Januariad

Meredith’s weight-loss regime was undermined, always and fundamentally, by a confused and ill-defined precept of universal fairness, both in form and in the manner it applied to her own life. For example, in her average week she would piously consume only the most healthy fruit and vegetables and lentils, or combinations thereof, forgoing frys, chocolates, liquorice whips, roast potatoes, all of those temptations that most keenly demanded her forbearance. By the time Saturday rolled around, it seemed only fair that she was entitled to a day off, a reward for her dedication. And so within a couple of hours she would ingest more sugar and bad fats than her grandmother managed in a full week at the same age. Her weight remained, her knees deteriorated, and the philosophy that had carried her through forty-seven happy years came under quiet attack. There was no key revelation involved, such as might suit the telling of a story like this. No bolt of lightning revealed the cracks in her foundations. It was simply a kernel that grew out of her gut, watered by the weekly disappointment of her Thursday-night weigh-in. Out of her initial frustration at the massive unfairness of her static weight emerged the bright, freeing idea: Life is not fair. More importantly, though: Life is not unfair. The very notion of fairness is irrelevant, a mushy, irrational layer pasted over the top of the world by the human perspective. After a week of healthy food it was not fair that she should eat whatever she wanted at the weekend, nor was it fair that her legs ached so terribly after her eight-mile walk the previous morning. Neither mattered. The taste of lemon-meringue tart wasn’t fair, and neither was the smell of cabbage soup. It wasn’t fair when her bulk began to steadily shrink under her new philosophy (or lack of one), and the reduction of complaints from her knees could also not be described as fair. Her reduced cholesterol count was not fair, and equally it wasn’t fair when she walked in on her husband fucking a nineteen-year-old intern in the corner of his office. It wasn’t fair when Meredith broke his forearm with a large spanner, and it wasn’t fair that this forced him to open the safe under his desk left-handed, on his knees, vomiting from the pain of his injuries. Filling a rucksack with the March takings wasn’t fair, and driving the unused four-wheel drive from his lot wasn’t fair either. It wasn’t fair that she boarded a ferry to the Continent later that afternoon. None of this was fair. It was just what happened.