Emma Finn's Cleaner II. Book 2. Chapters 4-6.

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 1-3 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. 

Chapter Four - Part One

A New Person 

KATHERINE

Time hadn’t made things better. Not really.

All the passing of the weeks and months had done for Katherine was to give her time to question herself and all the choices she had made in her life as she pottered about her house and garden doing needless tidying that nobody else would ever see to appreciate.

Sixteen years as Dahlia’s personal assistant. She had been there almost from the beginning of the beautiful young woman’s modelling career; witnessed every step higher in prestige and success. She had been there for her when her parents died, helped her through the dark time of that awful breakdown that had come after. Katherine knew Dahlia better than anybody; had been there for her more than anyone else; but all she could see now, looking back, were ways in which she’d let her down.

There were a thousand different memories in her head of good times but in the dingy vacuum of her mind now she couldn’t help but focus on the blips; the knocks that struck Dahlia from time to time over the years: break-ups with lovers, disappointments about modelling contracts not secured, day to day frustrations; Dahlia’s growing boredom of the life she had constructed for herself.

Katherine had been there for all of it and she realised now that she couldn’t have done enough. She had been as caring and supportive as their bantering relationship allowed but she hadn’t protected Dahlia from every setback. She hadn’t made everything better at every turn.

It didn’t matter how much she told herself it wasn’t her job to protect Dahlia from the world; she still felt that if she’d only done something more then it would have come to this.

In her little kitchen she put the kettle on then immediately forgot she had, staring out the back window into her garden.

Two months had passed now since Dahlia’s disappearance and there had been no sign of her since; no calls home; no emails; nothing. Her brother’s funeral had come and gone: no sign of her; no flowers sent or glimmer to show that she cared. Though of course, Katherine knew that Dahlia did care. That was the problem. Dahlia cared far too much.

Looking back now it was so clear what the progression had been toward the weakening of Dahlia’s psyche and the final crushing blow that had sent her running from her town, from her country; from her whole life.

It almost drove Katherine crazy herself to think of that nasty cleaner travelling with her; though surely that was what had happened. Melissa had dropped off the face of the earth too.

She couldn’t help second-guessing everything; every point of decision; wondering if she could have altered the flow of things; been there for her employer; her friend; enough to prevent her leaving.

But what could she do about it now? Dahlia had made her choice. She was a grown woman. She was having an extended holiday, probably somewhere very hot and very pleasant. It was most likely exactly what she needed. If it hadn’t been for Melissa then Katherine might not even have worried... that much. But the cleaner was manipulative. She was grasping. She was a wild card potentially liable to make things worse.

Of course there was every chance that Melissa was no longer with Dahlia, though it was difficult to know. Katherine had called her mobile a dozen times and received no answer.

Except she was all to conscious of the amount of time that had passed. She held herself responsible. Wherever Dahlia was, things could be far worse for her now with even more terrible things waiting for her. Katherine couldn’t bear to do nothing; not anymore.

She went through to the study she kept in what the architect had designed as a dining room. She kept all her records there as well as everything she’d ever done for Dahlia. It didn’t take her long to bring up the information she needed: an address for Melissa Chapman, here in Nockton Vale.

Katherine stared at the address for the better part of a minute, wondering if she was making the right decision; but she couldn’t just wait anymore. She had to do something. A huge part of her feared that unless she took action then something bad would happen to Dahlia; something irrevocable.

She needed to find out if Melissa was still with her. And maybe after that, she needed to track them down.

Chapter Four - Part Two

DAHLIA

When I opened my eyes the room was still very dim, what early morning light there was restricted by the tiny window. My vision was blurry. It was always blurry now. With constant wear of my glasses I had pushed my vision three prescription notches away from normal, sufficient to effectively ruin my eyesight when I wasn’t wearing them.

I turned off the alarm then lay in bed thinking about that.

My eyes were so used to the glasses now that I couldn’t see straight without them. I only had two more prescriptions to go before I reached the same one that... the original Melissa had worn. I wondered if I was ready to go up another notch already. My brain had been able to keep up with each progressive change so far, adjusting to the focus distortion until I could see again. Maybe I could. What would that feel like?

I lay there imagining the thicker lenses, the heavier frames on my face. I imagined taking them off a week from now and having even worse eyesight, like looking into pools of rippling water. I got a dreamy sense of mild euphoria, my mind trundling along considering each aspect of that, the sensations I would feel; the impact it would have on my long term vision.

Was I permanently damaging my eyesight? Would I have to wear thick glasses for the rest of my life?

The headache I seemed to have all the time now crept up the back of my head, making my scalp feel too tight for the skull inside it.

I sat up on the edge of the bed and sighed. I didn’t have time to waste ruminating. I had to get ready for my cleaning duties.

I was weary in a way I hadn’t felt before coming to Greece: partly the limited sleep I was getting before the daily grind began day after day, and partly the extra weight I was carrying now.

I put on my glasses and went to the mirror to look at myself.

The woman I had been; the slim and beautiful super model; was well and truly gone now.

Over the past two months I had consumed perhaps five or six times as much food each day as I might have done in my old life. All-you-can-eat breakfast buffet followed by all-you-can-eat lunch and all-you-can-eat dinner. On top of that I had chocolate and crisp snacks throughout the day, swilled down with Coca Cola and a doggy bag of dinner leftovers that I troughed on before bed that amounted to another large meal.

I had put on a lot of weight. A lot.

The extra fat had gone onto my stomach making a pillowy fold distending my waistline. It had gone onto my thighs and buttocks, swelling them. It had gone onto my upper arms giving me growing bingo wings that rippled like liquid when I made rapid movements like when I was mopping the hotel floors. It had gone into my breasts, making them swell, becoming rounder, but also making them hang differently; deeper. Most disturbingly it had gone onto my face.

My eyes, nose and mouth were in the same place but as my cheeks and neck showed greater and greater signs of thickening it was becoming like those features were a little mask placed on the front of a head too large to fit it.

With the bobbed brown hair and the glasses I was looking more like the real Melissa than ever. My features were still my own but the extra fat showed me now that we really hadn’t been that different in the first place. Our eyes were the same shape, equally placed and the proportions were a close match.

I wasn’t Dahlia anymore. Nobody would have recognised me; not immediately at least, and certainly not without a sense of shock, disbelief… and disgust.

Looking at myself I was filled with that same sense of disapproving wonder now. I couldn’t believe I’d really gone through with this; that I’d actively pursued the destruction of my beauty. But surely that beauty was gone now, at least by the standards of most men and women. A minority of people might have found me attractive now; those who liked big women; but to the bulk of the population I was no longer a sex object at all. I was just a fat woman, barely worth a glance; someone who sank into the background in any situation with her mousy hair and squinting, befuddled-looking eyes.

The headache got worse, sucking at the backs of my eyeballs.

I pressed my eyes tight shut and rubbed my pulse points in little circles.

The room was a mess, clothes on the floor, sweet, crisp and kebab wrappers, pizza boxes and empty Coke bottles discarded on any surface available. I spent so long cleaning in the day that I couldn’t face doing it in my own space. There was half a bottle of gin still open next to the little TV. I eyed it, wondering if a tipple or two before work would help with my headache.

I had a brief shower instead, not bothering to wash my hair then put on my cleaning uniform.

The first one I’d been given was still hanging in the wardrobe, untouched for weeks. I had gone up two sizes since then. It was laughable how tiny that one looked now compared to the one I had to wear now, and this one was straining at the seams. Tight across the folds of fat, it accentuated them in a way that was both horrifying and fascinating to me.

I looked at myself in the mirror now, dressed in the garb of my role.

It didn’t feel odd anymore, so much time had gone by of daily toil, but I was being reflective this morning and I regarded the type of person the uniform made me look like, especially with the added bulk I’d gained.

I went to the bedside drawer and took out the pair of glasses with the next prescription up. I took off the ones I was wearing, pitching my vision out of focus, and placed the new, heavier frames on my face.

My vision distorted again, making it harder for me to see… but not impossible. I squinted, giving my brain the command to begin getting used to them.

Just one more pair after this and my eyesight would be as bad as the original Melissa’s had been.

The headache got worse behind my eyes but that same sense of dreamy euphoria returned anyway, a pink glow that centred on my lower regions.

I looked at my reflection, distorted though it was, and smiled at the fat, plain woman looking back at me; the hotel cleaner.

That was me. I had really changed. And I was going to go on changing.

Every day I got a little fatter; my eyesight grew progressively worse. One day soon I would be as close to being the original Melissa as it was possible to get.

Chapter Four - Part Three

DAHLIA

When I got downstairs, Maxine and the other cleaners were hanging around just outside the main entrance smoking cigarettes and chatting. Maxine was the loudest as usual, ruling the roost, gabbling on in her provincial UK accent. When I saw them I got the usual butterflies in my stomach, but it was worse today somehow, probably because I had been reflecting on how far I’d changed.

Weight gain was a funny thing. It crept up on me slowly with only periodic realisations of how far it had gone; how much more deeply I’d entered the world of obesity… because surely I must be classed as obese now. Since my last realisation I’d grown used enough to being plump that my observations this morning had been another level of shock. It didn’t help that Maxine and the other girls had taken to calling a particular nickname.

“Hey look!” she cried jovially. “Here comes Chubby!”

The other cleaners looked my way and smirked. The wind went out of my sails and I slowed my pace.

“Blimey but you’re getting fat now,” said Maxine. She nudged the girl next to her wither her elbow, a new girl who had only been working at the hotel for a few days but was already more in with the other cleaners than I was. “When she started working here she was thinner than me,” she said. “Now look at her.”

The cleaners sniggered and Maxine gave a brazen laugh. Eager to ingratiate myself with them I made myself chuckle too, even though it felt like a betrayal of myself.

Every time I went to see Melissa she asked me if the other cleaners had accepted me as one of them yet and I was feeling the pressure of that as increasing desperation.

“You’re going to need yet another uniform soon Chubby,” crowed Maxine. “That one looks like the buttons are about to pop. It’s the unlimited food here,” she said to the new girl. “It’s a killer.”

“Yeah,” I said, eager to please and smiling like a fool. “It’s ‘cause I’m such a pig. I can’t help myself. The buffet’s like a trough. I just stick my snout in a gobble up everything I can.”

All the women laughed and I laughed with them, but I knew they weren’t laughing with me – they were laughing at me – and it made me hate myself, even as I went on laughing.

“Actually that would be a better name for you Chubby,” said Maxine. “Now you’re getting so fat. You aren’t just chubby anymore, are you?”

They all looked at me and I felt I had to fill the pause. “No.”

“Now you really do look like a pig.” They all laughed. “What do you think to the name Little Piggy?”

The smile dropped off my face and the women laughed all the more.

“What do you think Piggy?” asked Maxine.

I thought about Melissa and her admonition that I should do anything I could to fit in and I said. “Well if the shoe fits…” I grinned. “It’s nothing if not descriptive.”

They all laughed and I laughed with them, but this time it felt like there was genuine camaraderie.

Maxine nudged the new girl. “Piggy isn’t so bad when you get to know her. She thought she was lady muck when she got here but she’s alright really.”

I smiled with relief to hear that: the first real hint that I wouldn’t be ostracised anymore.

“She’s not a bad worker I suppose,” said Maxine. “She does half my work for me, so she can’t be that bad!” She laughed loudly. “Isn’t that right Piggy?”

The headache pulsed behind my eyes, drawing the moisture out of them but I gave her another grin and nodded eagerly. “All part of the service.”

Maxine smiled, stepping out of the group and grinding out her cigarette with her foot. Immediately, in response to the unspoken command, the group started to disperse. “You should maybe join us for poker tonight Little Piggy,” she said. “Give me a chance to steal most of your wages as well. That would be hilarious!”

I nodded happily, keen to accept the invitation that had never before been presented. This was so positive. It meant I was really making some headway into being one of the gang.

The girls dispersed, leaving me standing in thought. I imagined myself at their poker table in the staff room, drinking beer and laughing, then I had a little fantasy about letting Maxine win so that she really did take most of my earnings. That brought the rosy feeling back between my legs.

I felt my roll of stomach fat, chewing the name they’d christened me over in my mind, trying to purposely alter my self-image to fit in line with it. I pictured myself as other’s might see me except in my mind I pushed the bloating even further and I imagined myself with the head and trotters of a pink-skinned pig.

I had been a famously beautiful model on the verge of a spectacular comeback.

Now look at me.

I was a fat cleaner at a rundown Greek hotel, submissively doing everything I could to ingratiate myself with minimum wage domestic staff who did nothing but run me down.

Had my self-image altered so much that I could allow this?

But then, I wasn’t a beauty anymore. I really was getting as fat as a pig. I couldn’t expect any better treatment and I needed to put up with it if I wanted them to be my friends.

Somebody like me couldn’t expect better treatment like this and at least they were including me now. I’d much rather be made fun of a bit than be excluded.

It was worth being called Little Piggy to achieve that.

I walked back inside the hotel to start my duties but paused when I saw the cook come out of the back corridor, looking as greasy and dishevelled as always.

He looked at me and gave me his usual suggestive leer. Normally I looked away but this time I went on with the eye contact and perhaps emboldened by that, he gave me a little wink.

I wasn’t better than these people. Not anymore. I felt like I’d been telling myself I was on the sly, no matter how much I tried to get down to their level. Things felt different now. I was Little Piggy now. I’d accepted that nickname gladly. I wasn’t superior to any of these people; quite the opposite.

I made a decision.

If the cook made another pass at me then I wouldn’t put him off. Next time I would say yes. I’d spread my legs for him if he wanted me.

He gave me another brief leery smirk and this time I smiled back.

Yes. If he wanted me then he could have me any way that he wanted.

Chapter Four - Part Four

MELISSA

My arms and legs felt strong and sure as I front crawled my way up the outdoor hotel swimming pool and back down again. Swimming had to be the best exercise possible and since coming to Greece I had really built up my stamina. It was unbelievable to think how far I had come. Initially I had struggled to doggy-paddle a single width. Now I could do lengths for an hour at a time without too much of a struggle.

Boredom was my biggest obstacle with it but I’d purchased a water-resistant music centre so that wasn’t a problem. And I’d loaded it with the recordings I had made of Dahlia’s reminiscences about her life. I listened to them over and over again, absorbing the information about her life and career; about the different people she knew and the way she interacted with them.

I did at least three hour long swims a day now and I was thinking of building that up to longer endurance swims of two or three hours. Plus the jogging. Plus the rowing machine and the cross trainer. Plus the squats and the sit-ups.

I was maniacal and obsessive and I was loving it.

I diverted to the pool’s exit ladder and climbed it quickly, the water cascading off me in the bright sunshine. I felt great and I was just starting to look great too. I still had a good way to go but the training was working wonders. It was amazing what unlimited time and unlimited money could achieve if coupled with desperate yearning.

I heard clapping and smiled when I saw my personal trainer, Ambrus, leaning against a table, watching me emerge. “If I had not seen you every day then I would not believe my eyes Miss Western,” he said. “Your progress has been spectacular.”

I beamed proudly and unreservedly, looking down at myself. I couldn’t believe it either. I still wasn’t slim as such; not yet; but the steps I had taken had carried me so far. The laser liposuction treatments had removed bulk from all the difficult areas and the five-star beauty treatments I’d supported it with were ensuring I downgraded my weight gracefully and without unsightly side effects. Coupled with obsessional exercise and regimented diet, I was further along with my diabolical master plan than I could ever have expected.

“How do you feel?” asked Ambrus. “You look great!”

“Fabulous,” I replied. “Really fabulous. Just look at me.”

“I am looking. It is remarkable. I have never had such a great success before. I should take your picture and put it on my flyers.”

I took up my towel and dried my hair. My hair was fuller now and looked lovely in the bright Mediterranean sunshine. I patted my arms and my legs, loving the thinner me.

“Most women would be happy with what you have achieved so far,” said Ambrus.

“Not me,” I replied with a grin. “I’m going all the way. Now that I’ve gone this far I can see that there isn’t really any kind of barrier. I can be as slim as I want.” I shook my head ruefully. “All these years, how fat I’ve been… I never realised that it was even possible to change. I thought I was trapped in that ridiculous fat suit; like I’d never get out of it.”

He nodded and I became quiet; reflective.

“Thank you,” I said. “Really. I couldn’t have done this without you. And there’s still a long way to go. I’m hoping you’ll stay with me to the end.”

“I couldn’t let my best client down, could I?”

I said goodbye to him and picked up my bag, heading toward the bar. He’d be back later but to be honest I didn’t need him anywhere near as much now. The training was habitual now. It was like these awful boot camp things except over a far more enduring period and it was visibly getting me the results that I wanted now. I was getting slimmer by the day, going down size after size. And it wasn’t just the actual loss of weight. My greater fitness was improving my posture and muscle tone so that what fat I did still have was held in more convincingly.

The pool bar was a circular stand with a straw roof. Half a dozen hotel guests sat on tall stools around it while the Greek barmaid hurried lackadaisically round to take their orders. I took a seat and ordered some fresh fruit juice. I hadn’t drunk alcohol in three weeks and that was unheard of. But I felt better for it; a lot better.

I got the drink and slugged it down swiftly, enjoying the flush of taste and refreshment. It wasn’t until I set down the empty glass that I noticed the dishy man sitting across from me who was watching me with a gentle smile on his face.

He was in his mid-thirties with tanned skin, curly blond hair and dimples and it took me a minute to register his attention and what it meant because this was the first time – in my life – that this had happened to me: that a handsome man had flirted with me using his eyes; had looked at me with lust and admiration roiling inside of him.

I had to check myself; look down at my toned legs and slimmer stomach; my cleavage; to believe he wasn’t checking out somebody else.

I was like a schoolgirl on the inside but I knew I couldn’t show it. I just gave him a little nod and raised the corners of my mouth then ordered another drink. He picked his glass up and sauntered round to my side of the circular bar.

There was an empty seat beside me.

He took it.

Still I didn’t look at him.

Then finally I turned and let him enjoy the sight of my generous cleavage before I let him know that I was willing to talk.

Chapter Four - Part Five

MELISSA

I left the key card to my room with the man from the bar and went up to wait for him. I wanted to shower and make myself more presentable so I told him to wait thirty minutes before he climbed up to the penthouse. I was expecting Dahlia in the afternoon but we would have plenty of time before that.

I dipped in the shower quickly and left my hair curly and damp as I put on a sheer summer dress with a halter neck. Because of all the swimming my shoulders and arms were becoming wonderfully toned. This showed them off nicely. With that on I did my make-up quickly and efficiently until I stood there in front of the tall mirror, admiring myself.

It wasn’t just the sight of me that was altering my perception of myself. I could see how much slimmer and firmer I was now. It was the subtle and continuous changes in the way that other people acted around me: comments they made, like the compliments that Ambrus had paid me, the second look that men and women gave me, especially the hotel staff who, like Ambrus, had witnessed my rapid transformation across a continuum of time; the attentions and interest of this man. The way I saw myself was being altered by the reflections coming from others, and as it did so, my confidence was growing.

At first I had a sense of purpose and the knowledge of my assumed control of the money and over what happened to Dahlia, but this was different. This was a confidence in myself that I had never possessed before; a belief suddenly that I of all people could capture the treasure that was physical beauty and hold onto it; something I could never have believed was possible.

But I was becoming beautiful. Sort of. My facial features were still a little bland and my weight had a way to go, but I was a thousand leagues further down that path than I ever could have reached on my own.

A light knocking came on the door out of the suite and the lock buzzed as the man from the bar activated the key card. My whole body was flushed with nerves but I told myself to quiet. I wasn’t that silly fat woman Melissa Chapman anymore. She was out of sight and beneath my notice. I was Dahlia Western now. I was rich and slimmer and sexy. This man had approached me. He wanted me. Me!

“You weren’t kidding about it being the penthouse,” he said. “My room’s on the first floor. It’s a cupboard compared to this.”

“Do you like it?”

“Sure. I mean wow!”

I smiled. ”Let me give you the tour.”

He followed me as I took him from room to room and out on the balcony and it almost made me laugh how tactile he was, how close he came to me as we moved. He clearly wanted nothing more than to get down to doing the dirty. I liked that. I had little interest in engaging in a long conversation and didn’t feel as equipped as I would like to be to engage in such a thing. I wasn’t used to flirting with men.

I saw the wedding ring on his finger and it shocked me at first before I reminded myself that I didn’t want a romance. I only wanted a shag. After living with my husband Robert for so long I felt I needed one.

Robert. How did I feel about him now? Was I really going to casually throw away the fidelity of our marriage so casually; with so little forethought?

The man stroked the nape of my neck with his fingertip, running it down to my back and I turned suddenly, taking his face in my hands and kissing him hard on the lips.

Yes. Yes I was. Robert could hang for all I cared. He had mistreated me for far too long for me to care about him anymore. As far as I was concerned, I never wanted to see him again.

The kiss was penetrating but ever-fluctuating, as the man turned his head one way and the other, urgently pressing his tongue between my lips. For a moment, it was too much but then a click came and I relaxed into it. He kissed my neck and I let out a gasp of pent-up release.

Had I ever felt such passion and desire? Perhaps as a teenager?

No. I hadn’t. Not like this.

He pulled at my dress and I snatched at his short-sleeved shirt, exposing his tanned chest with its densely curled thatch of blond hair. I kissed his chest, working down to his nipple and biting it hard enough to make him groan. We went back against the open balcony door and he popped out one of my breasts, nuzzling in softly, moaning with desire.

I wanted to cry out, Yes! At last! This is what I deserve! But I didn’t. He closed his mouth over mine again and we went down on the floor there at the mouth of the balcony, the perfect blue sky stretching out above us.

He was gentle and kind but he wanted me with the passion of a young man. I let him take what he wanted, relaxing into the intense build-up of pleasure.

This was the life I wanted, now and forever. This was me now. This was who I am.

And thinking that made me realise that I couldn’t give this up; not ever.

Not.

Ever.

The man scratched my sides and I squealed with excitement, throwing back my head as he buried his head in my stomach and started to work his way down.

There could only be one Dahlia Western and that had to be me.

I had to do everything in my power to make that happen.

I had to take the life that must surely now be meant for me.

Chapter Four - Part Six

DAHLIA

I hadn’t visited Melissa for two weeks, what with her taking a trip to get another round of liposuction done. I was nervous about it.

The expansion of my body wasn’t something that had occurred since she left – of course it wasn’t; it was a long ongoing process – but with the latest developments that morning it felt like something new and significant had occurred. It felt like something had shifted; something she would notice.

I was fatter now by a pound or four – maybe that would noticeable – but it was more the shift in my own perception, the ruminations I’d had in front of the mirror that morning; the new status quo with Maxine and the other cleaners.

I was always nervous when I went to see Melissa. In order to play the part we’d agreed on she operated with an aloof frostiness that did more than suggest superiority. She made me feel as though I was inferior to her and I guessed that was true. She was fitter and slimmer now. She was bettering herself; working hard with discipline to get stronger and healthier. I was making myself fatter and fatter; doing damage to my health to chase after a fantasy that bordered on mental illness. Even without the question of who controlled the money and the diametric roles we had taken on, she was a better person than I was.

But also I felt that she would see right through me. She would know that a shift had occurred in my thinking; that I’d followed her instructions to wallow in my new status.

I hated the idea of falling under her scrutiny. It chilled me. And my headache was no better.

The bus journey was just as long and uncomfortable as it always was. I was sweating a lot more now that I was fatter and the sweat was collecting in the folds of flesh around my bloated body. It was nice to get off my aching feet but my motion sickness was back in full force by the time I got there. I trudged to the Satine Palace, my nerves tinkling and faced the scornful glares of the reception staff. They had seen me coming and going for the past two months. They couldn’t know what our connection was but had they tried to guess? Had they noticed that as I grew fatter, Melissa became slimmer? I didn’t know. I hated and resented their air of superiority.

Ignoring them as best I could, I took the lift up to the penthouse floor and knocked on the door to Melissa’s suite.

There was a sound of rushed movement inside and then the door opened, not to reveal Melissa but to show a good-looking man hurriedly doing up the buttons on his shirt. He flashed me a grin then darted into the lift just before it closed.

I watched him go then cleared my throat nervously and entered the room to face Melissa.

Chapter Four - Part Seven

MELISSA

It hadn’t crossed my mind that Dahlia would arrive before my gentleman friend left but it was actually kind of perfect because that meant that she got to see my little conquest; evidence if any more was needed that I had changed beyond recognition.

And what a conquest! I had never felt such heights of pleasure. I’d never even considered that I could find myself in such a situation. And I wanted more now; much more. I wanted everything and I was going to snatch it if ever I could.

When her knock came I hurried my lover to leave. My lover! I had no idea what his name was! Then as he went for the door I leant against the edge of the lavish sofa, wanting to show off my new physique. With my recent lipo and all the swimming I really felt as though she was going to be surprised.

I hadn’t considered how surprised I would be.

When Dahlia came into the suite, still looking back at my departing paramour, I was stunned to see her. She turned to face me and in that frozen moment we sized one another up, each of us open mouthed and flabbergasted.

In the two weeks since I had seen her she had swelled up like a ripening tomato. It was staggering how much she’d changed. It was as though her muscles had initially been able to hold in the extra weight she was gaining, but a limit had been reached and suddenly, unable to hold it in anymore, all the fat had plopped out on display.

Her torso was thick and plump with rolls of fat visible where her bra and knickers pinched. She was wearing a brown sleeveless button-up blouse and a skirt and her inflating arms were on display, as were her chunkier legs. Her thighs and ass were much wider than they had been. It was her face, though, which was most amazing.

It had distended enough now to really distort her features. With the bobbed hair making a crash helmet shape around her face and the circle of fat lowering her chin and merging it with her neck, her face had an entirely different shape. Add the glasses – and I could see she’d gone to an even thicker prescription now – and she was another person. At a glance she looked like the old me.

No, she wasn’t as fat as that… yet… but the acceleration toward obesity had been so rapid already, I saw no reason why she wouldn’t achieve the same girth or pass it within an even shorter time frame than we’d anticipated.

And as I examined her, so she examined me.

She had to see the contrast between us now. When we’d last met we had been close to the same size, which had been remarkable in itself, but she was past that now. I was the slimmer one. I still wasn’t close to where I wanted to be but I was the one able to hook a man now. There was no was the bloke who left would have been interested in this mousy, scared-looking fatty.

“Come in Melissa,” I said, underscoring her new identity. I said it with a slight edge today that she must have picked up on, that said, You’re really becoming me now. You’re more Melissa than I am. “You look… well,” I said. “They aren’t starving you at least.”

I smiled and Dahlia blushed furiously.

“Come over to the table,” I said, moving the conversation on without a pause for niceties. It was a pattern I had followed since we started this and it reinforced our different statuses. This wasn’t a social call. I didn’t want to hear about her trivialities and my own luxurious life was none of her business. As usual, she acted wary and guarded around me which gave me some satisfaction. Every time I saw her it made me feel more confident about my own repurposed identity and standing.

I said nothing while I took my seat and waited for Dahlia to take hers. I arranged the voice recorder as I normally did; all business; and pressed record. Dahlia waited submissively.

“Today I’m going to tell you about my husband Robert,” I said.

A slight frown creased Dahlia’s forehead.

“I haven’t gone into much detail about him before,” I said, “because I wanted to ensure he got the attention he deserved.”

… and because I hadn’t been able to think of a way to describe him that wouldn’t terrify her and make any fantasies I might have about a permanent swap impossible to achieve.

But I’d been thinking over this past two weeks, about a lot of things, and the best approach to this situation had presented itself late one night while I was sitting out on my balcony.

Dahlia had once told me how much she wished she had a loving husband; an established long-term partnership that felt comfortable and well-established. I couldn’t pretend I fully understood her reasons for pursuing this ridiculous swap, but the more I could layer in the positive elements of her fantasy, the more likely she might be to make some rash and irrevocable decision.

“The most important thing to know about Robert,” I said, “is that he is kind and thoughtful and he loves me… Melissa… very much.”

Dahlia’s mouth turned up at the edges and her gaze took on a wistful caste. I smiled on the inside like a predator bird.

“He makes me feel protected and looked after. And he makes it his goal every day to keep us both close together and happy.”

Dahlia’s smile grew and so did mine. I went on reeling out the lies and she went on drinking them down.

