Ginger Reilly danced with her head on Stephen’s shoulder and tried to ignore the wire-like bite of her control tights into her waist. She was impervious to such things, she told herself, inhaling the scent of Stephen’s spicy cologne and resting her face against his dinner jacket, not caring that it was hired and had probably been to more weddings than the band currently murdering ‘Unchained Melody’.
She wasn’t, for once, wondering if she looked hideously enormous, despite today’s bridesmaid’s dress – peach taffeta on a woman who wore head-to-toe black at all times – being a bit too Scarlett O’Hara to disguise Ginger’s substantial bosom and curvy hips. Sometimes, Ginger stood outside rooms and wondered how to walk in as thinly as possible, or else how to walk in so that nobody noticed a larger girl daring to exist in a skinny-girl world.
But none of that mattered today: what mattered was that she was dancing with a man who’d just asked her to go out with him. A good-looking, tall man who’d chatted her up, admired her and had asked her – unpushed by relatives, even though he was Liza’s cousin – out onto the dance floor five times.
‘People will talk,’ Ginger joked weakly the second time Stephen took her hand for a slow dance. She’d even looked around to see if Liza, the bride and her best friend, had manoeuvred this second dance so that Ginger wouldn’t have to be her normal wallflower self. A wallflower who did a remarkable impression of a woman having a fabulous time, because nobody was going to pity Ginger Reilly, but still, in the deepest, most hidden part of her brain, a wallflower.
‘Let them talk,’ Stephen had said, looking down. He was really tall and clearly a sporty guy, with big shoulders and a slightly too-thick neck. But he had wonderful dark hair, matching dark eyes and a smile just for her. How had she never met him before?
For the first time in her life, Ginger did not mind a man looking down into the Grand Canyon of her cleavage. In work, she wore polo necks or crew necks to cover up and had a smart retort to anyone who eyed her 42EE chest with leering interest.
In work, she was sassy Ginger who nipped all smart remarks in the bud.
But today, clad in a dress that had buxom wench written all over it, she found she liked Stephen openly admiring her cleavage. He’d also admired her hair, the auburn tangle of curls that had meant that when her eldest brother called her Ginger as a child, the nickname had stuck.
Her hair, wrapped up into a sheeny coil at the back of her head by the bridal party’s hairdresser that morning, was her most beautiful feature, Liza often pointed out.
‘Wish I had hair like that,’ said Liza, who’d got bum-length extensions onto her platinum hair, which she’d had tonged into long curls that trailed down her fake-tanned back for the wedding.
Ginger’s father, Michael, said his only daughter’s best features were her kindness, her sense of humour, a warm face and eyes like her mother’s: huge, trusting amber eyes with eyelashes longer than any giraffe’s. Michael had brought up his two sons and Ginger all on his own when his wife had been killed in a road accident on the way back from visiting relatives in her home town of Ballyglen. Ginger’s hair was like her mother’s too, her father said.
‘What about next week?’ Stephen was asking as they danced. ‘We could see a film. What do you like?’
Ginger, who quite often went to the cinema as it was something you could do alone, had seen all the films she wanted to. But pleasing a man, Liza insisted, meant kowtowing to him without him knowing. As she’d had at least fifteen steady boyfriends, from the age of fourteen onwards, Ginger – current boyfriend total to date: nil – felt that Liza must know what she was talking about.
‘What do you like?’ Ginger asked, quashing the feeling that she was letting down the sisterhood by not answering honestly. But she had to give it a try. The initial kowtowing clearly was only part of the process. When you knew someone, then you could be honest with them.
She envisioned her and Stephen when they were happily in love, perhaps on holiday in a cold country because Ginger didn’t do beachwear. ‘I lied that first night about films I like,’ she’d say and he’d laugh. ‘I know, silly. It made me fall in love with you faster.’
Stephen led her off the dance floor as the band finished up, and he began talking about the new Fast and Furious spin-off movie he’d take her to see.
Ginger, who had two brothers after all, and had been forced to sit through most of the original series, already knew the entire plot. She did not mention this but instead said: ‘That sounds wonderful.’
And it would be: a date with something other than the remote control.
Ginger Reilly, thirty years old today, and a spinster of this parish, as her Great-Aunt Grace might say jokingly, had only ever been on one other date in her whole life. He’d been a guy from college who’d eventually asked her out to the pub. He’d then proceeded to tell her about how much he fancied her college mate. End of date.
