This text is courtesy of Emma Finn's Dark Tales of Transformation blog (now sadly defunct). Cleaner II was supposed to be a trilogy of transformation novels, but the author passed away before being able to complete it. The first book was published, the second one was left unfinished on Emma's blog (and now copied to Ladies to Maids as a precaution as Emma's blog could be taken down due to inactivity. You can read Chapters 4-6 here: it was too long for Blogspot to be published on one page). The first part of Cleaner II is available from Amazon and I highly recommend it to any fan of lady-to-maid stories. This novel is second to none. There is also the original version of Cleaner, also written by Emma Finn, which shares the original premise, but is different enough (and, more importantly, it was competed by the author) - also highly recommended.
Prologue - Part One
KATHERINE
Katherine had told herself that after the fifteenth missed call she would go round there and knock on the door, despite Dahlia’s clear instruction that she didn’t want to be disturbed. Ever again.
But the fifteenth call came and went and still she didn’t drive up to Summertop.
She knew she should, that was the thing. She knew there was the potential for actual physical danger to her employer.
... Former employer...
And certainly danger to her fragile psyche...
But Katherine was just as afraid that any further pressure from her would be enough to split Dahlia’s mind wide open, where up to now there were only hairline cracks.
At the start of each day she told herself she would go but immediately after the resolution she would remember Dahlia’s red-rimmed eyes and desperate expression at the hospital after her brother died, as she told her to leave her alone. It couldn’t have been clearer. And though the admonition hadn’t been enough to stop Katherine sending texts of support and voicemails promising succour, she hadn’t physically made the journey. She hadn’t gone up to Dahlia’s house to see her face to face.
It was the phone call that finally clinched it; that sent Katherine hurtling finally, over the river from Nockton Vale and up the valley wall into Pinecrest village.
Days had gone by since Steven’s death and when it became clear that Dahlia wasn’t getting back to the hospital about his body; that she hadn’t called an undertaker and obviously wasn’t going to; Katherine had interceded. Of course. And happily. Katherine had worked as Dahlia’s assistant for sixteen years and, especially after her husband’s death, she felt as close to her as family. She didn’t have anyone else. And Steven was part of that family; someone she saw regularly and respected immensely.
In fact, Katherine had very quietly but unreservedly been in love with him. Not in a way that would have ever made her say anything to him. That wouldn’t have felt... appropriate. But she had enjoyed the sight of him and the sound of him and, if she was lucky, the smell of him when he passed close by, oblivious to her little fantasies. It was why his death had been as awful for her almost as it would have if her own brother had died; why Dahlia’s rejection right afterwards had hurt all the more.
As soon as she understood that things needed doing that weren’t being done, she had called Dahlia, knowing the phone wouldn’t be picked up, and left a message to explain that she needn’t worry; that everything would be taken care of. Then she had ended the call and cried for a little while; only long enough to release the worst of the emotional build-up; nothing indulgent. She wasn’t the type for that; not when there was work to be done. A quick swipe of each eye and it was straight on to the phone again, dialling the number of a local undertaker and getting things organised; calling the hospital right afterwards.
It didn’t matter that Dahlia had fired her. Katherine didn’t need the money. Well over five years had gone by since she had admitted to herself that she would have gone on working for Dahlia for free; admitted that she loved the beautiful young woman like a daughter. But again, she would never have said such a thing to her. Propriety was one consideration; but more, it was the fear that a statement of that nature might imbalance the delicate state their relationship had and irrevocably change it.
How simple words were – just intangible vibration in the air – but their power was immense and oftentimes destructive. Better to continue with the banter and keep the real emotions close and secret, as she always did.
It was heartbreaking to be pushed away now, especially at this time when Dahlia needed her more than ever, but what could she do? It couldn’t be clearer that she wasn’t wanted; that she was making things worse. If the younger woman needed to continue with her... escapism games... then maybe that should be respected.
It was all the cleaner’s fault – Katherine was sure of that.
Melissa.
She wasn’t the cause of Dahlia’s underlying problems – that was the slow accrual of personal loss and the ebbing away of self-worth – but the solution the cleaner was offering could only be transient, and surely did more harm than good in the long run.
Or maybe dressing up and pretending to be someone else was the perfect escape from a fraught life. Katherine didn’t know; couldn’t know; but her instincts had only let her down a handful of times in her long years and they told her three things now like they were screaming at her...
That Dahlia was in serious trouble.
That swapping places with her cleaner, even for brief periods, would do more harm to her than good in the long run.
And that Melissa couldn’t be trusted. That she was only taking advantage of her employer’s fragile emotional state.
And it was while dwelling on this gut feeling for the thousandth time, while she pottered needlessly at the flowerbeds in her neat over-tended little garden, that Katherine received the call that finally pushed her into action; that got her into the car and driving, determined finally to do something; anything she could; to pull Dahlia back from the edge of that abyss she was skirting before it was too late.
Prologue - Part Two
KATHERINE
Katherine’s landline handset was on the outside ledge of the kitchen window and when it started to bleat it took four or five rings before she even registered it was hers. That made her hurry to snatch it up, creaking her back as she got back up to her feet from the kneeling pad she’d been using in front of her roses. For all nine steps from the flowerbed to the back wall she knew that it was Dahlia, finally, calling her back (it had, after all, been twenty one missed calls now), but the number on the little grey screen wasn’t Dahlia’s mobile, nor was it a local number. It had a London area code.
“Hello?”
“Katherine?”
Her brow contracted towards what would have become a frown as she tried to recognise the voice from that one spoken word, then it came to her. “Tommy? Is that you?”
“Yep. Sorry to bother you.”
Tommy was Dahlia’s agent and the jolt of quickening Katherine had felt at the belief that Dahlia herself was calling was accelerated still further. Tommy had been in regular contact back in the not too distant heyday of Dahlia’s modelling career, but nowadays he didn’t tend to call. Especially in these troubling times, Katherine’s first assumption was that it was bad news. The photo shoot had been yesterday. Dahlia’s career was meant to be getting the bump it needed to jump back onto the tracks and hurtle back toward prestige and stardom, but with the current decline of her mental state and her overeating, it couldn’t have gone well and Katherine feared the worst. With the morbidly pessimistic route her worrying had carried her lately, if anything, she feared calamity.
The phrases pounced out of her, one after another without a beat between them for inhalation. “What’s wrong? Is Dahlia okay? What’s happened?”
Tommy exhaled in a generous enough rush of air to carry the sound down the phone line. “She’s okay as far as I know,” he said. “I mean, she drove off okay yesterday after the... Well, we didn’t really have a photo shoot in the end.”
Katherine allowed herself a little nod at the confirmation of her supposition. “What happened?”
“It was a disaster. She may have burned her boats, at least with that magazine. It would have been better if she didn’t turn up at all.”
“What did she do?”
“Have you seen her lately?”
Katherine pictured her worn and desperate face again, shouting at her in the hospital corridor. “Not for a few days.”
“Well she’s really let herself go. It was shocking. She must have been at least a stone heavier. Her clothes weren’t on straight. Her hair and make-up were... Well, she looked terrible.”
“You know about her brother, Steven? Did she tell you?”
Pause. “Yeah. Yeah, she did. So, I understand, you know? I do understand. She should have cancelled. Nobody would have blamed her for that. She could have salvaged something then – set up another shoot.”
“Tommy, I don’t mean to be obtuse, but at this point, my lowest concern is whether Dahlia can restart her modelling career. I think it was the increasing pressure of that that got her in the state she’s in in the first place.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m being a dick. It’s just instinct. My mouth blabs on about the business without me even knowing. You’re right. And I’m just as concerned about her as you are.”
Katherine knew that couldn’t be true, but she said nothing. She was thinking.
“Tell me what’s going on,” said Tommy. “What else do you know? I know losing her brother must have been bad but Dahlia hasn’t been right for... well, since...”
“Since her parents were killed.”
“Yeah. I guess.” A moment of silence as the pieces slotted into place in his mind. “When she... flipped.”
“Her breakdown.”
“When she went into hospital.”
“Yes.”
“Another long silence.
“What happened at the photo shoot?” asked Katherine.
“She... They said she couldn’t do it. Weren’t too nice about the fact she’d put on weight. It didn’t help that she was so late. And she looked... Her face... I talked to her afterwards, at the car, and... She isn’t right. Is she?”
“No.” Katherine regarded her roses. The wind was picking up, knocking them backward and forwards.
“I tried to talk to her; you know; offer some help; but she drove off. I’ve been trying to call.”
“No answer.”
“No. Sent some texts. No reply. I thought I’d call you.”
“She hasn’t been in touch.”
“Have you been up there?” asked Tommy. “I’d nip round if I was local but...”
The question pinched Katherine between two great guilty claws, and suddenly the justifications she’d had for not driving up to Summertop seemed vacuous and poorly constructed. “No. She... Dahlia told me to stay away.”
“So, she’s all by herself?”
Again, the justified pinch, sharp this time; cutting deeper. She thought of Melissa. She thought of Melissa agreeing to help divert Dahlia from her descending path of withdrawal from the outside world, smiling at Katherine as she promised to do her best and then very obviously went inside the house to do the opposite.
“I’m not sure,” said Katherine.
There was another silence but it was all too clear what bristled within it: the stark condemnation from Tommy that Katherine was wasting time in her garden while Dahlia needed her and the anger Katherine levelled at herself for doing just that.
“Don’t you think that...”
“I have to go up there. I shouldn’t have put it off.”
“Well if you see her—”
“Sorry Tommy. I have to go. Sorry. I have to go now.”
He said something else but Katherine didn’t hear and she didn’t care what it was. She ended the call and hurried inside, dropping the handset down so carelessly that she didn’t even realise that she’d done it.
She found her handbag, didn’t bother with her coat; checked the car keys were inside; didn’t bother changing out of the grubby gardening clothes she was wearing; didn’t even think to.
She ran out the front door, not noticing that the lock didn’t fully engage and again, not caring, and rushed to her car.
All she could think about was Dahlia’s red-rimmed eyes; her desperate and tattered expression in that hospital corridor; and the image she’d conjured in response to Tommy’s description.
Her instincts were working again, hurling up new worst case scenarios made material from dread and pessimism. She had the sense that something momentous and awful had happened already; that she had already missed the one chance she had to divert it; but she also knew that she had to try. She had to get up there to Summertop and try to divert whatever dreadful new turn of events must surely be unravelling before it was too late.
Even if it was already far too late and nothing could be done.
Prologue - Part Three
KATHERINE
Summertop, Dahlia’s white palatial home, overlooked Nockton Vale from near the top of the ridgeline, holding a promontory view of the long valley and its weaving river. Katherine pulled urgently up onto its wide triangular drive and cut the engine.
She had sped here, almost in a panic, but now she was past the gates, that exigency was instantly drained, replaced instead by a sour dread that fizzled on her tongue and on the tight skin behind her ears.
Dahlia’s car was parked out front where it always was; as though she might emerge and climb into it; but every window was blank. Despite the gloomy afternoon weather, there were no lights on; no signs of the life Katherine was hoping for.
She got out of the car, not wanting to approach because that meant a confirmation of what she was becoming increasingly sure might be something terrible.
She had known Dahlia was not right for some time, but her feeling now was of a far deeper hurt even than that – a deep festering that had gone unchecked, even by Dahlia herself.
Katherine had never thought her employer capable of... of suicide, but could anyone really be sure? How many people knew a victim of suicide who had known it was coming when it did? Was that what she was going to find inside there?
She reached the foot of the steps leading up to the front door and climbed them, knocking tentatively, over-quietly. She knocked again hard enough to hurt the knuckles of her crooked fingers. Waited.
She waited longer than she needed to and knocked again. Waited again. Took out her keys. Hesitated. Went to knock a third time. Didn’t. Then Katherine inserted the front door key into the lock and opened the door.
Inside she went to call out but the absolute sense of emptiness stayed the intention. There wasn’t a single sound, and though the size of the house meant that it was still possible somebody was in, she knew in her heart that there wasn’t.
Katherine walked the ground floor, hoping for signs, but all she saw were troubling indications of disarray. It was evident that the life swapping cleaning games had not been continuing for some time. There was mess everywhere. The kitchen in particular was in chaos. The house was stocked for grand parties. It was possible for someone to go for weeks without needing to wash a clean plate. The sink was piled high with unwashed pots. The sides nearby were covered with more. The waste bin was full and overflowing. Food delivery containers were stacked haphazardly around its base: pizza, Chinese, Indian. There were plenty of empty fizzy drink bottles lying on their sides on the floor and on various surfaces. Other food containers lay discarded near the fridge and on the other work surfaces.
Katherine shook her head grimly, her lips pressed tightly together.
The lounge was in a similar state. The pool room was a wreck. It was amazing how quickly it had got like this, though the house had always had a cleaner. Until now it never showed the slightest sign of even normal amounts of clutter. The contrast alone was making it seem worse than it was.
Katherine became increasingly despondent as she wandered round, slowing, then something occurred to her and she quickened her pace, moving through to the cleaning cupboard under the stairs.
She’s half expected... what? To find Dahlia hiding here, wearing her brown wig and glasses, her borrowed cleaner’s uniform? But it was empty. Untouched. No one had been in there to mess it up in the way that the rest of the house was.
Again, Katherine got that shiver of suicide dread: that she’d find Dahlia hanging somewhere by the neck or in a bath full or cold scarlet water, her pallid skin stained above the evaporating water line. And there was fear too of an alternative that seemed equally bad.
She went up the wide staircase slowly and tentatively, gripping the banister.
The rooms upstairs were equally silent, but for the most part, untouched. The main bathroom door stood open. The bath itself was empty. No dreadful confirmation of worst fears there.
Katherine walked on.
She reached the master bedroom and pushed gently on the door.
No sign of life, or death, here, but far more disarray if anything.
The bedclothes were tangled and off the mattress. There were drawers hanging open. The closet was in turmoil: clothes and hangers all over the floor. In various clusters around the room there were numerous empty carrier bags. Katherine crouched and turned one over, straightening it to find its origin.
Barton Workwear.
Another said Trend for Ladies, a dingy quality seconds shop in the back of the Tower Gates Centre.
Katherine’s forehead became a deep frown, but it brightened when she saw that several more were from boutiques that Dahlia had frequented in Nockton Heights, places where only high quality and expensive items could be purchased. The frown deepened when she had a closer look at the receipt in one of the bags; at the sizes listed.
She straightened, thinking, rubbing her lip with the flank of her index finger, then she walked straight into the closet and went to the back where the suitcases were stored.
None of them were there.
“Oh no.”
She returned to the bedroom, checked the half open drawer where Dahlia kept important documents.
Even on the second check through, it was clear that Dahlia’s passport wasn’t there.
Katherine shook her head and sighed through pursed lips.
Then her eyes narrowed and she rooted through her handbag until she found her mobile phone; took it out and called up the contact list; found the name Melissa; hit the call button.
Waited.
She pictured the day she turned up to find the house full of handicapped children and Dahlia dressed as a cleaner, disguised to look like Melissa; Melissa herself in fancy clothes and a blond wig, wearing contact lenses instead of her glasses.
Eventually the voicemail kicked in and Katherine terminated the call.
She sighed heavily, closing her eyes, feeling helpless; feeling that she had let Dahlia down in all the worst ways by not insisting that she stay close and help, even though she was pushed away at every turn.
Then she raised the phone again and hit redial.
She waited until the voicemail cut in, her heart getting colder and colder by the second. Then when she heard the beep, Katherine started speaking, her voice brittle and hard and full of barely tempered menace.
“Melissa. This is Katherine,” she said. “I know that Dahlia has gone abroad and I think... I know you have gone with her. I know you don’t care about anyone but yourself, least of all Dahlia, but I am asking you to stop what you are doing; stop encouraging her to run away from her life; to play these stupid and unhealthy games of yours.
“I’m asking you to leave her alone; that’s all. I know you think you can get some reward from this – probably financial – but I am asking you to consider the cost of your selfishness on Dahlia’s already fragile psyche.
“Please persuade her to come home. Or to make contact with me at least. I am very worried about her. Very worried.
“Please, for God’s sake, get her to come home. Don’t make things worse than they already are.”
The phone beeped. The call ended.
Katherine looked down at it and considered calling again.
But she didn’t.
All she could do now was wait and hope. That Dahlia would see sense and come home. That Melissa would grow tired of her manipulations or Dahlia herself would see through them.
That things wouldn’t get as bad or go as far as Katherine was afraid of.
Chapter One - Part One
A New Identity
DAHLIA
When the door opened on the aeroplane and I made my way to the exit; when I stepped outside onto the top step of mobile staircase and felt the heat envelop me and go in one gasping rush into my lungs; I recognised the tension I'd been feeling right up both sides of my back and down the rear of each arm, even in a star across the back of my skull: felt it crackle and intensify, causing a wince.
For one moment I closed my eyes, as the stress that had been cultivating within me for weeks; maybe years; inserted painful fingers into my brain and squeezed. Then a sigh came out of me that was taken from greater depths than any I could remember, and all that tension rustled up and out of me, shuddering my body from top to toe. Then it was gone.
I opened my eyes again, feeling the high temperature brush my eyeballs, and I smiled. That trouble was behind me now. We were here. I didn’t have to worry about it again. Not for a long, long time.
A little bump came behind me and I half turned my head. Melissa was at my rear, gazing past my shoulder at the dazzling runway, the clear blue sky. The thick lenses of her glasses reflected the brightness, blanking out her eyes, but I could tell she was captivated and school-girl-excited. I’d never seen her so happy and it was such a profound comparison to the way she’d looked two nights earlier on the side of the Banbury Way when I’d found her drenched and bedraggled in the rain.
The plane ride hadn’t been easy for her. She got travel sick and her weight didn’t help in the narrow seats. Already the sweat was starting to build on her round cheeks, pinprick specs of moisture forming on her hanging double chin. She didn’t care though. She gave me a grin and I grinned back, surprising myself and grinning even more broadly at the realisation.
We’d really done it. We’d really come here.
When Melissa had suggested it, it had seemed such an impossible step; a fantasy that could never become real. When I had told her I wanted to take it even further; to make myself look just like her; to swap places as long as we were abroad; as the words fell out of me; even then I hadn’t believed it would really come to pass.
But steps had been taken. With Melissa’s enthusiastic acceptance and helpful encouragement, we had made the arrangements quicker than I could have expected; booked our flights, bought the clothes we would need to start. Melissa was so helpful. She’d been even keener than I was to get things organised and with the... trouble I’d had with my assistant Katherine, it had been exactly what I’d needed.
The people in front of me had cleared far enough down the staircase to allow Melissa and me to descend and we both gazed about us at the bright concrete buildings and expansive space, taking in the sudden step in temperature. It was nothing new to me of course – I’d travelled extensively – but for Melissa, on her income, it was all new.