Chapter Four - Part Eight

KATHERINE

As Katherine walked down the street in Hillfort where Melissa and her husband lived she cast her mind back to the earliest days of her relationship with Dahlia, thinking about the promise that the beautiful young woman had; the optimism; the passion to make a name for herself that would be known the length and breadth of the nation.

Then she pictured the expression Dahlia had worn in the hospital after her brother died; pictured her putting those glasses on, knowing that it would ruin her eyes; how lost she had been; how crushed.

And what had she done to save her? What had she done to stop that topple off the precipice?

Not enough certainly. Not nearly enough.

She stopped at the foot of the path leading up to Melissa’s front door.

The house was in decline. The building next door was in a deplorable state. Melissa’s house had been neglected to the point now that serious work would need to be done to restore it. It wasn’t a case of repainting the window sills. They would need to be torn off an new ones attached. The brickwork was showing signs of deterioration. The paint on the front door was cracked and flaking, the door furniture tarnished and broken. Like many of the houses in Barton, it showed signs of a deep and deadly rot. There was a sense in much of the town that at some point in the near future the whole place might just collapse in on itself and be sucked down into Hell.

But that was just fantasy. Katherine had no time for that. There were many urban legends about Barton, most notably relating to the dubious “fact” that once you entered you would never leave. That was bunkum for a start. She had been in and out hundreds of times in her life. There was nothing magical about the place. It just attracted more than its fair share of scumbags.

She walked up to the front door and knocked.

After the second knock she heard movement inside and stood back to wait politely, hands clasped at her waist.

The door swung in sharply and a man; Melissa’s husband; stood there looking belligerent. He was extremely tall and broad with thick hair on his bare arms, chest and stomach. He had an overgrown moustache but the stubble was almost beard-thick on his fat cheeks and hanging double chin. His hair had receded much of the way back across his head but the rest of it was a straggly mess. “What?” he said, his voice a hostile growl inappropriate for a grown man.

Katherine was taken aback but she put on a civil smile and said, “Hello. I’m sorry to bother you. May I enquire if this is the residence of Melissa Chapman?”

“She ain’t in.” He started to close the door.

“Wait.” Katherine reached forward sharply and put her fingers on the door. She had no physical presence or ability to slow it, but the caveman stopped all the same. “I’m not here to sell you anything’ nothing like that. I’m a… friend of her employer’s; Dahlia Western?”

The man’s suspicion wavered, neither ramping far up or dropping down. He had no interest in the conversation, clearly, but Katherine held him in place with a practiced glare not far from that utilised by school teachers the world over.

“As far as I am aware, Melissa is… travelling with Miss Western at the moment. Is that right?”

His eyes weren’t like human eyes. They picked at her, giving away nothing. His forehead was still etched with distrust.

“Have you heard from Melissa since she left? Do you know where they are at the moment?”

The man in the doorway shifted, leaning against the frame, taking on a more relaxed, cocky aspect. He sneered with one side of his face. “I thought you said you was her friend.”

“I am,” replied Katherine. “Well, her assistant essentially. And I’m trying to locate her.”

“You’re her assistant and you don’t know where she is? And you don’t have her contact details?”

“Nothing, uh… Nothing that she’s responding to.”

The sneer crept further up the side of his face. “What kind of assistant doesn’t know that stuff?” He chuckled. “It sounds to me like she don’t want you to know where she is.”

Katherine gave a little smile to play along a little, knowing how hostile he was being but hoping to maintain some level of communication despite it. “And are you in contact with your wife?”

He sneer faltered on his ugly face.

“You haven’t had any contact since they left?”

“What business is it of yours?”

Katherine gave off a terse sigh, frustrated and rapidly tiring off this man. This had been a waste of time; as had all her other investigations to date. “No matter,” she said. “I can see she hasn’t been in touch with you. And you don’t know where she went.”

The nasty mirth dropped completely off his face. He clearly had no idea.

“So you’re her husband and you don’t know where she is?” said Katherine. “What kind of husband doesn’t know that stuff?”

She turned her back on him and walked away as he flapped his gums, trying to concoct a comeback.

But gratifying though that moment had been it left her no further on in her quest. She still didn’t know where Dahlia, or Melissa were. Though she had a better idea of why Melissa might not want to come back.

Chapter Four - Part Nine

DAHLIA

In the dream I was Melissa.

I wasn’t pretending to be Melissa. I really was her. I was as fat as she had been. I had her hair and glasses. I was wearing her clothes. And I was back in England. I was working at one of her other jobs; at the school. I was on my hands and knees in the cloakroom, trying to clean under the benches, using a tool to get the chewing gum off that had been stuck there. But it wasn’t her job anymore. It was my job. This was my life now. I’d taken it on entirely.

It was my crazy ambition come to fruition, not just as a holiday fantasy played out to ridiculous extremes but as an actual shift in my identity. My old life was gone. There was no way back to it.

She was Dahlia Western now. She was a famous model. She had made her comeback and the world loved her as never before.

I was a nobody; a nothing. I had no respect and little money. I was morbidly obese. I’d ruined my eyesight. I had no prospects or future apart from more of the same; endless days of humiliating, back-breaking labour, lorded over by petty-minded employers.

I was peeling more gum off the underside of the benches but I realised that I wasn’t alone anymore. In the dream, my brother, Steven, was there.

He was standing with his hands clasped behind his back, glaring down at me with scorching disapproval. Then he was shaking his head and in a stern but brittle voice he said, “Oh Dahlia. What are you doing, you silly girl? You’ve ruined your life.”

I was stammering, trying to explain why I was there in this fat woman’s body; why I had made the choices I had made. I told him that there was still a way to get back to my old life; that the change wasn’t permanent.

But he only glared at me. He knew I was lying to myself as much as him.

“You’ve let me down,” he said. “You let all of us down.”

And then I woke.

I jerked up in my seat on the bus, still on the way back to my hotel from Melissa’s. I was sweltering hot in the blaze of sun coming in through the window. My head was pinched and throbbing.

I slumped in the seat but that made my back ache all the more. I made myself sit up instead, rubbing my temple to push out the agony I was feeling. Nothing seemed to shift this headache I kept getting, except maybe food. I always felt better when I was eating.

I checked my watch, wondering how long it was before I could eat again. It wasn’t long before I had to start the second half of my split shift.

I groaned.

I still had the earphones in with the recorded conversation I had just had with Melissa; her explaining exactly what her home life was like with her kind and loving husband.

It sounded idyllic. It made me think that it was a shame this was only a temporary swap. What would it be like to have such a tender partner; to live in such a caring environment? Surely being poor; having such a basic job; these things would be worth it for the love of a good man.

It made me wonder how Melissa could bear to be apart from him for so long. But surely they were in regular communication. And wouldn’t he be pleased when she went home having lost so much weight to take up her life again?

It made me wish that it wasn’t just a holiday game; that we could really trade lives long term.

But that was crazy surely. What we’d already done was crazy enough.

But if it was crazy already then why not push further; take it all the way?

The bus juddered to a stop. I got out, my head still aching; my ankles sore. Walking wasn’t as easy now that I was carrying so much extra weight. The heat and sweat took a toll, as did the pressure on my muscles.

I walked back to the hotel and went up to my room; shut myself in and the heat and light out.

I sat on the edge of the bed, remembering my dream; picturing my brother’s disapproving face.

But I didn’t want to think about him now. I couldn’t.

I fetched the half bottle of gin I’d left by the TV and poured myself a generous glass; knocked it back with eyes pressed tightly closed. It pushed away the headache for a few moments. That was good. I poured myself a second and that pushed it back even further. It took the hard edges away and I needed that; I really did.

I really couldn’t think about my brother now.

And for now he wasn’t my brother. He was her brother. Dahlia’s. I was Melissa now.

I took in a long and brittle breath then sighed it out.

I thought about the tapes I was listening to; about how much I was learning about Melissa’s life. At first I had been a little confounded about Melissa’s reasoning for it – especially learning things from back home that I would never need to use – but I felt like I had absorbed so much already. I didn’t want to think about my real life. It was too tainted by tragedy, pressure and disappointment. I could pretend with Melissa’s memories that I had a simpler existence. It was such a relief to be able to wrap these stories around me while I did my cleaning around the hotel. Over and over I listened to them. The tales were becoming more real to me than any of my own past, especially because I refused to summon up any of my own memories.

I had a third gin, fantasising about a time when I might think these really were my memories. How perfect would that be? How much better?

Perhaps then the headaches would stop.

In fact… I made a decision.

As soon as I could, I would buy myself a voice recorder and into it I would retell these stories. Doing my best to effect Melissa’s patterns of speech, I would retell these memory tales as though they had really happened to me. Maybe then, when I listened back to them over and over again, they would seem even more real.

I smiled at the idea of that. I liked it very much.

Eventually it was time to start working again. I went downstairs, heading outside.

Someone was calling for aid down the steps into the hotel basement. “Can someone give me a hand with this?” she called. As I got closer I realised it was Maxine. This made me pause. I wasn’t eager to suffer her hostility. But then I made myself remember that she was more accepting now at last. She wanted me to play poker with her.

I hesitated for a moment longer then called down. “I can help! What do you need?”

“Who’s that,” called Maxine.

I hesitated again. Then, eager to ingratiate myself and eager for her approval, I said, “It’s Piggy!”

I heard her giggle then her voice came again and this time it was friendlier. “Oh good, Piggy. Get down here. I need help with this trolley. Someone your size will easily be able to move it.”

I smiled and hurried down to her but I got a shimmer of my dream again: the image of my brother’s disapproving face. I pushed it aside almost angrily. That was from my old life. As long as I was here in Greece I was Melissa. This was just my life. It was nothing to be ashamed of. This was just who I was.

Chapter Four - Part Ten

MELISSA

I had dinner overlooking the pool as I normally did, very much enjoying the high-quality food.

It was funny to think now of a time when I would have felt an almost desperate yearning to fill my plate and go back for more. That time seemed a long time ago now, though it really wasn’t. It felt like there was a wall between me and that weak person I used to be – and not just in terms of my gluttony.

I had never been a strong person. Food had been a safe zone for me to travel to; a land of peace and pleasure in which I was protected from the stresses of real life. My drinking had had the same effect except that had gone a step further because it took away my ability to worry – dulled my mind to the point of idiocy and created a wonderful sense of detachment from the despair of my life.

I had never been assertive; unable to fight my corner or make my case. And people had walked all over me my whole life. I had made a trade in submission.

But I had never submitted to the submission. I had always resented it; despised the people who made me acquiesce to their commands.

That was the big difference between me and Dahlia. One of my principle occupations in Greece was plumbing the channels and pits of Dahlia’s mind; trying to understand why a beautiful woman with everything to lose would risk giving it willingly to somebody like me.

Obviously, her brother’s death had been key to that final bid to escape her life, her body and England itself. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted the comeback she was planning. Perhaps the strain of pushing for it was too much. I got the impression there was a lot of that; the urgency to escape; but there was something else that I was realising. It was something there was no explicit evidence for; just an intuition that felt right.

I believed that Dahlia wanted to submit. I got the feeling she got off on it.

All her life she had been the one in control; the one people idolised; and surely that was a great thing. It was everything I’d ever wanted for my own life. But without the opportunity to come second or even last, maybe Dahlia had developed a kinky need to surrender control to somebody else. This swap of ours had turned me on from time to time – even now I got a faint shiver when I thought about what I’d taken from her – but surely it was erotic for her as well. I had sensed that on more than one occasion.

The question was why? Was it as simple as the fact that she had always been in control and she lusted after that which she didn’t have: poverty, ugliness and powerlessness? Or had something happened in her youth that gave her a taste for giving in?

The man whom I had shagged earlier walked past with his wife. He tried not to make eye contact but I saw him eyeing my crossed legs. I ignored him, smiling to myself, thinking how wonderful it was to have the power that looks and a figure gave; that money in the bank and fancy clothes imparted.

My eyes roved instead for my next conquest. I looked forward to finding another man to bed. I looked forward to bedding a hundred more men; as many as I wanted, as often as I wanted.

But my thoughts turned, as they always did, back to Dahlia. I couldn’t help it. She was my guilty obsession. It wasn’t enough that this experiment had given me the confidence and drive to better myself so magnificently; had presented me with a security and flair that only large amounts of money could provide. It wasn’t just about living a better life myself.

I wanted Dahlia’s life to be worse. I wanted it to be as bad as mine had been; or worse! And I wanted nothing more than for her to get as morbidly obese as I had been.

It had been a delight to see her today and to lie to her about Robert.

Was it just a fantasy that I might keep this life? That I could somehow persuade her to accept mine completely?

Was she screwed up enough to actually do that?

Would she become me – Melissa – permanently?

Honestly, I didn’t know. And surely I couldn’t believe it, even in my fondest dreams.

But I had a feeling that wasn’t the strategy. If I went to her and suggested a permanent swap, the act of questioning her would make her question herself. Any of that and she might drop out of the moment enough to run for the hills.

No. It had to be more about simply extending it. That I could see her going for. She was already altering her shape massively; possibly committing permanent damage to her body. Her self-restraint was clearly disconnected. I needed to continue pushing that just a little bit further; a little bit further.

For the foreseeable future there always needed to be that escape route for her; increasingly implausible though that might be. But I wasn’t going to stop until we really had become duplicates of one another, if that was even possible. And I wasn’t going to stop until our swap had become something indefinite and extended and ongoing.

I didn’t just want to pretend to be her abroad. I wanted to go back to England; to Nockton Vale; and actually assume her life as though it were really mine.

I wanted her to really become me.

Chapter Four - Part Eleven

DAHLIA

It was a relief as always when my evening shift was over and I could settle down to eat myself. Serving the hotel’s guests was trying at the best of times – they could be very rude – but standing over all that food when my stomach ached to be filled was a painful experience.

My appetite was bigger now than it had ever been in my life. I was voracious. I needed to consume massive amounts at mealtimes and between meals I craved snack after snack: items I had to secrete in my apron, in the pockets of my uniform’s skirt or on my cleaning trolley. And the snacks weren’t healthy – of course they weren’t; nothing was in this absurd venture of mine – they were greasy pastries or crisps of sweets, cake or chocolate. My obsession with Coca-Cola had been nascent in England. Now I couldn’t help myself. I always had a bottle on the go unless I was on the hard stuff. I couldn’t openly drink alcohol while I was working (though more than half of the other cleaners did it on the sly) but I did sometimes tuck a little bottle into one of the toilet rolls.

I carried two mounded up platefuls of food through to the break room and tucked in. I’d found it was far easier to have two plates initially to save time on having to go back through to fetch more. The hotel guests were only allowed smallish plates for their buffet to restrict how much they could get in one go. As a member of staff, I had access to some of the larger plates in the kitchen. I had two of these fully stacked with meat and carbohydrates and generously topped off with a variety of succulent sauces.

The other cleaners were in there eating and Maxine beckoned me over. “Come sit with us Little Piggy.”

There were giggles all round but I went over anyway, blushing, feeling they were making fun of me but wanting to be included more than I cared about that. With my increasing weight and the transformative effect it had had on my self-image and confidence, I was getting used to feeling as though people looked down on me now.

“We’ll be playing poker after we’ve eaten,” said Maxine. She chuckled. “Though by the look of it, you might still be eating. You’ll have to join us when you’ve finished.”

The girls all laughed and my face coloured more deeply. I smiled politely.

“You know when you started here, I got the impression you were right stuck up,” she said. “Like you was better than us – or thought you were.”

I shook my head.

“Don’t panic Piggy.” She smirked. “I don’t think that now. Now I reckon you’ve accepted that you ain’t nothing special here. You’re one of us. I mean look at you.” She gestured. “You must be two stone heavier than when you arrived, at least! You ain’t in a position to think you’re better.”

“No,” I said, but my voice was tiny. I cleared my throat. “No,” I said again.

She was right. She was right about everything. It made me feel glad, that I was following Mellissa’s instructions well; that I wouldn’t let her down. It made me shiver with arousal at the capitulation to this crass woman; to accept that she was on my level or even better than me. In my old life she would have been beneath notice. It also made me feel scared and alone; to long for Melissa’s company. When I was with her then this was just a game we were playing; two friends on a crazy adventure. Here, treated like the fat woman I looked, it felt too real.

“Where are you from anyway?” asked Maxine. “What part of the UK?”

“Uh, Nockton,” I said. I thought about Melissa’s life; the recordings I was listening to. “Well... Barton,” I corrected. “I live there... with my husband Robert.”

It felt oddly nice to say that, though the idea of living in the squalor of Barton for real was dreadful and was never going to happen.

“What are you doing here?”

“Just a working holiday,” I said. “I, uh, wanted a change of scene for a while.”

“What do you do back in England?”

I’m a retired model planning a comeback.

“I’m just a cleaner there too,” I said. “I do various houses and a school as well. No different from here really.”

“You see girls,” said Maxine, turning to the other cleaners. “I told you she’s alright now that she’s stopped being snooty.”

I closed my eyes and smiled, relieved.

“Ere,” said Maxine, offering me an open pack of cigarettes. “Want one?”

I faltered. “Uh...”

I didn’t smoke. I had no desire to. Melissa didn’t smoke so it wasn’t even something I should aspire to to complete my disguise. But Maxine was offering and I had the feeling it was another test; to see whether I was really willing to play the game the same way they all played it.

I looked down at my food and vacillated further. “Maybe when I’ve finished eating,” I said.

Maxine smirked. “Sure thing Little Piggy. I’ll hold you to it.”

Chapter Four - Part Twelve

DAHLIA

I leaned against the wall by the hotel entrance, hands on my knees, feeling fully nauseous.

I’d eaten more food than ever tonight and I’d gone on drinking through the poker game. And my first (and last) cigarette had done nothing to help. It had made my head swim, my limbs feel heavy, my stomach churn. It had left a bad taste in my mouth. That was one thing I wasn’t going to repeat, eager though I was to ingratiate myself in with the other cleaners.

Maxine and the others had thought my reaction was priceless, laughing at me as I spluttered for clean air. Or laughed with me at least. They were accepting me into their group now; becoming my friends; and though I still caught some little smirks and shared looks between them, I didn’t mind that. I was sure they had my best interest at heart.

The poker game had been fun but I hadn’t turned out to be a virtuoso. I’d lost every hand so far. More my own ineptitude and bad luck than the killer instinct from the other girls. They were very helpful, advising me when to bet. It wasn’t their fault it kept going against me.

I was happy they had let me play. It had been lonely days so far here in Greece, living another woman’s life with no friends or family.

Family.

I thought about my brother.

Then I pushed that away.

I don’t have a brother, I said to myself. I’m Melissa now. I was an only child. I grew up in Leeds and moved to Barton when I was fifteen. I didn’t make many friends there because everyone had already formed their little cliques by then. I couldn’t break into it. My parents moved away just after I got married to Robert. Robert is a kind and loving man. He loves me dearly.

Parroting the words that Melissa had recorded for me.

I pressed my eyes closed, the heavy drunk I was on making me giddy.

When I opened them I realised I was no longer alone. The cook was a few feet away, leaning against the opposite wall, smiling at me as though he thought it funny that I was smashed.

“Bad… uh… night?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I nodded.

“You are very drunk; yes?”

I nodded again, pinching the bridge of my nose.

When I opened my eyes again he had crossed the distance between us and stood close. I was alarmed but I didn’t pull away. He was still smiling. I got the impression that he meant it to be affable and reassuring but there was something in his gaunt sleazy features that made it unsavoury and suggestive. I blinked and blinked again. He just smiled and smiled, coming even closer, close enough for me to raise my hand and ward him off if I chose to.

I thought about Melissa and how I had let her down so far.

I didn’t ward him off.

She’d told me to flirt with him; let him have his fun with me; kiss him; maybe even sleep with him.

Just a holiday romance with a co-worker; that was all.

She’d reminded me that I was just an ordinary woman now: a bit fat; not very good looking. She’d told me that someone like that was probably the best I could hope for.

I hadn’t been with a man for so long and everything had changed since then. I wasn’t a beautiful, desirable model anymore; far from it. Everything was different now.

I was so drunk. I couldn’t believe I was thinking about this.

But he had been flashing his eyes at me for weeks now and this was him finally making his move. He didn’t speak. His English wasn’t that great. He leaned against the wall next to me, his hand by my head, his face close to mine. Still smiling. Still leering.

Melissa had told me to sleep with him and I wanted to do as she told me. I didn’t know why but the idea of letting her dictate who I slept with numbed my limbs and electrified my nerves.

The cook was skinny. He had a thin, moist-looking moustache. His eyebrows were bushy and too close together. His hands were out of proportion with his body. His Adam’s apple bulged, shifting up and down as he gazed at me.

I parted my lips, just slightly.

The cook bent his two first fingers and ran them down the length of my arm, watching their progress; then he turned his gaze back up to my eyes, via my chest.

How could he fancy me looking like this: so chubby and plain with these thick glasses? But maybe he didn’t care about that. He wasn’t handsome by any means. Maybe he just wanted a crevice to plant his dick in. Maybe who I was didn’t matter; only that I was as desperate as he was.

But was I that desperate? Did I need this?

I wanted so much not to disappoint Melissa and she asked me if I’d slept with him yet every time I saw her, gently grinding away with her encouragement.

And I was lonely. So lonely sometimes, especially at night.

And my self-image was so twisted now. The confidence I had once possessed had long been washed away. I was fat and ugly, but this man still wanted me. I was still desirable to him.

He gave a little querying grunt that meant, Are you up for this? Will you let me have you? Can I kiss you now?

I nodded, eyes open and fearful, head still floating, thoughts addled.

I did want him. I thought I did. My loins sizzled suddenly. He wetness and heat startled me.

Then the cook took hold of both my arms below the shoulder, a little too tightly, and pulled me forward out of balance. He pressed his face against mine, starting with a wet closed-mouth kiss and then pressing my lips apart, angling his head as he pushed his probing tongue inside me.

He smelled of grease and spices. He skin was oily. His moustache tickled my nose and upper lip. My glasses clouded. But I fell into the kiss. I wanted him so badly. My hips gave a single sway toward him of subconscious intent.

He squeezed my arms tighter, pulling me even closer, hurting me.

I moaned, letting him push my head back; liking the roughness; the physical dominion; wanting to submit completely now that he had come into me.

He broke the kiss then came in again: rougher; more urgent. It almost hurt but I didn’t try to get away from him. I made myself relax; let him do this to me.

Then he broke again and he flashed his eyebrows up and down, grinning. He gave another little querying grunt.

“Yes.” I said, nodding my head. “Yes please. I want it. Take me to your room.”

He kissed me again.

“Fuck me if that’s what you want,” I said, giving in to him completely.

Chapter Four - Part Thirteen

DAHLIA

The cook led me up the back stairs, higher into the staff part of the hotel than I had been before. There was a floor above mine where it seemed long term resident staff members stayed. It was dimmer and not as well kept. No decorating had been done for some time and the paint was cracked and flaking.

The cook’s room was at the end of the short corridor. It wasn’t locked. Inside it was dark and cluttered. He didn’t turn the main light on. Pushing his key card into the slot to activate the power turned on only a desk lamp that illuminated only the upper surfaces of the items littering the floor and bed.

He gave a deprecatory chuckle and snapped a sharp ripple through the bed sheet to cascade the items covering it onto the floor. The sheet was wrinkled. It hadn’t been changed for some time.

It was revolting. I was starting to change my mind. I didn’t want this after all. I didn’t find him attractive in the least.

But he had my wrist and he was climbing onto the bed, pulling me to the edge of it. And Melissa had told me to do this. I wanted to do what she said.

The cook unbuttoned his short-sleeved shirt, shrugging it off his shoulders. His arms were bony, his ribs in contrast. That same smell he’d had round him when we kissed downstairs was deeper here. It was all over him. But he kissed me and I let him.

He squeezed my arm. Rubbed his other hand down my side, and I felt the difference in the fleshiness of my skin, unfamiliar from when a man last caressed me.

I was so nervous; so aware of my new self; the dynamic of this.

He pulled my dress off over my head and my fat rolls juddered back into place.

He looked at me, smirking, and I blushed, trying to cover myself with my arms. I was so fat now, the shape of my breasts and torso, the thickness of my arms, the swollen chin. How could anybody find me attractive like this?

He took my hands, using his strength to prise them away from my body, digging into the skin such that I couldn’t resist. I didn’t want to resist – I wanted to give in to him – but I was afraid to. So afraid.

I’m Melissa, I told myself. This is the best I can hope for now. I’m not attractive enough to get anybody better.

He took his trousers off; put a condom on from his cluttered bedside drawer.

He kissed my face; my chubby cheeks; my thick. He worked down to my increasingly doughy chest, caressing my flabby sides. He took off my glasses and the dingy room became blurred.

I’ve ruined my vision, I thought. I’ve ruined it.

He guided me onto the bed. I lay back on the wrinkled sheet, putting my head on his soiled pillow. The smell of him intensified.

He was naked now: lean, dark-skinned and hairy, glowering down at me.

I let my hands fall to the sides. My confidence was miniscule. I didn’t know what to do. It was like I really was Melissa now; like I’d always been this fat woman who knew her sex appeal was limited.

I thought of Robert and in the heat of the moment I felt guilty that I was betraying him like this; like he really was my husband.

Just a holiday romance with a co-worker, that’s all. That was what Melissa had called it.

He prised off my knickers.

My knees were raised. My legs looked so much flabbier than they used to. I spread them hesitantly.

The cook leant in, gripping both of my fleshy upper arms. His face came close to mine but he didn’t look at me. He looked past me, above my head.

His probing cock tapped near my opening but didn’t find it. It tapped again, over and over. I reached down to guide it in, finding the hard end of it and pushing it into the moist crevice between my swollen thighs.

I gasped as he pushed inside me and suddenly the seediness withdrew; the incompatibility. The animal in me just wanted to rut, tensing my fat buttocks, pushing forward and up with my pelvis as he started to thrust.

He still didn’t look me in the eye, just whacked it into me over and over and over again, machine-like in his affectionless rhythm.

This is the best I can hope for now, I thought. This is my life now. This is who I am.

I’m a chubby cleaner working in Greece and I’m letting this man I don’t even know or like shag me because he wants to and because Melissa told me to and because I want to know what it feels like to submit to being this ordinary, pathetic, ugly woman.

He sacked into me over and over and over again and my swollen body jerked, my fat jiggling.

Never before I had felt so hopeless; so irreparably shoved into this new identity. Never before I had felt more like the fatty I was.

Never before had I felt so much like I was really Melissa.

Chapter Five - Part One

DAHLIA

I didn’t know how many months it was now since we’d come to Greece – time and dates didn’t seem relevant to me anymore - but it had been spring. I was sure of that. Now the summer season was coming to an end. The intensity of the heat had lessened. There weren’t as many holiday-makers. The tourist areas had an emptier, abandoned feel to them. Catching the bus from my hotel to Melissa’s was a faintly depressing ride. Most of the seats were empty.

As I did on every journey to see her, I reflected on how I had changed; how different I looked. The transformation hadn’t ended. It went on and on as my body bloated outwards, getting bigger and bigger.

I was truly massive now. Sitting down, my stomach had fold after fold of fat, spreading out in every direction; resting on my thighs. I was wearing a dress and my hips pressed it out, gravity squishing them out to the sides as it compressed them. My knees poked out the bottom of the dress but I couldn’t see my chunky calves and lower legs because my bulk filled too much of the space up. My knees were pushed up against the seat in front. It was lucky that the bus wasn’t full. My mass spread to the side, spilling onto the seat beside me.

The dress was sleeveless and my big, doughy arms were crossed on the metal-topped seat back in front of me. The skin was shiny where it had been stretched, where it’s compression at the elbows made flabby bulges.

Had anyone ever put on weight like this before; with such determination?

I had no idea how much I’d gained but it was a massive amount. I wasn’t myself at all anymore. As my old self I could have climbed inside this body and worn it like a suit.

I rested my head on my forearms and closed my eyes, wondering how Melissa would react when she saw me.

She was always so encouraging and I found that as hard to understand as I ever did. It was the strangest thing I had ever heard of and yet she went along with it gladly; never judging me; playing her part perfectly.

I could understand the benefit she got. It must have been like a dream come true to get to play the part of a rich woman travelling abroad and I had nothing but respect for the way she had taken on that role with gusto, training with an unparalleled passion to get slim; acting out the role of my employer.

