‘I told you she was fat. Look at her.’ It was true. I was parked on the sofa one afternoon watching television, trying not to put pressure on my knees. Richard, just home from school, had brought three of his friends over to see me. They all stared open-mouthed at me for a moment, then rushed out to play in the garden. I smiled ruefully to myself – I had become a freak show for my kids. I knew all these lads, and they knew me. I didn’t blame Richard for showing me to them like this – after all I was fat. It was horrific to me, but just a fact of life to him. I had changed, and there it was. Even Sarah had taken to calling me her ‘fat Mammy’. I am short, with a small frame, and I normally weigh around 45 kilos, or seven and a half stone. I had heard that people could put on weight with steroids, and the last thing I wanted to do was to acquire the physique of an Eastern Bloc shot-putter. But since that July, when I started taking prednisone, I had been ravenous.