We walked side by side toward the waiting shuttle bus that was already rapidly filling up. Another one was on its way across the tarmac and we decided to wait for that rather than squashing on the first one. We stood watching the first closing its doors and pulling away, then we turned to one another.
We didn’t say anything at first; just looked; then we smiled.
“We’ll check into the first hotel and get settled,” I said, “then we’ll head down to the bar and get something to eat.”
Melissa nodded.
“Then we’ll find a quiet corner of the bar and work out between us exactly how we’re going to do this. Okay?”
She nodded again, her smile splitting to show grinning teeth. “I can’t wait to get started.”
The other bus was pulling to a stop in the space the first one had stood. Melissa started to walk toward it but I stood still, just for a moment, watching her go and wondering if we were doing the right thing. If I was doing the right thing.
It felt right. It really did. But I knew how close to losing my mind I had been. How could I be sure that any decision I made was entirely rational?
Chapter One - Part Two
MELISSA
The hotel was close to the airport in Rhodes and it was a first real step into how the other half lived.
It wasn’t somewhere we were staying for more than one night but the luxury compared to anything I'd ever experienced was substantial. The bathroom was gigantic. The bed was big enough for three or four people to sleep in comfortably (or two of me).
As soon as I was fully in with all my stuff I shut out the day and switched on the air conditioning. The heat had given me a bit of trouble so far. I just wasn’t used to it. My fat didn’t help. I had a swath of damp, itchy skin under my boobs that I'd had to resist scratching as I was riding up in the elevator.
This was the first time I'd been properly alone since Dahlia picked me up in her taxi and whisked me off to the airport and it felt good. There was a tremendous build-up of excitement when she was there, an expectation of the as-yet incomplete plan we were brewing becoming a reality, but I needed the time now to gather my thoughts.
I sat on the bed and immediately let myself fall back, feet still flat on the floor, letting out a great whoosh of air. For a few minutes I tried to still my thoughts in the dimness under my eyelids, but as it went on, glimmers of thought sparkled in the darkness, distracting me.
There was just too much going on in my brain right now to ever truly relax. Overnight I’d had no more than four hours of exhausted sleep before I came awake and lay shuffling and lonely for the rest of the night, hating the snuffling sound of my husband Robert’s laboured snoring beside me.
We were really doing this. We were really going to swap places; change the way our bodies looked.
“I want you to go into training,” she’d said. “I want you to diet and work out until you’ve lost weight; a lot of weight.”
Could that happen? Really? Yes, I could lose weight if I put my mind to it – a lot of weight even, if I became fanatical in a way my willpower had never allowed before. But was it feasible that we could effectively trade places, as though a magic wand had been swung?
Of course not. No. Surely.
But Dahlia’s eyes had gleamed brightly enough in the darkness on the side of the dual carriageway to make me think that anything was possible. I had organised the plane tickets and the packing since then but she had glittered with the potential ahead of us that she was clearly seeing in her mind’s eye and believing.
It made me more eager to get downstairs to meet her and hear her thoughts. I had some thoughts of my own; powerful ones; but she knew more about certain things than I did. And though I knew exactly how far I wanted to go with this impending exchange, I didn’t truly have a feel for the limitations she was expecting yet, or of how far I could... encourage her along those lines.
It was like the further I got away from Robert, the more I felt that anything could be possible. Anything at all.
Even the practical equivalent of a magical transformation.
I grinned to myself, covering my mouth with both hands.
It was all so new in my mind. I couldn’t get used to it as being real.
I needed to just get on. Move forward. Get ready.
I had come in my own clothes. There had been no exchange at all as yet. Dahlia was back in her own designer outfits for the journey and this first night. She wasn’t wearing her glasses, though I had an idea she did have her contact lenses on – the ones that were already changing her vision, worsening her ability to focus without them, so that when she put the glasses back on again she really would need them.
It was odd in a way to be wearing my drab outfits, to have my own glasses on, after we’d made the decision to go ahead. I was itching to get on with it. I didn’t know quite what was holding us back. Why couldn’t we jump in with both feet? That was what I wanted to do.
I changed out of my sweaty travel dress and put on a summer dress I’d brought that exposed my arms and chest. It was something I’d bought rashly several years earlier and never worn but it seemed appropriate here, even if it was still dowdy compared to the garments I’d worn during our swaps.
I brushed my hair and put on some shoes; picked up my bag; went to the door.
My nerves were jangling. After I’d pushed too hard before and almost ruined everything I was wary of doing the same again.
But Dahlia really did seem up for anything now. It seemed as though she wanted to go all the way.
Maybe I couldn’t push too hard anymore. Maybe the only risk was that I wouldn’t push hard enough.
Chapter One - Part Three
DAHLIA
Melissa found me in the darkest corner of the hotel restaurant. I already had an open bottle of white wine and two glasses, one of which was almost emptied.
I’d found myself gabbling it down as I waited for her, feeling more like I was about to be interviewed by some hard-nosed back-stabbing journalist than that I was waiting to eat with a trusted friend.
She seemed over-polite as she took her seat and raised a menu and I realised immediately why.
We had never been equals before – not really – not in a supposedly relaxed environment like this, which was of course outside of her relatively poverty-stricken comfort zone. Neither one of us knew quite how to talk or act, but then, that was the point of this meal and the drinks afterward: to lay down some ground rules that we could work to.
I picked up my own menu and scanned down it. “What are you going to have?”
“Steak,” replied Melissa. “You can always trust a good steak.”
I raised my eyebrows over the top of the menu playfully. “Really? Are you sure?”
“Uh... Oh.” She looked again at the menu. “Salad?”
I smiled. “Much better. I’ll have the steak.”
We looked at each other in a frozen moment then burst out laughing. “Make it a mixed grill,” she said. “If you really want to pile on the pounds.”
I giggled, trying to see if they did one and smiled too when I saw that they did.
Pile on the pounds. I thought about that concept, visualising it.
The waiter came and we put in our order, looking at me with a perplexed crinkle in his eyes when he heard what we were having, double checking he didn’t have it the wrong way round. We assured him he didn’t. The fat woman was having the salad. The slim woman was eating the fat food.
Still vaguely uncomfortable, we made small talk about the plane ride while we both set off down the wine bottle, Melissa doing her best to catch up with me. Nearing the bottom of my second glass I started to let go of that tension that had been tickling me. Melissa too was loosening up, getting a bit more expressive in her words and gestures.
When the food came I gazed, thunderstruck, at my plate. I’d asked for the extra-large mixed grill and it had the proportions of a dinosaur. I’d never seen so much meat in one place. I’d never had a plate this size. Each of the five different types of meat; gammon, steak, chicken, sausage, black pudding; was a generous enough portion to satisfy any normal woman. All together and with the steak cut chips and the peas, mushroom and onion rings, it was diabolical.
Pile on the pounds.
I looked at Melissa; at her sparkling eyes and mirthful expression, returning my gaze and glancing down at what I had before me. Her bosom was generous, her arms bulging and round. Her face was very fat with a great hanging circle of flesh.
Was I doing the right thing?
I reached for my knife and fork but hesitated, curled fingers poised above them.
“Eat up,” said Melissa. “It’ll go cold. You have to hurry with a mixed grill and gobble it down; the faster the better.”
I smiled shyly, picking up my cutlery.
“Hang on though,” she said. “You’re forgetting something.”
“What?”
She passed across the glass decanter it was stored in. “Mayonnaise. It really brings out the flavour.”
Up until this series of exchanges had begun I’d never touched mayonnaise but now all I could think was that she was right. It really enhanced the flavour of whatever it was added to.
I gave myself a bountiful portion and tucked in, loving the taste and the sense of liberty I got to be consuming such a truly inappropriate meal; going against a lifetime of conditioning and principles.
Melissa didn’t look too thrilled by her salad but once she got going the initial scowl diminished.
We didn’t talk much. We just ate. And ate. And ate. Melissa finished hers but I kept going; flagging at times and then soldiering on. I knew that I'd had enough but eating more was becoming a compulsion, an overpowering desire to chomp and chomp and chomp and chomp. I didn’t know what the feel was it incited in me but it was like a chill wind whipping at my soul filled with excitement and abandon; maybe the tiniest bit of gloriously alluring self-destruction.
The deep heat the wine was imparting was making my limbs feel funny. I felt lovely; really contented.
We ordered a second bottle of wine as I polished off the last of my steak, feeling bloated as never before in my life but also extremely at ease.
I sat back, rubbing my tummy in a slow circular motion, relaxing into my chair. Melissa was watching me, smiling.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she replied. “Nothing at all. It’s just...”
“What?”
“It’s nice to see you so happy.”
I smiled warmly at her. She was so sweet. Was I happy? Had I truly left my troubles behind?
Thinking that made them shudder below the surface of my mind, threatening to emerge to my consciousness. I almost came to picture my brother. But I pushed the thought away immediately. I wasn’t ready for that. I didn’t feel I ever would be.
“Have some more wine,” said Melissa, “and let’s take a look at the dessert menu. Yes?”
I giggled. “Okay. Yes. Why not?”
“Why not indeed.”
She passed it across to me and I started to read down but after a moment I realised that Melissa was still watching me and I let it drop.
A long silence passed between us. Then she leaned forward a few inches and started the conversation we were both of us waiting for but that I had been too afraid to initiate.
“So what’s the plan?” she said.
Chapter One - Part Four
MELISSA
“Maybe we should start off by laying out exactly what we want to achieve,” said Dahlia.
“Er, okay. Sure,” I said.
We were both quite inebriated now and that had given me a healthy flush of confidence; almost as much as the flush I'd got watching her wolfing down that gigantic meal. I’d never seen her eat like that before; with ravenous eyes that drew in everything on the plate. But Dahlia clearly had some reservations, and why wouldn’t she? I’d never, ever heard of a situation that we were walking into – not in real life or on TV. There were kids’ films about this kind of thing, sort of, but they were always dosed with saccharine and magical wishes. Undergoing a slow, methodical, purposeful process of physical transformation was so far outside the box that expressing the concepts verbally was close to unviable.
I had the notion that this was the one conversation we would have about this; ever; that after this it would never come as close to the surface again. We would act on it and continue to make adjustments, possibly in character, but a frank conversation as Melissa and Dahlia, really looking at our intentions in the gleam of the lamplight... it felt too conscious for more than a one off. As it was, I didn’t think we’d be getting this far even if we weren’t drunk.
With that in mind, and seeing Dahlia’s hesitation, I decided to leap forward. “We said we were going to swap places for the duration of our trip. We said we would stay away for several months.”
She nodded.
“The whole time we’re here, we’ll become one another; wearing appropriate clothes and calling one another by the wrong names.”
“The right names.”
Dahlia startled me with that but her playful smile brought on one of my own.
“We’ll dye our hair,” she said, “and have it restyled so that I become brunette and you become blond. My blond hair is made up of highlights anyway so that shouldn’t be too hard.”
I fingered the ends of my hair. “And I’ll start wearing contact lenses all the time, while you...”
“I’ll wear my glasses.”
I nodded and started to speak again but the waiter interrupted us, asking what we wanted for dessert. The salad had gone down better than expected, leaving a pleasant thread of virtuousness through me, but I did want something else. Having said that, I wanted to resist too. I wanted to take this rampant bull by its horns and ride it all the way. Dahlia was clearly fully intent on putting on weight. She’d already ruined her perfect figure, edging it toward normalcy instead of super model flawlessness. I could do the opposite. With her help, I could become slim. Or slimmer at least.
“Nothing for me thanks,” I said.
“Triple chocolate sundae please,” said Dahlia, licking her lips.
The waiter nodded and withdrew.
“I’m going to need a personal trainer,” I said, “if I’ve got any hope of really becoming thin.”
“Of course.”
“That’ll be expensive.”
Dahlia gave a brief limp-wristed wave. “Money isn’t an issue. I’ve got more than we need for this; really.” She took a draught of wine. “Really. We’re doing this; we’re going to do it properly. You can have two personal trainers; membership of any gyms you like. You’re going to be Dahlia Western. You’re going to live like a queen. You’ll have the best room in the next hotel; everything you need.”
“Wow.”
“Just so long as you live up to your side of the deal.”
“Which is?”
“To become me,” said Dahlia. “To treat me as though I were you.”
Mostly to myself I murmured, “The whole time we’re away... Every day... All day.”
“That’s right. And meanwhile, I’ll be you. I’ll be Melissa.” She grinned excitedly, letting out a hiss of half-laugh air. “I’ll dye my hair and have it cut like yours and then I’m going to eat and eat and eat. That’s all I’m going to be doing.”
She looked off, imagining that and I shook my head, marvelling at this woman and the drive of intent she had to do such a weird and self-harmful thing. Somebody should shake her and tell her to stop being such an idiot, but that sure as hell wasn’t going to be me. No way. I had an all-expenses-paid Grecian holiday ahead of me and some realistic motivation to lose weight and better myself for the first time in my life. I could even lose five stone and meet some handsome prince to whisk me away to a new life away from Robert. Anything could happen.
Anything was happening.
“We’ll have our hair done tomorrow morning,” said Dahlia. I’ve already found out where we can go. Someone expensive and reliable. Then we’ll do the rest of the swap; change into our new clothes. We’ll become each other. Then we’ll get a taxi to the other hotel we’re going to be staying in, so that when we arrive we’re already in our new roles.”
Dahlia’s dessert came. She tucked in and I watched her careless manner, the chocolate going round her mouth, while I sipped my wine. We didn’t say anymore until she finished it off.
“And when we’ve swapped,” I said. “What then? Will we... hang out? Swim in the pool? Go to the beach?”
Dahlia looked thoughtful. “I don’t think that would be... appropriate,” she said. “I’m not quite sure how we’ll do it yet but... well... no offence to you, but Melissa works for Dahlia. They aren’t pals. I think the new Melissa will need to know her place and keep a low profile; show the proper deference.”
I smiled, tempering it so that my mirth at the hilarity of this didn’t shine too brightly. “I think you’re right Dahlia,” I replied. “I think that the new Melissa should never forget who is the wealthy woman and who is the cleaner.”
Chapter One - Part Five
DAHLIA
I woke up an hour before the alarm call I’d booked with the hotel reception and quietly went about my morning routine, bathing, brushing my teeth, washing my hair.
I put in the contact lenses I’d bought myself to transform my eyesight, two notches up from no prescription at all. They still felt a little weird in my eyes but I could easily cope with them. As I blinked them into place I thought about the scientist I’d heard of who wore special glasses that made his vision upside-down who doggedly went on wearing them until his brain had compensated and showed him the world the right way up. I thought about the series of progressively stronger prescriptions I’d brought with me, right up to the strong lenses Melissa had to wear all the time.
I smiled at myself with a slightly muddled careworn expression.
There was no delusion anymore in me about the effect of my overeating. I’d seen it plain as day and I could see it now. I still wasn’t what anyone would call fat, but the ripeness of my face and stomach suggested a movement in that direction. I thought about how slim I had been until so very recently and how close I was to being that way again. A week or two of concentrated exercise and dieting would be all that was needed at the moment.
If I went ahead with this crazy plan then I would be going in the opposite direction to that. Every day – every meal that passed, I would be taking step after step toward a place where being slim would feel like an impossible dream; as Melissa surely felt now.
The idea of being as fat as her... of transforming my body from athletic and trim to round and obese; to labour up stairs with difficulty; to become unattractive to almost any man... There were some men who found fat women beautiful but they were few and far between. I’d spent all my years trying to maintain this flawlessness; to be a symbol of sexual excellence; but it hadn’t made me happy really. I hadn’t ever found a handsome prince to carry his beautiful princess of to his castle. On the contrary, every man had wanted me for my looks and my looks alone... or perhaps the money or the fame.
Just to imagine stepping away from that persona and into the life of another where those shallow qualities would be irrelevant. A logical part of me didn’t understand the attraction I had to doing that but another logical part understood it completely. Because there was some sense to it at the end of the day.
And I really did want it.
Melissa was going to be waiting for me soon. We would go to have our hair done; take that first gigantic step to assuming one another’s identity; then swap names and get on with this adventure.
This was the last time I would be alone and look into my face as it was; the last time I could whisper, “My name is Dahlia,” and know it to be so in the sense it always had been.
This wasn’t permanent. Eventually I would come back to myself. It was only a holiday from myself. But for now; for a very long time; I was saying goodbye to the woman I was.
It wasn’t too late to go back. I could call Katherine; ask her to book me a return flight; run back to England; maybe even get back in time for Steven’s funeral.
But the very thought of that made my face cringe back on itself; distorting my features; blanking off a part of my brain.
I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t. This was all there was for me now: this wonderful, watertight escape.
I just thanked God that I had Melissa – that I'd found someone willing to play through such an anomalous facade. It was such a big sacrifice for her; what with her husband waiting for her back home; but I had never been more grateful... and I could justify it to myself that she was going to be getting an all-expenses-paid extended holiday abroad. It wasn’t going to be pure hardship for her, even if I was going to do everything I could to work her hard to lose weight.
I wanted her to have her own transformation; partly as a thank you for what she was doing for me; partly because I sensed that she needed someone else to push her; but also to provide that exchange and comparison to my own changes. Her conversion to being Dahlia was every bit a part of my fantasy as me becoming Melissa.
I had my last look at this face: my long, curly, blond hair; my unblemished face and pretty eyes; my expensive tailored clothes. A couple of hours from now I would leave this behind me and become someone else.
I couldn’t wait. I literally couldn’t wait. I wanted it so much.
Chapter One - Part Six
DAHLIA
The hairdresser was a taxi ride from the hotel. I'd asked in the hotel where the best place was within range and this was it: an expensive salon for wealthy tourists.
Melissa and I went in and I greeted the manager while she hung back. He guided us to our seats and introduced us to the ladies who would be doing our new looks. One spoke good English, the other didn’t seem to get anything, but they could talk to each other.
“What would you like?” asked the English speaker.
“I, er...” I cleared my throat. “We’re like to swap hairstyles,” I said.
She frowned at me confused.
“I want my hair to look like hers,” I said, pointing at Melissa, “and she wants hers to look like mine.”
The hairdresser frowned. “So...” She pointed at Melissa.
“She wants blond curly hair, exactly like mine,” I said.
“Blond,” said Melissa, smiling, embarrassed.
The hairdresser nodded, still frowning.
“And I want mine straight and brown, with a fringe. Exactly like hers.”
“Brown,” said Melissa.
The hairdresser looked from one to the other of us. “Exactly the same?”
“As close as you can get it,” I said. Melissa’s hair wasn’t as long as mine at the front obviously and didn’t have quite the same length, but it wouldn’t be too far off.
