Nonsense, obviously. Look at the Hubbards’ boy: built like a beanpole, and shocking asthma. Howard had always been big, as far back as he could remember. In the very few photographs taken of him with his father, who had left the family when Howard was four or five, he was merely chubby. After his father had left, his mother had sat him at the head of the table, between herself and his grandmother, and been hurt if he did not take seconds. Steadily he had grown to fill the space between the two women, as heavy at twelve as the father who had left them. Howard had come to associate a hearty appetite with manliness. His bulk was one of his defining characteristics. It had been built with pleasure, by the women who loved him, and he thought it was absolutely characteristic of Bends-Your-Ear, that emasculating killjoy, that she wanted to strip him of it.
But sometimes, in moments of weakness, when it became difficult to breathe or to move, Howard knew fear. It was all very well for Shirley to act as though he had never been in danger, but he remembered long nights in the hospital after his bypass, when he had not been able to sleep for worry that his heart might falter and stop. Whenever he caught sight of Vikram Jawanda, he remembered that those long dark fingers had actually touched his naked, beating heart; the bonhomie with which he brimmed at each encounter was a way of driving out that primitive, instinctive terror. They had told him at the hospital afterwards that he needed to lose some weight, but he had dropped two stone naturally while he was forced to live off their dreadful food, and Shirley had been intent on fattening him up again once he was out…
Howard sat for a moment more, enjoying the ease with which he breathed after using his inhaler. Today meant a great deal to him. Thirty-five years previously, he had introduced fine dining to Pagford with the élan of a sixteenth-century adventurer returning with delicacies from the other side of the world, and Pagford, after initial wariness, had soon begun to nose curiously and timidly into his polystyrene pots. He thought wistfully of his late mother, who had been so proud of him and his thriving business. He wished that she could have seen the café. Howard heaved himself back to his feet, took his deerstalker from its hook and placed it carefully on his head in an act of self-coronation.
His new waitresses arrived together at half-past eight. He had a surprise for them.
‘Here you are,’ he said, holding out the uniforms: black dresses with frilly white aprons, exactly as he had imagined. ‘Ought to fit. Maureen reckoned she knew your sizes. She’s wearing one herself.’
Gaia forced back a laugh as Maureen stalked into the delicatessen from the café, smiling at them. She was wearing Dr Scholl’s sandals over her black stockings. Her dress finished two inches above her wrinkled knees.
‘You can change in the staff room, girls,’ she said, indicating the place from which Howard had just emerged.
Gaia was already pulling off her jeans beside the staff toilet when she saw Sukhvinder’s expression.
‘Whassamatter, Sooks?’ she asked.
The new nickname gave Sukhvinder the courage to say what she might otherwise have been unable to voice.
‘I can’t wear this,’ she whispered.
‘Why?’ asked Gaia. ‘You’ll look OK.’
But the black dress had short sleeves.
‘I can’t.’
‘But wh — Jesus,’ said Gaia.
Sukhvinder had pulled back the sleeves of her sweatshirt. Her inner arms were covered in ugly criss-cross scars, and angry fresh-clotted cuts travelled up from her wrist to her inner arm.
‘Sooks,’ said Gaia quietly. ‘What are you playing at, mate?’
Sukhvinder shook her head, with her eyes full of tears.
Gaia thought for a moment, then said, ‘I know — come here.’
She was stripping off her long-sleeved T-shirt.
The door suffered a big blow and the imperfectly closed bolt shot open: a sweating Andrew was halfway inside, carrying two weighty packs of toilet rolls, when Gaia’s angry shout stopped him in his tracks. He tripped out backwards, into Maureen.
‘They’re changing in there,’ she said, in sour disapproval.
‘Mr Mollison told me to put these in the staff bathroom.’
‘Sorry,’ Andrew yelled at the closed door. His whole face was throbbing with the force of his blush.
‘Wanker,’ muttered Gaia, on the other side. She was holding out her T-shirt to Sukhvinder. ‘Put it on underneath the dress.’
‘That’ll look weird.’
‘Never mind. You can get a black one for next week, it’ll look like you’re wearing long sleeves. We’ll tell him some story…’
‘She’s got eczema,’ Gaia announced, when she and Sukhvinder emerged from the staff room, fully dressed and aproned. ‘All up her arms. It’s a bit scabby.’
‘Ah,’ said Howard, glancing at Sukhvinder’s white T-shirted arms and then back at Gaia, who looked every bit as gorgeous as he had hoped.