‘You’re curvy, not fat, and you’re a late bloomer,’ Mick, her eldest brother, had said, kindly, as she’d sobbed to him that it was because she was fat, wasn’t it? ‘Your time will come, sis.’
And it had.
Being thirty, Ginger decided, was going to make all the difference.
She had more confidence, more experience of Life, more . . . more something, she was sure of it.
Working for Caraval Media had sharpened her up, helped transform her into the tough cookie with the smart mouth who made gangs of people from work think she was the funniest thing ever. More money, thanks to her agony-aunt column in an online teenage girl mag, meant she could afford cool, well-fitting black clothes. She was getting places.
Except with the opposite sex.
Her sex life was a wasteland. Always had been.
To Paula in work, she pretended she had lovers on speed dial. Telling Paula was the gossip equivalent of WhatsApping the whole planet.
Therefore in Caraval Media, Ginger Reilly was seen as one of those large, sassy girls who had men falling at her feet so fast, she had to kick them out of the way to leave the house in the morning.
With Liza, her friend since they were four, Ginger dropped the facade and fell into the relationship they’d had forever: a size eighteen woman who would not stand in front of the mirror naked and who had never, ever had a proper date with a man, never mind actual sex.
Liza knew Ginger’s secrets, knew she dressed to hide herself, knew she longed for real love.
And then tonight had come . . . and with it came Stephen, sexy, kind and liking the version of Ginger in the poufy dress she’d worn purely to please her best friend.
As the wedding band shuffled off and the hotel staff brought in sandwiches and pretty wedding-themed cupcakes for the latecomers who would arrive for the after-party with the DJ, Stephen led Ginger out onto the hotel terrace and leaned her against the wall in a dark corner.
‘You look so beautiful in that dress,’ he murmured.
His hands were touching her bare shoulders and he kissed her briefly on the lips, so she tasted the heavy red wine they’d both been drinking.
As bridesmaid, Ginger had merely had a glass of champagne early on during the toast. She knew she must be on call all day, ready with anti-shine powder and perfume. But Liza was happy now and Charlene, the other bridesmaid, who was as thin and beautiful as Liza herself, had been sitting beside Liza for ages, giggling and chatting, so Ginger had allowed herself a half-glass of wine with Stephen. Now she felt the wine and sheer passion warming her up, not to mention Stephen’s large body pressed against hers.
‘You’re so gorgeous, Ginge,’ he said.
Normally, anyone who called her Ginge got their head verbally ripped off, but she could allow beautiful Stephen the luxury.
Then his mouth moved in a fiery line down her neck and it felt so wonderful that she didn’t care what he called her. This was passion. This was what other people had had. Why had she waited so long? Why hadn’t she joined an online dating site or even tried out something as openly sexual as Tinder and put herself out there instead of hoping for someone to ask her out? Why not be what she’d pretended to be for so long? A sexually modern woman who enjoyed the glory of her own body and the pleasure sex could bring.
Stephen progressed down towards her breasts and Ginger felt herself surge with sensuality. This was wonderful.
She cradled his large head against her and, despite having read hundreds of erotic, historical fiction novels where sex by chapter three was a given, sheer lack of experience in the real world meant she wondered what to do with her arms.
She could only reach his head, so she began raining kisses on it. He nuzzled the curve of her breasts, rising like Venus out of the foam of the dress, and Ginger felt a burning heat inside her. Ginger had had orgasms before – on her own – so she knew what that burning heat meant: the slow rise of passion as her body awakened. Imagine a real man touching her where she’d only touched herself.
But this was so different from being in her own bed, this was real. As she felt his hands start to slide up under her flouncy dress, Ginger froze. Not from fear of sex, no. From fear of what Stephen would find if he kept exploring: the hated control tights, and even though she was wearing her nicest knickers – coral lace Victoria’s Secret hi-thighs – the first thing he’d feel was the sausage-like encasement of her lower body and the fat spilling out over the top of the tights.
It would ruin everything. No blog or book she’d ever read had said that men’s groins went as hard as lead pipes at the feel of ample curves spilling over control tights.
‘No,’ she said, shoving his hand away, attempting to sound sophisticated instead of panicked. ‘Not here.’