Looking mystified, the English-speaker explained what we wanted to the other girl. The other girl looked incredulous and said a rapid garble of Greek back at her that made Melissa and I share a smile. They batted back and forth a few times until the Greek-speaker shrugged, muttering to herself, then turned to Melissa and gave her a big and totally fake smile.
Then they got to work.
We settled into our chairs while they started on the cut. Before they began they took a photo, from each side, of both of us on the one girl’s phone. Then they got going.
It took a long time.
And all that time, my nerves jangled away, telling me I was being crazy, but it was too late to listen to them. As my girl snipped away at the front of my hair I realised that it had already been put in process. It was too late to back out now. I’d started my transformation.
And it wasn’t the half-hearted switches we’d made up to now or even the rather more determined overeating I’d been doing. This was going to be methodical and steady and it was going to happen over a long period. I relaxed into my chair, imagining really becoming her in every way; though I knew that was too far over the top, even for me. But it was a lovely fantasy, even if I still couldn’t quite fathom why.
They straightened my hair, cutting away some of the length and levelling it at the bottom in a line at the height of my chin. Seeing them start to do that was really horrifying but I gripped tightly to the arms of my chair and tried not to run screaming from the salon.
After forty five minutes they were done with the cutting for both of us. Melissa’s hair didn’t have enough length to really look like mine but her girl had done a good job of shaping it in that direction and it looked a lot more glamorous; less mumsy. Like mine now was. My hair looked like that of a middle-aged housewife; or a secretary... or a cleaner.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered to myself. It really was amazing.
And it was only half way there.
We had a short break while they got ready to do the dyeing and Melissa and I came together, giggling at how different we looked already. We were just like school friends; silly girls playing dress-up at a sleepover. I felt kind of drunk, even though I wasn’t; it was that kind of slightly out-of-body experience.
They got started on the dye jobs, eliminating my highlighting and, of course, greatly lightening Melissa’s hair. This wasn’t some scrappy hairdressers at the back of Barton high street – this was a high-end fashion salon. It was the best money could buy in this country and they were clearly very good. That was what was needed. As I was returning to my natural darker shade I wouldn’t need the same amount of upkeep on my hair but Melissa would need more regular repeat visits. That was fine. That was all part of the persona she was taking on. A cheap place would do for me next time.
I sat there imagining that, smiling deliciously, as they carried on working.
After another age they finished off drying our hair. They referred to the original pictures, made a couple of last minute adjustments, then stood back, nodding and smiling.
I looked at Melissa. She looked at me.
Her hair was blond and magnificent. Yes, it wasn’t as long as mine had been but it would grow in soon enough and it did look great. Really great.
As for mine, it was identical to how Melissa’s had been.
It was thick and dark, coming down to form a bob below my ears, a dense fringe running along just above my eye line.
I fingered it in disbelief and uneasy wonder. I’d never had a hairstyle like this in my life. I never would have. It looked kind of awful; turning me into someone ordinary – especially with my more filled out face. This was not the look of a fashion model; not anymore. It was the first really big step on this process we were embarking on. It meant there was no going back.
We stood up and paid our way and silently left the salon.
Outside we waited on the pavement, not speaking to one another for a long while. Eventually, when we did make eye contact, it was difficult. We both felt uncomfortable. Perhaps we were acknowledging just how weird this all was in a way we couldn’t articulate.
It was a long time again before either of us spoke and it was Melissa in the end who did so.
“Well,” she said. “That’s that then.”
“Yeah. I guess it is,” I replied.
“So now... Now it’s time for the next part,” she said.
I nodded, more nervous than I thought I would be.
“Next we put on our new clothes.”
I nodded.
“And then we swap names. For the whole rest of the time we’re staying abroad.”
She smiled at me and I smiled back but I was shitting myself. It was happening too fast. It was going to be over and done within the hour. I was going to become Melissa.
It was all happening way too fast.
Chapter One - Part Seven
DAHLIA
Melissa was the one to hail the cab, leading me to the edge of the road. I went after her, looking at the blond curls flowing down from her head, mildly dazed. What I was seeing wasn’t reality as I knew it; it really wasn’t. When I stopped at the curb, my own newly darkened hair swung into view and the glimpse of it made me jump.
This wasn’t right. None of it was.
Melissa raised her arm, trying to flag down a taxi. One went by without stopping and she turned to me, throwing her eyes to the heavens in a comradely way as though we were just two friends on holiday together – as though this preposterous and faintly sick exchange wasn’t actually taking place. The little smile she gave me before she turned away again disturbed me more than any part of this; it was so weightless; detached from the potency of what was happening to us right now.
I reached for her to touch her back and turn her round; to tell her that maybe we should slow things down a little; have a night or two just to get used to the hair change before we rushed on to the next part; but as I did so she stepped away, calling, “Taxi!” more urgently as one slowed and pulled up.
I looked at it dopily, telling myself I should still say something but unable to somehow now that it was there and she was opening the door. Melissa climbed in awkwardly, struggling with her bulk and, not knowing what else to do, I climbed in after her, noticing the unfamiliar pinch and lack of flexibility my rounder tummy gave me. Standing up it wasn’t noticeable to me, but sitting or bending accentuated the extra mass, making it undeniably apparent.
I closed the door after us and Melissa gave the driver the directions then threw me a smile. Her face was radiant, her eyes imbued with their own shimmer of delight. Again, I opened my mouth to say something, and her eyes flickered down to my lips, sensing it; maybe even sensing the intent of what I might say. She spoke immediately, but the word seemed only a holding device, to fill the gap between us while her mind floundered to find something of substance to say.
“So...”
I closed my own mouth, my own side of the potential dialogue stymied. The thoughts in my head were so fractious, the drive to voice them was flimsy; barely enough push to get it moving. I was confused and very unsure of my ability to make a decision either way. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go through with it suddenly. I did. I just had my doubts. Those doubts weren’t enough to make me stop it with any great passion. I was just as likely to go with the flow as long as Melissa kept driving.
And Melissa kept on driving on as though she was the one who wanted it, not me.
We pulled up at the hotel and there was an odd moment of still expectation that bewildered me until I realised it was because Melissa and the driver were waiting for me to pay. I was the one in the fancy clothes. I was the one with the money. Flustered, I handed the man probably more than he was asking for and we got out.
Again, I felt as though I was only following as Melissa walked up to the doors and went inside. Is this what it will feel like when our roles are reversed, I thought, when I... become... Melissa?
And do I really want that?
Melissa pressed the button for the lift and we waited painstakingly. She must have sensed the silence between us now – she must have – and I wondered if this wasn’t another element of the transformation, as our sense of status and identity shifted. We had been close to being equals of a sort since our decision to do this had come; during the journey here to Greece. Soon that wouldn’t strictly be true anymore and neither of us could know how that would feel – not over an extended period.
The lift arrived and we went inside. Melissa looked like she was going to speak but a family entered after us, effectively gagging her. Instead she looked at me, holding my gaze, and I looked back.
Could she the fear in me as clearly as I could see the verve in her?
I had thought her a reluctant participant on the whole, but the closer we got, the more her inhibitions seemed to dissolve. For some reason that unsettled me more.
Why was I so afraid? This was what I wanted.
It was what I wanted.
I bumped into Melissa when we reached my hotel room door. I had been so caught up in myself on the way from the lifts. She raised her eyebrows, reminding me to fumble the key out of my handbag. My new hair swung again in front of my face and this time I almost yelped. I felt petrified and actually cold, despite the general temperature. It was cooler in the hotel than it was outside but I felt chilled to my organs.
For the first time on our return journey, I led the way inside. The cases were laid on a table near the window. I approached them tentatively. Of the cases, most of the bulk was taken up with the new clothes we would both wear. There had never been an intention for me to need more than one or two day’s worth of clothing for my true identity. I stood in front of the nearest case and looked back at Melissa, then I looked back at the case.
I looked back at her. She was looking only at the suitcase, her eyes blazing again with disconcerting expectation. Then those eyes flicked up to mine and she said, “Open it.”
Chapter One - Part Eight
MELISSA
Dahlia opened the suitcase and I moved back one step, reminding myself not to push too hard. This was what she wanted. I didn't need to prod her. Unless she was the one making the decision then she would never stick to it.
I was very aware of my new curly blond hair about my face, more visible that my bob had been, but I was also more aware than I would normally have been of the weight I was carrying. I knew it wasn't going to be an instantaneous magical transformation like in some trashy novel when I put the new clothes on, but I also felt that something mystical would occur. There would be a monumental shift, not only in Dahlia's and my relationship, but also in the way others perceived us; the way we saw ourselves.
Dahlia hovered over the open case and a visible shudder ran through her, then she lifted a garment and swivelled to face me, holding it up. It was a silk top with ruffles down the front, something expensive and made to accentuate one's... physical endowments. I took it and laid it on the bed. Next to it we placed a skirt and shoes that blended well and a little bolero jacket to cover my shoulders but leave my chest exposed.
These items had been purchased as part of our frenzied preparations to leave. They weren't tailor-made but we'd purchased them at one of the nice Boutiques in Farley. They cost a lot of money – more than I could believe when I saw the price tags – and they were made of exquisite material. They took the dress up Dahlia and I had been doing up to now and took it to a whole other level.
I undressed quickly and quietly. As I did so, Dahlia laid out the underwear to go with it. I was leaving my own Primark-bought clothes behind completely. It was going to be a whole new me. It felt slightly uncomfortable to be naked in front of Dahlia but it wasn't too bad. It made a difference what we were doing and it also made it easier that she had put on some weight. Showing my own rolls of fat wasn't quite so intimidating. I glanced at her as I reached for the bra and was startled to see her staring.
She wasn't looking at my face. Her eyes roved my arms and shoulders, my back, my thighs, and there was an odd caste to her face – a kind of hungriness and wonderment. My first thought was that I couldn't imagine what was going through her head, but then it occurred to me that I did know. There was only one explanation. The truth of the matter was that I couldn't quite understand why she would be thinking what she clearly was.
Why would anyone want to be fat? Why would they want to be as obese as I was? Why would they want to change their hair and clothes and take on my name?
Her eyes met mine and her cheeks coloured. She looked away.
I shook my head and picked up the bra. I hooped the straps through my arms and bent forward to position my breasts in the cups. While I was down there I looked at Dahlia out of the corner of my eye. She was staring again, thinking I couldn't see her. As I swung back up she was already looking away, pretending she hadn't been. I made a chuckle that was as light as an exhalation.
The skirt was tight on me but that was better – it made it less tent-like – and it made my legs look almost good, especially when I put on the shoes. They were Jimmy Choo, a brand I'd fantasised about on occasion but never conceived of actually owning. They were sling-back heels; very delicate and pretty. I admired them, smiling to myself.
They top was a bit of a struggle to get on but it made even my mass look good. It actually made enough of my bosom to look kind of sensational. The lady in the shop had talked about accentuating physical virtues while drawing the eye from less desirable elements. This certainly accomplished that.
“Wow. I look amazing!” In the mirror, with the clothes in place and the hair, it really was like stepping through a doorway and becoming somebody else. I'd applied some make-up earlier. It wasn't enough to really lift me as high as I could go, but it worked wonders to blend me into this new look. “Don't I look amazing?” I said.
Dahlia, when I turned to face her, was looking oddly listless, separated from the flow of positive emotion I was feeling, as though there were glass between us. Catching my gaze made her twitch. Her eyes went left a few degrees as she tried to catch what I'd said, then she returned my look and said, “Uh, yes. You look nice. It's; like you say... It's amazing.” She smiled.
I tried to gauge her for a second, worrying she was going to pull out, but I was too thrilled with my own transformation to think about hers right now. I just wanted to look at myself.
I went up close to the mirror and touched my clothes and hair; my cheeks. I was still fat – I was so fat – but I could see... the potential now. I could almost believe that one day I would be slim. Could I actually do that?
In these clothes – with this hair – it all seemed possible. All of it. I could even entertain the fantasy of something total and complete; something permanent; that would leave me actually looking like Dahlia did.
I was elated. The distance from my home and my normal life was part of that, but also flying through these spectacular new experiences. I had never felt so happy and all I could see before me was more of the same. It was like dying and finding out that heaven did exist. It wasn't just hell or some dingy purgatory waiting instead. It was actually heaven!
I recalled Dahlia and turned back to her. She was standing back at the case, looking into it, obviously reticent. It took the gust from my sails and that same worry returned; deeper now. I couldn't bear to have this bizarre but delightful future laid out for me only to have it taken away but I had the awful presentiment that she was about to withdraw. It would be so easy for her. For her it would just be a few words. For me it would mean being hurled back into the life I hated; that I wanted to escape now with vicious passion.
Her back was to me but I could see her thoughts in the turned-in posture; the lowered head. I took a step toward her, feeling that there was nothing I could do to stop those words of negation come now. The stupid facile woman. She was going to ruin everything and she wouldn't even be aware of the devastation she was doing.
I had to say something; anything to persuade her; but the intensity of my emotion was too close to the surface. The minute I opened my mouth she would know how little I thought of her; how much I wanted to strip her of what was hers and take it for my own.
But what else could I do? Stand in waiting as she pronounced judgement on our experiment; surrender control to her as I had been doing to others my whole life?
Chapter One - Part Nine
DAHLIA
My new clothes were at the top of the case now, plainly visible, but something about seeing them was making me hesitate. I didn't know what quality that was but it made my arms feel weighty; made the idea of raising them to lift out the garment a forbidding prospect.
Melissa had made her transformation already and she looked so different, like a different person. She didn't look like me – her features were too different and she was far too fat – but the totality of the change had... It had chilled me. I didn't know why it should when this was what I had wanted; what I'd fantasised about; but it did it enough to stop me now and suddenly I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure if I even wanted to go through with it anymore at all.
It was only a costume really – I wasn't going to actually change into a different person – but it felt as though it would be as complete as that. We had agreed to effect a total trade. She would take my name. She would take control of my money. She would treat me as though she were my employer. I would assume her identity, having little to no control over anything. I would give myself to her instruction as though my livelihood depended on it.
With that exchange only one or two minutes away now; so close in time; it seemed like it was an impossibly wide physical gap to cross.
I couldn't do this. Of course. Of course I couldn't. It was ridiculous. What was I thinking?
“Dahlia.” The word came from behind me and was surprisingly resonant; surprisingly tender. Melissa's fingers closed around my upper arm, gently turning me until I was facing her again. Seeing her fabulous new look was as startling now as it was when she put the clothes on. I couldn't believe the change that had come over her. But there was concern in her eyes. She smiled but her eyebrows rose in the middle, her eyes themselves looking pinched. “I know how you must be feeling,” she said.
I didn't reply. I went to but I couldn't think of a word to say that would adequately express how I felt.
“You're thinking about your brother's death, aren't you?” she said.
My eyes went wide, my forehead crinkling again and the hint of tears rising. I hadn't been but hearing her words brought it right back; hurled me into the memory of being at the hospital with Katherine; of realising that there was no... hope... left in my world.
“I wish I could take the pain away,” said Melissa. “You must feel terrible. He loved you so dearly. It must be awful to know that you can never have him back.”
I nodded, the tears coming high enough to blur the edges of my vision but not enough to fall free.
Melissa moved in, putting her arm round my shoulder and taking my opposite arm in her hand, drawing me close. “It's okay,” she said. “It's okay to feel bad when you've lost so much. I'm so sorry. But it's going to be okay.”
I let myself be pressed against her and relaxed my neck, placing my cheek against her warm chest. My hands closed involuntarily, gripping her top tightly, clutching me to her. The tears started to flow, running silently down my cheeks. I didn't make a sound. I didn't sob. They just streaked down as she pressed me tight.
“It's okay,” she said. “It's okay. Everything feels like it's gone wrong – your modelling; your relationship with Katherine – but none of that can hurt you now. Not here. You're away from it all.”
I nodded.
“It's such a rare opportunity that you have here. It's like magic if you think about it.”
I raised my head to look at her and she softly released me.
“We don't have to go through with it... if you don't want to,” she said. “You know that.” She looked at me earnestly. “And if we do go through with it, just for the fun of it, and to give you that total break you wanted from your troubles, then we can always change our minds at any time and swap back again. We can swap back whenever you want.”
I nodded again and I stepped away. Behind me, Melissa said nothing. She didn't make a sound.
I felt terrible suddenly; that same swirl of emotions that had been dogging me was right back at the forefront of my mind where I thought I'd cleansed it from. A headache was threatening. I wanted to lie down. I wanted to sleep; to curl up and close out the world.
“It's okay to do this you know,” said Melissa. “Whatever you need to do to get through the rough times – it's okay.” She paused then she gave a little laugh. “And just imagine how amazing it could be; like becoming a character in a play; turning into somebody else. Just look at me; it's happened already!”
I did look at her and she had such mirth and compassion in her face. I smiled back at her, my tears slowing and then stopping. It all seemed so simple when she explained it; so elegant.
“I'm so glad I've got you Melissa,” I said. “Somebody who understands; no matter how crazy I might get.”
“You aren't crazy. There's nothing wrong with what we're doing. Ordinary people would give their eye teeth to get an opportunity like this. I for one can't wait.”
“You're right,” I said. “We've come so far already, we'd be stupid to stop now. We have to go on. And like you said...”
“We can swap back whenever you like. You just have to give the word.”
“Okay,” I said. “No more worries. No doubts. Let's do this. Right now.”
She grinned. “Your costume awaits. All you have to do is put it on and you can become a different person.”
I looked across at the case, pushed aside one last shiver of trepidation, then strode purposefully toward it.
Chapter One - Part Ten
DAHLIA
The dress came up in my hands easily. It wasn't heavy. The material was cheap.
It wasn't a uniform of course – that wouldn't have been appropriate in these climes... or at this stage – but it had the air of one. The material was plain, thin and figure-hugging, cut to drop to just below the knee. It had a little white Peter Pan collar and matching cuffs on the short sleeves which gave it a suggestion of being the outfit of a maid. It had been inexpensive to buy; practically free; and it was the opposite of what I would normally wear.
Now that I'd reconciled again with this path I got a finger-trace of arousal that floated around the vicinity of my crotch in a pink cloud rather then caressing it as it might normally do. The corners of my lips quivered.
I set it back and undressed, noticing by contrast the quality of the garments I was removing, wondering how long it would be before I felt clothes that well-tailored again. In the dirtiest depths of my heart I fantasised about never wearing things like that again; of taking Melissa's life in its entirety for the rest of my years; becoming just as fat as she was; even going home to England to live her life. The fantasy went on for some distance until I noticed how detached I was being from the present scene and remembered Melissa's presence.
“Sorry,” I said. “Just thinking.”
She smiled, almost smirked, back at me.
