nudging Gina and pointing to the bottle.

Gina lifted it cautiously off the shelf and held it at arms length as if it might bite her. ‘It smells like a scent someone young enough to read fairly tales would think was tremendously grown up.’

‘Oooh look it has a price to match the age bracket!’

‘Yup, cheap enough to buy it and use as air freshener!’ They laughed and moved a few steps further along, eyeing the queue at the till. There were only 2 people left to pay for their products.

‘Shall we make our way there now?’ Janey asked and Gina nodded.

‘You want to go first? I’ll stand beside you and block everyone's view!’ Gina offered.

‘Yep, lets get this over with.’ Janey said taking a deep breath, before she stepped onto the electronic scales, coin pinched at the ready. ‘It doesn’t say my weight out loud does it?’

‘No! Impossible, no one would use it if it did, would they?’ Gina spoke with her back to Janey.

She whispered over her shoulder to Gina’s back. ‘Hey, you can watch y’ano, you’ll find out what it is soon enough anyway!’

The scales were kindly mute, instead printing the weight out onto a slip of paper. A mechanically printed total was what their small group had decided would be an acceptable method of honest weight reporting. Janey and Gina made their way to the high street with their individual slips of paper.

Gina said ‘Ready to go meet Trish and Pam?’

‘More than!'

Talking, laughing and window shopping, they made their way through the crowded high street to the relative quiet of the park.