table with a crash. I’m sitting with my head in my hands, my hair hiding my face, so I can see why she’s thinking the worst. I lift my face up to see her looking at me, head on one side, like a concerned sparrow.
‘Oh, it was fine. I’m just so tired that I can’t move. You know what it’s like when you start a new job – you’ve got so much stuff to remember and your brain gets overloaded. I could literally fall asleep here.’
‘That’s not a good idea,’ she says, briskly. ‘We’re supposed to be going to Pilates, remember?’
‘Oh my God. I can’t.’
‘It’ll be good for you.’
‘I don’t want to engage my core and strengthen my glutes. I want to lie on the sofa with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s and watch crap on TV.’
‘You can do that afterwards. It’s not on until nine.’
‘You know what I mean.’
She hooks me under the elbow and tugs me up to standing. ‘Come on, I’m not going on my own. Last time I did that creepy Charles tried to hit on me afterwards.’
‘FINE,’ I say, yawning so hard my jaw cracks.
The thing about living in Notting Hill is that even the most basic gym class is super posh. There’s a string of black Range Rovers parked outside the fitness studio, and inside everyone’s Lululemoned from head to toe. I’m in a bog-standard pair of sports leggings from JD Sports and a vest top, so I hide at the back of the room so nobody notices me, taking a yoga mat and parking myself in the corner beside a young mum who has a sleeping baby in a carrier. Becky’s standing at the door answering a last-minute call when the instructor walks in.
‘Hello, everyone.’ She’s a cheerful looking Australian woman of about forty-five, with the figure of an eighteen-year-old. Her buttocks are so perky that they look like they need their own morning TV show. She tosses her water bottle to the side of the room and claps her hands. Her ponytail swings. Oh God, I think, this is shaping up to be a torture session.
‘Now then,’ she says, giving me a welcoming smile. ‘We’re going to shake things up slightly this evening, for those of you who like to hide in the corners. Pull your mats back a couple of feet.’
Everyone does as they’re told. There’s a very quiet murmur of dissent, but nobody’s brave enough to speak up.
‘Excellent. So the back row is now the front row, and the front row is the back.’ She looks very pleased with herself.
I don’t know who’s more disappointed – the Lycra-clad goddesses who like to show off in front of everyone, or the scruffy reprobates like me who are now centre stage. I’m pretty certain my knickers have gone up my bum and now I can’t hoick them back out.
I haven’t been to a gym class since school, when Miss Bates the terrifying PE teacher used to make us do yoga with a side order of military-style barked instructions. Now I’m standing beside my mat wondering what exactly I’m expected to do.
We start off lying down, and it all seems very restful and soothing. But the next thing I know we’re on our sides doing something with our legs that’s making me want to cry. I’m not the only one. Just as we shift positions, the baby starts screaming at the top of his lungs, and there’s a brief – but oh God, much appreciated – pause as his mother hisses an apology and gathers him up and exits, trailing muslin cloths and water bottles, her yoga mat unravelling behind her. I eye the clock. Another half an hour to go and then I can escape.
‘Keep those heels together. We want to feel those glutes engaging,’ she says, cheerfully.
My glutes feel like they’ve been set on fire and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sit down again. This is torture.
It’s possible it’ll go down in history as the longest half hour of my life. I’ve seen Pilates classes before, and I always thought they looked pretty gentle – like exercise classes for people who can’t be bothered getting all sweaty. Except now I’m lying face down on the floor with my arms by my sides, doing what looks like the tiniest little movement. I wait until the instructor has passed by me and flop my arms down onto the mat, and lie there quietly, like roadkill.
15th January
Next morning, I wake up with the alarm and sit up with a yelp of pain.
Last night, as we’d walked home Becky had said, cheerfully, ‘You’re not going to be able to walk tomorrow.’
Bloody hell she wasn’t joking.
‘You all right?’
I bump into Alex as he’s coming out of the bathroom, wrapped in a grey dressing gown. He’s towelling his hair and looking amused.
‘No I am not all right. Becky took me to a torture chamber last night and now I can’t actually walk, and I’ve got three meetings in a row this morning.’
‘You need to come for a walk to loosen yourself up. You free on Friday afternoon?’
I nod. ‘Ow.’
‘It hurts to nod?’
Stupidly, I nod again. ‘Apparently. Ow. Anyway, yes I am free. Well, I’m working, but we all get Friday afternoons off to work from home, so … as long as I catch up over the weekend, I think that’s fair enough.’
Alex looks at me, one eyebrow cocked slightly.
I press my lips closed. God, I can’t half go on. ‘Yes.’
‘Excellent. I’m free at one. Want to meet me here and we can go for a wander?’
18th January
I meet Jess after lunch. She’s still in work clothes – a pair of dark grey trousers, black boots and a soft red jumper, which is an improvement on my work uniform. I’ve been living in scrubs for the last week on a placement in the paeds ward, and it wasn’t until I got home last night that I realised I had a teddy bear sticker stuck to the side of my beard. I’d like to think nobody noticed, but knowing the staff of Paddington Ward, I suspect they thought it was amusing.
‘You okay?’
‘Yes,’ she says, but it’s in that sort of brittle, not very convincing kind of way.
‘What’s up?’
‘Just one of those days. Loads of work stuff.’
‘We don’t have to do this if you’d rather get on?’
She shakes her head. ‘No, I need the fresh air. Just that first week of work thing. I feel like I haven’t a clue what I’m doing.’
We start walking.
‘So