There was a new bra for me, again something cheap that wouldn't normally have reached my hands. This one was different though; a size larger. Since I'd put on weight I hadn't bought any new underwear but the extra curves had made my bosom enlarge; not enough to be noticeable to the eye really; but enough to make my current bra uncomfortable. I put the new one and noticed in juxtaposition the unfamiliar fabric as well as the relief of a good fit; the acknowledgement of what that signified about my changing shape.
I noticed in my peripheral vision Melissa fiddling around with her contact lenses; removing her glasses. I was still wearing the corrupting contact lenses that matched the current frame of spectacles I'd trained myself to wear. I'd have to do the opposite switch myself in a minute.
I picked up the dress again and unzipped the back, stepping into it and pulling it up. It fit snugly; a little too snugly; and I realised that, though I'd chosen one bigger than my old size, it was still on the snug size with the bulk I'd put on so far. The cuffs of the sleeves were a little tight and the stretch fabric showed the exact contour of my body. It didn't disguise anything. It felt strange and psychologically uncomfortable to have the amount of fat I'd gained so far on display. Never before I had I really put on weight. In the rare post-Christmas occasions, I had carefully used the cut of my clothes to disguise it for the short time it took my exercise regime to eliminate it. Not now. Now anyone who looked at me would think me... a little overweight. It wasn't excessive yet but no one would have pegged me for a model anymore, especially with this hair and outfit.
I glanced at Melissa. She was looking excited, maybe even impatient. I smiled nervously and went into the bathroom. I took a look at myself in the mirror, the transformation almost complete, then I worked on taking out the contacts.
When they were gone I used cleanser to remove my make-up. Even subdued as it was, it was still too much for “Melissa” to be wearing. Without it my skin looked pale, my lips almost colourless, my eyes less defined.
The glasses were on the little glass shelf there. They were the last part of my new costume. My vision was just a little blurred now but I could see the mass of them, the questionable fashion of the thick round frames.
Put them on and never take them off again. Become Melissa. Or start to.
She wasn't here now with me to offer counsel or encouragement. It was down to me. My choice and mine alone.
I wanted it. I did want it. And I admitted it was crazy and didn't care. What did I care about craziness? I was rich. I didn't have anybody to answer to anymore. My parents were dead. My brother was... gone too. Even Katherine. I only had Melissa left now and she didn't judge me. She only wanted me to be happy.
I could do this right now and let it go on for as long as I wanted to. There was nothing to stop me.
I picked up the glasses. I looked at my reflection. I slowly lifted them to my face and slotted them into place. I blinked, clearing my vision, then I looked at myself.
I looked like a different person. More than ever before. Alongside the hair and the clothes, the glasses pitched me into a different persona, as did the softening of my angled cheeks. It was so much more complete than it had ever been before. I didn't look exactly like Melissa had before. Of course I didn't. She was several stone heavier than me. But I looked enough like her now for someone to think us sisters perhaps.
And in a way I supposed we were. Had anyone ever shared so much? Touched one another's lives so closely?
All that remained now was to swap names and exchange the other items of identity; to relinquish control to her as I submitted to my new persona.
I looked at myself once more then took a reaffirming breath. Then I turned and left the bathroom.
Chapter One - Part Eleven
DAHLIA
Melissa was waiting for me in the main room, hands clasped in front of her, the sides of her mouth turned up, her eyes alive with emotion. I felt tremendously nervous but one foot still went in front of the other, carrying me fully into the room as though there was no longer any force that could stop me.
“Well,” said Melissa.
“Yes,” I replied. “This is it.” I swallowed. “Are you ready to become someone else?” I paused, finding it hard to get the words out, the intense feelings I had wrapping a constricting grip around my wind pipe. “Are you ready to become me?”
The hesitation she made seemed unnatural but then she said, “Yes. Yes I am.” She smiled. “It’s almost... scary.”
We both giggled but our nerves quickly stifled it.
I went to my handbag and unzipped it; sifted through. “In here’s my money and traveller’s checks; my debit and credit cards.” I lifted a little piece of paper I’d tucked into the wallet. “On here are...” My tongue felt too big for my mouth suddenly but I got a little shiver of delight in my nether regions. “They’re my pin numbers.”
Melissa stared at the scrap of paper.
“With these you have control of – well... I’m giving you control of my money.”
In my crotch the moisture and heat blossomed but in my head I felt a splintering, like the start of a migraine.
“Not all of it of course,” I said. “Not everything. But far more than we’ll need for the months that we’re away. Enough for you to make all the decisions about what we do and where we go.”
Melissa nodded and looked like she might speak, but she said nothing. There was a long moment in which I enjoyed, but questioned, the slow gentle sizzling in my knickers, then she did speak. She said, “Of course I will have control of the money. I’ll be Dahlia. You’ll be Melissa. You’ll work for me. I’d be a bit of an idiot to leave you in control of my money if you’re just my cleaner.”
We stared at one another, the moment full of potency. There was a hint of mirth or even irony around Melissa’s lips but I couldn’t be sure. I started to nod, hesitated, then finished it.
“And this is my bag,” said Melissa, gesturing to her own. It was bulkier than mine and far cheaper looking; rather threadbare. Mine was a Radley handbag. Hers looked like she’d bought it off the market a year or two earlier. “There isn’t a lot of money in there I’m afraid but after we switch fully, you’ll have your wages. That will give you some pin money.”
I considered that; considered the fact that I’d never been without a free flow of money in any part of my life; and shuddered inside, even as my arousal grew.
She handed me the bag. I took it and swapped it for mine, then I slung it on my shoulder. I felt the exchange as another irrevocable step and I realised that this wasn’t going to be a sudden switch as such. It was a drawn out process that had started the minute I began over-eating and increased as we walked into the hair salon. Further pieces had fallen into place with the clothes and glasses and now with the money. The transformation wasn’t about to happen. Not at all. It was already happening and was well on its way toward completion. Any further weight gain or loss on either of our parts would be cosmetic. Right here; right now; we were about to become one another.
Another long empty moment of trepidation and increasing sexual tension.
Then Melissa, with a sense of dramatic occasion, said, “I give you my life. I hand it to you. You can be Melissa Chapman from now on.”
I tried to giggle but the suddenly serious pall on the room trapped it in. I found myself nodding at her. “And I give up being...” A great crackle of tension rose up into my shoulders and came out in the form of a strangled exhalation. “I give up being Dahlia Western. You can try it on for size. I don’t want to be her anymore. I want to be you. I want to be Melissa. I want to work for you.”
“You’ll work for me.”
“You’ll be my employer and I’ll just be...”
A long silence, then Melissa said, “My cleaner.”
I nodded.
We looked long and hard at one another. If real magic had been involved then here the sparkling enchantment would be passing between us. Even without it I felt myself being diminished, almost as though my stature were being reduced. She seemed to stand taller; prouder; as my own posture turned in on itself, my shoulders drooping, my chin lowering.
“I’m Dahlia Western,” she said, her voice strong and full of determination, her eyes shining. “I’m Dahlia Western.”
I nodded, the arousal in my crotch spiking higher and higher as I looked her in the eye and said the words, “And I’m Melissa Chapman.”
Chapter One - Part Twelve
THE ORIGINAL MELISSA
Saying who I was now was like the words of a spell, turning reality around and blurring what had been true minutes before.
I knew it wasn’t real but it felt like I truly had become someone else, from the absence of the weighty omnipresent glasses to the feel of the different fabric gracing my form, to my curly blond hair and even the wildly different environment we were now in: the heat and the ostentation of the hotel room. Every single thing I was seeing and feeling was different from my old life and nothing more so than this woman before me who had just identified herself using my… my former name.
Melissa.
She wasn’t Dahlia anymore. She just wasn’t. With her dark bobbed hair and glasses, her cheap and curiously quaint outfit and her slightly overripe features and silhouette, she was as far from being a super model it was possible to get.
I felt fabulous, and it didn’t matter that I wasn’t in any way a duplicate for the former Dahlia. I was still someone better than I had been and maybe… just maybe… I could lose all this weight and really… It didn’t bear thinking about too thoroughly. It was a fantasy that couldn’t really come true. But what did it matter? This numpty had just handed me her purse strings and her identity. I wasn’t a super model but I sure as shit was suddenly rich! I couldn’t wait to go out and start throwing it around!
“Well,” said this new mousy Melissa, as she crossed to the window and absently looked down at the street. “The next thing to do is to decide what the next move is – which hotel we’re going to move to and how to work out the plan for the first month or so.” She started to turn back to face me. “I think we should—”
I cleared my throat, cutting her off. “Actually Melissa,” I said, pausing to allow that use of her new name sink in, “it’ll be me who makes those decisions from now on. I am your employer after all. Aren’t I?”
The new Melissa lowered her gaze, her face colouring. “Uh yes. That’s right.”
I grinned broadly, hoping she wouldn’t notice but not much caring. She was such an idiot she’d no doubt interpret any humour on my part as being good-natured. “I was kind enough to bring you abroad with me to act as my… assistant… but that doesn’t mean you can start throwing your weight around and thinking you can tell me what to do.”
She met my gaze and smiled a secret comradely smile. “Yes. You’re quite right Dahlia. That was rude of me. Obviously you are in charge of what happens. I’ll leave the decisions to you.” She was playing along, obviously enjoying the game of it. The way she spoke wasn’t quite normal; it was exaggerated and frisky. It made me wonder if she’d really let this go on long enough for that playfulness to disappear; for the difference in our statuses to stop being a game and simply be the established dynamic between us. I ached for that to happen and thinking about that now made the fizzing that had been building in my nether regions increase in intensity.
The fact this was turning me on made my own cheeks colour. That was plain weird.
“You can do your own thing for an hour or two,” I said to her, getting into the swing of this but noticing that my own voice, as yet, was equally staged, “but we’ll be moving on this afternoon after I’ve made a decision.”
“Yes, Miss Western,” she said. I smiled at the use of my new name.
She went to leave the room but I stopped her. “Before you go, tidy up in here would you,” I said.
The new Melissa stopped short, a little put out, but I kept my eyes on her and she nodded. “Yes miss.”
She got to work, straightening the cases and ensuring everything was in order and I watched her, enjoying myself greatly. She went to leave again, taking up my former handbag.
“Oh, and order me a salad from room service,” I said.
“Yes. Of course.” She backtracked again and went to the phone, dialling reception. She made the request, eyeing me tentatively as she did, requesting it me sent up to “Dahlia Western’s” room, and I realised that the room had become mine because the name had.
It was a good job we were moving on today as the changes in our appearances and names would raise eyebrows with the staff here. I couldn’t wait to start off somewhere new, where our identities as they now stood would be set from the start. Everyone there would know me as Dahlia Western and her as my employee, Melissa.
It was too delightful for words. And too hilarious.
I thanked “Melissa” for ordering the food then said, “You can go now.”
A crackle of electricity passed between us; of further shifting statuses and a setting of this new status quo, and then she went to the door finally and left without another word.
Chapter Two - Part One
A New World
THE ORIGINAL DAHLIA
It was like I really had changed into somebody else.
I went downstairs and left the hotel, wandering out onto the busy street and I truly felt different. The glasses, the hair, the clothes, the shoes: I looked like someone new now and I was out in front of anyone who might care to look as though this really was the new me.
Back in England, when I’d slipped down to Barton in disguise, as much as I’d wanted to pretend I’d changed, it hadn’t really felt like I had. The hair alone had ruined any illusion I could have had because the wig felt like wearing a woolly hat. This wasn’t a wig anymore, it was my real hair! I couldn't help clutching it in my fingers and smiling.
But the physical reality wasn’t the only thing, though it framed everything.
I was a model. In my day I had been a super model. Walking down a street like this a month ago would have seen every eye on me; on my long slender limbs and generous bosom, my long silky hair and my beautiful face; my extravagant tailored clothes.
Now I was anonymous. Nobody gave me a second look.
With the big frames of my glasses and the dowdy hairstyle and cheap clothes I was nobody notable at all. I was just an ordinary woman; one of the masses. The dress did nothing to hide the extra weight I’d gained already. It was embarrassing at first to be so exposed in front of all these people like this with that extra squishiness on display, but really, nobody cared. They couldn’t judge how far I’d fallen because they had nothing to compare me to, and honestly, these people had better things to care about than another bespectacled nobody shuffling along by herself.
I beamed, enjoying the anonymity and so glad now that I’d pushed through with it. I was so grateful I had had Melissa’s support. Without her I might have backed out with cold feet. She’d given me just enough of a nudge to keep going.
There was an ice-cream parlour up ahead with stools arranged around a front-facing counter. I slipped my tongue out and ran it once round to moisten my lips, grinning, and hurried across to it.
A lifetime of dieting and now there was nothing to hold me back. Nothing at all. Quite the opposite. For my fantasy to come true I really had to go out of my way to eat now.
I ordered a tub of ice-cream containing four generous scoops; a variety of flavours. I had chocolate chip and a delicious version of strawberry that actually contained whole real strawberries. With them I had caramel supreme and mint chocolate and over the top I added raspberry and chocolate sauce and hundreds and thousands, plus a sprinkling of nuts.
I tucked in greedily, chomping down the tub quickly and already eying the other flavours I hadn’t tried.
To put on weight intentionally. To get fatter on purpose. That was the plan now. To get fatter and fatter and fatter and fatter and let myself really become Melissa.
I’d already taken on her name. I’d given over all my money.
I grinned to think of her playing along; insisting that I have no control over where we were going to go next. It was so delightfully perfect. I couldn’t have imagined it better myself.
I finished off my ice-cream, toyed with having some more, then instead, continued down the shopping street. There were loads and loads of touristy shops and though much of it was gaudy tat, there were a few items that caught my eye. I considered going in and trying some things on but even as I got as far as the shop threshold I remembered about the exchange of handbags and I realised that I had to be careful now. I no longer had unlimited funds. I couldn’t just buy anything I wanted. Not anymore. I was an ordinary woman now on a cleaner’s salary and with my developing appetite I was going to need what cash I had to keep myself in food.
I checked my purse and deliberated, squinting at the item I'd seen: a brightly coloured summer dress. It was very pretty but I remembered who I was now. I glanced down at the clothes I was already wearing. Something like that wouldn’t suit me.
Not anymore.
And if I bought that then I wouldn’t be able to...
I looked back at the ice-cream store. There had been so many wonderful flavours there.
I took one last look at the summer dress then turned my back on it and walked back toward the thing I really wanted.
As I approached it again I heard a bleep from my handbag and, curious, fished out Melissa’s phone. My phone now.
It was inexpensive and of limited use; several years older than the phone I'd handed over in its place. There was a text and when I worked out how to bring it up I saw that it was from Melissa. From Dahlia.
Melissa, it read. Seeing that name gave me a shiver. Have organised accommodation and transport. We’ll be leaving in one hour. Meet in reception then. Dahlia.
I smiled, reading it a second time. She had been quick off the mark and done exactly as she said she would. I couldn’t wait to see where we were going. It made me nervous that she had control now but that surrender was part of the allure and my loins were sparking from the titillation.
I closed up the mobile and put it away, checked my watch then strode the rest of the way to the ice-cream store. I had more than enough time for a few more scoops.
Chapter Two - Part Two
THE ORIGINAL MELISSA
My first impulse after the former Dahlia left what had suddenly become my room was to call the room service number again and order a big steak dinner with a lavish dessert but I had resisted. It was the old me who teetered always on the brink of despair from which excessive eating provided a welcome and necessary release.
The new me was going to be strong. The new me was going to be my own creation. I didn’t aspire to be the same as the... former Dahlia. After all, she was a sorry individual really, twisted up inside and desperate for release from her own demons. I planned to design my new persona almost from scratch. Yes, I had taken her name and her money but the new me was going to be superior to the old her.
I hadn’t yet decided on the spectrum of qualities I was going to develop in this new purloined life but there was plenty of time for that. I had all the time in the world and no stinking menial job to do; no nasty husband to run me down.
I was so happy. I hadn’t been so happy in living memory.
Instead of the huge meal my weaker self wanted I chomped down the salad my... employee had had sent up. Again, it wasn’t that bad once I got into it. The feeling of virtuousness countered the lack of strong flavour.
With that done I went down to the foyer and spoke to the concierge. With a generous incentive she was more than happy to make a booking for me at another hotel on the east coast. It was a five-star hotel and the room was reassuringly expensive. It was actually obscenely overpriced. Or just-enough-priced. I grinned to imagine it. I didn’t know if she was confused by my change of appearance but she didn’t question me and we would be gone in no time.
I wondered for a moment what to do about Dahli— No. Melissa now. I was Dahlia.
I wondered what to do about Dahlia’s accommodation but then the kind of thing I wanted came to me and I made a few enquiries with the concierge. Once she understood what I was after – and she did seem perplexed by it – she brightened and did a series of internet searches until she’d found something that matched what I wanted.
That made me grin even more.
I asked her to make the booking and order a taxi to take us then gave her a liberal tip, enjoying the slapdash frivolousness of throwing away the money. When I broke off I sent Melissa a text, telling her to meet me an hour later.
I spent that hour coating around the hotel, enjoying the idea that this was me now. I wasn’t my old self anymore. I was this new person; this new Dahlia. Everything seemed possible to me: the weight loss; that I could stay this way for a long time. That happiness was becoming a deep maturing contentment. I couldn’t imagine really feeling this good day after day but why wouldn’t I? As long as the new Melissa went along with her side of things then I could go on enjoying mine.
And it had been so delicious to put her in her place; tell her straight who was the boss now. That had been the best moment of my life thus far. I could imagine her trying to break this all off and me telling her no. I pictured myself standing with my arms folded while she begged to swap back, telling her not a chance; that she was the cleaner now. I was the rich woman. I imagined her hanging her head and going along with it.
I really wanted that to happen so that I could enjoy it for real.
But that would have to wait for another day. I really didn’t think she would let me bully her that far and there was no sense in rocking such a precariously balanced boat.
When the hour was up I had a porter bring my luggage downstairs. The new Melissa was already waiting with the battered old suitcase she’d inherited from me.
She looked remarkable in her banality; more distant and diminished now than she had up in the room. She’d obviously had time to think and the new identity was closing its grip around her. She looked nothing like her old self now. I didn’t think her own brother would have recognised her, though of course, he was dead.
“Hello Melissa,” I said, underscoring her new name.
Hearing it had an effect on her and colour rose to her cheeks, her eyes quivering. “Hello... Miss Western.”
“Are you ready to go?”
She nodded. “Yes miss.”
“Good.” I strode past her. The taxi was pulling up outside. “Hurry up then. I want to get there quickly and the taxi will have to drop you off at your accommodation first.”
The new Melissa stopped hurrying after me when she heard that and stared after me, her face befuddled. “My accommodation?”
“Yes,” I said. “You didn’t think you’d be staying at a posh hotel, did you? That would hardly be appropriate.”