Supporting me was another thing entirely. What I was doing was plain mad but she didn’t seem to mind. She encouraged it.

Sometimes she seemed like an unbelievably good friend to support me in this.

Other times I lay awake at night, quaking with anxiety, questioning everything, feeling paranoid and distrusting.

The bus pulled up and I walked the rest of the way to Satine Palace. That hotel too was looking a lot emptier. The woman on reception gave a little sneer as I passed toward the lift. She had seen me visit many times now. I couldn’t imagine who she thought I was.

I rode the elevator up to the penthouse and knocked on Melissa’s door; waited for a full minute; knocked again; waited some more. I was just turning to go when the door opened behind me.

Melissa’s stood there, her eyes twinkling and full of mirth. “Ah, Melissa. Good. Well come in then. Don’t keep me hanging on.”

She stepped back and I entered. There was rather a lot of clutter in her suite: discarded clothes; food and drink containers.

“Give the place a quick tidy, would you?” said Melissa, languishing on the sofa. “It’s got a terrible mess and I can’t be bothered to clear up.”

“Yes miss,” I said, hurrying to do it.

She lay stretched out, watching me as I worked, smiling. I felt uncomfortable that she was observing me. I felt scrutinised. It made me tense, sure she would pull me up on some error or clumsiness. The more tense I got, the more I fumbled.

“Do be careful Melissa,” she said, her voice edgy.

“Sorry miss,” I replied quietly, keeping my head down.

It reminded me of the days, back in England when I was still beautiful, when I used to watch her, fantasising about having such a simple job; about being fat and having to wear glasses. She was so much slimmer now than then and what about me?

“Stop,” she said suddenly, that same edge to her tone as was there most of the time.

I did so.

I liked the way she talked down to me.; the role she played as my superior. I hid the smile that tried to compress my lips.

“Let me have a look at you,” she said. “Hold out your arms and turn around.”

I raised my arms as instructed and shuffled around, feeling more than ever how round my trunk was. My tummy and sides bulged outwards, blending into my chunky thighs. My legs were thick, and it didn’t matter that they were still smooth and shapely, they were fat woman’s legs. That couldn’t be denied.

As I’d grown bigger I had bought progressively larger sizes of clothes but the dress I had on now was strained to the limit; uncomfortably tight. I raised my head quickly to look at Melissa and felt a wobble of fat from my chins, the flick of dark hair on my cheeks.

Melissa was grinning broadly. “Oh my God,” she said, clearly delighted, covering her mouth with both hands. “You’re coming on so well sweetheart. It’s almost unbelievable. You must do nothing else but gorge yourself on food. When you aren’t working.” Dimples formed in her cheeks. “How many platefuls do you have at dinner?”

I blushed. “Four. If I can manage.”

“God, really? Four! But small ones though, right? Surely those plates aren’t all piled high.” Her eyes were dancing with delight.

I shrugged. “There’s no limit to how much I‘m allowed,” I said. “And you said I should take advantage of it.”

Melissa giggled. “I certainly did. It’s amazing what you’ve achieved in such a short time.”

“Well it’s almost the end of summer,” I said. “We’re running out of time.”

Melissa became quiet and introspective.

I took the opportunity to look at her and I was just as dazzled as she had been at my weight gain. She must spend all day long in training. She must eat like a bird. She had lost an extraordinary amount; a truly startling loss. And it illustrated how much potential her body had had before she put the weight on in the first place. Had she always been fat as a child? Had she ever realised how nice her body could look?

Her limbs were long and well-toned. Her stomach was becoming compact. I knew she had assisted her weight loss with liposuction, but along with the exercise and the advanced techniques that had clearly been used, she had undergone a magical transformation. She had nice bone structure, oddly similar to my own and again I got the eerie sense that we were like sisters. There were more similarities to our basic faces than there were differences.

But I was conscious that I was staring and at any moment Melissa would remember herself. She might tell me off for loitering.

I decided to get on with the cleaning. That was my comfort zone now. I was so used to it. I think I was happiest when I was down on my knees, scrubbing the floor.

But as I bent down to pick up a discarded wine glass I glanced back at Melissa and saw she was watching me. It made me halt, embarrassed, but I straightened and gave a polite smile. “Sorry Miss Western,” I said. “Would you not like me to go on cleaning round?”

“Yes. Finish doing it,” said Melissa, “but work a bit faster would you. I’m having drinks with a rather dishy man later and I want to have time to look my best.”

Chapter Five - Part Two

MELISSA

“I want you to know how proud I am of you Melissa,” I said, sitting opposite her at the table.

“Thank you,” she replied haltingly.

“Really,” I said. “You’ve come so far and your dedication has been phenomenal. It’s helped me so much; seeing you stick to your path. Lots of times I felt I couldn’t go on with all my training and beauty treatments, but seeing you doggedly stick to your own path has reminded me time and again that it can be done. With absolute dedication it is possible to change. You’re the person I look to when my will is weak. You’re…” I fixed her eyes in mine. “You’re my inspiration.”

I smiled at Dahlia. She squirmed under my benevolent gaze, uncomfortable with the praise.

To look at her it was impossible to believe there was a confident beautiful model hidden under the rolls of fat, the dowdy clothes and hair, and the thick glasses. She had changed so much. She had bloated into something almost disgusting.

Was she as fat as I had once been already?

No. Not quite. Not yet. But she wasn’t far off and her former self was simply gone.

“I thought we’d do something different on your visit today,” I said. “Normally we tell one another stories about our old lives but this time I want to hear more about your new life.”

“My life… now? At the hotel?” she asked haltingly.

“Yes. I want to hear the latest on your new man; the cook.” I smiled, hoping it didn’t sound like I was making fun of her.

She shrugged. “He’s…”

“Hmmm?”

She shrugged again, obviously reluctant to go into it.

“Doesn’t he treat you well?”

“I suppose.”

“Does he take you out?”

She became pensive. “No. Not really. Mostly we… If we meet up then… we just…”

She blushed redly, lowering her head.

I longed to see them together. From the description she’d given me I could only imagine his hackneyed, scrawny looks: his bulging eyes, his big hands, his skinny wrists and greasy hair. What a couple they would make: the fat four-eyed butterball and her slimy foreign suitor! I could just imagine the sight they’d be, walking arm in arm through the streets!

I really had to try hard not to laugh out loud.

“And how much English does he speak?” I asked.

“Some.” She left it at that.

“Do you talk much?”

She squirmed.

“What do you talk about?”

She didn’t make eye contact, blushing ever brighter. She knew exactly how low she had fallen. She didn’t want to admit it to me or to herself.

But that wasn’t good enough for me and I wanted to flex the muscles of how much power I had over her. How would she react if I pushed a little?

“I don’t like being ignored really Melissa,” I said, my voice harder. “I’m showing an interest in you and your new boyfriend. Don’t beat around the bush. I want to know what he’s like.”

She sat up straight: alarmed, guilty, shocked, afraid… unconsciously subservient. “Sorry Miss Western. He’s…” She swallowed. “He doesn’t treat me very well really. He doesn’t take me out at all. We drink together sometimes, while he watches TV. He mainly just… He just wants to have sex. He isn’t interested in me or my life.”

I smiled. “Sounds ideal in some ways. No strings. And you wouldn’t want to fall in love – not with that husband of yours waiting at home.”

She flushed. “No. No. You’re right.”

I narrowed my eyes.

It was at moments like these that I couldn’t be sure how far she was gone; how much further I could push. I wished I could ask her outright but I was afraid that would break the spell.

I’d mentioned “her husband” back in England and she had played along. Fine. That meant she was willing to pretend she was the real Melissa as long as she was here. But did that show any inclination to return to Nockton Vale and continue the charade? Not necessarily.

We’re running out of time.

Saying that, she’d implied that she was still on course only for our original plan: a total swap but only lasting a few months; only continuing while we were abroad.

The trouble was I liked to fantasise about it being more than that – and we were obviously deeper into this crazy game than maybe anyone had ever gone before – but signals though there were, I had no guarantee of anything longer term. I was starting to worry she was going to turn up one day soon and say it was time to change back.

I felt ill at the thought of it: of going back to England and having to fit back into my life as a cleaner; to go back to Robert. I was too used to the wealth and pleasure now. I could never go back. I would die if I had to.

I would kill myself.

“Miss Western?”

I looked back at her. I’d been gazing off out the window. “Yes?”

“Are you alright? You looked… unwell.”

I put on a smile. “I’m fine,” I said. “Fine. Just thinking about things.”

A long pause fell between us. “About the future?” she asked tentatively.

All expression fell from my face. “Yes. About the future.”

We looked at one another.

“I sometimes think about that too,” she said. “But…” She tilted her face forward and looked at her crumpled hands on the table. I waited for her to go on. “I’m not really ready to think about it yet. You know?”

I nodded as kindly as I could manage.

“It… hurts still… to think about it.”

I nodded again and reached my hand across the table.

Hesitantly, she extended her hand too and I took it.

“All play aside…” I said. “You should always remember that I’m your friend. Above all else.”

She looked at me with moisture rimming her eyes and inside me the part of myself that wasn’t heartless, that hadn’t really meant to say those words except as a way of manipulating her, felt a warm stirring that surprised me. It actually disturbed me because I didn’t want to feel that way toward her. I was still angry at the way I had been made to feel all my life, by her and her ilk. It didn’t matter that she had never treated me badly directly. She had made me feel inferior simply by being pretty, slim and wealthy, and by paying my wages.

“We’re doing this for you,” I said, “this thing we’re doing; this swap. We’re doing it because you needed it.”

She nodded, wiping her eye. “I still need it I think.”

“I know. I know,” I said. I squeezed her hand. “And we can go on doing it as long as you want. Okay? As long as you want.”

She nodded, putting on a brave smile. “I’m sorry that I’m so pathetic.” 

“Not at all,” I said reassuringly. Then I grinned. “And don’t worry. It suits your new persona perfectly.”

Chapter Five - Part Three

DAHLIA

“Let me tell you what my life is like now,” said Melissa, “all thanks to you.”

We had left her suite and were travelling downstairs in the lift. It had mirrors on every wall, even built into the doors, and gave an uncanny sense of other dimensions shifting off, endlessly repeating images of us that slowly curved out of sight. Melissa was facing the door. She didn’t look my way. I stole glances at her from every angle through the differing mirrored views.

“Because of your support and this grand adventure we’re on, I have lost a phenomenal amount of weight,” she said. “I’m almost as slim as you were when we first met.”

It was true. Her body looked amazing. For quite a long time now it had looked a lot better: simply exercising constantly had enabled her to carry the weight better almost from the start. Now she was very shapely and if anything looked slightly better than I had before we left England.

After all, by then I had let my own weight slip a little already and hadn’t maintained as intense an exercise schedule as her for some time: years. Melissa’s developing form was the result of intensive physical training. And her boobs were a little fuller too.

She didn’t have my facial features (though hers weren’t a million miles from mine), but she was similar enough in other ways that a member of the public who followed my modelling career might almost have thought she was really me – if they were told as much.

“And losing weight is only the start of it,” she said. “Living here as you; enjoying the life of a wealthy woman; something I could never have done before; has changed something inside of me. I see myself differently now. I see a strength and...” She went quiet for a moment. “... a beauty even, that I never had before. I look in the mirror and I don’t recognise the incredible woman looking back at me.”

She turned her body so that she stood beside me and put her arm round my back, gripping the chubby bingo wing on my left arm so that we were looking at our reflections, pressed side by side.

The sight of it was barely credible and dimly disquieting.

She was taller than me; because of her heels and my flat working shoes; because my posture was... different: shoulders slumped; back a little bowed; head lowered. She was so slim and athletic and that gave her a bearing and confidence that was visibly magnificent. My dark brown hair seemed almost black in the soft lighting while her lovely golden curls danced about her face. Her hair had grown massively since we came to Greece. It looked fabulous now.

And I looked tremendously fat: my stomach rolls; my round, sagging chin, my inflated bottom and wide hips, the swollen calves, the round chubby arms. I peered, blinking, through the thick lenses of glasses that covered much of my face.

I looked so much like the original Melissa now. So much like her.

“Thanks to your generosity and kindness,” said Melissa, I feel like a princess. I used to have a drinking problem – did you know that? I used to drink all the time, just to dull the ache I felt from living my life; from looking the way I did.” She grinned. “Not anymore. Now I have it under control. I still drink but only for fun. You don’t know how different that feels. It’s wonderful!”

She hugged me tighter. I said nothing, only smiling a little.

I felt comforted to hear this; to know that she was happy; but I also felt strangely awful and I didn’t know quite why. This had been my choice. It was what I wanted. Why should I feel bad now that I was so close to achieving my outlandish dream?

“I’m so grateful to you,” she said. “So grateful that you gave me the chance to live your life and find out what it’s like. I love it so much.”

She stopped speaking but I sensed there was more she wanted to say. Her eyes clouded and she said nothing. She released my arm and stepped away. I was going to ask her what was wrong but the lift dinged and the doors opened.

Melissa strode out without a glance to see if I was joining her. I scurried after her. I was going to catch up and walk alongside her but that felt wrong. Despite everything I knew about our true pasts, there seemed a gulf between us now that I... didn’t want to close; that I liked. This was what I wanted, wasn’t it? I wanted to be subservient to her; to feel as though she was the wealthy lady and I the portly cleaner with dowdy clothes and hair and thick glasses.

It was my dream come true; or almost. We weren’t quite the same shapes as our opposite had started. The way she was viewed compared to me was startling. It had been a long time since we had appeared together among other people and it was astonishing how differently we were treated now. Men and women openly admired Melissa as she strode proudly along, chin up, apparently unaware of the adulation. Her stride was long and measured. The hotel staff nodded deferentially as she passed but she ignored them.

To me they were openly disdainful, sneering in my direction as I glanced shamefully at them. Everyone we passed either ignored me completely or gave me some grimace of disapproval or derision. And my footsteps were shorter than hers, my pace more laboured with my greater mass. I had to hurry to keep up, frequently speeding up to match hers.

Melissa seemed unaware of me now; totally dismissive of my presence, and I started asking myself if she meant for me to follow or if she had dismissed me without even bothering to address me directly. She had been so open and kind in the lift but immediately upon stepping outside, the wall had come down and I was only her underling; largely beneath notice and only worth contempt.

It was horrible; almost a betrayal; and yet it made me feel alight inside, like I craved this desperately; as though this subservience to her and the pitiful life she had crafted for me were was a dingy hell and her disregard was something I yearned for: a light I could gaze at in the darkness.

Melissa strode on and I hurried after her.

I wanted her to remember I was there. I wanted her to be kind to me. But I also hungered after the casual disdain she was capable of showing me. I wanted her to make me feel pathetic next to her. I wanted to feel as though she was so much better than me.

Chapter Five - Part Four

DAHLIA

I followed Melissa outside to the rear of the hotel. Again she didn’t look back at me or engage me in conversation and because we had transitioned from inside to outside I felt certain that she didn’t want me to go with her anymore. She had never taken me outside before.

I slowed down and eventually stopped and she didn’t react either way. It was like I didn’t matter. But I was also anxious that she might turn round and snap at me to catch up. Playing her part well, she could be mercurial and hostile. I didn’t want to get in trouble with her. But still, I was certain now she didn’t want me.

It was disappointing. I had… enjoyed our interaction… sort of; though it incited, as always, a range of conflicting emotions. I wanted to go with her.

Obviously, I didn’t feel as though I could join her by the pool or anything – I felt deeply uncomfortable now in such surroundings. After that first day at my own hotel I had been cast solely as an employee in this kind of environment; certainly not a guest. But part of me felt wistful over the aspect of the fantasy in which I had waited on her every whim, scurrying around to fetch her things. Melissa didn’t seem interested in that aspect. She didn’t want me near her in public. She wanted me far away doing my cleaning job at my own run-down hotel.

But I was curious and I found myself following after her, hanging right back.

I wanted to watch what she got up to; to see how well she was playing the part when I wasn’t there. I some ways I felt threatened by the idea that she might be doing it well: pretending to be me. Part of me wanted to find out that she couldn’t be me as well as I could. But I’d already seen her in the hotel and up in her room. I’d seen her beauty, confidence and grace only increase. This was an exercise in likely humiliation. I wanted her to be doing badly but I believed she would be doing well. The seedy, self-destructive part of me wanted her to be performing magnificently; wanted her to be a better Dahlia than I ever was.

Melissa sauntered along the edge of the pool, her long legs glimmering in the reflected sunlight off the water’s surface, her golden curls wavering in the light breeze that came from the sea. She looked like a goddess. It was remarkable how much she had changed: how great an effect her training and studies had had on her. She moved like a dancer with careful poise and femininity. And as I’d noticed in the lift, I recognised that her body looked better now than mine had done; because of the extra shape and musculature she had.

I moved in behind a large potted plant so she wouldn’t see me, spying on her as she walked gracefully, nodding and smiling at various guests it seemed she had made a connection with.

Once upon a time I had been extremely gregarious. It was how I had been able to expand my career so quickly. But since my withdrawal from modelling and my… my parents’ deaths years earlier, I had… not felt the same level of self-confidence. I had chosen to withdraw. I had lost interest in forging those connections. That was why I had moved to Nockton Vale really; away from the big city. I had become reclusive.

That wasn’t the person I was watching here. Melissa was possessed of a generous confidence and warm affability. This place had stripped her of the inward-looking downtrodden persona she had had when I hired her as my cleaner and allowed her to replace it with something wonderful.

She was friendlier and more sociable than I had been in a long time and the people she interacted with were clearly taken with her; magnetised by her charisma. I was captivated myself, just watching her.

She was so similar to me in looks now – only those slight differences in the face. Her hair, her body, her manner: all these were as good as or better than my original state.

It made me see myself there: a homely, obese woman, huddled behind a plant, gazing enviously at her employer. Resenting her superiority? Perhaps. Wishing I could be as beautiful again; as confident and outgoing as that? Maybe.

Maybe. In a small way.

But a far more prominent part of me was afraid that I could never be that beautiful again; that I never had been in the first place. I was afraid I’d already allowed this transformation to go too far. I had already passed some point of no return.

The me I was now was anonymous. It was safe. There was no expectation on me to be glamorous. The only expectation was for me to work hard and follow orders. I clung to that.

And if I could press a button and long that way again; take on my old life and beauty? Would I do it?

Did I want to go back? Was I ready?

No. Not yet.

Not ever?

Not yet.

Melissa circled the pool and headed for the outside bar. Nervous she was going to see me, I shifted my position, moving to my right. I was afraid of being caught; of her exposing my seedy infiltration to everyone here; but I wanted to see more. I was desperate to.

And might it even be delightful if she did expose me? How might it feel if everyone around the pool was laughing at me as I scurried away in this massive, bloated form, my glasses misting up from the heat and exertion?

She got to the bar and sat down and I drew in as close as I dared as she started chatting to an attractive man seated beside her.

I was a voyeur on my own former life and I felt ashamed of that. I felt pathetic.

But that made it better. It made me want to do it more. It made me want to wallow in it.

Chapter Five - Part Five

DAHLIA

Spying on Melissa as she sat at the pool bar with this handsome guy; listening to them; the first thing that struck me was her confidence.

When she started working for me back in England as a cleaner, Melissa had been timid and withdrawn, her self-image a mess. Her gargantuan weight, her uninspired dress sense, her near-poverty and her short-sightedness all crushed any chance she had of feeling good about herself. All of those things were in the past now – taking over my life and wealth, and doing all her training had achieved that – and now she seemed more self-possessed than I had been in years. Maybe more than I ever had.

The only reason I could think for that was that she had effectively undergone a fairytale transformation, from an ugly servant to a beautiful princess. She was like an actor on the stage. It was near-fantasy, the life she was living, and that meant she had nothing to lose.

I had to admire her. But that admiration was something more. I acknowledged that she was doing amazingly well but this was beyond that and the sense that she was doing it better than I would was out there now. I felt... envy; maybe even jealousy. I... resented how well she was playing my part. I felt like an understudy to it, as though she was the one who had been chosen; that I was only the back-up; and looking at myself; at the flabby folds of belly, the quivering fat on my arms and thighs, the features of my face that were drowned by fat on my face; I realised that I couldn’t play the role of Dahlia anymore, even if I was called to.

She looked uncannily like Dahlia with only a couple of facial features out of place. I didn’t. Nobody who saw me could ever have guessed that I was her. I wasn’t her in the least anymore in any way, physically or mentally.

I didn’t even recognise my psyche now; it had changed so much. I had been a confident and successful model. Now I was an obese, fetishistic obsessive who had destroyed her own beauty and health to chase after a self-destructive and preposterous goal.

But her confidence was only the first thing I noticed.

The second was her voice, because she didn’t sound like she used to anymore. It was months since we had started recording our memories for one another. We had been meant to be practicing emulating the other’s voice and I had done as instructed. This was the first time I really see her do it in a public arena.

Maybe it was the drop in weight or the increase in self-belief, but she spoke exactly like I used to. Her tone was exactly the same, but more, she used the same words and phrases. And as she chatted to this bloke I heard her make little references that identified her as the genuine article.

She chatted to him about her life as a model, giving various juicy anecdotes about her time on the catwalk and backstage. It was entirely convincing to him and intimidating to me.

Could she fool someone who knew me well?

Maybe not in person... yet... but over the phone? Yes. Definitely. If I closed my eyes then the woman I was listening in on was Dahlia Western, no doubt about it.

The more she talked, the more I realised that she had accomplished everything she set out to do here in Greece. She had become me in every way that mattered. And yes, she excelled at it. She did it better than I had for a long time.

The contrast was like a regular unceasing tapping against my forehead, pointing out the contrast between us; how far I had come myself.

She fit in here; she really did; and I didn’t. At this moment, it felt like I never could again. How could I? I was gross. I was disgusting. She was beautiful.

She was flirting with the guy but it was more than that. She had already slept with him. She was planning to do so again. Part of me felt awful about that; violated; as though it were my reputation in question; almost that she was doing it with my body (which in a way she was). But the rest of me knew that she had more right to that persona and form now than I did. It wasn’t my life she was living; it was hers.

She really was Dahlia Western now and that meant that I wasn’t.

Was I fully Melissa Chapman?

Maybe I was. Though it didn’t yet feel complete.

Yet.

I had to get out of there. I couldn’t listen anymore. It wasn’t just that I was watching her. Witnessing this was having a weighty impact on my own self-image; casting me further away from my origin and into this new life I had borrowed. It made it feel like it wasn’t just a temporary loan; that it was a permanent trade.

That scared me. It scared me very much.

I turned to go; to creep away in the hopes that she didn’t see me; but as I started to leave I heard something that chilled me still further; that made tears break out and stream down my cheeks as I lumbered back to the front of the hotel and down to the bus stop. It made me hate myself and look down on myself too; made my self-image plummet still further.

The man. The man said, “I’ve seen you talking to a repulsive obese woman with thick specs occasionally. She comes to see you. Who is she?”

Melissa laughed, tilting her face to the sky. “Oh her? She’s nobody. She’s nothing,” she said. “She works for me. But you’re right; she is hideous. I’m embarrassed to be seen with her. To be perfectly honest, she disgusts me. I despise people like that with so little self-control; so flabby and crass. I wish I didn’t have to see her. She’s beneath me.”

Chapter Five - Part Six

DAHLIA

On the journey back to the hotel and my filthy menial job I alternated between three contrasting states, flipping between them in sequence, one after another and back again.

In the first state I simply stared out of the bus window, eyes rigid, blurred out of any kind of interest in the scenery I was passing as my sluggish thoughts went back over the... obscenity... I had just witnessed; the insane situation I had found myself in.

Then my thoughts would drift to the second state where my memories of the humiliation and envy of my real life took on a rosy golden glow; a simmer of gently bubbling arousal between my swollen, fleshy thighs. This arousal was like the silvery film around a bubble, floating in a breeze, each one holding a different image of this awful sordid life I had inherited and the questionable decisions I had made. One bubble might be the massive amount of fat I had piled onto my body, another the pathetic and dirty job I willingly did when I was meant to be a wealthy model. Another was my eyesight, ruined possibly beyond repair; another was Melissa living my life as a superior clone of me, telling people how ugly and fat I was; how beneath her.

And as each stimulating bubble in my mind popped I broke into a brief and desperate tears: weeping that lasted only seconds before it shut off and I went back to staring.

I knew this was wrong. I knew it was a terrible and maybe even irrevocable mistake, but I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t break free of it. Because I wanted it still. I wanted to be fat. I wanted to be ugly. I wanted to have weak eyes and cheap clothes. I wanted to work in a subservient and pitiable vocation. I wanted Melissa to be superior to me; to take on every trait that I had lost. I wanted her to be as beautiful and slim as I was homely and obese. I even wanted her to treat me like I was scum. I wanted to be scum compared to her.

And I didn’t know why. I honestly didn’t know why I did any of this.

I hated myself but I couldn’t stop. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to. And again, I wondered what would happen now if Melissa came to me and mentioned, matter-of-factly that she had decided to keep my life.

Would I fight her for it? Did I even want it back?

And how in heaven could I ever hope to be Dahlia again, looking like this; my self-esteem and self-respect in ruins?

The bus came to a stop and I got out. I lumbered back toward my hotel, my knees creaking terribly because of my extra mass and the battering they got when I was scrubbing the floors. My weight was so huge now. It was giving me back pains too; making my breathing laboured. How obese was I now? How much fatter was I going to get? Did I know when this was going to end? And when it did, I did know that I wouldn’t suddenly spring back to my former shape.

When Melissa and I decided to stop doing this crazy scheme I wouldn’t be Dahlia in any way anymore, even if I wanted to be. I was far more like her now than she was. I was a grossly obese woman with thick glasses. And the lifestyle I had adopted was so set in now. I craved my meals and my snacks. With such a habitual lifestyle catapulting me into a progressively fatter woman, how could I hope to get back or even stop?

I might end up being fat forever, whether I was myself again or not.

As I walked up the drive to the hotel I realised that my gait was so different now. I remembered the grace that I used to use as I walked the catwalk modelling extravagant dresses. Now I was so gargantuan that I could do nothing but waddle: one lumbering footfall after another, the ample thighs grazing one another as my chubby arse shifted alternately up and down; as quivers ran round my folds of belly fat and up through my doughy thighs and swollen calves. My distended boobs flopped and juddered with each heavy stomp and the flab around my chin trembled too in time with the shivers in my bloated upper arms.

This was my fantasy come true. This was me as a corpulent cleaning lady, with nothing better to do than trudge to her unskilled and tedious job.

I thought about the other cleaners and the way they treated me and I started crying again.

What had I done to myself? Why had I done it? I knew I should call a stop to this now but where could I find the courage to do that? Where could I find the will?

And deep down I was afraid of what would happen if I did. It wasn’t just a case of becoming Dahlia gain but a grossly obese parody of the former model. The thing I was really afraid of was that I would go back to Melissa and demand a switch and she would say no, as she sort of had before. She would refuse to swap back and leave me stranded in her awful life forever.

But perhaps that didn’t make me fear. Surely that was the most titillating part of this; the darkest and most seedy fantasy. For surely, deep down, that was what I had wanted all along. Surely if she did that then part of me would be glad, would sizzle in raging, unfettered arousal, even as the conscious part of me that wasn’t mad screamed and screamed for the rest of my life.

Chapter Five - Part Seven

DAHLIA

I worked my afternoon shift in a state of mind where my consciousness was supressed. I didn’t reflect on what I was doing or who I was; I simply did it. The duties were so natural to me now. I needed no direction or reflection on what needed doing; I just got it done.

It was funny to think about a time when hair and make-up and lights and glamour were what my life consisted of. Now it was only dirty toilets and dirty floors, soiled sheets and filthy baths. It felt like there was no transition between these two states; that I couldn’t have ever been a model. How could that slender beauty be anything to do with the leviathan on her hands and knees scrubbing the gaps between the floor tiles? It wasn’t possible.

Once I was done with the cleaning and helping serve the evening meal I piled my usual plateful of fattening food and went through to the break room. I ate alone, going back for seconds, thirds and fourths, my appetite not allowing me to pause or hold back in any way. My stomach was like a great maw now, a bottomless pit that demanded filling, and I was addicted to that sense of bloating: the intense pressure in my stomach that meant I had gone too far; that my fat cells were expanding; my flabby body getting even fatter than I had been the day before. In my former life I had hated that bloated feeling. Now it was the only thing that made me content.

