The Perfect 10

The Perfect 10
Louise Kean

A controversial, throught-provoking and witty novel about the pursuit of perfection – the perfect appearance, relationship and life, from a young, hot talent.Sunny Weston is bright, breezy and fun. She is also fat.Well, less fat that she was. In her pursuit of the perfect figure – and the life to match – Sunny has lost seven stone, with two to go. Yet as her thighs shrink her problems grow. When gorgeous Adrian at work decides that the new streamlined Sunny is the girl for him, she should be thrilled. But then she realises that Adrian loves her looks, not who she is.The only perfect thing about Cagney James are his put-downs. Cynical funny and old-school cool, he runs an agency that specialises in catching cheating lovers – something he has plenty of experience of.When Sunny and Cagney meet it’s loathe at first sight. Their hearts are too hard to see that they might have met their match, so they declare war instead. But sparks of anger have a habit of becoming flames of passion …

LOUISE KEAN

The Perfect 10

Dedication (#ulink_979cc2d7-6349-535d-bede-298fa8e0b51d)

For my sister Amy, withlove … remembering LarryMize, and his quiet village.

Epigraph (#ulink_4553daa2-35ed-5ee4-ad29-025f8ad277c2)

‘No one can make you feel inferior

without your consent.’

Eleanor Roosevelt

Contents

Cover (#u56a6a681-41d0-51a3-8a63-1aa179a3339f)

Title Page (#ua69216ec-4d81-5174-8480-08f4bc75233e)

Dedication (#u776100a7-2f66-5d0b-b365-e7f045470675)

Epigraph (#u5c84fa72-bfcb-5a89-9a9a-e8d615db563b)

Magic Numbers (#u91db2ad5-912d-5175-a43c-0fe8ba901baa)

One: Proud (#uf411f668-e3df-567f-af34-0452827420df)

Two: An Inspired Puff of Air (#u2c3046d8-76f2-5350-9b7b-c3c40f229010)

Three: The Monkey Nut Miracle Marvel Man (#litres_trial_promo)

Four: Addicted (#litres_trial_promo)

Five: Just a Side Dish … (#litres_trial_promo)

Six: Killing Love and Sex Over Dinner (#litres_trial_promo)

Seven: Sermon on How to Mount (#litres_trial_promo)

Eight: Plunging In (#litres_trial_promo)

Nine: A Nipple-flicking Road Trip! (#litres_trial_promo)

Ten: A Prince of Wales (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue: The Soles of My Feet are on Fire! (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Magic numbers (#ulink_61b76c76-fc19-516b-86f3-e0c9cf34a991)

The colour of my eyes is dependent on how much I weigh today. They are either the silver grey of a morning mist across a Canadian lake as the sun rises and catches the cold gleaming water. Or they are the colour of dishwater, greasy and thick with grime, dirty with all of the family’s Sunday roasting pans, and forks and knives, and casserole dishes and baking trays – murky and grimy and ugly.

Depending on what I weigh, my hair might be the browns and caramels of a thick chocolate bar that melts and shines and drips promise by the fire. Or the flat brown of a library carpet, laid in 1972, and trampled on by cheap shoes and schoolchildren every day since – tired and thin and lifeless …

Depending on how much I weigh today, my breasts may be round and full, reminiscent of a Russ Meyer vixen, ready to be grasped, voluminous and juicy. Or they are veiny and sagging, the skin at the top indented and ravaged by stretched tears, sitting lazily on my ribcage, flattened and blotchy, and dry.

I will love or hate myself, depending on how much I weigh today.

ONE (#ulink_4590acbb-47c8-51c7-ad3c-cec72325d99a)

Proud (#ulink_4590acbb-47c8-51c7-ad3c-cec72325d99a)

Here’s what they don’t tell you when you lose seven stones in weight.

They don’t mention the loose skin. They forget to tell you that you’ll end up with a rice cake-grey stomach that wrinkles and crumples beneath pinched fingers like tissue paper. They don’t divulge that on the upper inside of freshly toned thighs two flabby folds of stretched skin will stand guard over your pelvis, like a pair of spitefully unskinned chicken breasts, with a Stalinist determination not to budge. They don’t let on about the pubic pouch that they guard so angrily, that refuses to deflate in line with the rest of you, lending your naked profile a hermaphrodite edge.

They make believe your life will be a series of ketchup-red headlines yelling, ‘Now Sunny Can Wear a Swimsuit and Feel Fabulous!’ or, ‘Sunny Buzzes With So Much New-Found Energy She Could Burst!’

The truth is that the energy reserves alone can be spiteful. Some days I’m woken at dawn by the sun streaming in through the cracks in my curtains, and I’ll roll over in bed, hug my pillow, and determine to drift in and out of sleep until it’s too hot to stay under the duvet any longer. My new ‘healthy lifestyle’ denies me this simple pleasure. As soon as I open my eyes I am buzzing. I can no longer spend an entire Sunday in front of the television with the papers strewn out before me, carelessly picking at the foreign news, munching on Maltesers. My metabolism is so wired I wake up feeling like I’ve been drip-fed crack in my sleep. My body wants to run everywhere: to the train station, down supermarket aisles, from my bed to my wardrobe in the morning. It disconcerts people. They assume I am running from something, and maybe I am. They don’t tell you that some days you will fall so violently off the diet wagon that you will consume a family-sized tub of salted peanuts in twenty-five minutes – your hand dipping rhythmically in and out, passing nuts to lips without thought or care, and that it won’t matter an ounce if you run to the gym the next day. The perception is that anybody who loses a lot of weight has an iron will, and this is simply not true: you are mostly good, and occasionally bad. Detoxing is for monks, or freaks. A rogue band of particularly freakish monks actually invented the concept. They had remarkably clear skin, but they were still mad.

They won’t tell you that your nearest and dearest will inhale sharply if you eat a Quality Street in front of them, secure in the knowledge that the second you digest its seventy nutrition-free calories, you will regain every pound of weight you have previously lost. All seven stones of flesh will instantly bubble and gurgle under your skin – not gone, just hiding – until you suddenly and violently explode like a puffer fish into your old fat self. Despite the effort and determination and willpower you alone have mustered, people will still believe that you need to be protected from yourself. Thus the phrases, ‘But you’ve done so well so far!’ and, ‘Move the chocolates over here out of temptation’s way.’ Cue a kindly smile in your direction. Try not to speak with your fists when this happens.

They don’t tell you that you won’t find anything you actually want to wear in any of the clothes shops you were too humiliated to enter pre fat busting. The kind of shops where skin-and-bones teenage assistants used to eye you suspiciously if you so much as glanced at their carrier bags.

They don’t tell you how vain you will become. They won’t alert you to the fact, in advance, that you won’t know how to cope with looking in the mirror and seeing something you actually like, without succumbing to self-obsession, and fixating on the bits that refuse to become perfect, no matter how many miles you run, or how little dairy you eat. They don’t tell you that you will replace an addiction to food with an addiction to losing weight.

And they won’t tell you that you won’t be in love with Adrian any more.

Adrian, who couldn’t see past your belly, and who shouldered the burden of your unrequited love for so long.

Adrian, who was responsible for so many tears in front of the TV on lonely Saturday nights.

Adrian who inadvertently squished your soul daily for three years.

You just won’t love him any more, and it will really confuse you.