Getting Fat

On the evening of 29th January Hidal Martin noticed that she was getting fat. When she grabbed her stomach there was a handful that shouldn’t be there and when she looked in the bathroom mirror a fat version of herself looked back at her.

Her boyfriend Tony assured her not to worry, she was still the most beautiful little woman in all the world, and her agent assured her that she hadn’t gained an ounce and that the jobs would continue to pour in, but she noticed the next day there were no emails or phone calls, in fact she hadn’t done a job for nearly two months apart from the Cadbury’s Flake add, and the last thing she needed in her current state was an association with chocolate.

Hidal decided to diet. She gave up all meats, fats and sugars, living off the occasional rice cake and banana. She started going to the gym twice a day with her friend Pixal. “I’ve got the same problem” Pixal confessed, “if I so much as look at a chocolate muffin my stomach swells like a balloon.” They both pedalled furiously on the stationary cycles and rowed four miles on the ‘against stiff breeze’ setting.

Tony didn’t understand Hidal’s diet, and used to try and make her share his fatty pasta meals. “You have to eat Sugar. Even when you’re dieting you have to eat something.” But Hidal was good, she resisted, she fought every temptation, even those painful late-night hunger pangs that made her scream out loud, and those cunning dreams in which she’d gorge herself on every conceivable luxury of food, only to wake and find herself in the kitchen sleepwalking, or more accurately sleep eating, her mouth crammed to spitting with a delicious mouthful of strawberry ice-cream. Even this she fought, gobbing it all out into the toilet bowl. She returned to the gym next day with renewed rigour, determined to pay for her sins.

But it was all in vain. She checked herself in the mirror every day and a bloated ball of blubber bounced back at her. She cried her face a blotchy sticky mess and had to re-apply her make up, though why she bothered making up her face when she had the body of a telly-tubby she couldn’t really understand. Even the opportunity of becoming the Face of Ginseng Tea didn’t cheer her, as she feared yet another association with drugs; the last problem had so nearly lost her everything.

She went to her Doctor, who weighed her, and told her “you’re fading away, if you don’t start eating immediately I’m going to have to write to your agency. You’re at least two stone under-weight and a danger to yourself.” He gave her a diet sheet with a calorie count that looked like a banker's bonus. She took it home, but back in her bedroom she ripped it to shreds and hid it in her secret place.

After that she gave up food altogether, living off water, as she’d seen her friend Gavin from the animal liberation movement do, in order to save a beagle that was being used for testing make-up and lip balm. She agreed it was wrong: make up was wasted on animals.

Hidal went to the gym four times a day, switching the rowing machine to ‘uphill climb against the tide on a hot day’. Pixal went too, claiming that she needed it even more, having given in the previous night to blancmange.

"It’s a psychological problem," she overheard her father say, "She’s been like this since Maureen died, can’t seem to handle everyday life. She’s starved herself to the point of extinction." She was forced to see one of his cronies from the golf club, a Harley Street expert, who was, apparently, the best there was.

“You are not fat,” the Harley Street specialist advised her, “you are in a delusional state brought on by trauma and stress. You need a complete break from modelling, take time out, a walking holiday perhaps, something to get your appetite back." She left in tears, frustrated to the point of madness, how could he not see how overweight she’d become, how near she was to being simply smothered by her own body fat.

On the 29th February Hidal stepped out into the world for what would be the last time. Her last feeling, her last experience, would be that of pain. For all her body did was generate pain, so much did it crave food, food she dare never have, food it took all her strength and energy to resist.

She stepped out onto the pavement outside her house. A neighbour saw her, nearly walked into her, commenting that she was so thin she was hardly there. So thin that a wisp of wind would blow her away.

What became of Hidal we will never know. She was last seen walking towards a particularly large crack in the pavement.