But it also made me feel wretched. I knew this was wrong., Of course I did. But I couldn’t stop.

I joined the other cleaners for their evening festivities but as always, I remained on the periphery. I tried to join in the laughter but could never quite connect and my courage was minimal when it came to contributing. I had no gift anymore for conversation or humour and when I did speak I spoke with Melissa’s voice. My constant practice had done its job. Her inflection and word use was more natural to me now than my own.

The term “my own” didn’t even seem appropriate anymore. It was my voice.

The other cleaners drifted off one by one but I didn’t shuffle back to my room. I was hoping to see the cook when he got off. Seeing Melissa with that man at her hotel bar earlier had made me feel lonelier than ever. I knew he didn’t really care about me as a person, but I craved the physical contact. I needed to be close to somebody, even if it was a lie.

In the end, only Maxine and I remained in the staff room. She was very drunk and exuberant. I was at least as drunk – I had gone on drinking all evening – but my own inebriation was more dour and introspective.

“I’ve been watching you Little Piggy you know,” said Maxine. “Since you started here. How long’s it been now?”

I looked at her shyly. She didn’t seem to require an answer. She didn’t really care about the specifics.

“Every night you sit in here and eat more than I’ve ever seen anyone put away,” she said. “More than anyone should eat. I mean, it’s okay to splurge here and there but it’s like you want to get fatter.”

In my lap, my fingers curled, the knuckles whitening.

“You were a bit chubby when you got here but nothing like you are now.” She chuckled. “I shouldn’t really be calling you Little Piggy anymore. Plain old Piggy would suit you better.” She laughed.

I blushed, smiling with half of my face because I didn’t want her to think I was touchy about it.

“Why do you do it?” she asked, and her voice wasn’t goading suddenly. It was different from any tone she had ever used with me before: genuine and curious and maybe even caring.

“I, er…” I cleared my throat and then did it again.

“Am I right?” she asked. “Are you eating so much because you want to get fat?”

“I, uh, I don’t know why,” I mumbled. “I just… I like to eat.”

She was being so uncharacteristically kind, I almost wanted to confide in her; maybe even tell her everything; but I knew that nobody could ever understand. It was amazing that Melissa had but she was wound up in it. If she hadn’t been getting a benefit from it then surely she would have found it more difficult.

And also I hated the idea of breaking character. To Maxine and all the other staff here I was Melissa Chapman.

“You should watch yourself Piggy,” said Maxine. “One day you might pop.” She gave a raucous laugh.

My headache increased in intensity and then wavered, vibrating my brain.

“Actually, on another subject, you’ll never guess what happened to me,” said Maxine. “I was over on the coast yesterday and I was talking to a bloke at one of the big hotels. He told me they had a big celebrity staying there.” She smirked. “Turned out it wasn’t such a big one but you might have heard of her. Dahlia Western? She’s a model; or she used to be. Pretty big a few years ago.”

I stared at her. My throat rattled.

“Made me want to go and get a look,” said Maxine, “so I snuck into the hotel and checked her out. She was by the pool.”

“Did you… Did you recognise her?” I asked, nervous.

“Yeah. Sure,” replied Maxine. She looked a bit different from the pictures but not so much and she was definitely the one. Had a lovely body. I envied her. I wish I looked like that. Don’t you?”

“What?”

“Don’t you wish you were slim and beautiful?”

“Uh…”

“And rich of course. She must be loaded staying there. Apparently, she’s been there all summer. Wouldn’t you love to be her?”

“I… Well…”

“It’s not a hard question Piggy,” said Maxine. “Would you rather be a big fat butterball cleaning lady or be a rich, sexy model?”

I couldn’t get a word out. I just looked at her.

Maxine laughed finally. “You don’t have to worry,” she said. “The decision’s been made for you. There’s no way you could be as slim as her, the way you eat. And no offence but you aren’t exactly model material.”

I blushed again.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of Piggy. Some people are cut out to be beautiful and the rest of us have to clean up after them. Am I right?”

I looked at her.

“Eh? Am I right?”

All I could do was nod.

She certainly wasn’t wrong.

Chapter Five - Part Eight

MELISSA 

All my life I had been a huge lumbering heifer. 

Any kind of grace or agility had been out of the question. When it came to sports at school, my only drive had been in how to circumnavigate it. I never really took part, even if I was “taking part.” I walked during cross-country. I stood sullenly with my arms folded during netball. I claimed cramps as often as my idiot male PE teacher was gullible enough to believe it. 

I didn’t play outside as a child; I stayed in. I wasn’t a popular little girl. Children didn’t call for me and I didn’t call for them. If I had they would have laughed in my face. I didn’t do exercise of any kind. 

As a result I was round and chubby. I sweated and panted when climbing stairs. My muscles were only strong enough to carry off the waddling gait that trundled my massive bulk from place to place. 

All summer I had been in training and I was a new person now. My fat was (on the whole) a thing of the past. My muscles were honed and toned. They had needed to build up quickly so that I could manage to train with all that extra weight to carry that I started out with. 

But even though I had done so well; transformed myself as surely as if I’d had a magical pendant to do the job, I was still scared to death when I turned up at the ballet class. 

It wasn’t something that was available on the resort; I had travelled into town to do it. There was a dance academy that ran sessions for locals and tourists. I found it online and signed up. 

When I got there I didn’t want to go in. I just had so much conditioning against this sort of thing. Everybody knew Melissa Chapman couldn’t do something like this. 

But then... I wasn’t Melissa Chapman anymore. I was Dahlia Western. 

Melissa Chapman was an obese, four-eyed cleaning woman who twenty four hours earlier had been pathetic enough to spy on me while I chatted up the bloke by the pool. 

I could do this. I could do anything. 

I showed myself in the door. A Greek lady ran the class with a fat man pressing play and stop on the music. She was an ageing beauty; very exuberant and welcoming. I started to feel better. 

The group seemed to be a mixture of different levels of talent. While I got ready I kept an eye on what was going on and felt a bit better about being there. I wasn’t going to be the only duffer in the class. 

I recalled Dahlia spying on me from the day before and grinned to myself. I had been a fantasy of mine and to see it play out almost exactly had been wonderful. That she had sunk so low that she would consider doing that: spying on me with a man! And to think that she really thought she was hidden, trying to hide that bloated body of hers behind plants. I laughed out loud to think of it but the dancers noticed so I covered it up. I didn’t want them to think I was laughing at them. 

How wonderful it had been to show off my newfound confidence and charisma, knowing she was watching and judging herself against it! I had wondered if it had been a risk; pushing her to the point where she would call it off; but I was almost at the point now where I honestly didn’t feel that that would happen. Surely, she had been pushed by me or herself beyond the point where anything would stop her bizarre and self-destructive spiral into corpulent obscurity and servile poverty. 

Ah me, oh my, but I felt happy. 

I finished getting ready and joined the class. It was a little difficult getting into it at first – my body still wasn’t used to being graceful, despite the lessons I’d been having – but it didn’t take long. I had never felt this way in my life: that anything was within reach and possible. I think my confidence was leaving the atmosphere and shooting up into space it was so high. 

The teacher was kind and good at explaining things and as the lesson went on I started to realise something. I wasn’t the worst in the class or the second worst. Of the beginners, I wasn’t close to bottom. My modelling lessons and the strength I had built in my arms and legs actually gave me an advantage. And that confidence. I was starting to realise that things like this were ninety percent self-belief. It was the tense muscles and trepidation of a defeatist attitude that made most folks stumble. Those things weren’t a problem for me. 

One wall of the room was made up of tall wall mirrors separated by carved and varnished wooden strips. I watched myself through the glass, smiling. I looked so fabulous; so elegant. And... beautiful. Could that really be? 

But it seemed to be so to my eye. And surely I had managed to bed so many men now. It must have been true. 

Seeing myself in such broad mirrors for so long; seeing myself move so gracefully; it did something in my mind; clicked a switch from off to on that ignited a flashing sign in my head, telling me that maybe I had never been ugly. Maybe I’d just drowned under the rivers of fat. Maybe beneath all that I had angular cheekbones and dimples like Dahlia’s and pretty eyes. With the makeup and hair I did look like a model. 

And I realised something else. 

Up until now I had fantasised about really taking Dahlia’s place; going back to world like that; really being her back in England in front of everybody. I had never really believed it was possible. 

Things were different now. Looking at myself like this I was starting to believe. I was seeing the similarities in our facial structure and figures: mine and the Dahlia that had been unblemished by flab. I could almost believe – no I could actually believe – that it could really happen; that maybe I could actually pull it off. 

I preened, radiant. 

I had got up this morning looking forward to another day of smug luxury. I hadn’t realised how crucial this day would be. 

I stopped dancing and just looked at myself. 

It was possible. I was a beautiful woman. My body was amazing. My features really weren’t so different from hers.

I could do this. I could become Dahlia. For real.

And now I knew that I was ready to do it.

Chapter Five - Part Nine

DAHLIA

It was the end of another long day: up at the crack of dawn to clean outside the hotel around the pool, then helping with breakfast, more cleaning (stripping beds and doing bedrooms), a break for a few hours in which I went to the local shop for supplies then sat in my room with the curtains drawn shoving junk food in my mouth, more cleaning, then helping with dinner.

When it got time for me to eat I binged even more than normal, piling the food that little bit higher on each plate; going back for one entire plateful over and above what I normally did. It was a wonder I could pack it in there but I was somehow able to. It made me think about the scratching I had had when I was in my old life. Back then I would have felt bloated after half of one plate. Nowadays I was having four; eight times further on than I would have said stop in the old days. 

I didn’t play poker with Maxine and the girls. The cook finished in the kitchen earlier than normal. I saw him headed out and followed after him. I caught up with him on the stairs up toward his room. 

“Vasilis!” 

He turned back but the look on his face wasn’t a happy one. He looked put out. 

I gave a shy, needy smile. “Where are you off to? Are you having an early night?” 

“Er... I, uh... I’m busy tonight. Out for drinks with friends.” 

“Oh.” I smiled. “Can I come?” 

He looked pained. “It’s just men.” He continued up the stairs. I walked after him. 

“Are you going out right away?” 

“Not... In a while. In half an hour.” 

“Oh. I might come up then and hang out with you while you get ready.” He was moving quickly in his lithe slim body. I struggled to keep the same distance between us in my bloated, sagging one. He reached the first landing and hurried down the corridor to the back stairs. He was pulling away. “Hang on,” I said, giving a nervous chuckle. “I can’t keep up.” 

He stopped and gave off a sigh. I waddled up behind him. The skin around his eyes and mouth was taut. Had anyone ever looked at me like that in my former life? No men surely. Men had been fawning or lustful, kind or generous, charmed by my looks and my personality. 

“What is it?” he said. “I told you I’m busy.” 

“I just... wanted to spend some time with you while you were getting ready to go out,” I said. 

“Why?” 

“Uh... What?” 

“Why do you want to come up? I don’t have time for sex. I’m going out.” 

“To... talk? I was feeling... I’m a bit lonely. Are you sure I can’t come out drinking with you?” 

The tightened skin around his eyes spread onto his cheeks in ribbons of white. “I want time away. That is the whole point. I don’t want you there. It’s embarrassing.” 

“What?” 

“Pfah.” He walked away. 

“Wait,” I said. “Embarrassing how?” 

He stopped, scratched his forehead, didn’t turn. 

“Vasilis. What is it?” 

He showed me his face. “I like... big women. That’s why I like you. But you’re too big now. Too fat. Look at you. You’re gross. My friends think I’m an idiot being with you.” 

“What?” 

He walked away then paused. “If you want to fuck later then you can come up when I get back. I’ll knock on your door.” He looked pissed off like I’d just done him down somehow. “Do you want that?” 

The offer was made like he was doing me a favour. 

I thought of all the men who had pursued me in my life as a beautiful model: hundreds of handsome guys willing to do anything to earn my favour. There was no pursuit here. Even his initial interest had been lackadaisical. If anything, I was the pursuer and looking at his gaunt, sunken face, bony body and protuberant eyes, his greasy skin, I saw reflected my own level of attractiveness. But it wasn’t just looks; it was all about self-image and confidence. Out of the two of us, he had assumed the dominant role. I was the one desperate for the connection. He could take it or leave it. 

“Well” he asked. “Do you want to fuck later?” 

My mouth quivered. I looked at his dirty shoes. Still looking at them, I nodded. 

“Fine,” he said offishly, again as though he were granting a boon. “If I feel like it I’ll give your door a kick on my way past. You can follow me up.” 

“Uh, okay.” 

“But do something about your appearance first for God’s sake. You get fatter and uglier each time I see you. And cleaning makes you smell.” 

He turned away again and this time he didn’t look back. 

I stood there in the corridor, trying to understand what had just happened for well over ten minutes. All I could think about was the man I’d spied flirting with Melissa next to the pool; how into her he had been. 

Surely, I had almost achieved my goal in full now. I was no longer treated like the woman I used to be in any way.

Chapter Five - Part Ten 

MELISSA 

Over the past months, when I might otherwise have been eating excessively, I had found something else to feed on: fantasies. Fantasies about how I might really come to look like Dahlia; how I might even become enough like her to fool people back in England. I had engorged myself on these fantasies in spare moments, as I lay in bed or by the pool, as I did my training; to light myself up as one of my many men pumped and grunted on top of me, caring more for his own pleasure than mine. 

Since the very beginning, standing on the side of the road in that terrible storm, just before we left the UK, when I had come inches away from ending my life, I had treasured the daydream that we could really change places. Now I had accepted that there was some true possibility there, all the ideas I’d had were flooding my mind. Surely, I had worked out every little detail by now. Surely, I knew exactly how I was going to do it. 

And I had been working toward this from the very beginning, hadn’t I? Since we first arrived in Greece. 

I had taken photographs of our faces at that starting point, from every angle. As I did it I had known exactly why I was doing it, even as I lied to poor, stupid Dahlia. 

I took out those photos now and sat on the edge of my bed, my lips cured up at the edges, flicking them one after another onto the cover beside me so that they were all on display. It was so delightful seeing my old face. It was so bloated! I could scarce believe that it used to be me – I was so used to being slim now. I was disgustingly fat. But that wasn’t the best thing. The best thing was that when I first took out the pictures and saw my old face, my first reaction had been to think that it wasn’t even me – that it was her as she was now! Oh, how I had laughed at that! 

As for her old face... the beautiful face she used to have... I looked at it then at myself in the mirror, over and over again, chin rising and falling. I hadn’t been imagining what I saw in the dance studio. We really did look alike now. It was uncanny. Not the same; not identical – of course not – but close enough to be cousins; maybe even sisters. 

And close enough for the reason I had taken these photos to maybe work. 

Surgery. 

It wasn’t a magical transformation – I wished that it could be – but I had been doing research for some time now; watching videos online and reading loads of firsthand accounts. The advances they had made in just the last couple of years were remarkable. They really could perform miracles. 

I closed my hands, the last photo resting on my knee. 

Although the greater part of me was crazily excited about the prospect of that, another part of me was terrified. 

But any pain, any risk, was worth it to steal this life. 

I wasn’t an idiot. I knew it wasn’t guaranteed that I would look exactly as she had, but I had a plan to cover that and frankly, if it worked, it worked. If it didn’t then I would still end up a beautiful slim woman. I would have lost nothing. 

And maybe gained everything. 

I went to the computer and started setting it up. I made contact with the surgery in Bangkok that seemed like the best place to do it, all things considered. I looked up flights and checked prices for first class seats and scummy seats. I found a couple of hotels near the clinic for our convalescence. 

I set the wheels in motion. 

I was thinking about an A-list Hollywood star I knew who had had surgery to keep herself looking young and how afterwards she hadn’t looked quite the same. I was always seeing celebrities on the front of magazines who I didn’t recognise at all, who had changed their looks and updated their style. 

And this was why I needed to talk to Dahlia’s agent, Tommy. 

It would be him that would start the rumours of “my” facial surgery. He would get the story out there in the gossip rags so that when I appeared in the limelight, people would already be expecting a difference. All I needed to do was get as close as I could to the original Dahlia’s face. The willing suspension of disbelief would... hopefully... do the rest. 

The idea of calling Tommy filled me with fear, but I could do this. I could do anything. 

And it was thanks to the other preparation I had undergone that my confidence was at least reasonably high. 

The recordings. 

For the entire duration of our trade, Dahlia and I had spent long sessions recounting the details of our original lives to one another, and even longer listening back to them; learning the details of our new personas. I knew her history and relationships as well as she did now; surely enough to pass if I was careful. 

I could do it. 

And if it all went wrong then I could end the call. He would remain none the wiser. 

I shut the computer down and went to the mirror. 

“You’re Dahlia Western,” I said to myself. “You’re invincible. You’re beautiful. You are going to steal that stupid bitch’s life and there’s nothing she can do to stop you.” 

I grinned at myself and took a deep breath. 

Then I reached for my phone and called up Tommy’s number.

Chapter Five - Part Eleven

MELISSA

 

The call to Tommy didn’t go through immediately. There was an extended delay of silence as my phone reached out across the curvature of the world and tried to find his. 

I stood. I walked toward the balcony. The double doors were open. I could see sky and a sliver of horizon. I turned my back on it. The phone started to ring. I changed hands from one to the other. I sat down. 

It rang on and on. Tommy didn’t pick up. Physical tension crept into my shoulders and down my arms. I changed hands on the phone again. 

He picked up. 

“Dahlia? Is that you?” 

I held my breath. My lips opened and my tongue rolled forward ready. I said nothing. 

“Dahlia? Hello? You there?” 

I made a funnel with my lips. I couldn’t make myself reply. There wasn’t a chance he would believe I was her. This was all about to come crashing down around me. He would expose me for a fraud and both he and Katherine would charge over here to denounce my manipulations. They would find Dahlia and do everything they could to destroy me. They would convince her to sue me for ruining her life; for trying to steal it. I would be ruined. I’d end up just as fat as I ever was, penniless and alone; without even Robert to look after me. I would end up far worse than I had ever started. 

“Yes,” I said. “It’s me.” 

“Jesus,” said Tommy. “Thank God you’ve called at last, We’ve been worried as fuck. It was like you dropped off the face of the world. Where have you been?” 

“I’ve been—” I stopped. My voice wasn’t like hers in the least. It was my old voice – my real voice. I cleared my throat. “I’ve er...” I cleared it again. 

“Are you okay?” He paused and said the next words tentatively. “You don’t sound yourself.” 

I swallowed, my throat tightening and drying. I had to end the call. This wasn’t going to work. I was going to ruin everything. 

“Dahlia? You there?” 

I closed my eyes. I had to get a hold of myself. I tried to reason with my chaotic mind; to draw it under control. 

Breathe, I told myself. Breathe. 

“Dahlia?” 

“I’m here,” I said. “Sorry.” 

The voice was perfect now; as good as I’d ever managed to do it. I sounded exactly like her. I smiled, a new confidence settling over me. 

“I was just distracted for a minute. I’m fine now.” 

“Where are you?” asked Tommy. “Katherine’s been trying to find you. She’s worried sick. What happened? Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine Tommy,” I replied. “I’m much better now. I’m sorry I haven’t been in contact. I... needed some time to myself, to get my head straight. Everything just... got on top of me. That’s all. My... uh... My brother’s death. The pressure of going back to work. You know.” 

Tommy went silent. 

“I’m in Greece at the moment.” 

“Greece? Where are you staying? I know Katherine will want to get in touch.” 

“I’m... not quite ready for that yet,” I said. 

“Oh, uh, okay.” Tommy was uncertain; treading lightly. He was aware of how screwed up the real Dahlia had been when she left the country and he had to have concluded how uncharacteristic it was for her to break all contact for several months with those closest to her. He must have been treading very carefully. “No problem. I understand. Do you want me to keep it quiet that you got in touch?” 

I considered this. “Yes. For now. Is that okay?” 

“Sure. No problem.” 

He had accepted I was really her. There was no doubt. I got another swell of confidence that this crazy scheme really could succeed, even face to face. 

“Will you be coming back to England sometime soon?” he asked. 

“Yes,” I said. “It won’t be too long now. But not quite yet. I’m... Before I come back I’m getting a little work done... to my face.” 

“What? You don’t need that. You’re beautiful as you are.” 

“That’s nice of you to say Tommy, but it’s all booked in. I’m doing it. And that’s why I was calling.” 

“Uh, what did you gave in mind?” 

“I know I let you down before about my... my comeback... but there were things going on at the time, what with my brother’s—” 

“Don’t worry about that. It’s all just water under the bridge. Seriously. Forget about it. It wasn’t a problem.” 

I knew he was being kind; that it had been a problem; Dahlia had told me enough about her life for me to understand that. 

“I want to thank you for everything you did,” I said, “and I want to ask you a big favour.” 

“Anything sweetheart.” 

“I want you to set it up again. I want you to organise another comeback for me.” 

He hesitated. “Dahlia... sweetie... Are you sure you’re ready for that? After the last time?” 

“I’m sure,” I said. “I’ve had a lot of time to get my head straight and think about what I want.” 

I pictured the real Dahlia on a magazine cover looking like a beautiful princess. I pictured her walking the catwalk and acting on the big screen. 

“I assure you Tommy. I want that life more than anything you can possibly imagine, and I’m willing to do anything to get it. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Chapter Five - Part Twelve

DAHLIA 

I should have told the cook to go and fuck himself. But I didn’t. 

I sat in my shabby little cluttered and despoiled hotel room and slowly drank myself into a stupor, waiting for his knock to come. The main light had stopped working a long time previous. Only one light was lit, a lamp that lay on its side on the floor beside the bed. It projected my gargantuan shadow up the wall and ceiling so that it blocked most of the room in blackness. 

The feelings folding over and over on top of themselves inside of me were familiar but I couldn’t have named them. It seemed like tears were close by, trying to seep up to my eye ducts, aching to weep down my face as I gaped in horror at what I had done to myself. 

I looked in the mirror, my right hand splayed across my face, only one eye visible between my first and second fingers through the pebble lens. With my features covered there wasn’t a jot of my true form visible; not the slightest clue as to who I really was under all this fat. 

Who I was... 

But who was I now? Surely not Dahlia at all anymore. I didn’t know if I’d truly become Melissa but I surely wasn’t that beauty. 

The way the cook had spoken to me. The way I had let him speak. 

“Do you want to fuck later?” 

I put my hands on my round knees and stared into and through my face, trying to witness the woman inside; understand how she had changed; whether she was as insane as she seemed to be. 

“I’m insane,” I murmured. “I have to be to be doing this.” 

But doing that scared me; it truly did. Because it was her voice I spoke in... naturally. Maybe it was the greater resonance this mass provided or the pressure on my windpipe from the weight of the fat – I didn’t know – but I sounded exactly like Melissa without even trying. It was my voice now; just as she sounded like me. 

“Oh God,” I muttered, setting my forehead against my palms. 

I sat up straight and looked at myself again then stood up. 

I felt the folds of fat around my middle. I raised one hand up to the opposite shoulder then felt the ripple of flab down the back of it. I pressed both upper arms forward so that it boosted the hanging breasts there out. I gripped my hips, uncomprehending of how far that had bloated. It was like this was a suit of clothes that I could quite literally had slipped my svelte former body inside of. It felt like I could still take it off and go back to being her right now. 

Was I as fat as Melissa started at already? Was I the same size as that lumbering heifer of a woman? Surely, I was a hair’s breadth from there. Maybe even bigger. 

A thump clattered against the door to my room and I yelped. 

I knew who it was but I didn’t call out or go to answer it. Not right away. 

Then I did. I shambled over and opened up. 

The corridor was clear. No not clear. Another thump came from the far end and I saw the door rock closed that led to the upper floor, where the cook’s room was. 

He couldn’t even be bothered to wait. I meant so little to him. 

I looked back into my dismal room. 

The summer season was almost over. This had never been meant to go on as long as it had. Surely it had to end at some point; in some way. I couldn’t go on like this forever and even “Dahlia’s” bank account couldn’t sustain her hotel bill indefinitely. 

I slid my hands up under my glasses and rubbed my eyes. 

I knew I had to end this. I knew I had to. I should ring Melissa now. I should go there; demand she begin the process of changing back. 

My fat body was thick and warm around me. It felt heavy but it also felt... safe. 

I craved a relief from it but I also couldn’t bear the idea of that. I didn’t want this to end until... well... until it had to. Until I had truly become her. When I finally achieved the exact same shape that she had had. When I was as fat as her. 

The cook would be waiting. The longer he waited, the more irritated her would be; the worse he would treat me. I should scurry up there immediately; try and placate him. He was going to be stinking drunk and he could get very nasty when he was like that. 

But I also knew I shouldn’t go up there. I shouldn’t debase myself like this. I was worth more than any of the people in this rattrap fleapit. 

I had to go to Melissa now and demand we swap back. 

But. Instead. I picked up my key and closed the door of my room with me outside. I started walking toward the foot of the cook’s stairs; not quickly – I liked it when he got angry – I liked the way it made me feel when he pinched my wrists and pinned me against the wall; when he hissed at me and told me how worthless I was. I didn’t want to hurry. I wanted him to treat me like that. 

There was time to swap back. There was plenty of time. And I did want this to go on. Just to the end of the summer; another week or so. When I had finally become an identical twin to Melissa then finally we would call it a day. 

Then, and only then, would we begin the long process of regaining our true shapes. 

I reached the foot of the stairs and hesitated, smiling to myself. In my nether regions I was getting wet and hot. I was thinking about what the cook said to me before he went out, about how much fatter and uglier I was now, even than the bloated sow I used to be when we got together – about how much my cleaning work made me stink. 

I hesitated a while long, letting that feeling build, then I made my way up and knocked on his door.

Chapter Six - Part One

DAHLIA 

That last week or so turned out to be three weeks and as the days swept from one to the next almost entirely filled with my various labours, a curious inversion started to occur. 

There was a countdown inside me now; two countdowns; one toward returning to seeing Melissa and taking the first step to swap back; the other to race as fast as I could toward a total and final immersion in her body and life. 

I knew these were the last few weeks and while that part of me was eager to begin the return to my old body and life, the other me wanted nothing more than to grasp onto this bizarre and dismal life while I still could; to relish the changes I was undergoing and push them even further. 

And I did push them. I spent every cent I earned on snack food or fatty drinks. I spent it on cigarettes that I was starting to realise I could no longer live without. During the mealtimes in the hotel I had as many as five or six plates of food now for each meal, troughing on it like a pig; drawing it out long enough to fit more in; sometimes even having a break for an hour before going back to shovel in more. I secreted even further leftovers into a bag and snuck it up to my room, having feasts in the late evening and further snacks throughout the night. 

I lay on my back in bed, breathing gutturally, picturing the fat cells growing and binding with my body; imagining the food I was eating being absorbed by my increasingly bloated flesh. I visualised it to encourage it. I willed the fat to enlarge me more and more, to expand my thighs and the rolls of my stomach, the seep into and swell my arms and my chest; to make my face rounder and less like my own; to make my head and neck become one round sagging melon of fat. 

I lay there doing this, rubbing myself between my thighs, my vision blurry without the thick glasses on; my dowdy hair splayed on the pillow. I could feel my enormous weight pressing into the mattress; the mass of it like nothing I had ever felt in my life. I wasn’t myself at all anymore. Was I as fat as she had been? Was I almost there? Surely, I had to be. Was I, heaven forbid, even fatter than she had been – than the original Melissa? 

Maybe. 

Maybe. 

I didn’t know. 

But I felt like I was a huge obese cow of a woman. I was huge. Every sensation and sound I made was affected by it. I was gargantuan. 

And as always it filled me with such a tearing confliction of emotions because surely I knew how bad this all was. I knew the damage I was potentially doing – possibly permanently. I knew how crazy I was and how pathetic. But I wanted it still. I thrived on it. I was desperate to wallow deeper and deeper in this terrible life. 

The cook continued to mistreat me. He only ever used me for sex now and I could see his increasing disgust and disinterest. It made me feel lonely and depressed but it also thrilled me, because his gradual loathing mirrored my own. It mirrored the way I felt about myself. The way I wanted to feel. 

I wanted to be an object of pity and scorn. I wanted to be repulsive to others and myself. And by God I was achieving that goal. I was becoming the woman I had set out to be and no mistake. 

