She did a double take. Nine stone five! She’d lost almost four pounds this week so far. She hugged herself with delight. Just wait until Martin O’Brien saw her in her jeans, the smart alec creep. She hated Martin O’Brien with a deep and burning hatred. Were the gates of heaven to be closed in her face she could never forgive him for the pain, hurt and awful humiliation he had caused her. Her face burned at the memory of the contemptuously cruel words he had spoken to his friend, almost a year ago, not knowing that Caroline could hear. ‘A big lump of lard,’ he had called her. And worse, he had stood her up on the night of her Debs Ball, leaving her sobbing in an enormous sack of a dress which the dressmaker, lying in her teeth, had told her ‘flattered her curves.’ Caroline, whose self-esteem was almost non-existent, had pathetically believed her, trying not to see the ungainly bulky figure that filled the mirror. She had pretended she was losing weight; her waist had certainly gone in.
