ABSTRACT

In the changing room, she undresses. I remember the body I had seen in the bath when I was growing up, the convex belly from two Caesarean births that my sister used to think was like a washing-up bowl. The one that I have now, myself. She used to hold hers in under her clothes by that rubberized garment called a roll-on, a set of sturdy elasticized knickers. She had been six-and-a-half stone when she got married, which rose to ten stone after bearing her daughters, and she would spend twenty years adhering to the rules of Weight Watchers without ever noticeably losing a pound. Then she more or less stopped eating when my father died, apart from cakes and sweets and toast with lowcalorie marge, on which regimen she shed two stone and twice was admitted to hospital suffering from dehydration.