During the day I worked diligently at my cleaning duties and in the dining room doing the serving. I knew exactly what I was doing now and had done for some time. It made the work easier, not having to question things or ask for assistance, and it allowed me to keep my head down and be the best worker I could be. 

That was all my life was now: working and eating; working and eating. With the occasional dirty fuck thrown in when the cook could be bothered; when he wanted cleaning out. 

I felt that any day now he would reject me finally and that that would be okay because it would mean I had finally sunk as low as I wanted. I was finally as pathetic and insignificant as I had set out to be. 

The days went by though and that day didn’t come. I continued to eat and push further but I knew that time was running out. The final turning point had to come soon. Surely. 

I hadn’t seen Melissa since before that night when Vasilis had made it clear that carnal pleasure was the only facet of our stunted relationship he was interested in. She hadn’t made contact and I had avoided her. 

Part of me felt that should we meet again then that final stage would come. I would have to tell her it was time to swap back. Surely, she would feel devastated by that. It must have been so nice for her to live my life; to get slim and enjoy my wealth; even just for the summer. I felt awful about taking that away from her. But also, I didn’t want to take it all back. I was afraid to. I was terrified to take that step. I didn’t even know if I really wanted to. 

Was I happy being so fat? Getting fatter by the day? What was this self-destructive and obsessive motive force that pushed me on? 

It seemed like happiness, but it couldn’t have been.

It couldn’t have been. 

Each day I blinked at myself through the pebble glasses, staring at my bloated limbs; my round face and flabby belly; the distorted silhouette I had now. Each day I dressed in my shabby, dowdy clothes and hurried downstairs to get on with the cleaning. Each day I asked myself if this was the day now; if the time had finally come when the reflection was complete; that I’d come to the end. 

And then one day it did. 

I looked at myself. 

I was grossly obese. My face was like a distended moon with this great roll of sagging fat distorting my neck. My upper arms were huge and doughy and my forearms were a close match. My breasts were huge and pendulous, resting on the great round mass of my folds of stomach. My rear and thighs stretched out widely, coming down to rounded calves and my still relatively dainty feet. 

Surely, I was every bit as fat as Melissa had been when this started. 

Surely, I had reached my goal; had become her in almost every conceivable way. 

But that brought on a fresh wave of horror that told me another goal had been reached; that this had to end now, surely. There was no other way. 

I had to put a stop to it because where else could this go? What else could happen next now the obsession had brought me here? The answer to that, if I didn’t go back, staggered me with quivers of real fear. If the physical transformation was complete then what truly would come next if I didn’t flee back to my old life... or at least begin to? 

I was conflicted. Of course I was conflicted. But something was certain to me suddenly that couldn’t be denied. 

I had to go and see Melissa now. I couldn’t wait anymore. 

I had to go to see her and see my reflection in her eyes. 

I had to hear her reaction to the way I looked now; to hear her judgment on whether I had succeeded or not. 

And surely I would tell her it was time to swap back. And reluctantly she would have to agree. We would have to start that process; even though ,for the life of me, I couldn’t conceive of finding a way back to my slenderness and beauty now. This new fat me felt too real. It felt inescapable. 

And maybe it was. Maybe I never would find my way back; and that both thrilled and terrified me. 

But rather way, I had to see her now. Of course I did. It was long past the time. 

I had to go and see Melissa and bring this entire thing to the conclusion it had surely been edging toward from the beginning. There was a predictable intensity to it that was still riddled with questions. I was afraid to raise the swap back; afraid to see the disappointment and sad acceptance in her eyes. 

But also I just didn’t know if I was ready. And I didn’t know if it was what I really wanted. 

For the life of me I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. Maybe I never had.

Chapter Six - Part Two

MELISSA 

The text message chimed on my phone and my heart rate went from calm and relaxed to fight or flight in a second. It could only be her. 

I found the phone quickly but hesitated before checking the message. It said, Please can we meet? Nothing more. She didn’t address me as Dahlia or Miss Western. She didn’t sign it Melissa. 

I frowned, turning the phone over and over again, then I set it down and went to the balcony. I looked out at the sea then back at the phone. 

I questioned my actions now. I questioned waiting; not pushing ahead with this when I’d first decided to do it; when I’d booked in the trip to Bangkok; but my instincts had guided me through this so far, mostly successfully. I had listened to them; allowed her some space and time to gently simmer. 

But I hadn’t forgotten the conversation in Dahlia’s garden back in Nockton Vale when I had pushed ahead and she had resisted; when this whole precarious insanity had almost folded. I didn’t kid myself that I had total control, no matter how confident I had become, nor how... weak my former employer seemed to be now. 

I had given her that time to stew and now she was ready to meet. It was fortunate. The dates I had booked were fast approaching. I would have had to push it to a climax soon if she hadn’t. But I still questioned myself. I couldn’t predict how she would turn. I couldn’t be sure how she had spent the last couple of weeks parted from my influence. I felt I knew her now, but did I? 

Please can we meet? 

Ambiguous and brief but at least polite; suggestive of supplication. 

Obviously, the answer was yes. I took the phone back up and tapped out a response. 

Yes. 4pm today, and sent it off. 

Held my breath. Waited. 

OK. See you then. Melissa. 

I looked at that last word and smiled. 

The possibilities before me were sensational. I couldn’t wait. But more, it had been almost three weeks. Surely if she was still playing the charade then she had continued her transformation. Three more weeks of gratuitous overeating. She had to be as fat as I had been now. She had to be. 

I couldn’t wait to see her. I was so nervous. I checked my watch. 

There was too long to wait up there in the room. I went down to the poolside and did two dozen laps easily and swiftly. I got out and took a drink then did three dozen more, slipping through the water like I was born to it. And all the while I tried to imagine what she would look like now; if she really had reached that final point. 

I hoped she had; I really did. 

I ate my lunch impatiently. There wasn’t much to it. Eating lightly was second nature to me now. I couldn’t have conceived anymore of consuming the volume I used to or that she still did. 

I grew more and more excited at the coming prospect. 

I went back to my room and checked everything was in place. I called down to reception and asked them to let me know when she arrived so that I wouldn’t be surprised. 

I opened the wardrobe and took out a large item that I had waited a long time to reveal. I opened it and set it ready on the bed for when she appeared. 

I sat down and crossed my legs. I stood up and paced to the balcony and back again. I checked my watch. 

All this time I had rehearsed a hundred different ways of trying to persuade her of my plan; justifications for why she would want to do it. Now I was so close I could hardly remember them. My mind was a mess of drive, expectation and fear. 

The phone started to ring. 

I was slow to pick it up. The voice was the woman on reception I had spoken to earlier. 

“Yes?” I said. 

“Your guest is on her way up,” she replied. 

I put the phone down without a thank you and looked toward my door. 

Was she walking toward the lift now? Was she getting in? Was she looking at her own bloated reflection in the mirrored walls? 

What were her intentions? 

Was the transformation complete? 

I couldn’t breathe. 

I suddenly knew that I couldn’t do this; that I would fail to persuade her of anything. 

I needed more time to prepare. I needed to delay her. It was too late. 

She was going to demand her life back and laugh at any attempt I made to obviate that. Of course, she was. She wasn’t totally insane. I was insane to have believed that she might. 

Through the closed door I heard the lift ding. 

There was a long pause. 

I pictured her waiting hesitantly outside, preparing to knock. 

My heart rose in my throat. 

Then the knock came and I realised that this was it, finally. This was what it had all led to. 

There was no turning back – I had to proceed – and everything would hinge on this exchange. 

Everything would be decided finally and I would find out if my destiny was bright and diabolically hopeful or as dismal as it had ever been.

Chapter Six - Part Three

DAHLIA 

The door opened and Melissa was standing there in her hotel room. But surely she could in no way be referred to as Melissa anymore. 

It had been long months since I had looked in a mirror as Dahlia and seen my reflection as it once was looking back at me: my slim form and beautiful face. The memory of it was a little hazy, though still there. This was like that. She gazed back at me looking every bit as though she really were my former self. She had the same slender legs and arms, the same slim but nicely-endowed figure. Her hair and make-up were immaculate. 

I let out a mouse-like gasp because for the briefest of moments an unthinking element of me thought I was somehow looking into a mirror – that the transformations had been reversed. 

Of course, there were differences. Though unpredictably close, her facial features weren’t the same as mine had been. But for that moment I had become myself again and the increasingly conflicted emotions I’d been feeling flip-flopped and I got dual sensations in my tummy that hit hard enough to nauseate me: relief that my beauty was recaptured; that the idiotic mistakes I’d made to pursue my fantasy had not happened after all – and paroxysms of regret; that I’d lost the comfortable bulk; that all my efforts to escape had been wasted. 

But this irrationality only lasted for that split second and the true nature of what I was seeing lamped me in the bridge of my nose. 

If this were a mirror I was looking into then it was a distorting carnival mirror; one that showed what might have been; that showed a different life than the one I had. 

Seeing Melissa, the one true Dahlia now, looking back at me in a posture, by coincidence, identical to my own, the reality of my true shape was outlined all the more starkly. I saw the surprise in her face as she looked at me, the wonder that continued to hold as she traced the round contours of my face and girth, the bulging mass of my arms and legs, my breasts and stomach folds. I already knew how grossly over-mass I was but it was only now, seeing it parodied in her expression; seeing the upward curl of her lips; that it became truly real. 

I looked down at myself; saw the gigantic mass of my new body. In my own mind-space, within the safety of my hotel and my fantasies, the continuing engorgement of my body had not been “real.” 

Now it was. 

Now the awful accumulation of my transformation couldn’t be obscured beneath the folds of my conscious mind. This had happened. This was a genuine conversion from beautiful washed-up model to bloated, morbidly obese sow. 

“Come in Melissa,” she said, stepping back, her eyes glistening, that impish smile coming out to play on her lips. “You look very... well.” 

Meaning fat surely. 

I shambled in, aware of my bulk and the narrowness of the doorway; the shifting of the puffy masses around my middle; the quivering of the flab in my calves and thighs with each step, the swollen podginess around my face; the trembling jelly of my upper arms. Melissa’s movements in her heels were graceful and dainty. She moved like a dancer... or a model. She moved like I used to. In the side of my eye she was the spitting image of the real Dahlia Western. 

I stood in the centre of the room, unsure how to bring up the idea of changing back while she closed the door after me and gave me another smile, this one more reassuring. I still felt acutely uncomfortable but it was a different kind of discomfort now – more an ordinary social one. This was her domain. I was... unsuitable for a place like this now. When I was in hotel rooms it was almost exclusively in the role of cleaner, theoretically subservient to the person dwelling inside. I found myself slipping into that role automatically. It was made all the more potent by the nature of our swap. Since coming to Greece, she had been the employer, I the employee. As agreed on arrival, she had never allowed me to feel in any way her equal. How true that felt now though; no play acting required. She was my superior in every way, and not just in terms of her beauty and slenderness compared to my weight and homeliness; my thick glasses. She carried herself with a verve and confidence that I could no longer touch. My sense of self was turned inward. I was too aware of my rotund silhouette and the dismal depths of my societal and occupational fall. If I had had any sense of personal beauty and worth they had been all but squeezed out of me by the scornful ministrations and rejections of the cook, himself so near the bottom of the barrel. 

Was this how the original Melissa had felt around the original me? Surely if she had then it could only, in the long term have ended in envy and bitterness. It seemed impossible that she had been such a good and supportive friend. I feared that if our positions had been switched in the first place, I would have done anything to try to steal her life; to scratch it away from her and take it for my own, no matter how manipulative or conniving I had to be to do it. 

But it hadn’t been that way. I had chosen the swap – I had chosen to become this lumbering, bovine skivvy. Melissa was my friend; perhaps the closest friend I had ever had in my skewed and oddly fantastical celebrity life. I trusted her fully. 

“I haven’t seen you in so long,” said Melissa. “You really have changed. You look... more like your real self than ever before. It’s incredible.” 

A prideful grin found its way onto my face without me willing it into existence. 

“When we first came to this country together you didn’t... look yourself... but now you do. You look almost exactly the same as... you used to. You really look like the Melissa I remember. Well done. You’ve done incredibly.” 

I beamed at the compliment and the validation of what I’d been telling myself was foolish and dangerous. Suddenly it didn’t seem so. With Melissa’s approval it didn’t seem exposed as ludicrous and idiotic. It did feel normal. Recognising that removed a good deal of the painfully scratching self-doubt I’d been feeling. It took away some of that discomfort. My superior was patting me on the head and telling me I had done well. Surely there was nothing as self-affirming as that. 

For the first time in a while I got a sizzle of arousal between my thighs that surprised me. 

“I have something for you,” she said and walked toward the bedroom, apparently expecting me to follow. I did so, my puppy-dog tail wagging nervously. 

On the bed was a suitcase, and one I recognised. It was the case that she had brought with her when she first came. She flipped open the top and lifted a dress up into view. 

“Oh God,” I muttered, and that arousal increased, fizzling down my legs and up into my stomach with a satisfying warmth. 

It was the dress she had worn all those months ago on that first day, back in Nockton Vale when I had first suggested this. 

It was navy blue, cut to stop above the knee with a square neck and short sleeves. 

The same dress she had worn that first day. 

“I think it might fit you now,” she said, smiling. 

I nodded haltingly, uncertain how to reply. 

“Why don’t you try it on,” she said, holding it out to me. 

I stepped closer and took it, that stimulation in my crotch blazing hotter. 

That was when I realised what she was wearing. She was dressed in the same bathing suit and silk robe I had worn when I’d broached the subject, that day when we exchanged clothes for the first time. They fit her perfectly. She looked entirely natural in them, as though they always had been and always would be her clothes. They were certainly her clothes now. 

She caught my glance and her smile broadened. “Do you like my outfit? It suits me, doesn’t it?” 

I nodded mutely. 

“Get changed,” she said. “I really want to see you in this.” 

I nodded again and took it, holding it up to my body. That first time it had seemed gigantic compared to the figure-hugging outfits I normally wore; tent-like and curiously out of scale; as though I were a little girl again, playing dress up in her mother’s clothes. 

Not anymore. 

Now it didn’t look out-sized in the least. It looked like it belonged to me; like it... fit me in more ways than the physical. 

It wasn’t made of expensive material. It was a hard-wearing work dress for a career cleaner and surely if it really fit now then that transformation from model to domestic, from Dahlia to Melissa, would be complete. 

I quickly took off the clothes I was wearing and took up the dress again. I bunched it up and slipped it over my head. It was snug; hard to pull into place; the girth of my distended arms and the folds of my belly snagging against the fabric as I struggled to pull it down into place. I pushed my arms out through the sleeves, the cloth clinging tightly around my doughy flesh and then tugged it down around my bosom and my swollen stomach. 

When it finally fell into place I was red-faced and embarrassed. Melissa was watching, leaning against the window frame, her face intent and mirthful. I gave her a tight-lipped smile and then looked down at myself. 

It fit me. 

It fit me as though it were my own. 

It was my own now. 

I got a sense of Melissa’s original perfume and body scent from it and with it the acknowledgement that I had truly reached my goal now. I shivered with arousal. 

I was every bit as fat as she had been when I first suggested the swap. I had her dark bobbed hair; her glasses, only one prescription away from being as thick as hers had been. I had been slaving in my role as a cleaner for months; subjecting myself to my new social class, acquainting myself with others like me, allowing the skinny cook to have his way as I settled into alcohol abuse and overeating as I became an increasingly heavy smoker. 

I had become Melissa. She had become Dahlia. 

This was it. The end had been reached. 

I closed my eyes and tried to comprehend the enormity of it – that I had achieved every aspect of my sordid and self-destructive fantasy. I had switched places with my cleaner and become her in almost conceivable way. 

The titillation I was feeling became a low but constant simmer. 

I smiled. But I felt sad as well. Because surely this had reached its conclusion now; played out as far as it had any right to go. I could stay this way for a little while longer; enjoying the culmination of my plan and the reality of its achievement; enjoy being Melissa as she had once been. But surely too it was time to address its ending because it did have to end – I knew that now for sure. I couldn’t go on anymore. A week or two more maybe but nothing beyond that. It had to end. It had to reverse. I had never been clearer on it, as though I were waking up finally from a dream that had come true. 

I opened my eyes and turned to Melissa. She was looking right at me but she must have sensed something of the contents of my mind because the smile waned on her mouth. Her eyes faltered, eyebrows coming together. 

I turned my body to face her, the hem of the skirt swishing into its new position as my trunklike legs replanted themselves, as my rotund shape shifted and settled, trembling. 

We looked at one another. I held the moment for as long as I could but the electric stimulation in my genitalia was dying now. The stimulation was passing. 

After months of being subservient; of being Melissa; it was time to take control again. It was time to set this on the path to its conclusion and reversal.

Chapter Six - Part Four

MELISSA 

She looked perfect in the dress. 

Seeing her clump in; seeing the tilt and yaw of her prestigious mass on those tattered, ubiquitous low-heeled court shoes of hers: it was a magical and perfect moment that validated my own transfiguration as much as hers. 

Dahlia was the nearly faultless twin of my former self just as I was the glimmering shadow of hers. 

Now that she was wearing that dress; that original voluminous outfit that hadn’t even been washed since she and I had worn it, down on our knees, swabbing the floor of Summertop; it was staggering how far we had come. I could nary believe it. 

I had been masturbating steadily about our exchange of fat cells for months now and as expected, here and now, the stimulation of my sex organs crackled into action. This was almost the culmination now of everything I'd strived for; all my gentle prods of manipulation. It was empowering as nothing else in my life had ever been. I had total control over this woman. Just look at what I had accomplished from the raw material of her strange fantasy. It had turned into a body-altering obsession for both of us. I couldn’t have planned it better. I couldn’t have wished for a more complete interchange of our shapes and roles. 

Surely there was nothing left now of the spoiled rich woman who had been my boss once upon a time. In her trembling lips and contracting brow there was only capitulation and subservience. She knew she was no longer my equal in any way. She knew exactly who the fat cleaner was and who the wealthy model. 

My smugness was like a heated blanket around me; the light-headedness of being nicely tipsy. I was comfortable and confident to look at her bulging form that it was all going to work. I knew it would now. The momentum was too great to divert its thrust now. Look at her, eyes closed in contemplation of her new reality. She no longer had the strength of will or sufficient self-image to stand up to me if she ever had. I was the dominant one, she the submissive. It couldn’t go wrong. 

But when Dahlia opened her eyes and looked at me, shifting her corpulent mass to face me, that confidence faltered in me. Its volume drained a little. 

There was a calmness in those eyes that I hadn’t seen since... ever; a determination that didn’t suit the glasses or bulging face; that didn’t look right under the thick fringe of dowdy hair. 

I frowned, standing more upright, the clench of my folded arms loosening but not falling open. 

Suddenly I knew what was coming and a desperation burst into the light to stop it, somehow. I wanted to beat her to it; to say some collection of words that would belay what I knew she was about to say. Once she had said it, everything would be weakened. The path ahead that seemed clear of obstructions would abruptly become cluttered instead. But I could think of nothing to say to block it. The fact of its imminence had destabilised all the self-assuredness I had gathered since this began. Under that steady gaze I was cast back into the role of servant. I couldn’t cling on to the esteemed sense of self I had managed to construct to replace it. 

I was out of time. 

“Melissa...” she said, and that single word was enough to shatter what resolve I had left – to make me feel as though it were hopeless. Identifying me as my former self seemed like an irreversible revelation of the frightened fat woman hiding deep inside this athletic and attractive body. My eyes went wide with dismay. 

“It’s amazing what we’ve accomplished together,” she said. “Look how much I look like you used to. It’s like a real magical transformation happened.” She gave a sad smile. “But I think it’s gone its limit now. We’ve achieved what we set out to do and it needs to end before it goes too far.” 

I said nothing. I just stared at her. 

Seeing my reaction, she gave a self-conscious chuckle. “If we don’t stop now then I’m afraid we never will. I’ll go on getting fatter and fatter and in the end I’ll forget I ever was Dahlia Western. I’ll lose myself completely in who I have become.” 

She chuckled again as though expecting me to join her but I couldn’t muster the required civil response. The rug had been pulled from under my feet and I was tipping backwards, losing all equilibrium. The confident Dahlia persona I had constructed was gone as if it had never been. Its strength was no longer mine. In this slender form with its sculpted hair, toned muscles, and perfect skin; behind the contact lenses that gave the illusion of hawklike vision; I was just Melissa again; the cleaner. I had no power or influence. Any gain I had made was an illusion. The achievements so far hadn’t been mine; they had been Dahlia’s: only the result of her fixation; the force of her will. I had been a fool to believe otherwise. 

Behind her bulbous glasses and round face she was Dahlia. She was the strong one who had made this happen. 

“I can see you’re disappointed,” she said. “I know it’s going to be hard for you to give all this up and go back to your old life. But... you’ve had these months here in Greece. You’ve stayed in the best suite the hotel had. You’ve had the benefit of the food and the pool and the gym. You’ve lost so much weight you look wonderful. I can only hope that all that is sufficient to take the sting away of swapping back.” 

My shoulders drooped. I was wilting. 

“And it doesn’t have to end this instant,” said Dahlia. “I’ve only just reached my target weight. It’s only now that I’ve really become... become you.” She paused and something passed behind her gaze that might have been doubt. “I’d like to stay this way for a little while to really get the most of it; to enjoy actually being you now that I’ve got this far.” 

She stopped speaking and I absorbed what she was saying. It seemed like some kind of thought process was going on for her too, as though she was making decisions as she went. I could see the temptation in her to stay this way that I’d seen before and suddenly that doubt of mine was the thing to falter. Abruptly it seemed as though hope still existed, even if it was frail. 

“Maybe... maybe two more weeks would be good to really enjoy the end goal; live out a few more days in our new roles. Would that be better?” 

I said nothing, my thoughts picking up the pace. 

“But we would still need to swap back. There’s no doubt about that. After the fortnight we would become ourselves again. I’d become Dahlia. You’d become Melissa.” 

She looked down at her bulging body in that dress and hesitated. She blushed, looking back up at me, and giggled. “I guess it will take me a while to regain my figure.” 

At last I gave her a wry smile with the side of my mouth. I tried to keep the bitterness out of it but I didn’t succeed completely. 

“Maybe... Perhaps I’ll stay on here for a while when you go back to England; try to get most of the way back to how I was before I go home too; stop wearing these glasses; get my hair back how it is meant to be.” 

There was another trace of wistful doubt in her expression. I saw my opportunity but I didn’t snatch it. I stood looking at her, wondering if it was even possible to come back from this. 

Any second now she was going to start talking again and each word would carry us further and further away from the alternative reality where I got to be a gorgeous, rich model for the rest of my life. I had to jump in. But I couldn’t. 

Dahlia inhaled, her eyes clouding for a second as she gathered her thoughts. 

“Or...” I said. 

She exhaled and looked at me, startled. 

I gazed back at her, no traction on where that sentence was intended to go. What little confidence I had was like a trembling branch but I had no choice. If I didn’t speak up now then it was all over. 

“Or we could take a different route,” I said. 

Dahlia cocked her head to the side in query. She waited a moment before saying, “What do you mean?” 

“Just... Just that I have a counter-suggestion,” I replied. 

Dahlia’s lips parted slightly. 

I felt like I was standing at the edge of the world, the yawning gulfs of space below me. 

“What kind of counter-suggestion?” she asked.

Chapter Six - Part Five

DAHLIA 

Melissa’s changing expressions were like the rippling surface of a pond in the rain, not remaining still and untouched for more than a second. Something in her posture had changed that was so subtle that I only took it in subliminally, but I recognised it all the same. The shift produced an instant alteration in my own demeanour that highlighted it. The renewed confidence I had experienced moments earlier dipped. My vision dimmed and became strangely monochromatic as though a sepia filter had been laid over it. 

I became hyperaware again of my shape and the persona I wore. A part of me told me it was like a fat suit; a costume I had climbed into; but the logical segment of my mind that had been reawakened by this conversation reminded me that wasn’t so. This was no suit. I really was obese; tremendously obese. My hair wasn’t blond and curly anymore. It was straight. My eyesight had been ruined. I couldn’t see to read anymore without these thick glasses. 

My confidence took another dip. 

It seemed that Melissa picked up on my shift in body language as I had picked up on hers for she shifted again, straightening, losing the element she had regained over the last minute or two of cleaner in disguise, to become again the powerful woman I had seen her blossom into over the previous months. 

She smiled at me reassuringly, perhaps a little condescendingly, then she said, “We have, both of us, come so far from where we started. So far that it’s difficult to imagine that we really were those people. I look so much now like you originally did I amaze myself every time I look in the mirror. It’s like you said; as though we’ve been enchanted.” She chuckled. “Like in those urban legends you hear in Barton back home.” 

I gave a weak smile. We’d talked about those before. The yellow ghost of Nockton Vale. It was a popular local fairy tale. 

“And you...” she said. “You look more like me than I did. It truly is astounding how much you’ve accomplished. When you told me about your secret wish I couldn’t believe it could come true. You wanted to experience what it was like to be me and you set out to do so. You changed your body so that it became a copy; albeit an imperfect copy; of mine. You allowed yourself to take on employment as a cleaner in your hotel; to make friends of people at your new... status. You made a connection with that fellow, the cook.” 

I flushed. 

“But my suggestion...” she said. “It’s just that I’ve been thinking a lot about what an amazing and determined woman you are and how much you’ve achieved and it makes me sorry to think about how I’ve ruined things for you.” 

“Ruined things? How?” 

“By keeping my actual life out of your reach. By keeping you here in this foreign realm of fantasies rather than letting you actually take my place back home.” 

I stared at her. I couldn’t believe I was really hearing this. Her words were like stiletto blades sinking, without resistance, into my back in a line up my spine, one after another; but the blades didn’t hurt me. They were warm and almost, but not quite, pleasant. I could already see where she was going with this – of course I could; I’d fantasised about this very thing from the beginning – but to believe it was actually happening now was not possible. 

Melissa paused for a long time, perhaps sensing I could detect her gist, then she smiled reassuringly again. “You’ve become so like me that you’re almost my double. You’ve taken on a job role, similar in some ways to my old one. And yes, we could end it now – sure we could. We could start the process of swapping back and become our true selves again. But really... if you think about it... there isn’t any hurry for that. We can go back to being ourselves any old time. What we can’t do... what will forever be out of our reach if we turn back now... is to play this out further; to take it to its limit; to experience these new lives even more fully than we already have... to go back to England in our new personas and slip into our new lives for real.” 

I stared at her. The colour rose even brighter in my neck and cheeks – I could feel the heat of it – and with it, my arousal returned with a fierce intensity, much hotter than before, taking me onto an entirely different level of titillation. Sweat broke out above my hairline. 

Was she serious? She couldn’t be! How could we ever pull it off? 

I might be the same weight and shape as her – I might be wearing her clothes – but despite the similarities in our features, I could never really pass for her; not to someone she knew her well. 

But just for a moment to imagine it as really happening! To live in her house. To live with her husband; sleep with him and pretend we’d been married for years. To do her work, cleaning the school and people’s houses. To be called Melissa by people who genuinely knew her. To be believed by all that I was really her. 

To really become her. 

Oh, but it could only be a fantasy. 

I shook my head. “It isn’t possible. You know it isn’t. No one would believe it.” 

She smiled at me with genuine pleasure and the insight I had to her thinking suddenly became acute. She hadn’t believed I would even entertain it for a second but here I was debating whether it would work as though she’d already persuaded me of the sense of it. Suddenly she’d found herself much further along on her path of persuasion than she’d expected and the surprise was a delight for her. 

It made me question her motives in a way I hadn’t done so before; that eagerness; but then it was a terrific sacrifice for her; to give up her kind husband for an even longer period; to allow another woman to take her place at his side. 

But I was coming to close to believing it again; to really entertaining the possibility of it; but that was stupid. It could never happen. 

“It could happen. We could actually do it,” said Melissa. “We could become one another more than we ever thought possible.” 

“How?” 

She sat on the edge of the bed. “Plastic surgery,” she said. 

“What? No way! That would be permanent!” Surely she wasn’t serious! 

“Not permanent, no. Long term. I’ve looked into it. The procedure could be done and it could be done well. You could be made to look exactly like I used to. Exactly like it. I could be made to look the same as you.” 

“... Exactly the same?” 