Chapter Two - Part Three
THE ORIGINAL DAHLIA
The taxi journey took about an hour and I watched out the window as the bright Rhodes countryside rushed by. I had been to Greece before but not Rhodes however it had that similar arid patchy landscape, so different from England that I’d seen elsewhere. There was a lovely glamour but also a decay, of things unfinished or past their best.
“Dahlia” said nothing and I kept to myself. It felt odd now between us. At first, I had been very much the aloof employer, she the quiet mousy employee. Then, toward the end of our time in the UK we had started to become a sort of friends, something that had grown and expanded in the final preparations and the trip here. It was like we weren’t friends at all now and that knowledge was settled over the atmosphere between us, inhibiting conversation.
It was a multi-level state comprising discomfort and regret for the loss but also a thrill of enjoyment and daring. Had anyone on Earth ever done such a thing as this – taken it so far? Besides, I knew she was still my friend. We were only playing the parts we’d agreed to. And she was playing hers remarkably well. She should have been an actor. She had so far managed to affect a perfectly authentic remote indifference to me. She could almost make me believe she didn’t like me at all. It was funny.
We turned off the main road and trundled down a narrower branch lined with tall trees. Tourists and a few locals were walking the roadside. We turned again and the road became bumpier; again and it got bumpier still. The taxi had to slow right down. I looked across at “Dahlia” and thought for a minute I saw a curl to her lips.
Finally, the taxi pulled to a stop and shuddered. We were outside a squat off-white hotel with peeling paint and a row of tired looking palm trees that needed trimming. The sign outside was coated in dust but the name was Castle Hotel. There was no indication why it would be called that, though the building looked ancient. I frowned, unsure of myself and looked back at “Dahlia.”
“This is where you’re going to live,” she said. “It’s nothing fancy I know.”
“Oh. Okay,” I replied. This wasn’t what I expected at all. I had imagined I would at least be in the same hotel as her. “Where are you staying?”
“On the seafront some way from here. A five-star hotel called Satine Palace. I’m told you will be able to get there by bus in half an hour or so.”
“Oh. Right. Don’t you want me nearer to you?”
She chuckled, going along with the roleplay. “You’ll be able to get there in no time and I won’t be needing you right away. Besides you have some... eating to do. Don’t you.”
I blushed and nodded, uncomfortable talking so openly about the strange subject matter.
“This place isn’t much, I know, but it has an all you can eat buffet at meal times. That should get you started on your mission. We’ll fatten you up in no time.” She giggled.
“Uh, okay. Thank you,” I said, feeling a little despondent and lonely.”
I got out of the car and looked round. The hotel was a very run down. There was detritus piled against the side wall and parched scrappy grass on the lumpy ground out front. I felt very much out of my depth.
“Goodbye Melissa,” said the new Dahlia. “Get settled and come and see me tomorrow. The staff here should be able to direct you on how to get to where I’m staying.”
“Okay. Sure.”
She said nothing more. I shut the car door and got my case out the boot and the taxi pulled off. She looked back at me through the rear window, smiling. I gave her a shy wave then turned toward my new home and walked toward it, struggling with the case’s little wheels on the uneven ground.
It had a pool at the side with a few guests lying on sun loungers. The pool was small and a bit dirty. This was obviously a lower end hotel but there were still a fair number of inhabitants. It looked like it was placed a long way from the beaches but I guessed the poorer people needed to be catered for. It needed major renovation work to be nice but clearly they had no money for that. It might even have needed knocking down and rebuilding, though it was hardly a prime location.
I went into reception and booked in. The man on the counter spoke enough English to get by. I thanked him and went up to my room.
It was small and gloomy at the back of the building. There was no balcony and it overlooked a scrappy field where a dozen or so cars were going rusty and falling apart. It had little in the way of comfort and no bath but there was a shower. It was the worst hotel room I’d ever stayed in and surely substandard for any tourist. Still feeling low and hoping for a perk up, I got undressed and stepped into it, washing off the journey.
I checked the time when I came out. I was feeling peckish, even though it hadn’t been that long since my ice cream extravaganza. I’d missed lunch, that was why. But there were snacks available downstairs shortly and I decided to go and have a look around.
Unpacking, I found a swimming costume and put it on, frowning at the design. T was on the frumpy side with big pink flowers on a dark blue background. Not something I ever would have normally worn and it clearly showed the extra weight I’d put on round my middle.
I stood in front of the mirror, looking at myself, barely recognising anything in the person looking back at me. She suited this place, that woman, with her slightly dumpy figure and humdrum hair, her big round glasses. It was a place for ordinary people and I was certainly ordinary now. There was no denying that.
Chapter Two - Part Four
THE ORIGINAL MELISSA
I laughed as I drove away from dropping the new Melissa off at her hotel and went on giggling all the way to my hotel. She had no idea what I had planned and I only wished I could be there to see her face when she realised.
Oh yes, I certainly did. But I couldn’t have everything. Just almost everything.
It was incredible how empowered I felt now with our exchange today. When she’d started this swap idea I’d been sceptical, even scornful, but now it was like an addiction. I didn’t want it to stop. Ever. Something had clicked when we traded names and I just didn’t see myself the same way anymore. Nobody knew me here. I could reinvent myself any way I chose. Even the former Dahlia had been left behind in my dust.
The taxi pulled up outside my hotel and I paid the driver a handsome tip, just because I could. The Satine Palace was an incredible place. It had a great semi-circular driveway bordered by palms and a grand entrance. My bags were carried inside by a porter and the check-in was seamless and very respectful. Each activity underscored my new status as a woman of privilege and leisure.
I was famished but I wanted to see my room first.
I rode up in the lift and made my way along the corridor, bell boy hurrying behind. I didn’t have much luggage as yet – there were few Dahlia clothes that fit me – but I planned to rectify that soon enough. I had the money and the will to splurge out on an entire new wardrobe, and why not? It was my wealth now.
I laughed again and the bell boy looked confused. The tip I gave him stopped him worrying too hard about it though.
The suite was splendiferous; really magnificent. The furniture and decor were as opulent as Dahlia’s house back in Nockton Vale and the view was ten times better, looking out over the bay, rocky cliffs and hills to my right and a long stretch of beach off to the left. On the wide private balcony I could hear pool noises from round the corner of the hotel and below I could see more palm trees and rocks and a path down to the perfect beach that was dotted with big free-standing umbrella sunshades. I breathed in the warm sea air, smiling happily.
Had life ever been this good to me?
Of course not. My old life had been deplorable. She was welcome to it.
I didn’t bother to get settled in immediately. Lunch was still being served downstairs. I got changed into a wrap, bikini and sun hat then went down to see what was available.
The dining room had an incredible spread of food. Like at the new Melissa’s hotel it was an open buffet but obviously the standard was far, far higher than that would be.
I took a plate and eagerly began filling it, stuffing on every morsel of food that took my fancy. And so much did! There were local dishes; some of which defied description and looked frankly awful; but a lot of it was food I recognised and craved intensely. More I put on my plate, and more.
Then half way round I stopped and looked down at it and realised what I was doing; why I shouldn’t be doing it. I looked to the heavens and sighed heavily, resenting the situation terribly. But this was the price, I reminded myself; and it was barely a price. It was an opportunity. All my life I had been fat. This was my big chance now to change my ways.
It was a lot of fun to focus on the fun I was having scoring one up on my former employer and setting her down a peg, but there was so much more to this than that. I wasn’t a diabolical villain, existing only to steal a life, even for a while. Deep down I was a fat sad woman who had been depressed for a very long time; who had hated myself – yes, hated myself – for a very long time.
Today was a gateway from the me of the past to the me of the future. Everything could change now. If I put the necessary will behind it. And it had to be now. I couldn’t think that I’d give myself a week off first. Today was the gateway. If I waited a week before starting on my diet then I knew I’d never really start it. Melissa; the old Melissa; was gone now. I was this new person who did have self-control; who respected herself finally.
And yes, throwing mud in Dahlia’s eye added a lot of fun to the process, but this was about me. I didn’t really know how long this would go one for but if it did have an end in the relatively near future then I wanted to take away from it a new slimmer body. Maybe I’d never be as slim as she had been; that was impossible; but I could change my shape for the better. I was sure I could.
I left the overburdened plate where I was and went back to the beginning of the line to fetch a clean one, then I started again. This time I chose light items and I didn’t fill more than the inner circle of my plate.
That was better and I saw the huge swimming pool out there. Perhaps I’d go for a swim later. That was it; start the way I meant to go on. Dieting plus exercise: that was the way to go.
I smirked to myself, thinking about her, then I found a table overlooking the pool and settled down to my lunch.
Chapter Two - Part Five
THE ORIGINAL DAHLIA
I didn’t have a robe or anything and I didn’t think it would matter so I decided to walk down to the pool just in my swimsuit with a towel in hand.
When I left the room though, even though no one was around on the dim and narrow back corridor my room was, I felt instantly embarrassed. It was that gaze into the mirror that had done it, cementing my self-image in place.
That had been the first time since the haircut and name exchange that I had had real non-pressure time by myself examining the way I looked now and it had really drilled into me the visible differences.
This was exactly what I’d fantasised about – not being a gorgeous model anymore; just being an ordinary woman – but the reality of that was so unexpected. I hadn’t realised how fundamental that picture in my head had been of how I looked and how intrinsically joined it was to my sense of identity; or how jarring it would feel to step away from that identity. I was actually feeling a cloud of anxiety building high enough to make me want to go back inside my room; maybe even contact the new Dahlia and call all this off right away before it went far enough along that I actually had to live like this and be seen by other people.
But I got a hold of myself; figuratively grabbing my brain in two hands and giving it a shake. I could deal with anxiety. I’d had to in my life as a catwalk model. The way to do it was to recognise that yes, my lower brain was having an anxiety attack and then reflect with my higher brain what I wanted to do about that.
This was what I had wanted. I wasn’t going to wimp out at every little detail as it went on. I was committed now. See it through: that was what I was going to do.
I went downstairs. Even though this was generally a dive, there were clearly nicer sections of the hotel than I was staying in. I could almost have been angry at Melissa— ... Dahlia for booking me into the worst of the worst but she was just granting my wish. I giggled. She was kind of like my fairy godmother actually.
Reception was unmanned. I passed it and went out into the heat. The temperature was so high that the paving slabs burned my feet unless I crossed them very quickly.
The tiles beside the pool weren’t such potent conductors so were fine and I found a recliner and laid my towel on it. There were maybe a dozen people around the pool. As a newcomer, I could see them checking me out. In the past, the reactions would have been striking and notable. Now the only way they were notable was by their minimalism. I’d expected people to smirk at my dowdy costume and more curvy figure but, I guessed, to them I wasn’t Dahlia the supermodel brought low, I was just one of a billion average women; not noteworthy in any way.
I felt slightly down about that until my higher brain reminded me of my purpose here and then I got a little shiver of pleasure to wallow in my normalcy. It was nice actually. Nobody was staring for the first time in my life. It was kind of great.
I decided to take a little dip and walked over to the edge of the pool but as I dipped my toe in the proprietor of the hotel, who had emerged from the front door, started getting agitated and hurrying across.
He was a harried little man and he seemed awfully flustered. I examined my environment, trying to figure out why and noticed belatedly that nobody else was in the pool. It must have been restricted at certain times for cleaning for something.
I smiled and started to apologise when he came up to me but he cut me off quite rudely.
“Not allowed,” he said. He pointed to the pool and to the sun lounger where my towel lay. “Not here. You aren’t allowed here.”
“What do you mean?”
The other tourists were watching our exchange with interest.
“This swimming pool is for guests,” he said.
“But I’m—”
“You are staff. Staff are not allowed in pool.”
I frowned, confused. “Wait, what?”
“You are staff,” he said, becoming more and more agitated. “Staff are not allowed out here; only guests of hotel.”
“But I’m a—”
And then the penny dropped.
I remembered the smirk on the new Dahlia’s face as her taxi drove away and it hit me why my room had been so awful; why my corridor was narrow and grim at the back of the hotel.
The hotel manager was still yabbering on but I was noticing the people staring at me now; seeing how I was treated; seeing how I wasn’t allowed to enjoy the facilities that they could because... because I was only a member of staff. I was beneath them. My cheeks coloured darkly.
The manager gestured for me to come and I hurriedly picked up my towel as he herded me back toward the hotel, still repeating over and over that I wasn’t allowed to use the pool. He pressed me to the back of the hotel near the kitchens and there pushed back a door onto a small cluttered yard with a wire fence and a small wooden bench. There were cigarette butts littering the floor and noisy machinery units blaring away. There was nothing nice to look at, only the side of an old decrepit van with graffiti down its side.
“Here,” said the manager. “If you want to relax, you can come out here. Not at front of hotel. Not in pool.”
I looked forlornly about at this awful little courtyard feeling lonely, embarrassed and beaten down by his verbal attack.
The new Dahlia must had organised this position for me – I had no idea how without an interview – and now I was stuck with it. It was almost funny but I was still too shocked and shaken to be anything but forlorn.
Then I realised there was still something crucial I didn’t know and so I turned to the man and said, “What job? What job am I supposed to be doing?”
But of course I knew already. Of course I knew.
He looked back at with a face like thunder and said, “Cleaner.”
Chapter Two - Part Six
THE ORIGINAL DAHLIA
“You start tomorrow,” said the hotel manager. “In morning. 7am.”
“Tomorrow?” This was my fantasy… sort of… but I’d expected something of a holiday really.
“You will start outside around pool area then clean corridors inside. Then you will start on rooms.”
This was bewildering. On my extensive travels I’d seen hundreds of cleaning staff going about their business but I’d barely noticed them. Was I really going to allow myself to become one of them?
“Come,” said the manager. He led me to a set of cupboards in the staff area of the hotel and eyed my figure then removed a plastic-packed outfit in pale blue and white. “Here. Uniform. For you. Be dressed and ready here in the morning. The housekeeper will tell you what to do.”
“Uh, okay,” I said.
The manager went to leave.
“And I’m not to go outside?” I asked.
“Not at the front. No. At back.” He pointed toward the dirty little courtyard again.
“What about eating?” I asked. I was getting hungry already. “Should I eat with the other… with the guests, or…?”
“No,” he snapped as though I were being an idiot. “You will eat after each meal finished. In staff room. Eight o’clock tonight.”
“Eight o’clock?” That was hours away.
The manager walked off without another word and I stood looking after him, unsure what I should do now. Obviously the plans I’d had to enjoy the weather and rest weren’t going to work out.
With nothing better to do and feeling hemmed in by these sudden limitations I went back up to my room. On the way I passed a family of four English tourists who had been out by the pool when I got dressed down. When they saw me they twittered away at my misfortune and I blushed a bright red.
It was dingy and depressing in my room. I sat on the bed with my arms round my knees, playing back what had happened in my mind’s eye, feeling the discomfort and humiliation again. It had been horrible and embarrassing but also…
“Hmmm.”
I maneuvered on the bed, lowering my legs and spreading them slightly, then I scootched up the mattress and lay on my back, my eyes closed. I pictured myself again outside with my new brunette hairstyle and round glasses, my ordinary figure and dowdy swimming costume. I pictured the hotel manager coming angrily up to me again and telling me I had no right to be out there; saw the tourists watching the scene and smirking at the indignity. And I started to smile, biting my lower lip; started to feel a glow down inside me that I, Dahlia, wasn’t good enough anymore to use even this shabby hotel’s swimming pool. The poorest tourist was well above me on the social pecking order now when once I’d been like a princess.
When it had happened I’d felt a spike of anger toward Melissa – Dahlia now – for setting me up like this and not telling me, but now I suddenly felt really grateful. I would have fannyed around for a long time before I got to organising something like this. She had really taken my dark dream in hand and turned it into a darker reality. I had imagined spending the time abroad being a sort of servant to her, running around fetching drinks and such. This was much better. It was going to be far more immersive – and being separated from her, at least for now, would mean that everyone I interacted with would only know me as this person I now was. Melissa.
I sighed happily and settled deeper into the bed.
When I was done I cleaned myself up and went downstairs; found my way out to the little courtyard. It was just as claustrophobic and noisy as it had been before but was also an unpleasantly hot suntrap.
A skinny Greek man; a member of the cooking staff by the look of him; was leaning against the wall smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. He gave me a brief up and down look that made me feel deeply uncomfortable then flashed his eyes and offered a grin. Safe in my anonymity, it hadn’t occurred to me that I would have to contend with men in this new guise and the surprise of it put me off guard. I gave a curt smile back and looked away. He was far below my league – my former league – skinny and worn with curly black hair and a chipped front tooth. It was another reminder of how different I looked already.
It was remarkable; the difference the hair, glasses and clothes made, added to the weight I’d put on, which wasn’t that much. It was colouring my new self-image in more and more moment by moment.
I sat uncomfortably for a couple of minutes on a small plastic chair. The man showed no impulse to leave, starting up a second cigarette when he finished the first. He offered me one. I smiled and shook my head. I’d smoked a little in my earlier years but thought it was a stupid habit now that I’d stopped.
After a while, feeling out of place, I went inside and walked out of the front of the hotel. I needed to eat and I couldn’t get anything there. I decided to walk the streets until I found a shop of some kind. I needed something in my stomach.
This day hadn’t turned out how I had expected it to. Was it better?
I wasn’t sure yet.
I thought maybe it was.
Chapter Two - Part Seven
THE ORIGINAL MELISSA
I spent most of the afternoon relishing the wealth and privilege I now possessed, lounging by the pool in an expensive swimsuit I bought in the hotel shop.
It was wonderful to say the least. I had never been any further abroad than France and that had been on a particularly dull and wet school trip. Robert had never had the money nor inclination to finance something in a hot country and we could never in a million years have managed such a lavish hotel as this.
The drinks were complimentary and I got a mite tipsy, reading another purchase from the hotel shop: a racy little book about a gypsy falling in love with a wealthy merchant, only to find he was really only another gypsy in disguise. I couldn’t stop smiling.
When I got very hot I went for a dip in the pool. I wasn’t a great swimmer - my body wasn’t especially buoyant – but I managed to get across and back before I got out. That was enough for one day. I knew it was possible to pull all sorts of muscles if one went too far.
I also knew an excuse when I saw it and I grumbled to myself as I returned to my recliner because I had given myself the mission to do better; to get slim; and I was determined not to allow my normal proclivities limit that. This was the new me now – I was a new Dahlia – and one of the qualities I was going to possess wholeheartedly was an uncompromising resolve to achieve my ends.
I lay there for ten more minutes, thinking about the notice board I’d seen in reception advertising personal trainers, then I gathered my things and went inside.
I checked the poster and then went to the receptionist.
“Hi. I’d like to hire a personal trainer to work with me while I’m staying here,” I said.
