CLEANER II: Chapter Five - Part Eight

MELISSA

All my life I had been a huge lumbering heifer.

Any kind of grace or agility had been out of the question. When it came to sports at school, my only drive had been in how to circumnavigate it. I never really took part, even if I was “taking part.” I walked during cross-country. I stood sullenly with my arms folded during netball. I claimed cramps as often as my idiot male PE teacher was gullible enough to believe it.

I didn’t play outside as a child; I stayed in. I wasn’t a popular little girl. Children didn’t call for me and I didn’t call for them. If I had they would have laughed in my face. I didn’t do exercise of any kind.

As a result I was round and chubby. I sweated and panted when climbing stairs. My muscles were only strong enough to carry off the waddling gait that trundled my massive bulk from place to place.

All summer I had been in training and I was a new person now. My fat was (on the whole) a thing of the past. My muscles were honed and toned. They had needed to build up quickly so that I could manage to train with all that extra weight to carry that I started out with.

But even though I had done so well; transformed myself as surely as if I’d had a magical pendant to do the job, I was still scared to death when I turned up at the ballet class.

It wasn’t something that was available on the resort; I had travelled into town to do it. There was a dance academy that ran sessions for locals and tourists. I found it online and signed up.

When I got there I didn’t want to go in. I just had so much conditioning against this sort of thing. Everybody knew Melissa Chapman couldn’t do something like this.

But then... I wasn’t Melissa Chapman anymore. I was Dahlia Western.

Melissa Chapman was an obese, four-eyed cleaning woman who twenty four hours earlier had been pathetic enough to spy on me while I chatted up the bloke by the pool.

I could do this. I could do anything.

I showed myself in the door. A Greek lady ran the class with a fat man pressing play and stop on the music. She was an ageing beauty; very exuberant and welcoming. I started to feel better.

The group seemed to be a mixture of different levels of talent. While I got ready I kept an eye on what was going on and felt a bit better about being there. I wasn’t going to be the only duffer in the class.

I recalled Dahlia spying on me from the day before and grinned to myself. I had been a fantasy of mine and to see it play out almost exactly had been wonderful. That she had sunk so low that she would consider doing that: spying on me with a man! And to think that she really thought she was hidden, trying to hide that bloated body of hers behind plants. I laughed out loud to think of it but the dancers noticed so I covered it up. I didn’t want them to think I was laughing at them.

How wonderful it had been to show off my newfound confidence and charisma, knowing she was watching and judging herself against it! I had wondered if it had been a risk; pushing her to the point where she would call it off; but I was almost at the point now where I honestly didn’t feel that that would happen. Surely she had been pushed by me or herself beyond the point where anything would stop her bizarre and self-destructive spiral into corpulent obscurity and servile poverty.

Ah me, oh my, but I felt happy.

I finished getting ready and joined the class. It was a little difficult getting into it at first – my body still wasn’t used to being graceful, despite the lessons I’d been having – but it didn’t take long. I had never felt this way in my life: that anything was within reach and possible. I think my confidence was leaving the atmosphere and shooting up into space it was so high.

The teacher was kind and good at explaining things and as the lesson went on I started to realise something. I wasn’t the worst in the class or the second worst. Of the beginners, I wasn’t close to bottom. My modelling lessons and the strength I had built in my arms and legs actually gave me an advantage. And that confidence. I was starting to realise that things like this were ninety percent self-belief. It was the tense muscles and trepidation of a defeatist attitude that made most folks stumble. Those things weren’t a problem for me.

One wall of the room was made up of tall wall mirrors separated by carved and varnished wooden strips. I watched myself through the glass, smiling. I looked so fabulous; so elegant. And... beautiful. Could that really be?

But it seemed to be so to my eye. And surely I had managed to bed so many men now. It must have been true.

Seeing myself in such broad mirrors for so long; seeing myself move so gracefully; it did something in my mind; clicked a switch from off to on that ignited a flashing sign in my head, telling me that maybe I had never been ugly. Maybe I’d just drowned under the rivers of fat. Maybe beneath all that I had angular cheekbones and dimples like Dahlia’s and pretty eyes. With the makeup and hair I did look like a model.

And I realised something else.

Up until now I had fantasised about really taking Dahlia’s place; going back to world like that; really being her back in England in front of everybody. I had never really believed it was possible.

Things were different now. Looking at myself like this I was starting to believe. I was seeing the similarities in our facial structure and figures: mine and the Dahlia that had been unblemished by flab. I could almost believe – no I could actually believe – that it could really happen; that maybe I could actually pull it off.

I preened, radiant.

I had got up this morning looking forward to another day of smug luxury. I hadn’t realised how crucial this day would be.

I stopped dancing and just looked at myself.

It was possible. I was a beautiful woman. My body was amazing. My features really weren’t so different from hers.

I could do this. I could become Dahlia. For real.

And now I knew that I was ready to do it.