‘But you’re so beautiful, darling Ginge,’ coaxed Stephen.
‘I mean . . .’ Ginger paused. ‘We need privacy.’
Privacy for her to first get the bloody tights on and let the Victoria’s Secret hi-thighs work their magic, and privacy so that her first ever sexual encounter could be in an actual bed instead of against a wall outside a ballroom.
Despite both her fierce desire for this man and her fierce desire to offload the millstone of her virginity, she wanted this to be right.
Sure, she wrote an online column where she told teenage girls about the perils of letting some guy have sex with them and then slut-shame them via social media.
But they were young and she was thirty.
It was time.
This was real, not a one-night stand. She would not seem easy if she told him she had a room in the hotel. And as for her millstone and what he’d think when he found out she was a virgin – the studly guys in the historical fiction novels loved virgins. Unsullied women were the ultimate prize, which did offend Ginger’s feminist hackles, but hey, that was historical stuff. Pre-condom, pre-pill. Modern virginity was absolutely not a prize men should use to keep women in check.
‘Whaddya mean privacy?’ said Stephen, his hand no longer able to burrow as Ginger kept pushing it away.
‘I mean, not here, darling. We need privacy,’ purred Ginger, astonished at her own daring. ‘Somewhere we can be alone.’ She’d called him darling, she’d purred like a sex kitten to a real man and she was implying that serious action would take place in a room.
But the control tights, which were possibly now cutting off the circulation to the bottom half of her body, would ruin all plans of the serious action. One feel of them and Stephen would bolt.
‘I think I’ll wear Spanx,’ Liza had decided early on, even though she was as slender as a twig and Ginger – who knew all about control garments and owned a panoply of them – wondered where Liza would find Spanx small enough to fit her.
As Ginger herself knew that wearing the all-encompassing hold-it-in garments was like being wrapped in bulletproof cling film, she had gone with control tights and the prettiest minimiser bra she could find, a bra that was fighting a losing battle.
Nothing had ever minimised her breasts and nothing ever would, not since they’d appeared like downy pillows on her chest almost overnight when she was thirteen and boys had stopped asking tomboyish Ginger to play footie and had started staring at her breasts instead.
Bridesmaid dresses with tight waists, billowing skirts and tight bodices were not designed for buxom women with body issues.
Still, Stephen didn’t seem to mind.
‘Oh sugar, come on,’ he murmured, nuzzling her neck again.
‘Give me a moment, babe,’ she said in what she hoped was a sultry, come-hither voice. ‘I’ll be back. And then . . .’ She channelled someone sexy and said: ‘I actually have a room in the hotel.’
Stephen’s face lit up.
‘I’ll wait, Ginge,’ he said.
She grabbed her handbag from the table inside and half ran to the small, discreet loo the wedding venue manager had told the female members of the bridal party about to save the bride schlepping up to the bridal suite every time she needed a moment to herself.
In the stall, Ginger sighed and thought again, this was the best day ever. Better than the day she’d got into college to study journalism, better than the day she’d got her first job, better than all that. Today, she’d found someone special and that mattered more than anything.
She hauled up her voluminous skirts but stilled when she heard some people come in.
She must pretend not to be taking tights off because that might be an ‘about to have sex’ sign, she thought, registering what they were talking about.
Just idle mutterings, women’s room stuff.
‘You don’t need more blusher.’
‘The base is good, though, isn’t it? Glowy.’
The voices belonged to Liza and Charlene, and Ginger relaxed as the conversation meandered on. It was now well after ten and the wedding party was going strong.
Ginger would never admit it to Liza, but she was not a big fan of Charlene’s. She’d entirely taken over the organising of the hen do, which they’d all attended the previous weekend. As chief bridesmaid, Ginger had set up dinner in an elegant restaurant in Dublin because Liza said she wanted ‘something classy’. Despite this, Charlene had quietly booked a club for afters and a neon pink stretch limo to take them all there.
Liza had loved it, which was the most important thing – but Ginger had felt out of place the entire evening. She’d felt she’d failed her friend. Liza must have wanted a wild night and not a sedate dinner. And what a wild night it had been, with all sorts of mad dancing, plus members of the bridal party attempting to pole dance and doing shots.
Charlene had called her a boring old cow for not joining in.