The receptionist tried to maintain her demeanour but I caught the smirk that slid quickly on and off her lips. I narrowed my eyes, my initial impulse goading me to demand an apology, but I managed to retain my decorum.
She gave me some more details and took my information, telling me she’d set one up for the next morning. We agreed on a time and I walked away, feeling as though I’d made a terrible mistake.
It was fine. I could always drop out if I didn’t like it and what if he really could work some magic?
I imagined a scenario where I got bullied and harassed all day, every day, by the trainer but where I quickly showed results and in no time had a beautiful athletic body.
It would be so wonderful to do that and maybe, just maybe, it was possible. It was unlikely, surely, but it was like buying a lottery ticket. You know the chances are miniscule but that doesn't stop you hoping and dreaming.
I returned to my sun lounger but I felt better now; more virtuous. It was true that procrastinating only leads to self-imposed pressure and stress. Getting things done was the real path to lasting happiness.
I got settled and thought about Dahlia, giggling to myself about the trick I’d played on her. It had been expensive to convince the hotel to take her on as a cleaner without meeting her first when I’d found and responded to their advertisement, but money greases all sorts of wheels if there’s enough of it. Once it was explained to them that she had previous experience and they understood just what I was willing to pay so they would give her a chance, fleshing out the details was simple and very enjoyable.
Had they told her right away when she got there or had she sauntered round thinking she was a guest? Had she had her rude awakening yet? It was hilarious to imagine all the possibilities.
Just wait until she learned what it was like to work a real job – not pretending anymore but stuck in it all day long; at least twice the length of time she had played at it back in Nockton Vale.
Of course there was a risk she’d hate it and coming crying to me to swap back, but I had a feeling she was a big enough glutton for punishment to want to push through with it regardless. Maybe she was angry with herself for screwing up her modelling career. Maybe she hated herself for her brother’s death. Whatever it was I could see a vein of self-destruction in her; a desire to pay penance for some real or imagined act on her part.
Maybe when this was all done with she would have worked that guilt, whatever it was, out of her system and go on being a happier person. But she was going to be a fat happier person if I had my way. When this ended and we swapped back, the very least I wanted to get out of it was a fit slim body and to be able to laugh at the ruin she’d made of hers.
Chapter Two - Part Eight
THE ORIGINAL DAHLIA
I didn’t enjoy my walk.
There was little to see that far inland and the area wasn’t set up for tourists. It was just a lot of arid inhospitable wasteland and scrappy housing and heat. Terrible heat. And the shine had been taken off this experience for me by the abruptness of the hotel manager and, truth be told, the rude awakening I'd gotten from the surprise twist my life had taken. It made me slightly irritable. I kept thinking that if I had been the one to choose the route I was now taking; becoming an actual cleaner here; then I would have been able to enjoy it more. Having it foisted on me was... Well. It was like I really had no choice in the matter.
On the way back to my third-rate hotel I thought that through. That was what I had wanted really: to not have the power of my former role. I shouldn’t gripe. Melissa was simply allowing me to live out my fantasy. Yes, she was taking it farther than I had asked her to; farther than I’d expected; but it was still in line with my wishes, however unexpected it was.
As I approached the hotel I saw that the outside tables were laid for dinner. My stomach rumbled but I knew that I wasn’t permitted to eat with them or until they had finished. I wandered in feeling sorry for myself, gazing enviously across at the diners.
The manager appeared from the direction of the kitchens as I headed for the back staircase looking harried. “There you are! I’ve been looking for you. Get back here now. You’re supposed to be helping.”
“What?”
He grabbed my arm and urged me toward the back of the hotel. “Hurry. You will help to serve.”
“But I thought I was the cleaner.”
“Yes. Cleaner. But you help with meal as well. Hurry.”
He ran me back into the kitchen and shoved an apron into my hands. I was still bewildered by all this but I found myself carrying topped up plates of food out to the buffet tables for the guests to eat.
Back and forth I went as I was barked at by the manager and the skinny cook to move more quickly. It was hot and exhausting and sort of degrading. Because I thought this kind of job was beneath me? Was I so snobbish to think myself superior to the hoi polloi? Or was it just the mistreatment I was getting?
Either way I didn’t like it. It was too much of a thump down to that level. At home, within my own house, I had been able to take things slow and savour it as my own choice. This was the opposite of that; foisted into an unpleasant situation with unpleasant people treating me unpleasantly.
I kept telling myself this was what I wanted, but was it? Really?
The pace thankfully slowed as the evening went on and eight o’clock approached. I was left to hang around more as the guests finished their meals and went to the bar. Then it was cleaning up that I was roped into, clearing the tables and returning the food plates back to the kitchen. There were other staff members doing that as well and it wasn’t long before the skinny cook nodded toward the leftover food dishes and told me to help myself.
My stomach was moaning now and I greedily did as instructed, filling the widest plate I could find and carrying it through to the windowless staff room where a bare plastic table and plastic chairs waited. No one else was in there and I sat and tucked in.
The food was a tad cold and a tad dry but there was plenty of it and it was delicious. I chomped through three quarters of the plate without thinking about it but then I started to contemplate my intention to put weight on. If I ate like this every day then I surely would do so, and quickly. But what if I went further? What if I had a second plate? Or a third? What if I had a fourth?
I’d heard stories about fat people who ate so much that their appetites grew to match it, demanding more and more sustenance and bloating their forms even further. Here in this environment, without anyone I knew to judge me, I could do that if I wanted to. Who was to know? Who could stop me? Who would care?
Nobody.
I finished off that first big plate and then I went back for more. I filled a second plate with juicy meats and chips and mashed potato and mayonnaise. Back to the staff room I went and again I devoured it, working my way down. By the end of that much I was stuffed. I sat rubbing my full belly, thinking how enjoyable it was to cut loose so wildly. It was a shame I couldn’t have even more.
But on a whim I slipped up the corridor to the staff toilet and relieved myself. After that I went back and got my plate; took it through to the kitchen; filled it up with another helping. I was straining at the waist but the loo break had freed up some space.
Feeling guilty and oddly light-headed I carried my food back into the staff room and sat down, shovelling more and more into my mouth until my cheeks were puffed out with greed.
I thought about my cleaning duties starting first thing in the morning.
Then I focused back on my food and went on devouring it.
Chapter Three - Part One
A New Life
DAHLIA
At five to seven I stood in front of the mirror in my room, looking at my new self.
I was a cleaner for real now.
I was no longer playing dress-up within the comfort of my own home. This was the real thing.
I had put on the uniform they gave me. It had short sleeves and a skirt down to the knee, made of light grey material. Over the top of it went a white apron. The sleeves had white cuffs and the collar matched. It couldn’t be mistaken for a normal outfit; it was undoubtedly a uniform.
My hair was washed and brushed into a smooth bob. I had my glasses on; an extra prescription stronger now (probably prematurely) that warped my vision and gave me a misty-edged streak of eyestrain. That distortion added to the preternatural quality to what I was seeing before me, as though it were a mystical vision.
My mother had told me stories when I was little; local legends about magical transformations. I’d believed them wholeheartedly as a girl, longing for something like that to happen to me, until I’d grown old enough to realise what a naive idiot I’d been. This wasn’t unlike that though. This transformation seemed almost as mystical.
Was I even fatter now?
I felt bloated from the overlarge banquet the night before. Surely, I would gain weight rapidly if I ate like that every night.
Tingles in my crotch.
I felt shattered. The time difference told me it was still the middle of the night inside my body. This new zone was going to take some getting used to.
Feeling very nervous, I went to the door and let myself out, tucking my room key in the front pocket of my apron. I made my way down to the foyer and recognised the housekeeper I was meant to be meeting immediately. She was a round middle-aged woman with grey-streaked hair tied into a bun. Her skin was like the outer shell of a baked potato that had been left in the oven almost too long. She was speaking intently to another cleaner but made a shooing gesture as she saw me approach.
“You are Melissa, yes?” She smiled agreeably. Her English was better than the manager’s and she didn’t have his hostile intensity. I had half expected her to be a tyrannical caricature, yelling at me and running me down. She wasn’t I could see immediately that she was just a normal woman of responsibility – a bit harried perhaps but wilfully pleasant enough.
I nodded. “Yes. I’m Melissa.” It was a delight to say those words to her; to be in this environment where I really was another person as far as all were concerned.
“Good. Welcome to the staff here. You will be treated well but I do expect high standards. Is that clear?”
I nodded. “Yes. Of course.”
“Some of the people we get think they are here for an easy life; a free holiday. That is not the case. I expect you to work hard throughout the day. It will not be easy and the pay isn’t great but you will have my gratitude and the pleasure of knowing you are making the hotel look beautiful for the guests.”
I nodded.
“You will start outside; mopping the pool area. After that I want you inside, mopping the corridor floors, starting at the top and working your way down. Do you understand?”
I nodded, appreciating how surreal this all was.
“I will show you where the cleaning equipment is. There is a cupboard on each floor and another one outside. When you have done the mopping I will show you how to prepare your cart to start work on cleaning the bedrooms.”
“Thank you.” I wondered how Melissa was getting on. She was probably still fast asleep.
“I wasn’t happy that I didn’t get to interview you before you took on the post,” she said. “The manager made the decision. I believe a payment was made.”
I shuffled, unsure how to respond to that. I had been curious exactly how Melissa managed to arrange this.
“I will be watching you carefully to check the quality of your work. If you do well then all will be well. If your work is shoddy then you will be dismissed. Is that clear?”
I nodded, feeling a pinch of stress. This wasn’t like my fantasy, but in other ways it was. I was really going to be a cleaner. I was really Melissa.
Or I would be soon.
Hopefully.
Chapter Three - Part Two
The housekeeper showed me where the outdoor cleaning cupboard was.
Our walk from the hotel to the cupboard was supremely surreal. It was just becoming so actual now! This was genuinely happening and that was supremely difficult to accept.
I was in another country. I looked so different from how I usually did. And everyone here thought I was really Melissa Chapman. I was employed under that name! I was actually a cleaner for real!
“Start with the broom and dustpan,” said the housekeeper. “Work your way round the entire pool area. The dustbins are there. Then use the mop and bucket. You can get hot water from the tap here.”
I nodded, secretly thrilled by the nature of these instructions.
“When you’re done with the floor, wipe down all the tables and any sun loungers that need it. Is that all clear?”
“Yes miss.”
She took the measure of me, eyes flicking across my face then, apparently satisfied that I was going to do as I was told, she gave me a reassuring nod and said, “Good. Welcome to the staff here Melissa,” she said (and I thrilled again at the use of my new name). “I’ll come and check on you later.”
She went back inside and I got to work right away. There was a lot to do and I was aware I had further duties inside when all this was finished.
The dustpan was built with a long handle for ease of use. I carried this across to the pool area with the broom and left it standing as I worked around and back toward it, sweeping the tiles. Because the land was so arid there was a surprising amount of dust that had blown in. I worked hard to collect it up, slowly filling the dustpan. When it was full I deposited its contents in the outside bin then came back for me. And more. And more.
The morning was much cooler than it would be later but it didn’t take long to build up a sweat. As I worked I reflected on the situation I had found myself in and on the actions Melissa had taken to put me here. I had mixed feelings about her taking charge and doing this without prior discussion, but I couldn’t deny it was the perfect extension of my seedy fantasy. Would I have chosen it myself? Set it up? I didn’t really know. Perhaps if left to my own devices I would have dilly-dallied and never quite raised the ante this high. I was glad of it, truth be told.
My eyes were a bit sore, especially being outside. Out here I had a longer focal distance and that pushed my brain to compensate for the incorrect visual prescription. Squinting down at the collected dirt exacerbated that. But it wasn’t too bad I could cope. I kept reminding myself of the scientist who was able to make his eyes adjust to upside-down glasses. Surely that was a tougher proposition than what I was doing.
What seemed like an inordinate amount of time later I finished the sweeping and disposed of the last of the dust then I switched to the mop and bucket, filling it with piping hot water.
As I carried that over into place it struck me that I was already getting used to this in a way, working for minutes at a time without stepping outside myself and questioning it. If I did this long enough would I go so far into it that I would all but forget my old life? This wasn’t meant to be anything more than a short to medium term thing, but it was a pleasant fantasy to imagine it going on and on. Imagine if I did this every day for weeks and months and years until a point was reached when I might go for extended periods without so much as considering that it wasn’t just normal for me. I could get so used to being called Melissa that it didn’t seem odd anymore. And by that time, if I went on gaining weight, might I really look like her?
Oooooh, the deliciousness of that fantasy.
I imagined myself, years from now, grossly obese and tottering about back home in Nockton Vale, riding the bus from one cleaning job to the next, lost in my new identity, almost forgetting that I was anyone other than Melissa.
That would be far too delightful for words.
I worked my way along the pool edge fastidiously, wringing out the mop periodically.
A family appeared, loitering near the doorway. I could see that breakfast wasn’t far away from being served. The father walked across with some towels. I tried to keep out of his way but the mop bucket ended up being in his path. He sighed heavily and said, “Can I get past please.”
“Sorry sir,” I said, pulling it out of his way.
He scowled and sighed and marched past, laying the towels out across four well-placed sun loungers.
He scowled at me again as he passed back toward the hotel and I gave him a nervous smile. The hotel housekeeper was watching from the hotel doorway with a stern look. I got back to work, mopping quickly and carefully, hoping she wouldn’t think I was shirking my duties. It was important to me that I did a good job. I didn’t want to mess this up.
I didn’t want to let Melissa down.
Chapter Three - Part Three
MELISSA
It was at breakfast that I finally accepted that this dieting lark wasn’t going to be as easy as all that.
Whether it was hunger or a new bedroom, I hadn’t slept well. For two hours in the night I’d lain, hot and fretting on my big king-sized bed. I hadn’t been worrying about one specific thing at first but I had a low-level anxiety that had buzzed my heart rate enough to wire me out of the possibility of sleep. I thought about my husband back home, oblivious to my little games. I thought about what he would say to me if he knew what I was doing.
And I fantasised about food. The self-control I’d managed the night before scratched away at me and I found myself regretting the lack of food, wishing I’d let myself go more. I was on holiday after all. There was no one forcing me to lose weight. I could go one eating at least for a few weeks. There was no point rushing things.
I lay there regretting organising the personal trainer for that morning. I fussed over the embarrassment of cancelling him; worrying that the receptionist would smirk again smugly, realising I was incapable of ever getting slim. That made me think I should go through with it after all; perhaps drop out after a couple of sessions. I ended up visualizing different ways I might phrase my cancellation, hoping I wouldn’t have to meet him.
Eventually I drifted off again but my dreams were about food... and guilt. And the judgement of others. In the dream Dahlia and her former PA, Katherine, were talking behind my back, sniggering about how useless I was, that they’d known I would never be able to cut it; that I was a poor excuse for a Dahlia. Why did I ever think I would be able to be her?
I woke up feeling ugly and fat, my eyes parched, my brain sizzling. My hair was a terrible tangle. In the bathroom mirror I looked like a monstrous, obese hag. I hated myself. All I could think about was getting downstairs to breakfast and cheering myself up with a giant spread.
Without putting my contact lenses in so I didn’t have to look at myself (and wondering if I should just revert to the glasses) I stood in the shower until the top layers of my skin had been flayed away by the onrushing water. I got dressed, glumly thinking how stupid I must look in the posh clothes I had; wishing I still had the plainer outfits I wore in my real life.
I dried my hair but struggled to make anything of it, I was so irritable. I regretted having the dye and restyle. I considered just being done with this charade and reverting to my proper cut and colour. Eventually I gave up and tied it back then sat on the edge of the bed feeling sorry for myself.
This went on for a good half hour until the scratching in my belly urged me to get downstairs as fast as I could. Reluctantly I put the contacts in, thinking to myself how this would probably be the last time I had to put myself through that horror of self-inflicted pain.
On the way down in the lift I wondered what Dahlia would say when I told her that I wanted to end it all and swap back. Was that the right move? Would I regret it later? I was such a pathetic loser. I always had been. Why did I ever think I could pull this off?
I hadn’t bothered with make-up. I didn’t look my best. I didn’t look the slightest bit like a super model. I was an idiot to think that I ever could. In the foyer nobody paid me attention openly but I had the impression that they were all looking down their noses at me.
In the great big dining room I built up a mountain of hot food and noticed the cereal and fruit I could follow it up with. I carried it to one of the outside tables overlooking the pool area and sat looking at it, feeling conspicuous in my solitude and the opposite of the confidence I’d had the night before.
Then a counter wave of negativity hit me because this feast before me was the epitome of failure. All my plans to become slim and prove myself better than Dahlia, and this was how it ended.
Predictably.
I was just as sad and pathetic as I’d always been. I was far inferior to her. At least she had the will to go through with her side of this trade. I couldn’t even manage my side with untold riches as an incentive.
I stared down at my plate, kind of hating myself. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Twenty.
My thoughts started to settle.
I pushed the plate away from me and gazed out across the surface of the pool.
I looked back at the plate; back at the pool.
I thought about Dahlia, waking up to her new life as a hotel cleaner and a smile rippled across my lips right to left.
My food was well and truly cold now. I considered going back in to get some more. I contemplated that for several minutes and then got to my feet with a wheeze. I went back into the canteen, walked over to the buffet tables and picked up a bowl then half filled it with slices of kiwi fruit and banana.
I took that out to my table and sat down; glanced at the full plate of greasy food, quickly congealing, and gave myself a nod.
I wasn’t pathetic. I could do this. I could do anything I put my mind to.
I tucked into my fruit. It tasted better because of the virtue it was laced with. I smiled to myself and the smile became a grin.
Then I noticed that a man was standing near my table with his arms folded, leaning against a pillar. He was smiling as broadly as I was and I was taken aback to see that he was looking right at me. He was Greek and well built, darkly tanned.
He came closer and motioned to the food before me. “You made the right choice there. Good for you.”
I wasn’t sure what to say.
“Dahlia, yes?”
“Er... Do I know you?”
“You will,” he said, taking the seat opposite me. “I’m your new personal trainer.”
Chapter Three - Part Four
DAHLIA
I worked hard on the smooth corridor floors, using hot water and a mop.
I was getting some aches – my body wasn’t used to this kind of intensive activity – but it was pleasurable in its simplicity.
What would I have been doing in my real life right now? Would I even be up?
Having a leisurely breakfast? Swimming in the pool? Maybe getting ready to go shopping?
Was this really me here? Was I still myself at all anymore or had I become a different person?
“You’re doing it wrong.”
