Free Maximum Exposure by Jenny Harper Page B

of his smile was directed at her. At last her efforts had been recognised – but it had taken ten dead on the roads and a major fire to achieve it. What a price.
    ‘So congratulations, team. A great start. Let’s hope we can even better it next week. Sharon? A bit of corruption on the local Council perhaps?’ Sharon smiled bravely. ‘Everyone likes a good scandal.’
    Except those exposed by it, Daisy thought grimly. How could he say that when he’d just been the centre of a scandal himself? And was this really the way to save the paper?
    Ten minutes later, they received the first phone call and from then on, it was madness. Ruby, fielding calls feverishly, was getting increasingly upset. Daisy got so distressed by the complaints that she stuck a made-up appointment in The Diary and headed out. The rest of them, she learned later, had had to cope as one by one every member of every club, group, society, and association in the neighbourhood rang to protest indignantly that the report of their meeting seemed to have been missed out this week.

Chapter Ten
    On Monday evening she walked into the kitchen in her new jeans wailing, ‘Look! Look at this!’ She’d bought the same size as always, but they simply wouldn’t zip up.
    ‘Lie on the floor and tug,’ advised Lizzie, ever practical.
    Daisy lay down and tugged. The zip eased up an inch and stuck.
    ‘Here, let me,’ Lizzie pulled on the slide. It refused to budge. ‘Nope. No good. You’ll have to change them for the next size up.’
    Daisy sat up, horrified. ‘No way! Jeez, what am I going to do? Horrible, horrible, horrible!’
    ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Daisy, the world is not conspiring against you. If your jeans are too small it’s because you’re too fat. Do something about it.’
    Daisy stared at her, her mouth sagging open. Where was the laid-back, gentle Lizzie she knew and loved?
    Lizzie drew a tired hand across her forehead, gathering her thick hair back and twisting it into a scrunchie she found round her wrist. ‘Sorry Dais, didn’t mean to snap, I slept really badly last night.’ She gave an apologetic smile, then went on, ‘but to be honest, it is down to you. Go on a diet, go to the gym, preferably do both. The jeans’ll soon fit.’
    Daisy scrambled up from the floor, reeling from the shock of Lizzie’s outburst.
    ‘Right,’ she said, and padded back into her bedroom to find her old jeans.
    But Lizzie’s words stuck and she made a resolution to rejoin the Hailesbank Fitness Centre. On Wednesday, between filing her last photographs and covering an important presentation by Provost Porter to a delegation of Russians visiting from the twin city of Uskbegost, she snatched a break and headed off to an appointment with Markie Moss, a camp young fitness instructor who’d been assigned as her ‘friendly personal trainer’.
    Now, self-conscious in lycra leggings and a baggy old T-shirt that she’d optimistically thought might cover the worst of her bulges, she was standing at the door of the gym. There was no escaping her fate.
    It was like an alien world.
    ‘Height? Weight? Waist, hip, thigh measurements?’ Markie, fired personal questions at her with no sense of embarrassment or discretion. Daisy was unable to answer most of them – she’d steered clear of scales for years. She was forced to succumb to the indignity of being weighed and measured and was shocked at the results, which she could hardly dispute.
    ‘Medication? Heart problems? Breathing difficulties? Back problems?’
    This was worse than school medicals and heaven knows they’d been embarrassing enough.
    ‘No, nothing. I’m fine. Really,’ she stammered, already wishing she hadn’t come.
    ‘What kind of regular exercise do you take?’
    ‘Erm, I … well I have to walk a fair bit in my job.’
    ‘How far?’
    ‘Well, across fields, that kind of thing.’
    ‘How many fields? How big?’
    Daisy stared at Markie. Was he being serious? She glanced at his biceps,