Determinedly, Ginger pushed it all out of her mind. Tonight was going to be her night.
She heard perfume spraying and she began wriggling again with her tights which were as hard to get off as they had been to get into. She was nearly there, and once she was, she’d come out of the stall to ask Liza all about Stephen.
She leaned against the stall again and sighed with happiness.
For the first time in years, she felt as if she liked her body. He liked it, loved it. She would stick on some more perfume too . . .
‘Oh and really, what is Ginger like? Talk about desperation,’ Charlene said.
Ginger smothered a gasp. The bitch. Charlene must fancy Stephen herself.
Well, turns out he wasn’t interested in twiglets but liked curvy babes instead, she thought with a satisfied grin.
She waited for Liza to stand up for her.
‘I know,’ sighed Liza.
Not a warm-hearted ‘I know’. More of a resigned tone. The way you spoke of a relative who went off the rails at parties and let the side down.
Ginger breathed out shakily.
‘I love Ginger, but she’s her own worst enemy. Won’t exercise, won’t diet. I’ve spent years trying to help her, Charlene. Years. You and I both know it takes effort to stay thin, but she won’t and then she whines that she can’t get a guy.’
Whines? In the stall, Ginger was shocked. Did she whine about not having a man to share her life?
‘Sometimes I think of doing a friendship edit and getting Ginger out of my life because she totally wrecks my head,’ Liza went on. ‘I hate seeing her so huge, hate watching her eat all sorts of crap and then be surprised when she gets fat. That bridesmaid’s dress is a size eighteen, you know. Eighteen! If a girl in the salon was that size, she’d die! Or diet.’
‘Totally,’ agreed Charlene.
‘She’s the friend I’ve known the longest but I’ve totally moved on. You do, right?’
‘Totally.’
‘But ugh.’ Liza’s distaste was audible. ‘I really didn’t think she was going to slobber over poor Stephen like that. He has a lovely girlfriend, you know: fabulous skin, amazing clothes, runs half-marathons. But she’s away for a work trip and I don’t know how Ginger latched onto him.’
‘Have you seen the way she’s pushing her boobs up at him. It’s embarrassing to watch,’ Charlene said.
‘Have I seen it?’ Liza groaned. ‘Everybody can see it.’
Disbelieving, Ginger listened as her best and oldest friend spoke.
‘I know she’s desperate for a date, but really.’
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Charlene, enjoying sticking the knife in now that it was clear Liza was amenable to it, ‘is why she’s your chief bridesmaid?’
Ginger felt as if the whole world had slowed.
‘Ma said I had to. I’ve known her since I was four. Ma said Ginger was my oldest friend. But let’s face it, it was fine when we were four, not anymore. Not now it’s so obvious she doesn’t fit into my life. She’s hardly a friend like you, hon,’ said Liza, and Ginger knew, from years of standing beside her best friend in bathrooms and watching Liza apply make-up in mirrors, that Liza was now putting on lipstick.
She always stretched her lips to get it into the furthest corners of her mouth and she was speaking in what Ginger thought of as her lipstick voice.
She’d heard that voice countless times: in school bathrooms when Liza had been upset and Ginger had been the one to comfort her; after their big exams when Liza had done badly and Ginger, who could have gone and whooped it up with her pals from higher level English, had stayed and taken care of Liza who’d done so badly.
‘Honestly, Ma, I said. I’ve taken her under my wing my whole life! But Ma said I had to, what with Ginger having no mother.’
‘But . . .’ Charlene’s voice was almost a whisper as she said it and, alone in the stall, Ginger felt herself tense because she knew just what word Charlene was going to use, ‘. . . she’s fat. The photos! You don’t need a fat bridesmaid! Liza, you’re too gorgeous to need a fugly.’
A fugly – a fat and ugly friend, Ginger knew.
Liza laughed, happy at being called gorgeous, not saying that looks weren’t important – all the things she said to Ginger when Ginger stared at herself in mirrors and hated what she saw.
Clearly, that was what she said to Ginger – not what she felt.
Charlene was on a roll now.
‘At the fittings for the dresses, did you see the way she kept trying to hide in the dressing room?’
Stand up for me, Liza, whispered Ginger in her lonely bathroom prison.