I looked round. A woman dressed in a cleaning uniform like mine was leaning against a wall pillar, arms folded, ankles crossed. She had thick, curly, black hair tied loosely in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her skin was dark but she wasn’t a native. Her uniform hadn’t been washed enough or it had been washed too much. Its colour was faded and worn. She was sneering at me and at the work I’d done. Beside her was another cleaner; this one Greek and a lot older with reeds of grey in her hair. She was smirking, a bent cigarette in her lips.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“You’re doing a crappy job,” said the first one. “Your water isn’t hot enough and you should have changed it already. You’re going to leave streaks.” He accent was British but severely provincial.
“You’re from England?”
“For my sins but I got away from that rat hole. Now I live in this rat hole.”
“Oh. Yeah. Hi. My name’s Da— Melissa. I’m Melissa.”
“I don’t care who you are,” she replied. “I’ve got enough friends.”
The Greek cleaner giggled, taking a drag from her cigarette without touching it and piping the smoke out the other side of her mouth like Popeye the sailor man.
The enthusiasm of my greeting stumbled and fell on its face. I didn’t really know how to react. This kind of schoolyard hostility was something I’d never been faced with, even in my schoolyard. At school I’d always been one of the pretty girls: perfect and popular.
“You better learn quickly or else they’ll get rid of you,” said the nasty Brit. “If you do a bad job then the rest of us will have to end up doing it again and I’ll be fucked if I’m going to do your job on top of my own. Get it right the first time.”
I looked down at the floor I’d done. I could see the streaks she was talking about.
Part of me wanted to tell her where to stick her snide comments but the hair and glasses had worked some magic already, as had the normalising of my figure. I suddenly realised that the qualities I’d always relied upon to give me confidence; my looks and my money; were no longer there, and it felt scary. Without that stability to hold onto I realised I didn’t really have anything else. And this woman was right about the quality of my work. Maybe I should just do what she said.
“This place runs on a hierarchy,” said the Brit. “The housekeeper’s a waste of space. She won’t teach you anything. Because you’re new you answer to us. You go that?”
I looked back at her, feeling as intimidated as she wanted me to. I didn’t know whether I should nod submissively or try to flash some show of force but I had no confidence for the latter. Instead I found myself doing the former.
The Brit saw my dutiful nod and smirked. “Get that water changed and do this whole floor again. You got that?”
“Okay,” I replied, moving to do as I was told.
These women weren’t supervisors or managers; they were just other cleaners; but they were still higher up the pecking order than me. It made me realise how low I was now; made me accept it in a way I hadn’t before.
This was still just a game – I could call an end to it all whenever I wanted by going back to Melissa and telling her I wanted it to stop – but it was frighteningly realistic as long as it was playing out.
It made me imagine how I would feel if this really was me; if I really had no alternative to this life I was dipping into; but then, for the length of time I was here; as long as I didn’t pull the emergency brake; I was effectively trapped at this level by my own choosing.
As I hurried back up the corridor with the mop bucket to change the water, the two nary cleaners sniggering in my wake, I realised that no part of this was going to be easy, not for as long as I let myself be stuck in it.
Life had a different set of rules now. I wasn’t one of the untouchable rich beauties anymore – I was one of the ordinary masses – and for now I was well and truly down at the bottom of the scale of importance.
I wanted this fantasy to play out – I wanted it to succeed – and to do that I had to go on playing the part; allowing myself to fall into the role of the plain-Jane cleaner I had become. If that meant being bossed around by the other cleaners then that was just my lot in life for now.
Chapter Three - Part Five
MELISSA
The personal trainer, Ambrus, leaned back in the seat opposite me and gave me a speculative look. “What you need to decide before we start making you thinner is exactly what you want to achieve.”
“I...”
“Don’t be hasty,” he said, raising his hand. “These are important matters and I want you to be sure you’ve thought this through properly. I see people come here every year, men and women, who half some half-hearted desire to lose weight. They are feeling guilty about all the food and wine and think the odd hour here and there of exercise will make it all okay.” He shook his head, smiling. “Are you one of those people?”
My cheeks coloured a little. It all sounded so serious and he was applying a certain amount of pressure. “No. I’m not one of those.”
“Then tell me.” He relaxed, leaning against the arm of his chair. “What do you want to achieve here. I’m told you are staying here at the hotel long term.”
“Yes. For at least a couple of months,” I said. “Which gives me a good long time to get started on losing weight.”
“How much weight do you hope to lose?” he asked.
I thought about the question, picturing Dahlia, then I looked at him very earnestly and said, “All of it.”
He laughed. “Ambitious eh?”
“Yes. Really. I want to be thin.”
He was still chuckling.
“Can you help me or not?” The question was blunt enough to knock the humour from his lips.
He gave me another one of those speculative looks and I actually got the impression that I had impressed him. He might even have been goading me to see how I would react. Despite the spark of irritation I’d felt I found myself warming to him.
“I can help you achieve what you want if you are prepared to put the time and effort in,” he said. “Losing weight is simple. It requires the determined application of concentrated effort. If you put the discipline in then you will achieve results. How great those results are will be proportional to how much discipline. If you plan to do a bit of exercise here and there and then spend your evenings getting drunk and eating large then I am here to tell you that you will be wasting your time. Yes, you won’t put on as much weight as you might otherwise have done but you’re unlikely to lose any.”
“That’s fine,” I replied, feeling an icy determination start to form. This had been a good idea. This was what I needed. This guy was going to challenge me and keep on challenging me. I think I liked it. I am determined. I do want to lose a lot of weight.”
“All of it,” he said, smiling wryly.
“Yes,” I replied, equally bluntly. “All of it. Is that possible?”
“Anything is possible if enough time and, er... money is available.”
“I want to do it quickly,” I said.
“How quickly?”
“As quickly as possible. And money is no object.”
He frowned, trying, I guessed, to work out exactly how serious I was and what my expectations were. My guess was that people didn’t come to this kind of resort to enter a high-level fitness regime. He must have been trying to decide if I was for real.
“I suppose, if you were serious about it...”
“I am.”
“... then it would be possible to work to a strict regime of diet and exercise. We could get you shaping up quite quickly if you remain committed.”
“I’ve been thinking about liposuction,” I said. “What if I combined the exercise and dieting with that to enhance the results. Money really is no object. I want to get somewhere quickly.”
He seemed doubtful and possibly suspicious. I was being intense but I was also clearly honest and driven, maybe even potentially obsessional.
“Let me ask you a question,” he said. He paused, trying to find the best words to frame it. His English was outstanding but it wasn’t perfect. “What is your motivation? What makes you think that you can be as driven as you are suggesting. You are telling me you want to make your life about getting to the shape you want to be. What are you going to hold in your mind to make that happen. When I’m shouting at you and making you work harder than you ever have before, what will you picture in your mind to keep yourself going?”
I put the last piece of fruit in my mouth off my bowl and looked out over the pool, trying to find the answer to that. It came to me quickly and as it entered my mind I smiled grimly.
In the lounge at Summertop, Dahlia’s mansion back home in Nockton Vale, on the high wall was a bigger than life portrait of Dahlia. She was at the height of her modelling career and she looked slim and beautiful in a way that had always been impossibly out of my reach. Picturing it evoked a flash of all the bitterness and envy I had felt all the years I’d worked for her. It filled my mind with anger and... yes, hatred. I hadn’t realised until now. It hadn’t been clear to me just how much I hated her.
I wanted to be that slim. I wanted to be that beautiful. I wanted to do anything I could to hurl her into the life I had led, to encourage her to be every bit as fat as I was, and I wanted to take the shape she had had.
I wanted this more than I’d ever wanted anything. I wanted to beat her. I wanted to humiliate her. I wanted to posses everything she had and leave her with the pitiful things I had had.
I looked at Ambrus. He looked back at me.
“I have my picture,” I said.
“What is it?” he asked.
I smiled. “My little secret. But you can believe me when I tell you that it will give me all the motivation I need to go all the way on this.”
Chapter Three - Part Six
DAHLIA
I spent the morning mopping the corridors and then started work on the bedrooms. For my sins, Maxine, the nasty British cleaner, was the one allocated to train me.
“You better listen carefully to what I tell you,” she snapped right off the bat. “You do what I tell you and you might keep your job. Give me crap or don’t listen and I’ll get you kicked out of here in a second.”
She showed me the process in the first room: stripping and making the bed, cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming in the floor, dusting the surfaces. She was nasty about it at every opportunity and clearly resented the time she was having to waste on me. She threw in sighs every few minutes and sullen pointed words. She pointed out anything I didn’t get immediately right with relish and scorn.
“Well look at this table. You’ve missed bits here, here and here. Do it again!”
I found myself apologising over and over again but after we got to the fourth room I started to realise that she was slapdash with her own work. The parts of the room she did weren’t done to the exacting standard that she was demanding of me. It left me feeling sullen and confused; resentful of the way I was being treated.
This really wasn’t what I had imagined when I agreed to come here and make this trade. I hadn’t expected to be made to feel so awful all the time. I had wanted relaxed anonymity and routine, not to be treated unjustly as though I was scum.
As the morning wore on, Maxine spent less time working and more time on her phone. I was expected to keep going through. If I slowed or stopped for a rest then she was straight in there with a barbed comment.
I was sweating. I’d never worked as hard in my life. It was awful.
I started to fantasise about getting off work and going to see Melissa as she’d suggested. This really wasn’t what I signed up for. It wasn’t what I wanted. I hadn’t decided fully but I was seriously considering calling the whole thing off, or at least altering the set-up so I could do as I’d imagined: hang around her hotel, maybe fetching her drinks and such; just some low-key tasks like that. This fully immersive horror story was too much.
But I also fantasised about my lunch. It was going to be another all-you-can-eat buffet and my stomach made audible gargles in anticipation. I couldn’t help smiling when I thought about tucking in… and of the effect that would have on my shape. I couldn’t wait to start seeing the results of my overeating on my figure. I would never have expected to feel this way but I really craved being fat now; really wanted to see my inflated torso, my chubby arms and legs, my round face.
“I don’t know what you’re smirking about,” said Maxine, seeing me. “Your work’s still shoddy.”
I put my head down and carried on.
But it wasn’t too long before we got to break for lunch.
Again, I was ordered to help putting the food out and I did what I was told. Maxine wasn’t in sight. She obviously didn’t have to lower herself to that level. I took plate after plate out to the serving area and then went back for more.
The skinny cook was working, his face red and sweating. “How are you settling in?” he said.
I shrugged, nervous, and tried to smile. “Okay, I guess.”
He winked as I carried the next two plates out, leaving me feeling uncomfortable and confused.
As I finished serving I was told by the housekeeper that I would continue cleaning the rooms until two thirty and would then get some time off. It was like being told about my prison release date. I was incredibly relieved to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
It was time for me to eat and I filled up my big plate with different sorts of meat, rice, roast potatoes and coleslaw that was dripping with mayonnaise. Maxine and her coven of bitchy cleaners were in the windowless staff room, smoking and playing cards. I sat away from them and watched them sullenly as I tucked into my food.
All I had to do was to get through to two thirty and then I could get out of there.
I was going to catch the bus to Melissa’s hotel and confront her; tell her I wasn’t happy here; that I wanted to change the set-up. Either I wanted to create an easier life for myself or I was going to call the whole thing off. I didn’t like having so little control.
I went on eating though. My urge to get out of this situation wasn’t quite strong enough to stop me doing that.
I even fantasised about doing away with the whole Melissa swap as such and just staying on holiday with her, both of us getting fatter and fatter until we were both roly-poly ladies, lumbering around the tourist sites like identical twins.
That was a lovely idea and I found myself sniggering to myself to imagine it.
Two fat ladies just enjoying ourselves.
Becoming a cleaner had been an interesting experience but it was becoming clear that it really wasn’t a lifestyle I would want to get stuck in.
Chapter Three - Part Seven
DAHLIA
The bus journey to Melissa’s hotel took forty minutes and was bumpy and uncomfortable. Add to that the walk to the bus stop, the wait for the bus and the walk at the other end and it took me well over an hour to get there. A taxi would have been much quicker and far more relaxing but I’d given all my bank cards and cash to her. My finances were strictly limited now. After the series of unpleasant and demeaning situations I’d faced settling into my hotel the journey and that sense of monetary restriction was the final straw to my thinking.
Playing at being Melissa at home in Nockton was one thing. This was something else entirely. I valued the total change from my former life but it was too much and the restrictions felt too complete. The removal of my wealth was like I was handcuffed and chained by the ankles.
As I approached Melissa’s hotel on foot my feet were getting sore. I’d been on them most of the day but I had a feeling they were already a little fatter and the shoes were rubbing. I stopped and winced, trying to take the weight off one foot and then the other and I became aware of my glasses. I wondered if I should take them off but I was in two minds about my intentions now. The greater part of me wanted to continue the transformation toward looking more like Melissa but I also felt it was important I re-establish my position in our relationship.
It had been nice when she pretended to take control... very nice... but there was also an uncomfortable element to that. I’d never truly relinquished control in my life. What we’d constructed here together; and then what Melissa had arranged without my consent... It was all a little bit too much like I had no control in my life at all anymore. I knew that was the fantasy I'd had: to be a normal person ruled by the practical necessities of life; but it was too much too quickly.
I took off the glasses. When Melissa saw that she’d recognise it as symbolic of my determination.
Except... taking them off made my vision swim. These were a couple of notches up now from zero prescription and I’d been wearing them all day. Removing them brought on a slight but instant sense of dizziness and headache. I frowned, blinking to clear my vision. Was it possible my brain was already getting used to glasses to the extent that I would have to go on wearing them?
Surely not. If I went to bed it would reset my vision I was sure – but I was inclined to keep them on now.
Shrugging, I did so. What did it matter?
Though I was conscious of how much plainer I looked in them; how much closer I looked to Melissa.
The hotel had a long drive that was lined with palm trees. I walked along it feeling dwarfed. The Satine Palace was absolutely gigantic compared to the squalid little hotel I had been forced to stay in. Stretching off from the grand entrance it had two great wings that clearly faced the sea beyond. The air here was cooler than it was at my hotel; less stifling. This was clearly a superior residence in every way. Now that I was bringing this failed start to a close it was going to be nice to move in here; to get some quality lounging time in. And I looked forward to continuing my weight gain. It would be even easier with no pressure to work. I could just eat and lay out in the sun day after day after day. It would be great.
I walked into reception and went to the desk. I introduced myself (after a moment’s thought) as Melissa Chapman and asked where Dahlia Western’s room was. It occurred to me then that even if I moved in here I would have to continue using that name now. There couldn’t be two Dahlia’s. The idea of that was... intriguing. It was the work and lack of power that was getting to me. I still wanted to explore our swap.
The receptionist wasn’t polite to me. She was aloof and snooty. She didn’t even respond to my request; just went to a phone and made a call. It was a bit annoying actually. I was getting tired of people not treating me with respect. I was still a human being even if I my clothes and slightly dishevelled appearance suggested I wasn’t in the league of the clientele here.
I heard her use my new name and presumed she was talking to Melissa. After she put the phone down she ignored me and went back to the papers she’d been going through when I approached. Feeling irritable and impatient I said, “Excuse me. Should I go up?”
“Wait,” she said sullenly.
“Oh. Right. For how long?”
She ignored me. I waited. She still didn’t respond.
I huffed to myself and stepped away from the desk, loitering.
Five minutes later I had heard nothing. I went back to the desk. “Excuse me. Sorry. Did, uh, Miss Western say how long she would be?”
“You need to wait,” replied the receptionist without looking up.
I frowned and shook my head at the deplorable service and took a seat nearby.
It was starting to piss me off that Melissa was keeping me waiting. She was my employee. She should have told them to send me straight up. I shouldn’t have to wait.
But wait I did. Ten more minutes went by before I went back up to the desk. “Excuse me,” I said.
The receptionist scowled at me.
“Please can you just tell me what room Miss Western is in? I’ll go up and knock.”
She glanced down at my clothes and gave a little sneer.
“Could you at least ring her room again?”
She snapped something in Greek and then went back to the phone.
This time there was no answer. She put it down and said, “She isn’t there.”
“But you told her I was here to see her, right? Could she be on her way down?”
The receptionist ignored me.
“Oh for God’s sake,” I muttered. I walked away from the desk and then turned back to go and give her a piece of my mind, but something caught my eye through a wide window that looked into the expansive dining room to the pool area beyond.
I saw Melissa walking along out there. I was flabbergasted. She had been told I was here and she hadn’t even bothered to come. She was going out to the poolside.
“I’ve had enough of this,” I said and started toward the door leading to the back.
The receptionist called after me but I ignored her. This run-around had to stop. It was great that Melissa was playing along with this part she’d created but it had gone way too far. It was high time we had words. I wasn’t comfortable with the way she was treating me and it was time for her to stop.
Chapter Three - Part Eight
DAHLIA
I strode out to the back of the hotel, feeling determined, but when I reached the outside, I paused, trying to orient myself and spot Melissa.
Every table and sun lounger was filled and children were playing in the huge swimming pool. There were palm trees everywhere and a fancy bar giving away unlimited free drinks to residents.
People looked my way and I felt an uncharacteristic diminishing under their stares. I had been confident all my life but that confidence had been built on things that weren’t quite as present now as they had been. I was conscious of the weight I had put on and the new dowdy haircut I had; the glasses I was wearing. These people were all very, very wealthy and I must have looked a sight in my well-worn clothes. It just knocked the wind from my sails enough to tip me off the charge of righteousness I was on.
I saw Melissa at the other side of the pool on a recliner, a book out., and headed toward her, feeling increasingly self-conscious as I was watched by dozens of lazy eyes, well aware that I wasn’t really meant to be here as I wasn’t a guest.
Melissa was wearing a large round pair of sunglasses. She looked pretty good, despite her weight. I approached her, expecting her to see me, but she didn’t look my way. I stopped beside her lounger. Still she didn’t look up. She just went on reading.
I cleared my throat. “Melissa?”
She didn’t answer.
“Melissa. Can I have a word?”
Still she didn’t look up, though she must have heard me.
Then the penny dropped and my cheeks coloured as I tried the word, “Dahlia?”
She lowered her book and gave me a short smile. “Ah Melissa. Hello. You’re late.”
That threw me off-guard. “Er, sorry. I... had to work.”
Melissa smiled. “Well I suppose that’s understandable. You shouldn’t shirk your duties; not with your income. You’d be in trouble if you lost your job.”
I got a flutter at the game she was still playing that almost tempted me to go on with it, but I wasn’t happy with the rules she’d put in place. I needed to assert control again.
“Er, look, er... Dahlia,” I said, feeling nervous that I was going to pull out of this so soon. “I’ve been thinking and, uh, I’m not really happy having to work as a cleaner and live in that crappy hotel. I’d rather we, uh, changed things about a bit.”
She regarded me without any change in her expression. I couldn’t see her eyes through the dark lenses. She said nothing and eventually I felt the need to fill the gap.