She nodded. “Really. You could be Melissa for real. You could fool anybody. In England. You could live in my old house with Robert and be married. You could work as a cleaner for real – do all my old jobs.” She grinned, caught up in the verve of her excitement. “Just think about it. And then, when you were sick of that we could have another procedure; put our faces back how they are meant to be. It could last for as long or as short as you wanted. You would have total control.” 

“Change back?” I said. “Whenever I wanted?” 

“Yes.” She nodded. “Unless...” 

“What?” 

She chuckled. “Unless you decided you prefer my life to yours of course.” She laughed and I chuckled uneasily. Then the laughter died away. 

“Are you serious?” I asked. 

“Deadly serious,” she replied. “I’ve already looked into it fully. It can be done as soon as next week.” 

“Next week!?” 

She nodded again. “But only if you want to.” 

I stepped away from her. I went to the balcony and looked down on the pool. My thoughts were flapping inefficiently like a wounded bird. This whole conversation was preposterous. But then so was my whole life now. So it had been for a long, long time. 

“We can start changing back now if you want,” said Melissa. “We could be back in England in a couple of days. I could go back to my life, newly slim, to impress the hell out of my husband. You can go back to your life in Summertop.” 

Back to my empty house: an obese, four-eyed, ugly woman with no friends and no family. 

No family. 

“I’ve already booked us into a hotel in Thailand,” she said. “I’ve got the procedure set up ready if you want to go through with it.” 

I turned to face her sharply. 

The look of hope and expectation on her face faltered. She could see that she’d gone too far just as surely as I felt it. 

It was too much. It was crazy. To really become another person – not pretending; to really turn into them! To have surgery to achieve that! It was truly preposterous. And it was dangerous. 

I started to shake my head. 

Melissa rose from the bed. “Look, just think about it, okay? Think about it.” 

“What is there to think about?” I asked. “You know as well as I do that it can never happen. How stupid do you think I am?” 

She looked utterly crestfallen but she nodded with resignation. “Okay. I understand.” 

“I think we should finish this now,” I said, “not go on for two more weeks. I think it’s gone too far. We’ve both got confused about why we were doing this. We’ve both let our... fantasies run away with us.” 

Melissa looked down at the floor without speaking. 

I went to the door. I stood contemplating for a moment, wondering if it was somehow possible after all, then I said, “I’m going to go back to my hotel. I need to think.” 

“Okay,” said Melissa. “I understand.” 

I went through to the main room and opened the exit door. When I got there, I felt a sudden imperative to stay; to entertain this ridiculous notion a while longer, even just as a fantasy. I felt so guilty for shutting her down like that. Melissa had been nothing but kind to me. I knew the sacrifices she was willing to make to make this dream come true for me more then even I had imagined possible. Maybe I questioned her motives a little too – she would be the one living in a mansion if we actually went through with it – but I still felt bad. 

She appeared in the doorway behind me. I looked back at her and we made eye contact. She looked terribly, terribly sad. 

“I’m sorry,” I said. 

“Just think how amazing it could be,” she said. 

I shook my head. 

“Really becoming someone else.” 

I lowered my chin, facing down. I stood that way for the bulk of a minute or more. Melissa said nothing. Then I raised my face again to look at her. 

“I’ll think about it. That’s all I can say,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

Chapter Six - Part Six

DAHLIA 

I felt drugged-up all the way back to my hotel on the cranky old bus, tipping sideways over the potholes; jolting my tender stomach and making my flab shudder. 

All I could think about was Melissa’s absurd offer and its insanely tempting nature. 

Because of course, in some ways, that was exactly what I wanted. It was what I had wanted all along. Of course it was. I had wondered what life would be like if I truly became Melissa. I had wished for a magical transformation to occur. I had aped her life and longed to live it fully. This Greek charade was very close to that preposterous ideal but it was also a million miles away from it. 

But it was preposterous. And there was a world of difference between playing this game that we had been playing and going all the way as it were. 

I had put on a costume here in Greece. I was pretending to be someone else. I had even put on a vast amount of weight and trained my eyes to grow dim and watery. But nothing I had done was as drastic or potentially irrevocable as what Melissa was now suggesting. 

Was it even possible, through surgery, to make us really look like one another? And though talked about reversing it whenever I wished, surely it wasn’t so simple. We were talking a serious piece of surgery. The change really could be one way. Let’s say it was even possible... How much trauma could the human face stand and still bounce back from it? The change into her might be possible but trying to change back could make a hash of any beauty I had or wanted to get back to. 

Though I had my doubts even that was possible. I was so grossly obese now. My eyesight was ruined. The habits of overeating as well as the booze and the cigarettes was so deep-rooted now. I wondered if I would ever be able to give them up. I wondered if we even swapped back now whether I would have a chance of recovering my former looks. Surely, they were lost to me now. Surely I was going to remain corpulent and homely for the rest of my life, even if I was Dahlia Western again. Surely the old me was lost forever. I didn’t know where Melissa had found the motivation to lose all that weight and gain so much in fitness. I envied her that. I didn’t feel I could ever do it. 

And if I was going to be fat and four-eyed for the rest of my life, maybe I should stay as Melissa. She made a better Dahlia than I did nowadays. That was abundantly clear. It felt wrong for me to steal that away from her. I was undeserving surely now. I'd let everybody down; most of all myself. I couldn’t bear to think about Tommy or Katherine, or... or my brother. I couldn’t bear it. And I couldn’t bear the thought of going back to England looking like I did and trying to pretend I was really myself again. Tommy and Katherine would look at me and know I had gone mad. 

And what of the press? If they got wind of how low I’d fallen, how clearly ill I had to be mentally to allow such a thing, they would ridicule me into obscurity. After all the years of admiration and esteem for my beauty, that I couldn’t cope with. 

Maybe Melissa was right. Maybe this was the best option. Maybe it was my only option. And surely if I could really pull it off; really become her and assume her life; I could be happy... with her husband. If he loved me anywhere near as much as he loved her then I would be content forever. 

The bus rattled to a shaky stop and I got out, wheezing as I climbed down the narrow steps awkwardly, worried I might lose my footing and topple out headfirst like a gargantuan, misshapen peach. I thanked the diver in pigeon Greek and walked back to the hotel, resenting the heat and the way it made me sweat beneath my breasts and in the folds of my fat. 

As I walked I imagined the reality of taking on Melissa’s face and completely subsuming her identity. The arousal growled away in my lower regions but so did a scratching anxiety at the back of my brain that made my eyes feel parched and too big for their sockets. Maybe Melissa was right and it was just a continuation of the game. It wasn’t real. I could back out at any time. I could go back to my real life. 

Or maybe deep down she hated me. Maybe all this was about her stealing my life and never giving it back. 

I shuddered to think such a thing of my friend. I made the conscious choice to place that thought to the side and away. 

Maxine and one of the other cleaners were chatting in the foyer of the hotel. They had cleaning implements out but, as usual, weren’t using them. In fact, I’d seldom seen Maxine ever doing work herself. She mainly chatted while her flunkies flitted round her doing it themselves. 

“Hey, look who it is!” she cried, grinning. “It’s Big Piggy!” 

I frowned at the new version of my nickname, noticing that this time she didn’t even bother to mention he shift. I looked down at my bulging body and shrugged inwardly. It was nothing if not descriptive. And what did I care? I’d brought this on myself. Still, it did hurt me; it really did; but only as much as it gave me a certain thrill of masochistic pleasure. It made me feel both good and bad that she ridiculed me so openly. It meant I was accepted. It meant I was part of her social group. That was as much a turn-on as anything else. 

I gave a self-deprecatory smile and shambled over to them. “Hi.” 

“Careful,” said Maxine, smirking, “you might crack the floor tiles you’re so fat now.” She chuckled. “You should win an award or something, the amount of weight you’ve put on. If I didn’t know better I’d think you’d done it on purpose, but no woman I know would ever willingly get as fat as you. You’re a real porker now. You’re massive!” 

She and the other cleaner had a good laugh at my expense and I laughed along with them feeling uneasy and a little angry. I wanted to talk back to her but I just didn’t have the confidence anymore. She was right. I was gargantuan. I looked like a prize pig being fattened up for slaughter. 

“Where are you off to Big Piggy?” asked Maxine. 

I shrugged. “Don’t know. Up to my room.” 

“They have loads of leftovers from lunch in the kitchen if you want to go on fattening yourself up. Get in there before they chuck it out.” 

I stepped to do as she said and saw the smirk break out on her lips. That made me hesitate, blushing. 

“Go on,” she said, coaxing me. “We won’t judge you. You’ve got a big appetite. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” 

I shuffled on the spot for a minute, questioning myself. I didn’t have to go on shovelling food down my throat. I had reached my target weight. Soon I was going to start slimming down. And if I went and got it then they’d laugh behind my back. I knew they would. 

But my tummy was rumbling and I really fancied something good and greasy. I was starving. And what did it matter? If I went along with Melissa’s plan then it might even help. 

Melissa’s plan... 

“Go on Lard-arse,” said Maxine. “You’ll have to waddle in there quick or you’ll miss your chance.” 

I turned the corners of my mouth up and said, “Thanks for telling me.” 

I hurried toward the kitchen door, my fat swinging pendulously with each step, and behind me Maxine and her friend’s sniggers turned into laughter. With burning cheeks I pushed open the kitchen door and fell on the piles of leftover food, scooping it onto a plate, my mouth salivating as I eagerly imagined how good it was going to taste.

Chapter Six - Part Seven

MELISSA 

I needed to fuck somebody and I needed to do it now. 

The deep darkness between my legs was rippling with arousal and I needed to act on it immediately. And not just because I was horny as hell. I had a compulsion to do it that was beyond any desire just to scratch an itch or resolve the pent-up tension that had built before and during Dahlia’s visit. I wasn’t sure what it was but I needed to get out there. 

I kept on the translucent silk robe and bathing suit and slipped on some cream wedges then took the lift down to the lobby and made my way round outside. I strode along determinedly and I could see the looks I got of admiration and wonder. I was an attractive athletic woman and my long stride was both feminine and wholly confident. There wasn’t anything about me now that insinuated my old self. I wasn’t wholly Dahlia – I knew that – but this me was only a hair’s breadth away from that image. If anything, I was more like the original Dahlia than she had been prior to the swap. 

When she first approached me to exchange she wasn’t the vivacious, self-assured celebrity she had once been. She was a shy recluse suffering from increasing depression; maybe even anxiety; and possibly even a smidgeon of agoraphobia. She had been making a show of going back into the limelight but it was clear to me now that this whole endeavour was an attempt to escape from that life she felt she ought to recapture. She didn’t want to be famous again. Quite the opposite. She wanted to disappear into the cracks where nobody knew her and there was no longer any pressure to excel. There were other factors; her brother’s death being a big one that nudged her over the edge; but when it came down to it, becoming me for her was about getting away from being her. I just happened to be there and I happened to be a willing participant. 

Maybe there was a little more to it than that – perhaps there had to be – but as far as I cared about, that was the element that applied to me. 

I went out into the sunshine and went over to the pool bar; ordered an extravagant cocktail. It wasn’t for Dutch courage – I didn’t need that anymore – it was because I wanted the sweet taste, and because it was part of the image. I leaned back, crossed my legs seductively, and waited to reel a man in. There were half a dozen possible around the pool, of which two were preferable. Right now it was about getting laid. I didn’t really care who it was. Their character was entirely irrelevant. I wanted someone rich like I was right now and someone chiselled: someone I could never have netted in my old life. 

That made me smirk. I couldn’t have netted any man in my old life. I was a disgusting fat heifer with less sex appeal than a desiccated corpse. 

It came to me suddenly why I was doing this and my smirk became a self-deprecatory smile. 

This was about proving I could do this. To myself. That I had the power to do this. 

I had made my gambit with Dahlia and she had tried to put up a wall of resistance. Hell, she had told me what she wanted first: to go back to her old life! 

Hearing her do that had filled me with something close to terror. She was threatening my entire future with her whimsy and that made me angry, hateful and bitter. Why should she get to choose? She had thrown away her life of wealth and beauty. It was mine now. What right did she have to claim back the life I had been given? It wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve it. Not like I did. 

I had made something of this life; more than she had. I had done far better than she ever could. She had started off slim and beautiful. She had been born into the riches and brought up to manage them. I had had to fight for all of that. I had had to change my body from obese to athletic under only the force of my own will. 

It was maybe a little fucked up, but that was why I was here by the pool; to prove to myself and anyone watching that I could do anything I wanted; anything that she could have. I could have a gorgeous man anytime I chose. 

And it didn’t make me a slut that it was only about sex and power. It didn’t matter that I’d been with dozens of different men in the past couple of months – no strings attached. The only reason Dahlia had shirked the company of males was because she was messed up. She hadn’t possessed the confidence I did for years. 

I stewed for a little while, feeling antsy. For some reason I was angry at myself but I didn’t know why. 

It was angst. It had to be. I’d made my play to snatch and keep hold of this life and Dahlia had surprised me by having enough gumption left to fight for it. She was crazy enough to want to keep my shitty old life but she hadn’t been as crushed as I thought. She really had planned to go back. I hadn’t really anticipated or planned for this kind of resistance. I honestly didn’t know which way she’d go and that scared me. After all these months of being the one in control it felt like I’d used up my chance to persuade or dominate her. Now all the decision-making power fell to her. I didn’t like that. It made me want to chase after her to her hotel and apply more pressure than I had. 

|But that didn’t feel right. Not now. Not yet. She needed to have some time to stew in her juices. Because surely at the end of the day her own fear had to be reasserting itself; her own resistance to going back. I didn’t need to persuade her. She would persuade herself. 

I hoped. 

I downed the rest of my cocktail; not like a cultured lady but like a wino, desperate for the hit; then I ordered a second one the same. 

I sighed, lowering my head, turning my knees and shoulders inward, feeling low. 

Then I thought, no. No way. 

I wasn’t going to get depressed. That was the kind of thing that she did. I wasn’t going to sink to her level. I was the better woman by far. I was going to win this by force of character. 

I straightened in my seat, raising my chin. I took a demure sip of my fresh cocktail and made myself smile. I crossed my legs again to set my bait then I glanced to my left. 

A gorgeous, hunk of a man was watching me slyly: one of the two I most wanted to have my way with. I didn’t avert my eyes shyly. I maintained eye contact and then very deliberately gave him a smile. Then I tipped my glass. Then I turned back to the bar and ignored him. 

I was going to win this. I was going to beat her. I was a better Dahlia than she had ever been. There was no way she would stand up to me now. This life was going to be mine if I had to fight to my dying breath. 

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the man get to his feet and start to saunter my way. 

I smiled to myself and took another sip, uncrossing and recrossing my long legs.

Chapter Six - Part Eight

DAHLIA

I helped serve the evening meal and then, when it was time, I helped myself to the overlarge portions I liked and went through to the staff room. 

Maxine was in there with her gaggle of cronies but when I went over to sit with them she crowed, “Look who it is! It’s Big Piggy! The only woman I know who seems to want to get fatter!” 

The women with her burst out laughing; all of them. They weren’t the only ones. Maxine’s outburst had been loud enough to attract the attention of the other hotel staff taking a break. There were smirks and chuckles from all round. My cheeks blossomed red and I faltered, unsure whether to proceed. 

“She’s so obese now, I bet the bench will collapse if she sits down,” sneered Maxine. “Watch out. Dive for cover if she comes this way.” 

They all laughed again and though I took another step closer, I didn’t join them. 

There had been a time when her manner had suggested a certain amount of camaraderie and inclusion but that seemed absent now. Her derision was open and overtly hostile. It was juvenile but that didn’t stop it happening. 

I continued to waver, unsure whether to go on and sit with them as I had been doing. It seemed clear that the gloves were off again now, as they had been when we first met, and no doubt I would continue to be targeted throughout my meal. 

Still that didn’t deter me. It was part of my dark fantasy after all. This was what I wanted. I wanted to be ostracised; made to feel ugly and unclean. It was part of the dream I was living. 

Except this didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like I was wide awake and that this was really happening to me. This wasn’t a fantasy. It wasn’t happening to somebody else. I wasn’t safe from it as I normally would be when I started to fantasise. She wasn’t making fun of a character I’d invented. She was making fun of me. Me; Melissa Chapman; and for good reason. I was enormously obese. I was quite justly an object of ridicule. I considered sitting down and letting her continue to deride me; to live out the continuation of my fantasy; but the greater part of me wasn’t Dahlia Western anymore: a rich eccentric playing with masochistic fantasies of supplication. The greater part of me now really was just a bulging fat woman with thick specs with no real friends, low self-esteem and an addiction to overeating, cigarettes and alcohol. That part of me didn’t want to be made fun of because that part of me was real. She was the person they were really taking the piss out of and she didn’t like it because it made her feel just as pathetic as she knew deep down that she was. 

So instead I turned and took a seat away from them near the wall. 

“Ooo, she’s scared off us now,” laughed Maxine. “I’m not surprised. Look at her. She’s an abomination. If I was that fat I’d be too ashamed to leave my room.” 

Again, there were giggles all round and I slumped down into my chair, head hung, shovelling the food in. At least that made me feel better, but though I ears burned and my cheeks sizzled, I didn’t feel turned on by any of this. I just felt wretched and persecuted. I wished, for a change actually, that I had the confidence to stand up to her. But the very idea of that filled me with panic. I knew I would fumble my words and that she wouldn’t She would rip me apart, pointing out all my faults and in the end I would only be able to stand and take it; pr else I would flee in tears with them laughing at my enormous rear waddling away. 

I did nothing of the sort. I sat there and took it. I went on eating. And eating. And eating. I went back for seconds and thirds, even though that gave Maxine fresh ammunition to use against me and a reminder, on seeing me re-enter the room, to have at me again. 

By the end of the meal I felt awful; not just for being made to feel as fat and plain as I was; but because I realised now just how lonely it could feel to really be someone like this. And I really was this person. This was really happening. I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t. I could go and tell Melissa I wanted to swap back but there would be no instantaneous transformation. I really was a morbidly obese woman. I would maybe never get back to how I was. I deserved all the derision I got. 

When I finished eating I got up. Maxine and the other cleaners were playing cards. 

“You off for your fourth helping Big Piggy?” called Maxine as I reached the door. “Or are you just planning to go and drink yourself to death?” 

I stopped in the doorway, feeling despondent, then went out without even having the strength to look at her. 

Outside, the corridor was empty but I went to the door into the courtyard on the off chance that the cook, Vasilis, might be there. 

He was, smoking one of his long, thin cigarettes, looking as wan and unwell as ever he did. When he saw me shamble into the doorway he groaned. “What do you want?” 

I shrank a little further inside myself. “I just... I wondered if you were out here. I...” 

I don’t know what I’d been planning to say. I knew how he felt about spending time with me outside of the bed. 

“I was lonely,” I said, my voice sounding timid and mouselike in my ears. 

He looked at me with a slight sneer on his face for the better part of a minute, pained if anything that he was having to put up with this shit. 

I knew what the answer was. I felt bad that I was putting him in this uncomfortable position. A former model and I was guilty that this ugly, nasty little man was having to waste his time on a heifer like me when he’d already told me he was embarrassed being seen with me. 

“Do you... uh... Do you want to maybe have... have sex later on,” I said. “I could come up and...” 

I trailed off. His expression had taken on an even greater cast of revulsion and disapproval. I cringed even more inside, my spirit curling up in the centre of my chest. Tears rimmed the lower edge of my eyes. I faint gurgle came unbidden from my throat. Vasilis flinched as though he’d sensed I might cry and hated the very idea of it. But I was desperate to please him; to have some kind of affection and validation in this awful situation. 

“If you... If you want... I could do that thing that you like,” I said. “With my mouth. That thing that you really like.” 

The sneer on his face became less subtle and more overt. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m busy.” 

“Well maybe tomorrow,” I said quickly. Or later tonight. Whenever you want.” 

He shook his head. “I’m not really interested. I’ve got better things to do with my time.” 

“But—” 

“I don’t want to fuck you. Do you get that?” 

I gaped at him, stepping back, the tears forming properly now in my eyes. 

“You’re too fat and too ugly,” he snapped. “You disgust me! I’m embarrassed that I ever slept with you. Get lost.” 

“But I just wanted to say—” 

“Get lost!” 

He turned his back on me but I went on standing there, staring. 

I thought about the laughter in the dining room and then I thought about Melissa’s offer, not to escape from this life as I had planned, but to embrace it indefinitely; actually ruin what was left of my face and become this fat loser derided by all on an ongoing basis.; maybe even forever. 

It was so clear to me in this moment what I had to do. So clear. There was only one option that I could possibly choose. That was blindingly obvious to me.

I backed out of the courtyard and the swinging door shut in my face. 

I stood there for a long time, unable to combat the inertia holding me in place. 

Eventually the door opened and Vasilis stepped into the doorway. He saw me there and curled his lip. I stepped back in shame and surprise. 

“What are you hanging around for?” he said. “I told you it’s over. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to talk to you. I definitely don’t want to fuck you. Get out of here, you fat cow.” 

He pushed past me and marched irritably off down the corridor. I didn’t watch him go. I felt nothing but shame and self-hate. 

After a while I walked silently up to my room and shut myself in. I went to the drawer top where I had left my whisky bottle and I half-filled the class I’d left there, unwashed, that morning. 

I took a sip, then I took another. Then I gulped down the rest and winced as it hit my stomach.

Chapter Six - Part Nine

MELISSA 

I shut off the cross trainer and climbed down, grabbing my towel to wipe my brow, and took a swig of my drink. I had pearls of sweat on my chest and back; on my arms; but I didn’t feel tired, despite the length of my workout. If anything I felt energised. 

A slow clapping came from behind me and I turned to see Ambrus, my personal trainer, smiling; stepping forward from the mirrored wall where he’d been leaning. “You’ve done terrifically well Dahlia,” he said. “Outstanding.” 

I grinned, feeling so pleased. “Do you think so?” 

“Of course.” He came level. “Just look at you. Look at how far you’ve come since our first meeting. You were a little on the flabby side, you would have to agree, and although I could see the first glimmer of willpower shining, I could also see a woman who craved food in large quantities. Where is that woman now?” 

I thought of the real Dahlia and smirked a little, then I said. “She’s long gone. Gone forever I hope.” 

“I know it’s forever,” he said. “Come.” 

We walked to the doors leading out onto the hotel poolside from the first-rate exercise room and went out into the sunshine. 

“You made it clear what your objectives were when we first spoke,” he said. He chuckled. “I asked you how much weight you wanted to lose. Do you remember what you said to me?” 

I chuckled too. “All of it.” 

“Exactly. And now look at you. You said you wanted to be slim. You’ve achieved that. You’re probably more athletic than most women in the world. You’ve done this over a substantially long period, making it more than likely that you’ve broken your old habits and you’ve built up the kind of metabolism that is really going to help you staying the shape you want to be.” 

I didn’t know what to say. This was everything I had wanted. He might have been confirming things I had already seen with my own eyes, but hearing his congratulations and... approval meant the world to me. “I’m just so grateful for your help,” I said. 

“No.” He shook his head. “No. It wasn’t me. It was you. I merely provided minimalist encouragement.” 

I thought about the early morning jogs along the beach with him bellowing in my ear but decided not to say anything. 

“But it’s clear to me that you don’t need me anymore,” he said. 

“What? Really?” I didn’t like the idea of that. 

“You’ve grown into a strong, slim, beautiful woman with a will of iron. All I am now is a crutch. You need to cast that crutch aside and walk forward as strong and assured as I know you are.” 

“Well...” I thought about it. If all went to plan I would be leaving soon anyway. “Okay, I guess. But I’m going to miss you.” 

“I’ll be around,” he said. “I have other clients here and at neighbouring hotels. In fact... I need to go. I’m meeting one shortly.” 

“Oh. Okay. Right.” I extended my hand. “I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me. Thank you.” 

“It was my pleasure.” He took my hand and shook it. 

“And, uh, now that we aren’t working together anymore... What do you say to that dinner invitation of mine? I’d love to get to know you better.” I smiled seductively. “And I’d love to let you get a closer look at the body you helped create.” 

He held my look for a moment and then released my hand with a smile, saying, “As I said before, I’m very flattered, but I will have to decline.” 

I frowned. “But... Before you said it was because you were my trainer. There’s nothing stopping us anymore. We could have dinner tonight and then drinks afterwards, maybe a little dancing; then later on we could go up to my penthouse room and...” I gave a broad and suggestive smile. “... get up to foul play.” 

He looked uncomfortable. Then he gave a brief smile. Then he looked uncomfortable again; almost pained. “I really must decline,” he said. “But I’m very grateful for the offer.” 

“Why must you decline?” I asked, my temper rising a little. He’d always been very kind to me. He’d always laughed at my jokes and seemed to enjoy my company. 

He squirmed. “Perhaps it is better if we do not discuss this further,” he said. He clearly wasn’t going to change his mind. 

“No. Hang on,” I said. “I really want to know. Don’t you find me attractive?” 

He held up his hands. “No. Please. You are a very beautiful woman now.” 

“Now? Oh, is that it? Is it because I was fat before? You knew me as a tub of lard and now you couldn’t bear to be with me; is that it?” 

“No. Not at all.” 

“Then why not?” I demanded. “Why won’t you come to dinner? Or drinks? Why won’t you fuck me?” 

He glanced round to see who was listening which made me even angrier and then blushed red. “Please Dahlia,” he said. “I’d really rather not say.” 

“Tell me,” I said. “Please. Look, I’m sorry I got shitty with you. I’m really... I just want to know. Why won’t you... spend time with me now the training is done?” 

His face darkened more. He was clearly going through some internal decision-making process. “Because...” He shrugged apologetically. “I’m... You aren’t...” He looked away and looked back at me. He lowered his head and then looked me in the eye. “The truth is, it is nothing to do with you being overweight before. I think you are very pretty now. I simply cannot be with a woman who is... not nice.” 

I was disarmed. I said nothing at first. “What? Not... nice?” 

“I’m sorry to say it,” he replied. “I would have preferred not to. But I have known you for a long time now. I have observed you in many situations; speaking to the staff here; flirting with all your men...” 

My own cheeks coloured red. 

“I cannot come to dinner with you, or... sleep with you... because I cannot do that with someone I... don’t like. I’m truly sorry.” 

He gave a curt bow and withdrew. 

I stood there staring after him, flabbergasted. I couldn’t believe it. 

But part of me... Part of me had known all along that this was the reason he had politely avoided my flirtations. Part of me knew, because part of me knew that no matter how much I made myself slim or come to look like Dahlia, I would never truly be her. I never could be. Because deep down I was cut from different cloth. I was too bitter. He was right. I hated other people more often than I didn’t. I hated almost everyone. 

I straightened, wiping the corner of my eye, then put my sunglasses on so no one could see the moistness that was developing there. 

How could I go back to England and pretend to be Dahlia? Pretend to be a charismatic, personable, kind woman? And she was kind. I knew that too deep down; no matter what I’d thought of her when I worked as her cleaner. That was the bitterness talking too. She was a good woman who cared about other people; someone innocent enough and trusting enough to believe someone like me was after her best interests. 

The tear streams trickled away from my eyes and then silently started to thicken. 

This whole plan was doomed. Why hadn’t I accepted it before? I could never pull it off. Anyone who knew the real Dahlia would see straight through me, and anyone who knew of her reputation would not believe someone of my character was a duplicate. 

I put my head in my hands, sitting down, elbows resting on my bare knees. 

It was over. Or as good as. There was no point taking it any further. It was time I accepted defeat and gave up. 

At least I’d become slim – if I could keep it off. There was that. At least I’d had this long, free holiday. 

The life theft wasn’t going to work. I should call Dahlia and tell her to forget about the surgery. All that would lead to would be exposure, public disgrace and shame. 

I wasn’t a nice person. I shouldn’t have needed Ambrus to tell me that. 

But... 

I raised my head. I let my hands fall away. I looked out across the pool to the palm trees beyond. And my tears slowly stopped and then started to dry. 

Because a crisis of conscience or determination didn’t suit me. Was I really going to throw this opportunity away because it might not work? Because I thought people might people might find out? 

No. Fuck that. 

Fuck that. 

I would rather die than give up now. 

I had nothing else waiting for me that was worth a damn. I had only a horrible life awaiting me. 

This gambit was my only choice; my only chance. I knew I would rather die – literally die – than give it up. 

