1

  He always used to walk to work, whatever the weather.

  Although, of course, in those days he’d lived only a few streets away from his office, so the journey could hardly have been considered a great feat of physical endurance. Apart from his sheer size contributing to a, rather higher than average, risk of chafing, that is.

  However, as an example of mental strength, and of confronting one’s fears and anxieties head on, it very much qualified.

  He was large.

  Obese.

  Deliberately so, but that didn’t really matter. The average passer-by couldn’t be expected to give any sort of thought to any of that.

  All they saw was a fat bloke.

  Occasionally, he would try to ring the changes, ever so slightly, and be ‘a fat bloke with earrings’ or ‘a fat bloke in a skirt’, but it didn’t seem to make too much difference in the grand scheme of things.

  ‘Fat’, that was the thing people noticed.

  He’d noticed something too.

  He’d seen it in their eyes and he’d heard it in their voices.

  Disgust.

  Based on nothing more than what he looked like.

  Interesting, very interesting.

  The number of comments he’d received from total strangers was simply staggering actually although, sadly, the quality of those remarks had been very predictable. He’d kept a tally chart in his diary to record the number of times his very appearance had solicited an

  ‘Oi, Fatty!’

  or a

  ‘You fat bastard!’.

  It had run to several – rather uninspiring – pages. That ought to have given him at least some degree of satisfaction. After all, obviously people were noticing him.

  But where the heck was the originality?

  He’d reserved a special page in that diary for ‘witty and/or original comments’, but only Anthea had ever managed to contribute to that with any sort of regularity. She’d never gone in for an obvious, run of the mill type insult: not when something much more deadly could be fashioned from the available raw materials for really not much more of an effort.

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  The woman was awesome, simply awesome.

  To go to the trouble of personalising each insult must have meant that she cared about him enough to want to bother.

  What a gift that was!

  You certainly couldn’t find anything remotely like it in the Argos catalogue.

  As far as the general population were concerned though, size was everything. Even Anthea herself had made one or two observations – with regard to some, rather specific, parts of his anatomy – which seemed to run along, more or less, those same lines.

  And yet, he’d never been unnecessarily concerned or upset by such size-related comments.

  After all, they weren’t even personal.

  Had anyone ever yelled out an

  ‘Oi! Your skirt is so last year’

  or, God forbid, a

  ‘Nice face – shame about that dress, mate’,

  then he might well have wished for the Earth to simply open up and swallow him whole.

  If such a meal would not have created a significant bout of geological indigestion.

  Fortunately, however, there seemed very little danger of that.

  Humphrey had installed a very large and very prominent mirror on the wall of ‘Somehow’ and he would stand in front of it, for at least thirty seconds, every morning when he first arrived.

  Anthea could never have done something like that. In actual fact, the mirror had been consigned to the pages of eBay very shortly after the pair of them had got together: at her, rather forceful, behest. Otherwise, she’d never have set one foot across his threshold.

  The funny thing was that, despite invariably being heckled, ridiculed, insulted and even abused during that very short walk to work each day, looking into that mirror was always a positive experience. It was always a great relief to find that the figure which stood before him never looked as horrendous as the general population would have had him believe.

  If only Anthea could’ve found a way to have the same sort of amicable relationship with reflective surfaces, their own relationship might well have been different.

  It was a crying shame, it really was.

  Still, Humphrey had been more than happy with things, from his own personal point of view.

  He was getting noticed.

  He was, in fact, an integral part of people’s days, providing them with an extremely valuable ‘service’, for want of a better description. People undoubtedly learned a great deal about themselves while they were abusing him and they – almost certainly – ended up feeling better about themselves.

  He’d learned that skill many years previously – in 1985, to be precise: that really had been a big year!) when he’d been called upon, at the last minute, to fill in for the captain of the school netball team.

  Obviously, he’d been the very definition of a ‘last resort’: well, as far as the powers-that-be were concerned, anyway. But every eligible girl had been otherwise engaged on a field trip to Lulworth or on a shoplifting reconnaissance to Woolworth’s or – like Louise – would never have been seen dead in a revealing burgundy netball skirt in the first place.

  Humphrey had stepped up to the plate.

  Or, at least, to the position of wing defence.

  The rules of the game hadn’t been too difficult to master and he’d certainly been feminine enough in his appearance and general demeanour to have raised no suspicions whatsoever amongst the members of his netball opposition. His side had stormed to a, quite unprecedented, victory and they’d managed to do so with considerable sporting style and panache.

  More to the point, his presence on the court, that day, had achieved the impossible: every girl there had gone home feeling good about herself. His presence had ensured that every single other player – both friend and foe – had known – irrefutably – that they were not most unattractive one out there.

  For one – magical – afternoon none of them had found themselves being labelled as ‘The Ugly One’, or ‘The Tubby One’, or ‘The One With The Five O’ Clock Shadow’.

  He had taken all that upon his own shoulders instead.

  He was a hero!

  Even the bare arse belting his father had given him for having the audacity to stand before him, boasting of his achievements, while still wearing that same burgundy netball skirt had not diminished the occasion one iota.

  Any attention was still better than nothing.