“Are you about to chuck me or are you dying of some mysterious disease?” he asked in mock seriousness. It was early days in the relationship and he wasn't sure yet which piece of news would hit him worse.
George's jaw dropped. “I'm not dying of some mysterious disease,” she managed to say pointedly.
There! She'd said it! It wasn't so difficult after all!
“Right,” nodded Simon slowly. That hadn't worked out quite so well as he'd hoped.
There was a pause.
Now it was out in the open, George felt the black cloud that had been hovering over her head for the past month dissolve and disappear. She was suffused with a sense of goodwill to all men, including Simon.
“Coffee?” she asked sincerely.
Simon stared at her. “Have you just chucked me?” he answered ungenerously.
Oh dear. She thought they'd cleared all that up. She tried again.
“Well, I don't have a terminal illness,” she said pathetically.
Simon frowned and sat forward on the couch.
“Are you chucking me?” he repeated.
George swallowed.
“Well . . .”
No sound came out.
“I think it's a simple question, don't you?”
“Yes - I ..." she came to a halt.
“Yes . . . you think it's a simple question or yes, you are chucking me?”
“Yes ... I think it's a simple question,” mumbled George, growing uncomfortably hot and finding her feet rooted to the spot.
“So you're not chucking me?”
George could only nod weakly.
“What does that mean? Yes you're not chucking me or yes you are chucking me?” Simon was vaguely aware that he was making a prat of himself.
“Yes I am chucking you,” she whispered, her eyes down. Really, she hadn't expected him to make it so difficult.
There was an uncomfortable pause.
Simon put the paper down and looked round her flat. Nothing much had changed. Except he was single again. Shit.
“Right, so that's that then.”
He got up suddenly from the couch. George flinched, which seemed to disgust him.
“My God, what do you think I'm going to do?” he asked. “Hit you?” And then he added under his breath, “Wouldn't waste my time.”
George thought she was going to be sick. Please, just leave, she thought.
Simon tried to laugh carelessly. “You'll be all right,” he said, pretending to be fine about it. “Go and see a soppy girlie film and eat chocolate cake - that's what you girls do, isn't it?”
George tried to smile. Maybe she'd been wrong about him. He seemed to understand her so well.
He stood up to go. “And I'll just get rat-arsed and pick up some bird in a nightclub. Bye, doll.” And he gave her one last wink and slammed her front door so hard, she thought it would fall off its hinges.
She heard him stamp downstairs. Then silence.
She was free!
Her head felt light. Her stomach relaxed. Her flat was her own again. No more Phil Collins! No more afternoons watching rugby!
She looked round the empty room. And then rushed to the bathroom where she just made it in time before she was sick.
The lunchtime rehearsal the next day between Jack and George turned into an afternoon movie which turned into an evening meal which turned into a nightcap at George's flat which turned into a very passionate night together.
The next afternoon, when they finally got up, they wandered into West Hampstead for some food. They found Mo and Jazz in George's favourite cafe. Jack seemed genuinely delighted to see them both there and the four of them fell into easy banter. Jazz was overjoyed to see her George so happy. And Jack seemed totally besotted with her, as was right and proper. The very air around them sizzled. She hoped to God that he treated her right. Not everyone realised how fragile George was.
Eventually Jazz had to tear herself away.
“A step class? Whatever for?” demanded George.
“To repent for all my sins,” answered Jazz. “Mo's turned into a fitness freak. She's unbearable, she's—”
“Thin,” interrupted Mo merrily.
“Save me?” implored Jazz.
But George looked far too happy to bother saving anyone today.
Jazz picked up her gym kit. She hadn't worn her trainers since she had played netball with her old schoolfriends eight years ago. She had borrowed Mo's kit - a skimpy pair of gym shorts and a leotard that split her up the middle. Mo was kitted out in yellow and white Lycra.
An hour and a half later, Jazz was lying on a mat in a position she never thought she'd be in until she gave birth, flexing muscles she didn't know she had.
The step class had been the longest hour of her life. Sweat dripped into her ears and stung her eyes as she lay drenched on the mat.
She hated the aerobics instructor. She'd bounded in, all teeth and tits, with a bottom like two tennis balls wrapped in cellophane and asked them all indecipherable questions, while fiddling with the earpiece round her head.
“Iny anjuries? Beck problems? Inyone prignant? Iny priblems?”
Jazz was too busy staring at her own legs in the mirror to answer, “I think I'm in the wrong class, is this Oriental Karma?” She'd never realised until this moment just how white she was. She was so white she was blue. Every time she caught sight of herself in the mirror she thought there was a lighthouse in the room.
Then the aerobics instructor put on Pinkie and Perkie's 70's Classics and started marching on the spot.
Oh right, this is easy, thought Jazz, and started to march. After a few moments, she realised this might be a little more difficult than she thought. Somehow, the instructor looked decidedly cool marching on the spot, while Jazz was doing exactly the same movement and yet looked like a complete arse.
Suddenly, with no warning, the instructor yelled: “Ligs apart, stumech flut, bottom een, knees ovur fit, RIELAX!”
Jazz had just got the position when the entire room bounded off to the right. The woman on her left bumped into her and didn't apologise. It dawned on Jazz that those instructions had just been the way to stand correctly. This was the real thing.
The steps Ingrid the Instructor inflicted on them were so complicated and the instructions so inaudible over the noise that Jazz had spent most of the hour looking like she was a contestant on The Generation Game. To Jazz's untrained ears, the instructor was speaking a different language. Thank God there had been a man there. He made her look positively sophisticated. Why had he come? It couldn't be worth humiliating himself so much just to get a look at tight buns in Lycra, surely? Then again, thought Jazz bitterly, he was a man.
Every time Ingrid shouted, “SWAP LIGS!” Jazz wanted to shout, “Bagsie yours.” Every time she bellowed “RELAX!” Jazz looked for the couch. It was hell. Never again.
“Give yourselves a big round of applause,” shouted Ingrid at the end, as Jazz stood, fixed to the ground, panting heavily, wondering if they still burnt witches. Mo came over to her.
“Wow!” she said, looking at Jazz's beetroot face. “I think you've burst a blood vessel in your head.”
“Don't talk to me - ” breathed Jazz “ - ever again.”
They trudged heavily up to the changing rooms where Jazz took a long shower and then, when she felt barely human again, joined Mo's pink, moist body in the steam room. It was how she imagined heaven would be. All steam and heat. She didn't like the sauna as much but at least in here, without the steam, they could talk. The heat and the silence were wonderful.
“So what are you going to do with this new body of yours?” asked Jazz dreamily.
“Get happy. Get laid. Get a promotion. Dunno.”
Jazz didn't say anything. Sweat was slowly building up on the gentle curve of her stomach.
Mo sighed loudly and put one sweaty arm above her head. “Jazz, I'm not an idealist like you—”