Free Before the Dawn by Kate Hewitt Page A

remember.
    And after awhile I’d smile stiffly and shake my head.  “No, thank you.  You just go right ahead.”
    Then Karen got engaged.  Well, of course they wanted me to make the wedding cake.  Something different, Karen said, not a stodgy old fruit cake. 
    So I came up with a magnificent creation, three different tiers of vanilla, milk and dark chocolate, separated by mousse layers and decorated with large shavings of white and dark chocolate and glazed raspberries on top.  It was magnificent. 
    I was bridesmaid at the wedding, in a size fourteen that my mum insisted would fit me, even though I’d told her I was now a size sixteen.
    “Sixteen? No, you can’t be, Sherry...”
    So I ended squeezed into a dress that was unflattering to begin with (does anyone look good in a corset style dress?). I’d come to accept by then that my figure was always going to be on the generous side, cake eating or no.
    Karen wore a strapless dress of raw silk and had to wear a padded bra to keep it up.  That gave me some small comfort, but the fact remained I was miserable.
    It was towards the end of the reception, when I was cutting slices of cake for the guests to take away, hidden by those magnificent chocolate layers (or was I just invisible?) that I overheard my uncle, dancing with Karen. 
    “You look stunning, Karen.  Really beautiful.“  A dry chuckle.  “I didn’t realize your sister was so heavy.  I suppose you got the skinny genes, eh?”
    “She certainly didn’t get them,” Karen trilled.
    “Oh well.  There are worse things than being fat... or having a fat sister.”
    They whirled away, and I stood there, cake knife in hand, unable to believe that my own uncle had called me fat. A fat sister.  That’s all he saw me as.  That’s all Karen saw me as, or even my parents. I’d known they were obsessed with looks, I’d known they thought I needed to lose weight, but really... it suddenly occurred to me that that was all they saw.  They didn’t see me as a person, with thoughts, ideas... dreams. 
    In a daze, I finished cutting the cake, saving the small top layer for Karen and her husband.  I wrapped it up in wax paper and was planning to pack it in a hamper that they were taking with them on the drive down to Cornwall, for their honeymoon.  I was, I swear I was.
    But somehow I ended up in the powder room of the posh hotel, all plush seats and real cloth hand towels.  The top layer of the cake was still in my hands.
    Slowly I unwrapped it and stared down at it, the chocolate shavings and glazed raspberries, my masterpiece.  I sat on a toilet seat and continued to gaze at it.
    And then I ate it.  Methodically, without thinking, my mind a blank, I ploughed through the cake, eating with my hands.
    Just as I finished and sat there, stunned and sated, who walked in but Karen.  She was in a size eight striped trouser suit that made her look like a silk candy cane.
    “Oh my God.”  She stared at me in horror.  “What have you done?”
    I gazed down at myself, my sticky hands, my dress smeared with icing.  A glazed raspberry had nestled itself in my cleavage.  Then I looked up at her and shrugged.
    “I’ve eaten your cake.”
    “Our cake?  Our wedding cake?”  Karen’s voice came out in a squeak.
    “It’s not like you were going to eat it.”  Karen hadn’t touched a dessert since puberty.  “And anyway, isn’t it what you’d expect of your fat sister?”  My voice choked, and I got up, smeared dress and all, and left the powder room.  “By the way, it was good,” I said over my shoulder.  “It was really good.”
    I wish I could say that I felt satisfied and avenged, but instead I felt sick and pathetic.  I grabbed my coat to hide the ravages of my cake-eating binge, and snuck home without even saying goodbye.  And never ate a cake again.
    Perhaps I should have left the whole industry altogether.  It can be hard, faced with cakes day in and day out, to harden my resolve.