‘She’s always been like that. Buys her clothes from catalogues,’ Liza said dismissively, as if she understood what it was like to go into a shop and search in vain for something modern and in her size when there was always one saleslady who looked at her as if she were an alien beamed down onto Planet Thin. ‘Some people just want to be fat, they hide behind it, comfort-eat and whine that they can’t get thin.’ She paused. ‘You finished?’
‘Yup,’ said Charlene.
The door slammed and they were gone.
When she was sure she was alone, Ginger came out of her hiding place. In the mirror, she was the same Ginger as she had always been: big and curved in her dreadful pink ship of a dress. She had worn this dress for Liza, even though she had hated it. Knowing she was the biggest woman in the bridal party had sliced through her today, especially beside Liza and Charlene, who were slender in columns of cream silk and blush silk respectively rather than in enormous ballgowns.
‘The sort of thing Charlene’s wearing won’t suit you, Ginger,’ Liza had said that day in the bridal shop, standing back to assess her friend’s outfit.
‘Whatever you want,’ Ginger had said valiantly, even though she was sure something a bit more fitted would be better than this dress with its acres of fabric and boob-enhancing qualities. But if Liza wanted her wearing this, Ginger would wear it. That’s what friends did.
Friends.
She’d thought Liza was her friend.
But Liza thought she didn’t want to be thin, that she hid behind her body when, really, she wanted to be seen in spite of it. For people to see the tenderness of her heart; to see that a larger physical body could as easily hide a fragile soul as a thin one.
That the outside and the inside were so terribly, terribly different.
Today, on her thirtieth birthday, it turned out that her best friend only thought of her in terms of her body weight.
Thought she was fat. That horrible word. As if being fat was the worst crime in the world.
You could be anything you wanted in this world, but you couldn’t be fat. No matter what else you achieved, that wiped out the achievement or whatever was on the inside.
To add to the pain, Liza wanted to edit her friends list and Ginger hadn’t made the cut.
Just like that.
Time, friendship – none of it mattered except for her weight.
Ginger wanted to cry, could feel the traitorous tears rearing up, but she wasn’t going to, not now. She would not rush around, red-faced and blubbering.
Blubber and blubbering: that was her.
Oh yes, she could insult herself just as easily as Liza and Charlene did.
Ginger did self-hatred on an industrial scale.
Only she’d never expected Liza to do it, too. Not after twenty-six years of friendship.
She closed her eyes and thought. Getting out of here would need a plan and she needed to be out of this hotel or she would break down completely.
She had her tiny bridesmaidy handbag: there was nothing else in the reception room. If she could sneak upstairs to her bedroom, she could speedily change into her ordinary clothes and leave. She wasn’t going to talk to anyone, not explain anything. She knew she could get upstairs via the back staircase.
Summoning up the courage from somewhere in her bruised heart, she left the women’s room.
To distract herself, Ginger thought of all the tough things she’d had to do in her life.
Exist in a world where she had no mother and everyone else did. Smile and pretend it didn’t hurt when the girls in her class made Mother’s Day cards and she couldn’t. She’d made one for Great-Aunt Grace, who was not precisely motherly but who loved Ginger fiercely in her own eccentric way.
She’d braved college, scared of leaving people like Liza – what an irony – to swim in waters she was sure would be full of sleek sharks. Yet it was there that she’d found her tribe: people who liked knowledge, books, seeking things out.
Her first job: where that first, terrifying day someone had called her a ‘fine big lump of a girl who’d keep a man warm at night’. Ginger hadn’t run crying or screamed harassment. No, she’d begun developing her tough-girl persona.
‘You can dream, old-timer,’ she’d said, dredging up a wide smile, as if he hadn’t hurt her to her marrow.
She’d done all that. She could do this, too.
Then she rounded a corner and reached the bit of the lobby where she needed to slip into the corridor to the back stairs.
Despite being almost hidden by a selection of giant palms, she could see the after-party guests arriving. She recognised some of Liza’s outer circle, people Liza didn’t really hang around with, so they wouldn’t have been considered good enough to ask to the wedding but were still perfect for the after-party.
If they saw her, they would look at her dress and smile, or worse, say: ‘Oh, you look lovely, Ginger.’ Which was a lie, Ginger thought. A complete lie. She obviously looked terrible and everyone thought it but nobody had said it to her face.