I stood up. I folded my arms. I unfolded them and then looked toward the front of the hotel. 

I was sick of waiting for Dahlia to think about it. I was sick of leaving her with the initiative. She didn’t have the motherfucking power anymore – I did – and I was going to use it. 

This was going to come to a head... right now. No more waiting. One way or the other this day would see the conclusion of the conundrum. Were we going to do it? Were we going to swap our lives FOR REAL? 

And I wasn’t going to leave it to chance. 

Screw Ambrus if he didn’t want me! I didn’t want him, the swarthy bastard! I could get any man I wanted. 

Almost any man. 

I started walking toward the hotel doorway to go and get changed and order a taxi. 

By the end of the day I would know, one way or another. 

Either we would be planning our trip to Thailand or we would be packing to go back home. I didn’t know for sure which way it would go but I was sure as hell going to fight for what I wanted.

Chapter Six - Part Ten

DAHLIA 

I came awake very early or... no. No. I wasn’t sure really that I had ever slept. 

Throughout the night I had remained on the dirty rim of unconsciousness, my thoughts not dreams or nightmares as such but similar enough; disjointed and disturbing enough; that they might have been. 

It was still dark and that gave me the sense that sleep was, or had been, still continuing, but as I tipped up vertical on the side of the bed like a wibble-wobble doll that can never truly fall over, I felt that ghastly enclosing corpulence gripping every part of the slim woman trapped deep inside me; smothering her. 

That beautiful Dahlia was surely still there beneath these sweaty bulges, pressed into the grimy crevices, struggling to climb free; but she was running out of air. She was dying. Reaching up with a single grasping hand for the light from the folds of this gargantuan body she was trapped in, desperate to get out of it while she still could. 

My chubby hand scrabbled on the bedside cabinet for the crumpled pack of cigarettes I’d discarded there the night before. Several fags lay strewn amidst the rubbish and food scraps, the ribbons of spilled whisky, partially dried. 

No cleaner ever saw the inside of this room. 

My eyes didn’t focus – my vision was so piss-poor nowadays that in the dingy first light there was no hope of real clarity – but I found a dry, uncrumpled cigarette. The second lighter I tried gave me a flame. 

My mouth filled with the filth of the smoke instantly and I drew it down into my lungs, stifling the Dahlia trapped down there, reaching for fresh air, clotting up her lungs and dowsing her as the chemicals in the fag dowsed me, dulling my thoughts. 

I sat there, half tilted on the bed, blotting out the clean air and sucking this filth into me over and over again. With the first one finished it wasn’t enough. The stench and dismal corruption weren’t enough. I scrabbled for another fag and put that in my lips, cursing the whisky dampness as it wouldn’t light; found another; lit that. 

I shambled to the window and creased back the curtain half an inch, my breathing laboured, my grimy eyes squinting out at another day of drudgery and increasing self-hate.

I looked back at the whisky bottle on the side of the bed. There wasn’t much left to it. Dregs. But it was enough. 

I lumbered back and slumped down then drained the thing, chasing the vibrating inebriation down with more cloying smoke. 

I found my pebble glasses and got dressed. The clothes were soiled – they always were – but not enough to be a problem for the work. Cleaners in an establishment like this weren’t expected to be perfect; not once the first splashes of the day had had chance to settle. I did my hair, getting it as straight as I could; knowing I was letting life destroy me; knowing that I shouldn’t feel this low regardless of which path I took. 

I’m just tired. I told myself that. I’m just utterly and completely exhausted. 

And it didn’t help, the weight I was carrying; that at some level I still couldn’t be entirely used to. 

I felt awful, and that couldn’t continue. I couldn’t let myself go on like this; whichever life I chose. 

Melissa’s life hadn’t been this bad. She had lived an ordinary life as a cleaning woman back in England with her husband; content in her simple ways with the down-to-earth constraints of her everyday life. It was that touchstone with Robert that I lacked; that I’d had only a grainy simile of with the cook. There had been no love there between me and Vasilis; not even real affection. With all the guilt and doubt I was feeling, was it any wonder that I had spiralled; that I was still spiralling? Even my friendship with Melissa had been tenebrous at best since coming to Greece; we’d been so busy playing our allotted roles. 

It shouldn’t have been like this and I knew that it wouldn’t go on being if only a final decision could be made. Some new status quo would form; a reconciliation with reality and an acceptance of how things were; how they would go on remaining. 

Surely once a decision was made then I could start to resolve a clear path ahead. I would form a peace and happiness with what was awaiting me. Surely that was what would have to happen. 

But I knew I’d ruined my body; surely forever. I’d set out on a silly game like a schoolgirl, thinking that there would be some magic spell to weave me back from it whenever I wanted, and there was no spell; no magic to transform me back into a beautiful slender woman on the verge of a glorious comeback. 

“Hngh!” 

I sneered. 

Had I ever wanted that comeback? Had it all been Tommy, my agent? Or had it been the guilt; that I was throwing away my last chance to have another slice of that life before I really was too old or before my looks slipped away of their own accord? 

Maybe that was all this had ever been: not some crooked immersion into corruption and ugliness for sordid perversity, but a fuck you to the aging process: me taking the choice to let go of my looks on purpose before nature could take it out of my hands. 

Beauty didn’t last forever. Time was going to have its way sometime soon regardless. By leaping off the catwalk like this, at least it had been at a time of my choosing. 

I left the room and started my work. I avoided the other cleaners, as usual. I slaved, feeling the grimy build-up of sweat in the fatty crevices on my body, seeing only the sweep of the broom; the swish of the mop; the growing mottled piles of filthy bedding, gathered up in my round arms too close to my face. 

I stopped for two more cigarettes half way through the morning, hating the taste of the smoke and glaring at first one lit end and then the other. I tried not to think about Melissa and her expectations, because surely she expected an answer now quite crucially. This was coming to a head regardless of my own inertia. I couldn’t put her off together. 

I had ruined my body. That’s what I kept coming back to. Maybe it was permanent already. Maybe the slender me had already suffocated beneath the folds of flab. Maybe she could never be resuscitated now. Maybe the only way to stave off final and irrevocable madness was to embrace the inevitable coming; to accept that it wasn’t a case of choosing to finally become Melissa forever but to realise I already had done. 

There was no Dahlia left now to be seen. She was gone, surely for good. 

I went back to working. I slaved. I toiled. I let the harsh reality of this life I had chosen be everything. 

The decision was everything – it had to be everything – but it was clear to me that it had already been made. Surely it had. I could pretend to myself as much as I liked that there was a rational process continuing that might allow me to take a certain fork in the road. 

There was only one sane choice. There could only be one sane choice with the facts as they were; with my life as it was; with this body and the strain I had put it under; with the favour that Melissa had done me by effecting this trade in the first place; coming out here; living these strange, sham lives. 

Yes, I knew the answer. I had known the answer even before she asked the question. I knew what I wanted. I knew which way to go. It was the only option that made sense. 

I finished my shift and went back to my room, stopping only long enough at the local convenience store for dry, uncrumpled fags and more whisky; a huge bag of salted, ridged crisps and two chocolate bars.

In the room, I slumped back on the edge of the bed, one hand resting again, my round body tilted almost uncomfortably, a rasping wheeze coming out of the side of my mouth, the lit, drifting cigarette hanging from the crack at the other. 

Was that wheeze the last embers of the slender me, the fat now squeezing the very last life out of her, deep inside my bulging chest? Was she blind now, buried under all that fat as it filled her mouth and her eyes and blocked her off from the world where once upon a time she had lived as a princess? 

I withdrew the cigarette and looked at the glowering end. 

There was an ashtray squatting right there beside me on the bedside cabinet. Maybe all I had to do was stub it out now. Maybe that simple act would be enough to save the girl inside. 

I moved to do so but hesitated and brought the fag back closer to my lips. Lowered it again. 

I just felt so tired. I didn’t know what to do anymore. 

But I felt I’d come to a decision. I had to have done. It was so obvious what my only choice was. 

There was a tap at the door. 

I groaned, wondering if I should ignore it. 

It came again, more insistently. 

I looked back at the end of my cigarette and shifted on the bed, letting out one last wheeze. 

The door knocked a third time. 

I got up with difficulty, leaving the fag smouldering on the edge of the ashtray.  

My body ached as I walked across, from the effort of managing my bulk and the weariness of my cleaning work. Even at the verge of opening I considered breaking off; of keeping silent and hoping the visitor would go away. 

But I didn’t. I opened the door. 

And there was Melissa, looking radiant and bright-eyed. 

Wanting nothing now clearly except the answer that was due to her. 

And suddenly I realised this was the moment; that I couldn’t put it off anymore. 

She wanted to know and I had a responsibility to tell her. 

Everything was coming to a head and the fork in the path was finally here.

Chapter Six - Part Eleven

MELISSA 

Dahlia looked awful when she opened the door to her room. 

Back at my hotel, when she had shown the confidence to stand up to me there had been an patter of dancing potential energy lifting her features and her limbs. That wasn’t there now. She looked weary and drawn, but surprised that I was there. 

I did not visit her. She visited me. 

“Uh, hi,” she said, stepping back as though she might invite me in, but there was reservation there and I could see why. The curtains were closed in the room in it was terribly dingy; terribly cluttered; possibly even filthy. “What are you doing here?” 

“I wanted to talk,” I said. “After... what we discussed. I felt we needed to. Can I come in?” 

She took another step back but chewed her lip. Perhaps she was considering suggesting we went down to the bar or something instead but I stepped into the doorway regardless. I could see her reservations but I didn’t care. I wanted in. I didn’t want to wait and I didn’t want to be discussing these things in an open theatre where others could eavesdrop or where she might be afraid they could. 

She let me through and I entered as she closed the door behind me. 

It was a dingy pit of degradation. It was quite shocking actually. I’d never seen anything like it. Compared to my pristine room at the Satine Palace, this was like a beaver hole. It was revolting. There had been no attempt to keep it tidy or clean over a greatly extended period. There may have been a time when she was on top of it. It looked like one of those dens you see on documentaries of people who have gone off the rails and totally gone to seed. 

The evidence of alcohol abuse was everywhere but there was masses in the way of discarded food wrappers and cigarette packets too. I turned my nose up at the sight of it, realising instantly that there would be nowhere to sit. It actually felt like it might taint me, it was that bad. My body recoiled slightly, my skin crawling. 

Dahlia loitered by the door, her fingers crumpling at her waist, her face troubled, then she hurried round to the little window and pulled back the curtain. It did little to help and only helped to illustrate how bad it was, defining more piles of detritus. 

“I’m sorry it’s so messy in here,” she said. “I... I don’t tend to... After I’ve been cleaning all day I guess I can’t be bothered to clean... in here too.” 

I thought about my house with Robert back in the UK. Had it really been so different there? It had never been pristine; a certain degrading creep of filth omnipresent. I knew exactly what she meant. In fact, it brought it all back; that deep resentment of the back-breaking labour along with the bitter awareness that I lived in squalor while those who thought themselves better than me lived in the beautiful environment I’d created. 

“It’s fine,” I said. “Really. I’ve seen worse. Don’t worry.” I gave her a reassuring smile. “I’m more worried about you. You left so quickly yesterday and we hadn’t really had the chance to talk things through as much as I would have liked. You left so quickly. I’d intended for us to really talk; maybe get a bite to eat together.” 

This was a lie now but it occurred to me that it might still be good strategy after all. We could go out to a local restaurant. She could get her fill on more tempting food while I coaxed her along to make the right decision. 

“I’m sorry,” replied Dahlia. “I was just... taken aback by what you said. I didn’t know how I felt. It was all so... unexpected.” 

My eyelids creased down slightly of their own accord as I questioned that. Was my suggestion to indefinitely swap so out there? Was it really so unexpected? Surely that fantasy had been wound up in everything from the very beginning. I wondered if she knew she was lying to herself; if she really believed that or if she even recognised a thread of lying to me. 

I gave her another brief comradely smile. “It’s a lot to consider. I know it is. I’ve questioned it myself. I even questioned my own motivations.” I mimed a chuckle. “All this time I’ve been telling myself this was all for you but deep down there must be a part of me that thrives on it. I mean of course there is. It’s been wonderful to become you. To pretend I was you here in Greece at least. I’m so grateful to you for giving me this opportunity. It’s funny, isn’t it? It was only really meant to be a favour to you.” 

She squirmed a little uncomfortably. 

“I just wanted to reassure you about some things,” I said. “Because I gave you so much information in a short span of time yesterday and... it must have been an awful lot to take in.” 

“Yeah. Yeah it was a lot to consider.” 

“Everything about how I’d got it organised enough to proceed so quickly,” I said. “Maybe you’d need more time to digest the idea. Decamping right away and going to Thailand... That’s a lot to take in.” 

Something flickered on her face like a tick and I tried to read her. We were skirting round the real issue here but we hadn’t dived in at all. For all I knew she had made a firm resolution already. For all I knew she would never go through with it.

My nerves jangled and I wiggled my hands and fingers to relieve a sudden sensation of numbness in them. I had an awful feeling that I was buggering this up. And how the hell was I supposed to control it anyway? How could I hope to persuade this woman of anything as preposterous as I was hoping to?

Underneath my hairline I felt beads of perspiration exude. 

How did I get myself in this ridiculous situation? 

It wasn’t up to me to persuade her – I told myself that. She wanted this. She would persuade herself. But if that was the case then why had I come? Why was I pushing? 

God, this was stressful. I hated not being in control. 

Dahlia folded her arms with some difficulty, the action accentuating how doughy her bulbous arms were now. “I have been thinking about it; what we should do; how to... proceed with this. It is a lot to consider.” 

“You have?” 

She nodded, unfolding her arms again and looking down at her body. “It is... incredible what we’ve done here. Look at you. Look at me. Look at us! We’re just not who were we before. We’ve transformed entirely.” 

“You’ve really become a different person.” 

She nodded again. “I’ve become you. Or I thought I had. But maybe you’re right and maybe I did want more. Maybe I still do. Maybe being you back in England was what this was always about. It was. It is.” 

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. “Just imagine how cool it would be to go back there entirely as each other; to move into our opposite lives; to live in one another’s houses. Just imagine being back in your home town and walking down the street but not being yourself at all anymore; being me; actually being me.” I giggled. “It wouldn’t be a game then. It would feel totally real. We wouldn’t be just a couple of silly women play-acting anymore. We could actually turn into one another for real. I think it would be incredible!” 

“For you maybe.” 

“Huh?” The wind went out of my sales. I had got caught up, becoming exuberant and she was just looking at me as though she were totally detached, almost unkindly. “Sorry, what? What do you mean?” 

“Just that you would be the one who got to be Dahlia. You would be living in my house with my cars and all the money. What would I have? That street you’re talking about... That would be some scummy backstreet of Barton; not the lane outside Summertop.” 

My smile became embarrassed and a little desperate. “I didn’t mean it like that. Don’t take it like that sweetheart. I’m not...” I got flustered. “I didn’t mean to say that— Look, I’m not here to persuade you. I’m not trying to do you out of your life or anything. I’m not trying to steal your money. Of course I’m not. All I’m interested in is this... this glorious adventure, you know? Becoming somebody else for real – taking on their life; wearing their face. Really becoming them. I just can’t think of anything more incredible that we could do and now that we’re so close to it it seems crazy to pull back. Not when we’re so near.” I turned away from her, tried to gather my thoughts, then turned back. 

“If we could just go back now as we are and do it then that’s what I’d say we should do. It’s... unfortunate that we can’t really pull it off without the surgery; but think about that as... as a magic wand, you know? We can’t do real magic – nobody can – but it’s the closest thing to it. We’ve done something here already that nobody else has ever done. We’ve almost totally swapped places. All we have to do is take this last final step and we can truly become one another – just for as long as we want to. Then we can change back. We can change back at any time.” 

I shut my mouth. I was coming on too strong. I was being obvious; almost bullying her. I needed to dial it back or it was going to go wrong. I could see her indecision and there was the potential for hostility. I couldn’t risk that. If it got onto those terms then there might never be any rescuing from it. 

“I’m sorry I’m blathering on,” I said. “I’m just so excited about it. I really... I really want to go through with it; to make that dream come true for you, you know?” 

“To make my dream come true?” Dahlia’s voice was brittle. She made a tight twitch at the side of her mouth that gave little semblance of a smile. “Look at me,” she said. “Look at what’s become of me. Does this look like a dream?” 

We both regarded the squalor of the room; the empty bottle of alcohol; her ruined figure and face and eyes. 

“It looks like a nightmare,” she said, “and one that I can’t wake up from. Or haven’t been able to in so long.” 

“Listen...” I said, stepping closer, reaching for her wrist. Her arm tensed and I didn’t take it. I didn’t know what to say. I was fucking this up like I fucked everything up in my life. 

“It is a dream,” I said. “This was your fantasy. I know I’ve come on too strong – I know I’m shit at trying to explain what I mean – but I just keep coming back to thinking that deep down, this is what you want, if only you had the strength to see it; to follow it all the way to the end.” 

She shook her head once. “Strength? What’s that? I haven’t felt strong in... months. Years maybe. All I am is weak. I sometimes think that Katherine... I think I should have listened to her.” 

My cheeks hardened to hear the name. I said nothing. 

“Maybe I should leave you to think more on it,” I said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come round and started to push. You have to make up your own mind. I just wanted you to know that I will support whatever decision you make. And I think you should...” 

Shut up Melissa... 

“I think you should do it. Should make the change. We have to. We have to go to Thailand and see it through to the end; become one another entirely.” 

There was a long moment between us, an absence of sound or movement. It made me uneasy, almost scared, because the relationship between Dahlia and I had never been normal – not since this had started. It was almost impossible to accurately predict anything about it within normal social experience. And neither one of us was quite right in the head – I acknowledged that too – especially her. 

I felt that I’d fucked this up. I knew I’d fucked it up. But then there was still this pause: this potential. There were still words to be said. It could still go either way. 

Dahlia inhaled; a simple sound that nonetheless rasped within her, as though the inner part of her was struggling to catch one last breath. She didn’t release it right away. She looked down at her distended arms again, stroking her round belly with one hand. She touched the ends of her brown bobbed hair and then pushed the thick frames back into place on her nose. Then she looked at me. 

There were tears in my eyes; in hers too. 

Still she said nothing. Still she hadn’t released that breath. 

I itched to speak myself; to somehow guide what was about to happen; but all my instincts told me not to; to keep my mouth shut. 

I tried to smile though – something reassuring and encouraging – and something changed in Dahlia’s face when she saw it; something almost violent; as though the effect of that crease in my lips was a stabbing blow to her somehow. I couldn’t conceive of what was going on in her mind; not really. 

The breath came out of her that she’d been holding. She took in another. Then she locked my eyes in hers and said, “We can’t change any further. We just can’t.” 

I couldn’t reply. I stared at her. 

“We can’t go through with any more of this, ever. It has to end right now. Right. Now.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe we pushed it as far as we have.” She let out a sad chuckle then she looked at me again and her eyes were clear; determined; set in stone. “I’m sorry Melissa. I know you’ve got your hopes up about this but I’m not going to go to Thailand and that’s definite. I’m not going to have an operation on my face. That’s never going to happen. This has been a great fantasy and everything; an incredible holiday; but we can’t let it carry on any more. It would be ridiculous. And dangerous. It would be insane. It already is. We both know that.” 

“But...” I didn’t know what to say. 

“I’m sorry. I really am. I know how much you’ve done for me and you’ll never know how much I needed it; to truly escape... but it has to be over now. It has to end.” 

“But...” 

“I’m not going to Thailand with you Melissa. I’m not going to swap places. We’re going to go back to England as ourselves.”

Chapter Six - Part Twelve

MELISSA 

I stood staring at her; at Dahlia. 

The potential that had existed for this thing to go either way; for the decision to fall in favour of either future path... It had existed as some magical, writhing creature all summer, escalating in tension as the stakes of our physical transformations had risen. There had been the tiniest smidgeon of it that first time she had asked to swap places, back at Summertop: the possibility of a real and total trade of places. On the side of the Dorset Way in the thunderstorm, when I had been contemplating ending it all and Dahlia had appeared like magic through the curtain of rain to offer a different possibility; it had been even more possible. Each day; each week; each month that had passed since then, had made the unreal potential of her really wanting to go all the way with this seem first plausible, despite its foolishness, and then seem actually likely. 

Despite her waverings and doubts since our arrival in Greece, I had allowed myself to think it could really happen; to coax her toward it, to push myself harder than I had ever pushed myself in my life; to even plan and book the facial reconstruction procedures, the plane tickets, the hotel rooms. 

It hadn’t been a done deal – of course I’d known that – but my confidence had grown anyway. I’d let myself believe it out of a necessity and desperation to have something to cling on to, and I realised now why that was. 

Because if Dahlia were to refuse then all power would be taken away from me. 

The potential had flicked back and forth between the different possibilities, driving me to frenzy – I hadn’t realised how enveloped in stress I had been and all the more over these last weeks. 

Because suddenly that whip-snapping alternation of potential was gone – the decision had been made – and it was suddenly blindingly clear to me how little power or control I had ever had over this. 

I thought I had. I thought when she relinquishes her name and handed it to me along with her purse and pin codes, that I was truly becoming the dominant one. I had set up the awful circumstances for her here at the Castle Hotel. I had refused to allow her to move over to a cushier life at my hotel. I had insisted on her learning the intricacies of my history and on lowering her standards and self-image so as to take her place within this iniquitous pit of cleaners and abuse cooks. 

I had become slim and beautiful like a princess in a fairytale, able to get... almost any man I desired. 

But here, finally, it turned out that I had no say in the matter whatsoever; not really. 

I wanted to go to Thailand and change our faces; really become one another. I had done everything; given... my soul to this; and now, with a few words she had shut that down forever with her smug, implacable, sad-faced conclusion. 

I had faced all my demons. I had accepted that I was wrong to be trying to take her life but I had pushed forward anyway, really damaging my heart in the process; accepting that lesser image of myself and embracing it; that corruption. Now, with her whim, she had made that sacrifice meaningless. She had cost me my soul for nothing in return. 

Everything I had done had been a waste, as her, now, she had simply snuffed it out. I had never had anything more than an illusion of power. All of this had been the playing out of this ridiculous rich woman’s fantasies and nothing more. Now that she had had enough, it was over. My feelings didn’t matter one whit. 

She stood there, looking at me and what was that in her tired, muddled, inebriated face? What quality was framed at last, in this moment when the potential of that fabulous future life was being ripped away from me? 

Her body was still but there was a quivering of energy beneath the surface of her face as though she were readying herself to speak further or show some sign of... something. My own gaze flicked from one element of her facial features to the next, waiting to catch the clues of what that would be. It was coming now. The moments of stunned silence were coming to an end. Yes. There. 

Her cheeks shifted; the line of her mouth the curvature of her eyes; and she took on a cast of... sadness... apology... and pity. Pity for me. For me! Who had had it all just seconds ago! 

I had been Dahlia Western with all the potential to remain that way forever; a rich, retired model living in a palatial home; beautiful, slender, perfect. And maybe I could have even gone back there to England and restarted that career, become the celebrity that she had been so afraid of becoming again. Maybe I could have gotten acting parts; starred in movies and really done anything I had ever desired. 

And now, instead, I had nothing. That potential had been whipped away from me by her whimsy; her stupid, pathetic, fucked-in-the-head, on-again/off-again fantasies; and all she could do; all she could give me back; was a slow look of condescending pity. 

I had never liked any of my employers. They had always made me feel like a second-class citizen; like they were supposed to be better than me, even though they weren’t, just by virtue of their wealth or position. I had resented Dahlia in just the same way. Of course, I had, with her beautiful house and perfect figure; her beauty that I couldn’t possess and her wealth and fame. But things were different now. When she had wanted to swap places, I had looked down on her and begrudged the ridiculousness of it all. I had scorned her unenviable descent into madness and alcoholism, even though it mirrored my own. 

But she had made me believe I could have this life. She had all but offered it to me. For that I hated her. I loathed her. Right now I wanted nothing more than to roar with pain and anger and drive her backwards through the very wall to plummet to her death. If there had been a balcony I might actually have done it. 

I. Might. Actually. Have done it. 

Thinking that now made my hands quiver and close into fists at my hips. It made the world contract about me until all I could feel was the burning rush of real rage in my head and shoulders – the rest of my body was ethereal – stabbing daggers of fury pressing through each of my eyes from behind, and the terrible vision of her crumpling face, looking at me as though she truly understood what her decision meant to me. 

She couldn’t understand, though I bet she thought she did. I bet she thought she knew exactly how hard it would be for me to step down from the plinth of her life and go back to mine. She had walked in my shoes all summer. I bet she thought she was a fricking expert! 

But it wasn’t about being fat. It wasn’t about being a cleaner, or poor, or ridiculed by those around me, or having no friends, or sinking deeper and deeper into vice and despair. 

It was about the total lack of potential – that was what becoming Melissa would be like for me again. To have had every possibility and then have it removed just because this debutante felt like it; as though my life meant nothing. 

Behind those sad eyes, was she justifying it all right now? Was she thinking, Hey, it’s okay! Melissa got to have an all-expenses paid long summer holiday. She got to lose all that weight. She got to see how the other half lives. 

And now she gets to go back to that loving husband of hers. 

That loving, fucking husband, Robert. 

Oh, how I had laughed about the lies I spewed her regarding him; at the misty looks she got to imagine having someone so wonderful to look after her. And now who was the fucking joke on? Who was doomed to go back to that; top live with him and return to the selfsame abuse that had dogged me all my adult life? 

Certainly not her. Not fucking Dahlia. 

Me. Only me. 

She could justify things as much as she wanted but we both knew my life was over now. I might as well have ended it in the Spring; walking out onto the dual-carriageway into the path of a truck. 

It didn’t matter what I’d achieved; the weight I’d lost. There was no way I would be able to maintain that when we went back; no way I would manage to cling on to any of the so-called advantages I’d achieved. 

The despair would return – it already was returning – and I would submit to it fully; I knew that. How could I not? I had no real strength of my own. I never had. I was a pathetic fake who had survived in Dahlia’s lie only by virtue of its fantasy nature. Once the real world smacked me back down I would crumble instantly. I would fall into the cogs of the humdrum world and be every bit as crushed as ever I was. The drinking would return. The self-loathing would return. The overeating and everything that entailed would return. 

Dahlia, in her well-meaning, utterly selfish fancies had lifted me up from the brink of ruin only to dash me back down again. 

I hadn’t been happy when we had started the swaps but I had been existing. How quickly had these games pushed me to realise that I couldn’t live my life anymore? Why would my future be any different now? 

And maybe it was lucky there wasn’t a balcony after all, because now it felt like it wouldn’t be her going over it, clawed beneath my rage. It would be me; stumbling into wilful oblivion as the truth of my wasted potential overcame me. 

And then suddenly Dahlia spoke and even in this she had the power to strip away this space I’d claimed for my emotions to run riot. Of course she did. She controlled everything. She always had. 

She fixed me in her gaze and locked me there and the sides of her mouth turned up, even has her brow crinkled inward and her eyes took on a mockery of sadness and empathy. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am. But it has to be this way. You understand, don’t you?” 

And she looked at me, expecting some platitudinal answer; something glib that exonerated her of any blame in the terrible ruin she was about to make of my life again, and I thought to myself, You fucking bitch. You fucking bitch to do this and then honestly think it’s okay; that I might make you feel better when all you’re doing is stabbing me in the back. 

And then I replied and there was venom like battery acid in my voice that made that dopey, sad-sack expression of hers flinch right off her face. 

“No,” I said. “I don’t fucking understand, you nasty, stupid little shit. I don’t fucking understand at all.”

Chapter Six - Part Thirteen

DAHLIA 

Melissa's words crossed the space between us in my cluttered little room invisibly, but they might as well have been accompanied by a swift physical swish of her arm; a blow to my cheek. I took a step back and came immediately up against a little set of drawers with dishevelled clothes issuing untidily from each slot. 

"What?" I said, but the word seemed immediately stupid. I could see her face. I had seen the rippling and disturbing chain of emotions pass through her features as I'd made my final statement of intent. To pretend misunderstanding now was naive and ridiculous but it just slipped out and I could see it made her even angrier. 

"You must think I'm a right idiot!" snapped Melissa, "a right mug, to treat me this way. You must have been laughing your ass off at me all summer. Is that right?" 

