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I’ll bake for you, OK? Just get off my back.’
    Jimmy gulped.
    Never in his
life
had he stood up to anyone. He forced himself to eyeball GI Joe.
    In his chest, something had come alive. It was glowing like a coal. It was warm. It felt brilliant.
    GI Joe had taken a step backward, holding up his hands in a gesture of submission.
    ‘
That’s
more like it,’ he rasped, eyes boring into Jimmy, challenging him to say more. Then he grinned, not in the mocking way that Jimmy was used to when anyone grinned at him, but as though the pair of them were in cahoots, sharing some secret.
    Jimmy felt his cheeks grow hot, the warm coal inside cooling as suddenly as it ignited. His rush of anger fled, mind turning cotton-woolly and flustered. He looked down.
    ‘So, Jim.’ GI Joe’s hands landed, paw heavy on Jimmy’s shoulders. Leaning forward, he growled in Jimmy’s ear, ‘You’ve a set of balls in there somewhere. Now we can do business together. Tell me what I can do for you.’
    ‘Don’t want anything.’
Weirdo.
Jimmy tried to shrug the hands away.
    ‘I’m late,’ he added, feebly.
    ‘For what?’ GI Joe’s voice was searching. ‘For hiding yourself away?’
    Leave me alone.
    ‘You’re happy with things as they are? Rather I ignored you? Left you to fester like a blob in your kitchen. Left you to binge yourself into an early grave steeped in your own misery. Left your big fat arse to rot.
Gie us peace.
That’s all you want. Well – I’m sorry.’
    Jimmy couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Responsible adults didn’t speak to him like that.
    Mum wouldn’t even have scales in the house. She never mentioned his weight, even on Obsesity Clinic days.
    ‘We’ve got hospital today,’ she’d say, making sure she shredded any new diet sheets the consultants gave Jimmy the minute she got home: ‘
How . . . are you . . . expected . . . to live . . . on this rabbit food
?’
    Not even Aunt Pol, who thought Mum was too soft with the diet, ever talked about ‘fat’.
    ‘Let’s get fit,’ she’d say every New Year. ‘A mile jog every evening. I’ll stop smoking.’
    But it never lasted. Bad weather and overtime, flu and homework meant that any fitness drive was over before it started.
    Nobody, not even the consultants who gave Mum such a hard time, ever used the word
fat
in Jimmy’s presence.
    Now here was a
priest,
calling Jimmy a blob, a fat arse. Kids at school had called him less and been suspended.
    ‘Jim,
look at me, will you
?’
    GI Joe was shouting. One or two people passing glanced over their shoulder at him.
    Aye, you’re right. This guy
is
a nutter. Help
! Jimmy wanted to call after them.
    ‘Look at yourself, Jim. You’re the saddest, most miserable sod I think I’ve ever come across in my life. Sadder in your own way than my wee souls in South Africa. And that’s saying something.’
    The paw tightened.
    ‘Fourteen, Jim, and you’re dead inside. Standing on the sidelines of your own life, miserable as sin. When you gonna change? When you gonna make things better?’ GI Joe shook his head, voice quavering as he backed off Jimmy at last. Jogging away.
    ‘I want to know how I can help you before I let you help me.’

Chapter 9
    Sunday lunch
    ‘Soup’s great, Jim,’ said Aunt Pol.
    ‘Mmmm,’ Mum agreed brightly, smacking her lips. She exchanged glances with Aunt Pol.
    ‘Something up with it, Jim?’
    Both women had let their bowls grow cold. They watched Jimmy toy with his spoon. He hadn’t touched his soup. Carrot and coriander with ginger. His favourite.
    ‘Maybe too hot for soup, Jimmy?’ Mum pushed her bowl away. ‘Salad would’ve been better.’
    ‘Plenty of that in this house,’ snapped Aunt Pol, quick as a flash. ‘Deep fried lettuce.’
    ‘That’s unfair.’ Mum was defensive. ‘We eat greens, don’t we Jimmy?’
    ‘Not enough,’ snorted Aunt Pol when Jimmy didn’t answer, and before he had the table cleared she and Mum were going hammer and tongs about