The Locked Room (Ruth Galloway #14)(13)

‘Great to see you here,’ she says.

‘It’s my first time,’ says Ruth, feeling rather foolish.

‘I’ve been coming to this group for a few months,’ says Zoe. ‘I belonged to a different group before.’

‘I’ve never tried anything like this before,’ says Ruth.

‘Oh, I’ve done them all,’ says Zoe. ‘Weight Watchers, Slimming World, Lean Zone. I’m a yo-yo dieter.’ She grins as if this is a wonderful thing to be.

‘I’ve just got to get weighed,’ she continues. ‘Have you got time for a coffee afterwards?’

Ruth had watched in alarm as the women lined up before Jacquie’s talk to stand on the scales and have the results recorded in their ‘Lean Journal’. But Zoe makes this sound like it’s not an ordeal at all.

‘I’d love to have a coffee,’ says Ruth.

But what she really wants is a large slice of cake.





Chapter 8


There’s only one café in the village. It’s rather bizarrely designed to look like an American diner, with bench seats and a lot of chrome and neon, but it’s still open at five o’clock, which makes it a mecca for Ruth and Zoe. They sit opposite each other in a booth and drink strangely frothy cappuccino.

‘It’s not horrible,’ says Zoe, ‘but it doesn’t taste like coffee.’

‘It is slightly horrible,’ says Ruth.

‘Cappuccino is two points in Lean Zone,’ says Zoe.

‘Do you have to write down drinks too?’ asks Ruth.

‘You have to write down everything,’ says Zoe. ‘Didn’t Jacquie do her thing about “if you drink it, ink it”?’

‘I think I stopped listening after a while,’ says Ruth.

‘She does the same spiel every week,’ says Zoe, ‘but she’s not a bad consultant. I’ve had a few that were terrible. And some of the other women are nice.’

‘Are they always all women?’

‘Not always. In my last group there was a man who used to come. Most people ignored him though. Poor chap.’

‘Why do you keep coming?’ asks Ruth, before she can help herself. ‘I mean, you look terrific.’

‘Thank you,’ says Zoe. ‘But it’s how you feel inside, isn’t it? I’ve been fat and I’ve been thin and there’s no doubt in my mind that people are nicer to you when you’re thin.’

Is this true? Ruth has always felt that she was too big, in the eyes of society anyway. Would people have treated her differently if she’d been as slim as, say, Shona, her glamorous friend and fellow lecturer? Ruth remembers how Kelly had talked of Alison’s weight loss, almost with awe.

‘That’s depressing, if so,’ she says.

‘Isn’t it?’ says Zoe cheerfully. ‘Anyway, I’d like to be thinner.’

‘So would I,’ says Ruth, ‘but I’ve never wanted it enough to stop eating.’

‘Why did you decide to come today?’ asks Zoe. She’s spooning out the last of her froth. Ruth has given up on hers.

‘I don’t know,’ says Ruth. ‘I went to a school reunion at the weekend and one of my old schoolfriends had lost lots of weight.’

‘And you thought she looked good?’

‘No,’ says Ruth. ‘Actually, I thought she looked better before.’

They both laugh so loudly that the café owner, who is stacking chairs in a passive-aggressive manner, looks over in alarm.

‘I’ve never been to a school reunion,’ says Zoe. ‘Though I liked it when I was there.’

‘It was rather surreal,’ says Ruth. ‘I met my old sixth-form boyfriend. He’s now a successful businessman with two wives and no hair.’

‘I married my sixth-form boyfriend,’ says Zoe. ‘Sounds like you had a lucky escape.’

‘Did you really?’ says Ruth. She remembers Zoe telling her that she was divorced.

‘Yes. I was mad about him. Patrick was a couple of years older than me and one of the really cool boys at school. Football team and all that. Long blond hair like a pop star. You know the sort of thing. We got married when I was twenty and he was twenty-two. Our parents thought we were mad and we were, really. But we stayed together for ten years. I trained as a nurse and he did his apprenticeship to be an electrician. He’s very successful now too. Not bald but completely white-haired. Still long though, like an aging rock star. We’ve stayed on good terms. I sometimes think, if we’d had children, we’d still be together.’

Ruth doesn’t want to ask why Zoe doesn’t have children. She says, ‘I’ve never been married and I’ve never lived with Kate’s father. He’s married to someone else. It’s complicated. Or perhaps it isn’t.’

She stops, wondering if she’s said too much. She doesn’t usually tell almost-strangers about Kate’s parentage. But somehow Zoe doesn’t seem like a stranger.

‘Kate’s lovely,’ says Zoe. ‘I’m looking forward to getting to know her.’

‘Me too,’ says Ruth. ‘I mean we both are. Looking forward to getting to know you, I mean.’ She realises that she’s rambling, also that it’s five thirty and she needs to leave to collect Kate.