And then she stilled. Over to one side of the lobby stood James, Liza’s new husband, along with Liza, Charlene and Stephen, the man that Ginger had really thought she was going to take upstairs to her room. The man who’d asked her for a date, when he had a girlfriend.
He still looked handsome but also strangely conniving at the same time and how had she not noticed that his eyes were so close together?
She was overcome with a desire to slap him, but Ginger, who had never used physical violence in her life, wanted to hit Liza even more.
Liza had betrayed her totally.
Ginger wanted to scream: When were you going to edit me out of your life, Liza?
The four beautiful people were laughing. Probably about her.
Stupid, sad old Ginger – fancying a man who would only want to grope her because she’d pushed herself on him.
Rage, which had been absent when she was in the toilet cubicle reeling from shock, asserted itself.
With fierce determination, she walked right up to the quartet and stood in front of them, not caring that the tears she’d tried so hard to suppress had begun to roll down her face.
‘I heard you,’ she said, staring at Liza, ignoring everyone else. ‘I heard you in the bathroom, I was in one of the stalls. I can’t believe you’d talk about me like that. I’m your oldest friend. How could you say all those things?’
Liza looked discomfited, which was something Ginger had rarely seen before.
‘Well,’ blustered Liza, faced with this new, angry Ginger. ‘Nobody said you can’t snog Stephen. Might be good for you. Get you over the drought . . .’
‘What drought?’ Charlene was eager to know.
‘The permanent bloody drought,’ said James, who looked bored. ‘Let’s not ruin our day, Liza,’ he said to his new wife. ‘Ginger, go and do the wild thing with Stephen. Get it out of your system. You need a fuck. Virginity’s only for the really religious. At your age, it’s embarrassing. You just need a kick-start.’
Ginger felt the words like a fist to her solar plexus.
‘You’ve never had sex?’ gasped Charlene, fascinated. ‘Like, ever?’
‘You told James about me,’ said Ginger quietly to Liza. ‘My secret.’
‘We’re married, now,’ Liza said defensively. ‘I tell him everything.’
‘Liza was only trying to help,’ interrupted James. ‘I told Stephen because he’s a decent guy and he’s been around the block, you know, could give you what you want.’
He slapped Stephen on the back.
‘What I want? Meaningless sex to get rid of my embarrassing virginity with a man who has a girlfriend? How could you?’
‘Listen, Ginge,’ said Stephen, wading in. ‘We would have had fun, babes, we could still have some fun – don’t be so heavy.’
It was the wrong word to use.
Ginger stared at him.
Heavy.
So the wrong word: a fat, heavy, pitiful virgin on her thirtieth birthday who thought she’d finally found somebody special.
Instead she was part of some cruel fix-up where everyone would laugh about her afterwards.
Satisfied that Ginger had at last had a man, Liza could happily unfriend her and the twenty-six years of knowing each other would cease to exist.
How had she ever thought Liza was her friend?
Her brothers, Mick and Declan, hated Liza, always had.
Great-Aunt Grace, her father’s aunt, and her only female relative, had agreed.
‘A little madam – take care of yourself around her,’ she’d warned. Grace was wise. Utterly eccentric, but wise.
They were all devastatingly correct and it had taken this for her to see it: this public humiliation.
Ginger swivelled and walked towards the corridor where the back stairs lay.
Nobody called after her, nobody said ‘please come back’.
Liza, who could have hurried after her in the high but comfortable shoes Ginger had helped her choose, did none of those things.
They let Ginger go alone and she kept walking, ramrod straight, not once looking back.
At the small staircase, she went up to her floor, sweating as she hurried.
Finally, she was in her hotel bedroom – had it really only been a few hours before that she’d been here getting ready, so happy for her friend? Why hadn’t she come up here to take off her damn tights?
Then she wouldn’t have heard those horrible words.
But she’d had to hear them, Ginger thought sadly.
Fate had wanted her to. The truth shall set you free, she thought, remembering her Gloria Steinem from college, but wow, it was utterly devastating. She would need a lot more time for it to merely piss her off.
She began to laugh, and then the laugh turned to tears as she thought that, really, there couldn’t be anyone having as bad a birthday in the whole city as her. And then she closed her eyes, and let the tears fall.
I wish that next year, everything in my life could be totally different.