“It’s been, uh, really interesting swapping place and everything, but I think we should talk about doing things differently; maybe swapping back. Or staying who we are now but both living here. I don’t want to be stuck being a cleaner anymore, you know?”
Melissa still said nothing but her face tightened, her lips narrowing.
I was conscious of the other people nearby. I couldn’t raise my voice very high. It was frustrating that she wasn’t engaging in what I was saying but my emotions were clashing. I was feeling increasingly ill-at-ease and... submissive to her almost. It was weird but everyone here was lying comfortably except me. She looked like a queen and she was acting like one too. My timid, hunched, standing posture made me feel more like a servant, coming to request a favour. It made me feel as though I'd crossed a line of rudeness; that me requesting anything of her was inappropriate now.
“I know we agreed that you would, er, you know, make the decisions from now on,” I said, “but being a full-time cleaner; not having any choice in the matter; that wasn’t really what I wanted.”
She said nothing.
“I’d rather not have to do it.”
There was a long pause. Melissa didn’t fill it. I could feel her disappointment and disapproval and my face coloured scarlet. I felt embarrassed suddenly that I was thinking of giving up so quickly, because of course I knew deep down that this life she’d constructed for me was exactly what I’d fantasised about. I had wanted to be an ordinary person; to be in a position where I had to work; to have a normal person’s routine and responsibilities; to not have the get-out-of-jail-free card that was my wealth. She was right to be disappointed in me. I was disappointed in myself. But I still didn’t want to go back to that awful place.
“I suppose I could stay there for a little while longer,” I said, “but I want to cut it short. I don’t want it to be long.”
She looked at me for several long moments, then finally she said, “I understand how you feel Melissa. Cleaning is tough work and doing it full time can be crippling. It can’t be doing your self-esteem much good either, knowing how low you are in social standing. But you and I made an agreement. And though we didn’t discuss it directly, I would say that implicit in that agreement was the idea that we both needed to be strong for each other; to help one another stay on task.” She set her book down. “It isn’t all about you. Don’t forget that you promised to help me to lose weight. This is my big chance and it wouldn’t be fair for you to pull out now.”
I lowered my head, feeling bad that I hadn’t considered the impact this tirade of mine would have on her. She was right. It was selfish of me to try and call it all off.
“Being a cleaner is hard work,” said Melissa, “and you’re bound to question your decision from time to time; but when you made that decision it was definitely what you wanted. Even if you’ve lost your nerve now, I don’t think you should give up. The first day is always going to be the hardest. I think you should go back and give it another go; really put your heart into it; really live the dream you had.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. She was right. It did feel like I was giving up. And she was so much stronger. She had already come so far.
“Obviously you can come away from there at any time if you really want to,” said Melissa. “We can even swap places again if that’s what you want. But... BUT... You gave me control of your finances. You gave me the responsibility to be Dahlia; to be your boss. With that in mind, unless it’s a life and death problem, I’m not going to let you give up the cleaning, or come to stay here, or stop being Melissa. You’re going to go back to your little hotel tonight and you’re going to carry on with your job tomorrow; and the next day. And the next day. You’re going to go on working because you can’t afford not to. Is that clear?”
I looked back at her, my nether regions sizzling, my lips moist. I nodded.
“You’re Melissa now. I’m Dahlia. You have no right to question my decisions. Is that clear?” She gave me a little reassuring smile.
I nodded. “Yes miss.”
It was awful and horrifying in its way but it was also captivating and very, very erotic. It was all so clear suddenly. In amongst the thud of reality that I’d fallen into, that titillation had gotten temporarily lost. Melissa... Dahlia had helped me find it again with incredible flair. She did this so well. She should have been born to the life she was slipping into. She would have made a great Dahlia – though perhaps a rather darker one.
“I want you to be happy Melissa,” she said. “I really do. But I don’t want to hear anymore talk about you giving up your job. If you do that then I won’t help you out financially. You’ll have to end up getting something else – possibly something much worse – or else you’ll starve. Do you understand me?”
I smiled. I knew she was only encouraging me; playing along with our game; that she would give me my money back if I asked her; but it was hellishly exciting to think she was really leaving me trapped in the life I’d foolishly accepted. “Okay Dahlia,” I said. “I’ll go back and work hard. I’m sorry I questioned you.”
She nodded, smiling more broadly. “Good girl.”
There was another silence and I realised that I ought to leave. I didn’t fit in here and I didn’t feel comfortable around her anymore, as though she really was my employer; as though she was on a level above me.
“Right. Well, I’d better go,” I said. “I have to help at the evening meal.”
“Wait,” said Melissa. “Before you go I want to go through some things with you.” She sat up and put her feet on the floor, about to stand. I stepped back, curious.
“You’ve done well putting the first phase of this into place and I’m glad you accept now that my authority is final; but I want to go inside and talk to you about phase two. What we’ve done so far is only the beginning. There’s a long way to go and I want to make sure we move quickly.”
Chapter Three - Part Nine
DAHLIA
Following Melissa up to her suite was a dark and strangely erotic experience.
It was something like being called to the headmaster’s office at school; that long, slow journey with plenty of time to wonder what was coming. But I could assume to some extent what was waiting for me up there: phase two; the next step in our exchange of lives.
I had come to Melissa’s hotel planning to seize back control but instead it felt like I was relinquishing it further. It was she now who was determining our next course of action; she who refused to concede to my request. I thought about that as I followed her up. We didn’t walk together. We didn’t chat. There seemed to be a barrier between us now; almost a division of class; like she was my superior and I was... I was her inferior.
As I walked silently, my thoughts crackled away and I found myself getting more and more aroused. As we came out of the lift on the penthouse floor I gave a little skip, so eager was I to reach her room and find out what was in store for me. Despite that I followed dutifully and waited while she used her key car to gain entrance.
The suite was grandiose; the kind of place I was used to in my former life but, I realised, was, for now, hopelessly out of reach for me. As long as I stayed Melissa I would never be able to live in such luxurious surroundings. It was made up of several large rooms, elegantly furnished, and the view out over the ocean was spectacular.
“Take a seat Melissa,” she said, gesturing to the twin sofas.
I sat on the edge of one, feeling ill-at-ease and out of place. This was very much her territory and, with our relationship becoming more firmly established, this didn’t feel like somewhere I could relax.
“Tell me about the hotel you work at,” she said, pouring herself a drink from the fridge (she didn’t offer me one).
“It’s, uh, not very nice. Quite rundown. Dirty. And I have to start work so early. It’s so hard. And the other cleaners are cliquey. They treat me like I’m an idiot. It doesn’t matter how much I tell myself that I’m not really a cleaner; that I’m better than them really; it still hurts.”
She smiled a cold smile. “But you are a cleaner Melissa. You aren’t any better than them. If anything you’re worse than them because they have more experience.”
My face fell and my cheeks coloured.
“This is your fantasy, isn’t it?” she said.
I nodded haltingly.
“You wanted to be me. You wanted to have to be a cleaner.”
I nodded again.
“Then you have to accept that that is what you are. You aren’t different from them. You certainly aren’t superior to them. Are you?”
“No.”
“Sorry?”
“No. I’m not better than them.”
She smiled again, this time with more warmth. “What you need to do is get down to their level; become friends with them; do what they do; show interest in their interests. Are there any men there?”
“Some.” I nodded. “There’s a cook and a couple of others. The cook is a bit of a letch. I think he fancies me.”
“Is he young?”
I shrugged. “About our age I guess.”
Her eyes glittered and I suddenly knew what she was going to say. “You should flirt with him. Let him have his fun with you. Kiss him. Maybe even sleep with him. Just a holiday romance with a co-worker; that’s all.”
I turned my nose up. “He really isn’t my type.”
“He wasn’t your type,” she said. “You’re somebody new now; just an ordinary woman; a bit fat; not very good looking. Someone like that is probably the best you can hope for.”
I closed my eyes, remembering what he looked like. My loins were sizzling to imagine sullying myself with somebody like that; following Melissa’s instructions and really doing it; taking on this new persona and really making it my own. The idea that she had the power to order me to do all this was so incredibly tantalising, as was the submission to this new lower station that she was encouraging me to accept.
I chewed my lip, my eyes shining, as I said, “Okay. I will.”
Melissa nodded approvingly. She took a seat opposite me and sipped from her drink. “Are you ready for the next phase in your transformation?” she asked.
“You mean that wasn’t it?”
She laughed. “No. Not at all. That’s just something you have to do if you’re going to really become who you are now. No. Phase two is something more active. It’s the next step we need to take to make this all start to move forward properly.”
“What is it?” I asked, warily.
“I’ll tell you,” she said.
Chapter Three - Part Ten
MELISSA
I settled comfortably into my sofa and laid my arms outstretched along the back rest. “In phase one we swapped names. We swapped clothes and hairstyles and finances. You started wearing glasses and I switched to contacts. We each set off on a journey to alter our... physical shape.”
On her sofa, Dahlia shifted, her cheeks showing a hint of colour.
“These changes were profound,” I said, “but they were also mostly on the surface.”
“Cosmetic,” said Dahlia nervously.
“Yes. Exactly. And that’s great and I’m loving it. Are you loving it?”
She started to speak and her eyes quivered. She shut her mouth. “Yes,” she replied finally. “I love being you.”
I managed to control the smirk that came to my lips sufficiently to make it a reassuring smile instead. “We committed to swapping places for several months,” I continued, “and you’ve been so brave to take on your new job and accept that you have no choice about doing it. It’s truly amazing to see your commitment to this.”
Dahlia nodded submissively.
“But what I want to do next, in phase two, is to focus on the psychological aspects. We already started on that downstairs but I want us both to see it as a goal that’s every bit as important as changing our shape.”
“What do you mean exactly?” asked Dahlia.
“I mean that you’re Melissa now and it isn’t enough that you start to look like her. I want you to think like her – to really see yourself as her – to connect to what it is that makes Melissa who she is.”
She hesitated and then nodded. “How do you mean?”
I sat forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Well first of all I want you to really think about what we talked about; really get your head round the fact that you are Melissa now with all that entails. You aren’t playing. You aren’t pretending. This is still going to end – of course it’s going to – but while it’s carrying on, you have to accept that you aren’t a model anymore. You aren’t rich anymore. You have to work. You can’t associate with the well-to-do anymore. You have to accept what level you’re on now; who your equals are. Who your equals aren’t.” I looked her right in the eye. “You aren’t my equal anymore for instance. You aren’t on the same level as anybody in this hotel. And this is a prestigious place. Even the staff here are better than you; have more prospects than you. They will see you as inferior to them and they should. You are inferior.”
My crotch was fizzling merrily. I felt so high on this. It was fabulous.
“So yes, make friends with the other cleaners at your hotel; have a tryst with that cook or some other similar bloke. Start to fill your time with the kinds of activities that someone of your... position... would do.”
Dahlia wet her lips. She uncrossed her legs.
“And I want you to come here every other day. To see me,” I said. “It won’t be a social call. We’ll be working. We’re going to be learning; about one another. You will tell me everything about your life from your earliest memories right up until the present time and I’ll do the same. We won’t keep anything secret. You’ll tell me about every fantasy; every secret; about everyone you’ve ever known. And I’ll do the same for you.”
Dahlia was staring at me in wonderment.
“I’ve purchased a voice recorder,” I said. “We’ll record every session and we’ll each have a copy to study. It won’t just be the background we’ll be memorising. I want us to work on our voices. I want you to master my accent; to alter the pitch of your voice until it is the same as mine. Over the next few months I want the changes to go on until we not only look like each other but sound like each other as well; until we can tell stories about our new pasts as though they really happened to us. And I want you to make your new history your own; to think of it as your past. Is that clear?”
Dahlia didn’t speak. She only nodded.
“Stand up,” I said.
She hesitated and then did so. I stood up too and retrieved the digital camera I’d bought.
“Take your glasses off and tie your hair back.” I gave her a hair tie and then did the same to mine.
Dahlia followed my instructions, eyeing the camera warily.
“Remove your glasses,” I said. She did so, blinking to clear her vision and then squinting slightly at me. I smiled to see the effect they were having on her. Was it really possible to alter her vision, to make it as bad as mine? She seemed to think so and it seemed to be working already.
“We’re going to photograph each other from different angles,” I said.
Dahlia frowned in query.
“A sort of record,” I said. “A before and after shot. So we can see how much we’ve changed. Alright?”
She nodded and I set about instructing her in what I wanted, all the while keeping an eye on her to see if it had clicked what my real intentions were; but it didn’t seem to have.
“We’ll start recording our backgrounds in a minute,” I said. “We have to push on with this and work as hard as we can. Do you agree?”
Dahlia shrugged and then nodded. “Yes Dahlia, of course,” she said.
I smiled, trying not to giggle.
I couldn’t believe how easy this was; how gullible she was; how willing she was to run toward the awful life she had chosen.
Chapter Three - Part Eleven
DAHLIA
The bus journey back to my crumby little hotel was uncomfortable and hot. The sun blazed in my eyes all the way and I couldn’t get comfortable. I felt rather sick to my stomach and the jostling ride did nothing to improve that. Worse, it set the nausea in deeper such that it put a dirty filter across my already spiralling thoughts.
I had gone to Melissa’s hotel planning to insist that we swap back, or at least that I be allowed to stay there. Instead, the limits of my new position had been underlined so that there could be no doubt left as to what they were.
Melissa was the one in charge now.
When we had initially swapped, we had said it would be like that and I had played along, but now, meeting her again, I realised that it wasn’t just a game of pretend that either one of us could choose to drop out of at any second. To break the pact now would require both of us to agree – that was what it felt like. We had set out on this crazy journey together, agreeing on our objective, and one of us at any time was bound to get cold feet. It was such a radical action to take; of course we would. The pact ensured that the other one of us would stick to the deal and encourage the doubter to continue.
I had the feeling that it would be me that would feel the most doubt in this situation, having to work long hours and have no money; watching my body slowly change into a bloated shape that society at least thinks is worse. I was just so glad that Melissa had the strength of mind and determination to keep us on course. I was glad now that she had persuaded me to continue.
And obviously I could stop the game at any point if I really wanted to – I was still Dahlia Western really, however fat I got – but it was titillating to imagine that I couldn’t actually.
Just to think of what had happened... I had gone there intending to do just that and Melissa had refused me. She had demonstrated that she was the one in control now entirely. I knew she didn’t really have that power but it was lovely to imagine it was true. And maybe it was. Maybe I had already surrendered any chance I had of regaining my former life. Maybe I really was Melissa forever now.
Mmmm... To imagine that...
And though I thought of it as a game still, it really wasn’t one anymore. It was just life surely. I was going back to the evening shift of my job. I was going to live back at my squalid little hotel and work as a cleaner.
But my mood was dark, the nausea continuing to darken it.
No matter how much I got off on it or tried to reconcile with the fact that it was what I wanted, I resented the fact that Melissa had overruled me, that she had ignored what I said I wanted and told me I had to continue being a cleaner. I knew she was only doing it to help me get what I wanted but it still burned that she acted like she was better than me. I guess this was how employees the world over felt about their bosses, because that was really what she was to me now. It had been said before but now we’d had the time to explore it properly. She was the one who made the decisions. I was the one who carried them out.
I considered her latest decisions and the things she had said; that I should think of myself as being on the same level as the other cleaners in my hotel, possibly even inferior to them because I was new; that I should try and find common ground with them and take on their ways... really become one of them.
It was like the way she wanted me to learn everything about her life and try to really identify as her; as Melissa Chapman. The idea of assimilating her memories and filling my head with them made me feel strangely excited. I giggled, imagining my head becoming so full that these new and clearer “memories” supplanted my own. I fantasised about really forgetting my old life and becoming her in my mind as well as my body.
Melissa wanted me to act like her; to think of myself as her. She wanted me to graft myself into the hotel staff as though I really belonged there. It was frightening but it was also alluring, of course. I did want it more than anything. I was so glad she had kept me on the straight and narrow.
The bus let me off and I started the long trudge back to the hotel.
I hadn’t done any regular exercise for a long time now and the lack of it as well as the weight I’d put on was getting noticeable as I walked, wishing I had the money to take a taxi.
I started to wonder how I could go about following Melissa’s instructions; what I could do to ingratiate myself with the other cleaners. They weren’t welcoming. I had no idea how to do that. Though... the spiteful cleaner, Maxine, was off with me ostensibly because she thought I didn’t work hard enough. She clearly saw herself as ruling the roost. The other cleaner with her had been subservient to her. It made me wonder if the way to break into their clan wasn’t to try to find common ground or equal footing but to show her... deference. If I could demonstrate to her that I was a hard worker and that I wasn’t any challenge to her authority; that indeed, I was willing to be bossed around a bit; then she might allow me into her circle.
She’d been so mean to me, I didn’t like the idea of scurrying around trying to please her; to accept a subservient role; but Melissa had made it clear what I was to do. I’d accepted that I was subservient to her. What harm could there be in following her instructions and accepting a place low down in the pecking order at my hotel as Maxine’s lackey... if she would have me. I had the feeling it would take a lot of effort. She didn’t like me. What kind of toadying might it require before she accepted me?
I was sweating profusely as I walked. There were trees along the road but they were too high and sparse to provide anything in the way of shade. The sweat built up under my arms and in my hair and down my spine. It built up between and under my breasts.
Melissa had said I had to try to form a connection with one of the seedy blokes around the hotel. Unlike her, my version of Melissa wasn’t married as such, but still, the thought of pursuing a tryst with someone at my new level wasn’t something that appealed to me except at the dirtiest possible level.
I did have a kinky side – of course I did – and though, as Dahlia, I would never have considered lowering myself to someone like that greasy-skinned cook, the idea of being made to do it; commanded to open my legs to someone so unsuitable; was enough to get me wet again.
Could I do that? Could I let someone of that class have his wicked way with me?
Maybe.
Maybe.
But I wasn’t sure I was quite ready for that. Not yet. I could follow Melissa’s other instructions but I needed a little time to get my head around that other supplication.
I wanted it though. I did want it.
Melissa had told me to want it and she was in control.
I stopped at the side of the road opposite my hotel and thought about that.
I had wanted to end this and she had told me no. She wanted me, instead, to become ever more like her. She wanted me to ingratiate myself with cleaning and catering staff; get down to their level and, if necessary, show that I was lower than them.
Was this really what I wanted? Was I really going to go on eating and eating these gargantuan all-you-can-eat meals, getting fatter and fatter? Was I actually going to go on ruining my eyes just so I could look in the mirror through them and see my face become more and more like hers?
Yes.
Yes, that’s exactly what I was going to do.
I was going to do what I was told and see where it took me.
I had a feeling it would be somewhere dark and seedy and arousing and, in its own way... spectacular.
END OF PART ONE
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