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Booing Corporation: a gigantic organisation installed inside her
head dedicated to the business of booing, heckling and general discouragement
of any kind of positive behaviour. The only time the Booing Corporation ever
became encouraging was when they were suggesting it might be a really good idea
to eat a whole frozen tuna pie at six thirty in the morning. Except, as her wobbling legs strained against the
pedals and perspiration rolled down her face, she resolved that this time
things were going to be different, this time she had a foolproof plan to get
fit and lose weight.
    Two
weeks before, sitting in the place where she went to be ritually abused about
the state of her hair, she’d read an article in an old copy of Marie Claire concerning
an incredibly fat woman, much fatter than her, who’d got fit and slim simply by
hiring a personal trainer. There were snaps of the woman when she’d been fat,
at family> parties and at long tables in restaurants, smiling dazedly into
the lens like a barnyard animal that somebody had put a wig and big glasses on.
Funnily enough Harriet thought to herself all these ‘before’ photos were fuzzy
as if the camera itself was angry at the woman for being such a gigantic pig.
Then there were pin-sharp, acid-bright pictures of the way the woman was now,
youthful, thin and confident, her face full of happy intelligence. That was
what Harriet was going to do, that was her plan: she was going to ask Patrick
if he’d be her personal trainer.
     
    Harriet was pedalling the
bathtub through what was either a tropical forest or some animal heads stuck on
spikes when Patrick came over.
    ‘Hiya,’
he said, picking up her chart. ‘How’s it going?’
    ‘It’s
going at exactly the same speed as it was three months ago.’
    ‘Yeah…‘
he replied, studying the exercise machine’s digital readout, ‘your laptime’s identical
to the second; it’s a remarkable achievement in its way.’
    ‘What
way’s that exactly?’
    Patrick
shrugged. ‘Well, you know it isn’t really any sort of achievement but they like
us to be positive.’
    ‘I’m
getting sick of this place,’ she said.
    ‘Well,
you need to stick with it, not get discouraged…‘ He struggled to find
something more inspirational to say, ‘or… something.’
    ‘No,
no,’ she persisted. ‘Patrick, I do sincerely want to get fitter but this gym
isn’t working. So I was thinking… do you do personal training?’
    ‘Personal
training?’ he asked.
    ‘Yeah,
yeah.’ Harriet realised she was talking fast now but couldn’t stop. ‘I’ve got
this big empty room above my shop, nice springy wood floor, and I was talking
to a couple of girlfriends Lulu and Rose and we … they thought we could sort
of hire you to come round and give us a workout, a personalised programme,
personal training. What do you think, what do you think?’
    He’
paused for several seconds then said, looking around, ‘We’re not supposed to
make side deals with the clients.’
    ‘Oh
come on,’ she wheedled, ‘please … I’m never going to get into shape here. We
both know that. I assume you’ve done personal training before, most of the
instructors here have, it must have been part of your own training.’
    ‘Yeah,
sure, obviously …‘ He was silent for a further moment then asked, ‘You’d pay
me?’
    ‘Yes of
course, whatever the going rate is … I dunno, forty pounds an hour?’
    He
considered a little longer then said, ‘Well, I suppose the gym don’t need to
know about it. I guess I could come round one afternoon next week to meet your
friends and work out … you know, a personalised programme and that.’
     
    One of the muscular dykey
weight-lifting women had asked Patrick to ‘spot’ for her, that is to stand
above her while she bench-pressed the weight of a small car, to make sure that
she wouldn’t be crushed by the chromed bar if her strength suddenly went. In
fact he wasn’t giving her any attention at all but was