Free Fat Chance by Nick Spalding

in our jobs, what kind of house we want to live in, and where we want to go on holiday —but had never broached the topic of children.
    ‘Um, do you want to have kids one day?’ Greg asks tentatively.
    My heart rate rockets. This is one of those conversations that can make or break a fledgling relationship. If Greg is dead set against children we could have a major problem. ‘Yeah,’ I tell him quietly. ‘I would like them one day. You?’
    He scratches his nose and looks away from me, towards where the little boy is now crying due to the fact he’s dropped the luminous lolly. ‘I’ve never really thought about it,’ he says.
    ‘Oh.’ I pick at a thread coming out of the seam of my jeans.
    Greg turns back to me. ‘But you know what? If I ever did, I’d want them with you.’
    ‘Would you?’
    ‘Yeah. I reckon our kids would be gorgeous.’
    Just like his smile.
    ‘And smart!’ I point out. ‘They’d be really clever.’
    He grins. ‘And if it was a boy . . . he’d be hung like a donkey.’
    ‘Of course!’ I laugh and throw my arms around him.
    Greg kisses me with a passion that makes me wish we were already on our way home. At that moment I feel a swell of contentment that warms my soul. I love this man more than words can say, and one day (when I’m past the age of thirty, obviously) I will happily bear his child.
    At least that was the plan . . .
    Then life got in the way. As did about a million calories.
    By the time we started trying to get pregnant—several years after our theme park chat—I was overweight, unhealthy, and highly unlikely to conceive.
    No-one ever, ever plans to get fat.
    I am constantly irritated by people who think that fat folk are just lazy slobs who have let themselves get into the state they’re in via their own shortcomings.
    It isn’t like one second you’re thin . . . and then you’re fat. It happens over months and years.
    It happens because life gets in the way . Because at some point, unless you’re blessed with a bank balance that ends in a lot of zeros, you stop looking at yourself in the mirror because you’re too damn busy looking at the bills.
    If you don’t get fat, then maybe you smoke too much, or drink too much, or hit your kids, or gamble—or any one of a thousand other bad habits that human beings fall into when they’re stressed to high heaven—thanks to the vagaries of day-to-day existence.
    I’m not trying to make excuses for the fact I put on over five stone between the ages of eighteen and thirty-seven. All I’m trying to say is that I didn’t know it was happening until it was too late . When I did eventually realise I didn’t have the time or energy to do anything about it. There never was a baby past the age of thirty. Never was a small child to cart around the sweet shops of Thorpe Park on a sunny afternoon.
    Instead all the sweets went in my mouth.
    And now I’m thirty-seven and the likelihood I’ll ever have a baby is fast diminishing. It would be even if I wasn’t grossly overweight .
    And who have I confided my fears, doubts, and worries about never getting pregnant to?
    Elise Bailey.
    ‘What are you asking me, Elise?’ I say to her in the coldest voice possible.
    Her face blanches. She knows what’s going on in my head right now. I can see indecision cross her face.
    Does she let me off the hook and lose the strong material? Or does she soldier on and keep pressing me?
    ‘I’m just wondering if being so large has affected your life as a woman.’ She gulps almost audibly. ‘Some reports indicate it’s harder to get pregnant when you’re overweight. Have you encountered that issue by any chance?’
    Unbelievable .
    A friendship potentially thrown out of the window for the sake of entertaining the listeners.
    ‘I suppose I have,’ I say flatly. I can feel my face flushing redder and redder. ‘I haven’t been able to get pregnant.’
    ‘Because you’re overweight?’
    That’s what the doctors have been