"What? No!" I stammered. "Of course not!" 

"No, course!" she cried. "You've used me for your fantasies from day one and now you're going to dump me to the side as though nothing matters - as though none of the sacrifices I've made matter. Sacrifices I've made for you!" 

Sacrifices? That brought me up short and I got a jet of anger of my own but I was still too taken a back to let it out. 

"I was happy with my life before you stepped in," said Melissa. "It wasn't perfect but I knew where I stood. I knew who I was. Yes, it was shit half the time but it was what I knew - it was all I knew.  Then suddenly you're there with your weird fantasies, coming down from your tower like you owned the world. Swap places with me Melissa. Become the lady of the manor for the day. How was I supposed to react to that? How was I supposed--" 

She stopped dead and gave out a vicious chuckle that contorted her face, making it surprisingly ugly. 

"But why am I asking you?" she said. "You don't have any clue. And that's the thing, isn't it? You're the princess in the castle, perched on top of the hill. You have been all your life. You've never been normal. You've never lived like an ordinary person. You have no way of empathising with me or the way any of this has made me feel because you have no genuine human connections. Everyone in your life has either been employed by you or spent their time sucking up to you because of your cash and looks. I bet you've never had a single genuine human connection in your life!" 

I raised my hands. I couldn't stand what I was hearing. "Melissa, stop." 

"So that what? So you can feel better? So you don't have to feel guilty about that you've done to me?" 

"What I've done to you?" 

Melissa smirked. "Oh, here it comes." 

I was genuinely flabbergasted. I couldn't understand her enmity. "What I've done for you, this summer... I appreciate that it has been to help me live out my... my fantasy... but you've..." 

"Come on." She nodded, flicking her fingers as if to say, give it to me. 

"You've had your bills paid. You've stayed in a penthouse hotel room for months. You've had liposuction operations and a personal trainer. I mean, look at you." I gestured with my open palm. "Just look at you. You're amazing. You're beautiful." 

Melissa gave out a laugh that choked off immediately. "Beautiful? Am I?" She laughed again harshly. "And how long do you think that will last when I'm not you anymore?" 

I stared at her, unsure what to say. 

Because ridiculous though it was, I knew exactly what she meant. 

I looked down at my own meaty arms and bulging torso. 

"You gave me a free holiday - great - thank you so much - an expense that meant nothing to you in the long run - but you gave me something else with it that you were probably too busy self-obsessing about to even consider, and now you're stripping both of them away. So yeah, take me out of my nice hotel suite and bundle me back to my shitty little house in Barton - I can't stop you - but know that the other thing you gave me is something that I'll never get back; something you set up and now you're snatching away." 

My brow creased. 

"Hope," she said. "For a better life." Another scratchy, sarcastic chuckle. "The idea that I, of all people, could have had something better." 

She went over to the bed and slumped down. 

"But that isn't going to happen, is it? I don't get any say in the matter. Of course I fucking don't. You're the princess. What I am?" 

She looked me in the eye. 

The words, You're my cleaner, came to my lips but I didn't say them. Of course I didn't. 

"So you dump me back down and I scurry back to my old life, is that the plan? Except now it's awkward between us and you can't keep me on anymore and so you give me my notice. And maybe a pay-off, just to make you feel better. Enough that it has no effect on your bank balance and no real lasting effect on mine. And then what? You hide away in your castle, getting slimmer again until you can pretend none of this ever happened and I get stuck with the shitty life for the rest of my days." 

I lowered my head. I didn't know how she wanted me to respond. How could I? What could I say that would make any of this better? She was right. 

"Do you believe in fate?" she asked suddenly. 

I pursed my lips a fraction but said nothing. 

"Let me put that another way," said Melissa. "That night in the rain, when you found me on the side of the dual carriageway..." 

I hesitated, picturing the torrential rain; instantly recapturing my own sense of hurt and loss, then nodded. 

"Where were you coming from?" she asked. 

I cleared my throat. "London. From a photo shoot that went... It didn't go well." 

"And then you drove a hundred miles north." 

I nodded. 

"And meanwhile I was wandering the streets of Barton as it got darker and rainier; and then exactly where you randomly stop, right there on the side of the Banbury Way of all places, I happen to be standing. Have you considered how unlikely that is?" 

I looked at her. I had considered it in fact and the coincidence had scratched away at me. 

"Well do you know what I was doing there?" asked Melissa. "As a matter of fact, do you know what my first thought was when you told me that you were going to dump me back in my old life was? Do you, from your ivory fucking tower, have any clue of the effect of your actions on the lowly plebs you lord over?" 

I started to shake my head. "Melissa, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean for you to--" 

"I was going to kill myself! Right there on the dual carriageway. Or here off a balcony. Do you get that? Does it matter to you!? Does anything matter to you really if it doesn't affect you and your fucked-up games directly?" 

She glared at me in undisguised hatred but I was completely taken aback. Had she really been as close to that that night in the rain? What if I hadn't come along? What if I hadn't offered this? Did I really have such impact on her? 

But look at us. Just look at us. 

Of course I did. 

"I do care Melissa. Of course I do. Your happiness is... it's important to me. You're my friend. I sometimes think you're my only friend." 

"Well you can think what you like. You know a person by their actions and you've decided to fuck me over - to cast me back into Hell." 

"It isn't like that Melissa." 

"Shut up." 

"It isn't like that, really. I just... I can't take this any further. Can't you understand that? I can't really become you forevermore. That's ridiculous. We were both crazy if we ever thought that we could." 

Melissa got up. She went to the little window and looked out at the shabby lot behind the hotel. A long silence between us began then went on. 

I stood, totally unsure of myself, second-guessing my decision and everything I'd said; trying to comprehend what she had told me and, more, to identify if she was right. Was I really some pampered princess playing dress-up, even now? Had I learned anything from this? Even becoming her for so long... or becoming this caricature of her... Was I even capable of understanding how an ordinary person felt inside? Or was I permanently placed on a different plane? Was it impossible for me to be normal, simply because I always had my escape hatch? 

I looked at her back, at her beautiful cascading hair. I went to speak but she beat me to it by a fraction of a second. 

"But maybe I'm wrong," she said. 

"What?" 

She looked back at me and held my gaze for a while and then something dark and glittering glimmered in her eyes. 

"I fooled myself into thinking I had influence over you; that I'd sort of become Dahlia already; but then I came here today and you took all that away with a few words, like I was nothing after all." 

I dropped my shoulders. "Melissa... You're not nothing.  Don't ever think that you are." 

"No. Leave that for other people to think, right?" 

"That isn't what I meant." 

"No? We'll have a think about this... Look at the way you look now. Look at me. Look at where we're staying and the identities we've been going as. How close we already look to our passport pictures." 

I frowned. 

"Fuck you having all the power," she said. "Maybe you don't have any after all." 

"What do you mean? Melissa..." 

"I mean you're stuck in Greece with no proof of who you are and we both look way more like one another than not. You can say whatever you want. You can tell me you want to swap back until you're blue in the face. You can refuse to go to Thailand all you like. There isn't a damn thing you can do to stop me going. I can get the reconstruction done and then good luck to you proving any different. You'll be a penniless cleaner stuck here. I'll be Dahlia Western. And there'll be nothing you can do to get back!"

Chapter Six - Part Fourteen

MELISSA 

I’d fantasised about this – Lord how I had fantasised about it: eight inches of rubbery, quivering ramrod pulsing in my minge as the magical prongs of my vibrator’s perfect little hand worked their wiles with my shuddering clit – but to hear the words come out of my mouth like that and feel my own eyes widen in surprise at the gall of it, even as Dahlia’s did in response to the shock... It was more than I could have imagined; more than I ever thought I would have the courage to do. 

She gaped at me and I think that was what I was doing to her too. I couldn’t believe I had said that. I definitely couldn’t believe I was really willing to go through with it. But it was suddenly out there like a bet on a spinning roulette wheel; the number chosen; the ball flicking into the air, already too late to stop; bouncing; bouncing; finding its place between impossible, lucrative success and terrible ruin, but certainly already, with no way to go back. 

And I didn’t want to go back. It was ludicrous. But now the words were out there, how could I retract them? All hope of reasoning and friendship was surely gone now. My outburst and insults had seen to that and if they hadn’t then this was a line that could never be recrossed because that threat couldn’t ever be rescinded, however preposterous it was. 

“Melissa... You can’t be serious,” stammered Dahlia. 

“I’m serious,” I said firmly. 

“Melissa...” 

I shut her down. “I’m serious. Look at you. You aren’t Dahlia anymore. You’re a grossly obese cleaning lady living in Greece. Nobody would ever believe you were or ever had been a super model. You could tell anyone you like. Nobody would take you seriously. And I look enough like you to use your passport now. I can go to Thailand and get the procedure done whether you’re there or not. After that I’ll be untouchable, especially with all your money.” 

She put her hands to her cheeks then half lowered them. “You can’t mean this.” 

“Of course I can and I do. Why should you have all the power to decide what happens to us? Why should you have any? You gave up that power to me when we first came here to Greece. You submitted everything. Without the money you used to have you wouldn’t even be able to pay your way home. It would take you weeks and months to even get back there. And then what? How could you prove anything with me way ahead of you, laying the groundwork, telling people all about how crazy you got while we were abroad; how your obsession with me had made you think you used to be me. I bet you might even get locked up in an institution, raving for the rest of your days about being somebody else; about being the beautiful lady you used to work for. And why not? People would nod. Why wouldn’t you fantasise about that? Who would want to be a fat, ignorant cleaner if they could be beautiful like me?” 

Tears were welling in her eyes but I sneered and walked away from her. “I can't believe I’m hearing this. From you, I trusted you. Is this... Is this what you’ve been planning all along?” 

I didn’t turn to face her. I said nothing. 

“Is it? It is, isn’t it? You’ve never been my friend.” 

My anger spiked. For some reason I didn’t understand my cheeks flushed and I turned on her. “Of course I have! I...” I glared at her. “You know, fuck you! Don’t fucking look at me like that! Fuck you! Because you can make me feel as bad as you want. We both know that you’re the one whose let me down. You’re the one who made the promises – by implication maybe as much as anything, but still you made them! You led me on; giving me more and more. We both knew where this was going. From almost the start. Certainly from that night in the rain. We both knew. And we both knew you were batshit crazy enough to go through with it if the fucking whim took you.” 

Tears were streaming down my own cheeks now and I wiped my nose with the back of my wrist. Dahlia gave a shake of her head but she knew the lie of that as well as I did. 

“And ever since then,” I went on, “we’ve been walking a frigging tightrope, or I have, knowing where it went and desperate for it to get there, but knowing that at any time, you could shake the rope, just because you felt like it, and send us both tumbling down. Desperate, I’ve been; and more than desperate. Every day I’ve woken up thinking we were inching closer to it really happening; really going all the way; and now, today, you stand there and start talking this crap about going back and bringing it to an end. So yeah. Why the fuck not? Why not take back control? Why let you have everything? And really; think about it... Who would believe you? There would be ways to prove who you really were, but who would ever take you seriously enough to even go down that route? Especially with the army of lawyers I could hire and the total lack of cash you would have. 

“I’ve worked for you for a long time now. I’ve watched you. You never leave that house of yours. You never meet anyone who matters. You've been out of the public eye for years. You don’t have anything like any real friends.” 

I paused, seeing the pain that was inflicting on her, and I almost faltered. But I didn’t. I went on. 

“Who would ever begin to believe that you weren’t really me?” 

She looked down, her face crumpling up, tears running freely round her pathetically distended cheeks. Then in a little whimper I heard a sound that actually chilled me, raising an instinctive reaction of anger and even hatred. 

“Katherine.” 

“What?” I spat. 

“Katherine would believe me. If I told her.” 

I glared at Dahlia. I knew that she was right. But another part of me knew that her own shame would never let her tell. 

If I pursued this; really saw it through like I was claiming I could; then Dahlia would simply cease to exist. She would crumple up and die inside. She’d stay here, unable to mount any defence. There would be now intercontinental chase; no grand battle of wills or courtroom drama; no scandal or denouncements through the media. She would simply disappear, never to be seen again as I took on and assumed her identity for the rest of my life. Her psyche was that fragile. Her will was that weak. 

“You would never tell her,” I said. “You’d be too ashamed. Just look at you.” 

She did and her quiet tears became louder, muffled sobs that shook her round shoulders and quivered her broad chest. 

My own tears stopped flowing but I hated myself that I could say these things. I did. I hated myself. 

“It’s over,” I said, crossing to the door. “I’m leaving. And I’m going to Thailand with or without you. You can please yourself. Come with me and do this together; live out the fantasy you wanted and take on my old life, or get dumped here with nothing and no real lasting identity.” 

Her shoulders went on shaking but Dahlia slumped down onto the corner of the bed. She laced her fingers behind her neck. 

I opened the door. Outside the corridor was empty. I stepped into it, looking back at her one last time. 

“Call me if you change your mind,” I said, "but know this. I’m not going to change mine. This is happening. There’s nothing you can say or do to stop it now. The only power you have is in how you capitulate.”

Chapter Six - Part Fifteen

MELISSA 

How could I describe what I felt as I cracked the door shut to Dahlia’s pathetic, squalid little room and marched away down the dank corridor toward the stairs? How could any single word encapsulate the range of emotions I was feeling? 

There was no word? How could there be? If my emotions were represented by a great wheel of fortune then it was spinning and flashing in every segment now, whirling too fast for its mounting perhaps, shuddering with a clumsy vibration set to derail it and send it skittering off. I was well over-excited but there was also a great darkness behind that wheel in my mind that threatened to engulf me if it did lose its mounting and shatter in a maelstrom of sparks and whistles. 

I reached the marble staircase and set off down, gripping the handrail far tighter than I needed to. 

All these months here in Greece and the weeks before, travelling between my house in Barton and Summertop up in Pinecrest, I had been carefully constructing an impossibly complex four-dimensional jigsaw in time and space, delicately balancing my manipulations of this strange, crazy, mixed-up woman. I had added piece after piece to the puzzle, laboriously... precisely... even gracefully in the hopes that I could lead her to lead herself to reach the conclusion that the change had to be permanent... or at least indefinite. And despite all of those efforts I had failed. My manipulations had not worked and she, in her supposedly well-meaning blundering had refused, destroying all my hard work; threatening to tear down every piece of that meticulously constructed series of half-truths and wiles. And now, in the space of what, five minutes? I had ripped my own construction to shreds. I’d thrown away all conception of quiet, friendly confidence and replaced them with a potent but clumsy and entirely brutal alternative. 

I had abandoned all my manipulations and coaxing and resorted to uncontrolled vents of emotion, direct confrontation and threats. 

I paused on the next landing and realised as I removed my hand from the rail that it was shaking. They both were. And the more I stared down at them, the more I realised that that quaking was running up my arms. It was in the centre of my chest making my heart rate erratic. I was sweating underneath my hair line and in the pits of my cheeks, between my shoulder blades and down into my lower back. 

I felt awful. I felt sick to my stomach. 

I had fucked up. I had really fucked up. 

Now that I was out of there I realised that. Of course I had. 

“Oh God,” I said. “Oh Jesus Christ.” 

Who was I kidding with that crap I had spewed? Not even myself now that I was out of there. The very idea of it was outrageous. 

That I could run away to Thailand and have my face altered without Dahlia being complicit? That I could go back to her life in England and hope to infiltrate and absorb it without her support and potentially; obviously inevitably; against her active attempts to stop me? It was a hopeless castle in the air. It was a ridiculous, childish fantasy that only existed in that room because I had been hip-deep in my temper tantrum. 

This wasn’t one of those shitty Disney Channel movies or some crap from a late night sci-fi show like the Twilight Zone. This was reality – or at least it was now I was outside that room and able to see the sunlight around me. 

I was as crazy as Dahlia was sometimes. I really was. I had been all summer; allowing myself to believe this was going anywhere at all. But to believe it could go anywhere without Dahlia’s total complicity was the worst kind of stupid. It was moronic, laughable and every bit as crazed as she was. I was ashamed of myself that I’d allowed myself to think it. 

I gave a single nasty chuckle that went straight to my heart in derision and misery. “Know this,” I’d said. “This is happening. There’s nothing you can say or do to stop it now. The only power you have is in how you capitulate.” 

What a crock of shit. It was embarrassing. She was up there now, laughing at me hysterically. I should have been laughing at myself. But tears welled into my eyes in a single flow that trickled and then stopped immediately instead. 

I went down two more flights to the ground floor and left the building. I went out to the pool area where the few dispirited guests about were sunning themselves. No one was in the water. There was a fine layer of dust on much of its surface that discouraged any kind of dip. Near the far side was a dishevelled-looking bar that an attempt had been made on to make it look both hip and tropical. Both had failed. I walked over and ordered a vodka martini, wolfed it and ordered a second. 

I sat on a tall stool, looking at the pool, just nursing it on my lap for a minute and a half or so, then I knocked it back in one and ordered a third, ignoring the raise of eyebrows that passed between the only other two people sitting there. They could go and fuck themselves as far as I was concerned. 

What was Dahlia doing now really? What was she thinking? Because surely that intense little series of moments had passed for her too now. Surely, she had snapped out of it as much as I had and realised just how pompous and stupid I must have sounded up there. 

So, she’d had a good, hard laugh at my expense. She’d imagined out the reality of me trying to actually steal her life: the easily traceable plastic surgery, the mismatched finger prints and DNA, the huge gaps in my knowledge about her life that any kind of determined scrutiny would root out if a breath of doubt was called into question. Had she realised how easy it would actually be for her to get back to England if she needed to, no matter how restricted her finances. It wasn’t that expensive and there was always money to be got... one way or another if you were desperate enough. And back in England, while I was pretending to be her, how eager pretty much any trashy reporter would be to run an exposé, whether it turned out to be true or not. 

Cleaner tries to steal life of ex-super model? Someone would grab that up and run with it and with only a tiny amount of digging I would be exposed and ridiculed. I’d doubtless be up on criminal charges. 

I shook my head and drank half of my last drink.  

What an idiot. 

I’d ruined everything. That puzzle of manipulation I’d been building had been my only chance. Success required Dahlia to go along with it completely and indefinitely. It required her to be so broken that she gave in completely and accepted she was never going to get back. It required something that, frankly, was never going to happen now... because she didn’t want it, and because I’d then gone and ruined any chance of calling it back. Basically, I had acted like a childish dick and it was over. 

Or... was it? 

Was there the slightest chance? Was there any chance left that I could pick up the pieces of my jigsaw and fit them back together? 

No. Thinking back at her face; imagining her now, laughing at my tirade and threats. No. There was no way back from this. I had never really had a chance in the first place. And if I ever had, I’d ruined it now with my tantrum. 

I looked up at the hotel, through the facade as though I had X-ray vision to see to the back of the building near the top where her room was. 

Could I... Should I go back up there? 

Was there the slightest chance of healing the breach between us? Was this my last and only chance to have one more go? 

I half slipped off my stool as though to start walking but stopped before my buttocks left the hard, split plastic. 

No. No. It was over. I had to just accept that. I had to go back to my own hotel and pack my stuff and maybe enjoy one last night of luxury before she came over to kick me out, fire me and start the process of hurling me back into my shitty old life of despair and self-loathing with Robert in Barton. 

Except... 

Except one of the crackling emotions on my wheel of fortune was a wild, fanatical optimism and another was desperation. And need. And horror of what was coming next. And maybe the tiniest particle of genuine, innocent hope. 

I stood up. 

I lifted the glass to my lips; held it away, looked at it. Set it down. Walked away. Went back. Drank it down. 

Then I set off back toward the hotel entrance. 

My hands were shaking again. I gripped them up tightly into fists but that barely helped because the shaking had gone back inside of me again. I could feel it all through my body. 

I had no idea what I was going to say to her when I got back up there. I had no idea what I was going to do. In my arrogance, I had counted myself a master strategist while I’d been planning this. That was laughable now obviously. I’d achieved nothing, despite all my best efforts. All I could hope for was some honest-to-God improvised last-minute brilliance now; some instinctual face-to-face persuasion that would turn things around from being made of pig swill to being made of gold. 

That sparking, fizz-popping optimism on my emotional wheel was dripping purple with pessimism now. The hope was a gleaming ember with almost no internal incandescence left at all. 

I crossed the crowded foyer and made for the stairs. 

“Uh, excuse me.” 

I went on walking. 

“Excuse me please. Miss Western?” 

I stopped and turned. There was a member of the cleaning staff on the ground floor holding a dustpan and brush in one hand and a spray bottle of cleaning fluid in the other. She had a coarse British accent and a faintly ugly face that smacked of low-born provincial roots. She was one of the cleaners here and the minute I saw her I knew who she was from Dahlia’s description. 

Her face brightened when I looked directly at her and I realised it was because she recognised me, as Dahlia. 

“It is you,” she said. “Oh my God.” She grinned, fawning, coming to the foot of the stairs. “I’m sorry to stop you. Oh God, this is amazing. I can’t believe it’s really you. I’d heard you were staying in Greece but I never thought I’d really see you to speak to. I’ve never seen a celebrity up close before.” She blushed brightly. 

And suddenly I felt completely different. Suddenly that wildly spinning emotional wheel wasn’t shaking fit to lose its fitting. It was running smoothly. It was damping down on the darker colours. 

It was telling me that all wasn’t lost; that this woman – this thick-witted bulldog-faced woman who had been unwittingly tormenting the real Dahlia Western all summer really believed that I was her. For real – even without the surgery. Even this close – five feet apart – though surely there must have been more to the story that I didn’t know for her to pick me out like this. She must have seen me already, perhaps over at the Satine Palace. I had a feeling from her red cheeks and neck that she was hiding something, though I didn’t really care anymore what. 

Suddenly everything seemed possible again. Everything. And that confidence was reconstructing the delicate pieces of that manipulative puzzle in my head again, telling me that there wasn’t just a small chance but maybe even a big one that Dahlia could be brought back round. 

“I was wondering if I could maybe get an autograph,” said the cleaner. “If it isn’t too much trouble. I wonder if that would be possible.” 

She was so sycophantic. It was kind of pathetic. And hilarious compared to the reports I’d been getting on the way she’d treated the real Dahlia. 

But I had no time for this now. 

“No,” I said,” Sorry. I’m busy. I have someone I have to see.” I started up the stairs. 

“Oh. Okay. Sorry for bothering you,” she stammered, falling behind, but I didn’t care about that. I didn’t care about her. I was going to do this. I could do this. 

I climbed flight after flight, my strong, athletic legs carrying me up to the dingy top of the hotel staff quarters quickly and efficiently, and as I went my confidence only increased. 

I could do this. 

I could do it. 

It wasn’t too late. 

I got to that top corridor and paused. I held my breath. I started walking again. Now my confidence faltered. Now the emotional wheel became rickety. That sense of confidence I’d felt downstairs became drained and weak. The boost that talking to Dahlia’s nemesis had given me wore off completely, leaving me more and more tense; more and more edgy. 

The closer I came to her door, the more it came back to me in unblurred clarity how outlandish my tirade had been; how preposterous my threats; how little power I ultimately held. 

I stopped half way there, breathing heavily, hating myself. 

I had to really make myself walk on again, and as soon as I did I realised that something wasn’t right. The corridor wasn’t as I’d left it. 

Her door was open. 

That made me stop again. 

This was it. This was the moment of final confrontation and that instinctive range of iridescent persuasion that I had hoped to summon, ready to coax Dahlia’s resistance away and stroke her doubts smooth was not there. I had no words. My mouth was parched. 

I should turn round and go back but maybe she was in there in the shadows and had already seen me. If turned back now she would only laugh the louder at my retreating back. 

Surely this was my last chance. My last ever chance to win her round. 

I forced myself on until I reached the half-cracked door. 

I put my hand on it, pushing it in and almost said the name, “Dahlia,” but glanced behind my down the corridor, thinking how odd that would sound if it was overheard. Instead I said nothing. 

The room was as dim inside as it had been. I thought I heard something shuffle but when the door fell fully back I realised I wasn’t sure after all. 

I stepped into the doorframe. 

Dahlia was nowhere to be seen. The room was as filthy and cluttered as ever. The light was off in the bathroom. 

It was empty. She wasn’t there. 

And now the emotional fortune wheel did start to shimmy off its frame inside my mind, every aspect of it losing cohesion as its sparks flashed brightly enough to blind. Its mount shattered in a firework burst of inner sensation that was acute enough to give me real physical pain in the real world. The blackness beyond it swept in, blotting out the world around me and extinguishing any final sense of confidence of optimism I might have had. 

Dahlia had gone. I had no idea where. She had gone and I had missed my chance to make this right. 

She had given me a calm and measured decision; a declaration of intent to chance back to being her true self and in return I had acted like a spoiled child, making ridiculous, incontestably moronic threats that only underlined the absurdity of this entire situation. 

And now she had all the time in the world away from me to reflect on what a traitorous ass I was; on just how badly I had let her down and tried to set her up; on how much I clearly hated her and always had, and on just what she was going to do next to ruin my life in return. 

It was over. All of it. 

And she wasn’t to blame. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She just wasn’t as crazy as I’d thought she was. If anything, I was the maddest. Of course I was. 

I had actually believed I would succeed.

Chapter Six - Part Sixteen

MELISSA 

My heart rate was elevated as I slammed the door shut on Dahlia’s room and hurried down the corridor back toward the stairs. It ramped up even higher as I hastily descended the stairs. 

I stopped on the lower corridor, glancing down the passage to see if Dahlia was there. She wasn’t. I went on further down, checking each level. On the ground floor I looked for the British cleaner to ask if she’d seen her, but she was nowhere to be seen. I hesitated, wavering, my body swaying as though I’d just stepped off a dizzying playground roundabout. I eyed the unmanned reception desk and went across. 

There was an electronic bell pusher with a cracked top on the counter for garnering attention but when I pressed it it made no audible sound. Most likely it was broken or out of batteries. I waited tensely, then sighed, squinting toward the gloomy back of the building. I checked the time. I went to the outer door and scanned the pool area; across to the bar. There wasn’t a sign of Dahlia. 

I went back to the reception desk and waited, pressing the silent buzzer again, then sighed heavily and went to the nearby door leading into the staff only area in back. I paused, unsure of myself, then pressed open the door. 

Beyond was a narrow corridor with doors running off it. No one was visible. In the silence I could almost hear the dull, throbbing, thump of my pulse in back of my ears. 

Feeling out of place and entirely uncomfortable, I passed this first portal and went to the next door. It looked like the kitchen. I pushed inside. It was dingy as hell: cramped and dirty. This entire building needed to be condemned. It would never have passed a health and safety inspection without some greasing of the wheels. Maybe that was how they did things here. Or maybe Greek health inspectors either didn’t give a shit or didn’t visit this place. There was nothing above board about it. 

The room was empty but for one man, a tall skinny native with a thin moustache, bags under his eyes and sallow cheeks. He looked both suspicious and bored by my appearance initially; then came the second wave of reaction as he registered my looks and figure, and despite my tension this helped to sooth me: the acknowledgement that he found me attractive. 

But then I got my own second wave and only felt anger, because I knew I was teetering on the brink of losing these looks again. They would start to slide immediately for sure, knowing the steepness of my depression, and be gone completely within a month or two as I squandered the progress I’d made by shovelling food in my gob from morning to night to placate the raging demons in my heart. 

The man said something in Greek but the shift in his expression as he saw my reaction illustrated that he could tell I didn’t get it. He shifted to English without waiting for a response to the first hail. “Yes? Can I help you?” 

“Yes,” I said. “I’m looking for someone. Uh Dah—“ I stopped myself. “Her name’s Melissa. Chapman.” 

His features shifted again and it was this shift that made the penny drop, just as it had when I’d run into the cleaner outside earlier. This wasn’t a random hotel employee. This was him. This was the nasty little shit who had been treating Dahlia so badly all summer. 

Hearing her name (my name), he evinced the kind of distaste one might reserve for picking up the soggy, decaying trainers of a teenage boy: that instantaneous combination of tactile and olfactory revulsion. It encapsulated everything he thought of her in a moment of what was, to me, clarity. It made me wonder if she had seen it in him or if he even saw it in himself. 

They were still seeing one another as far as I knew but he clearly hated her guts. It was striking in its obviousness. But again, I was sure somehow that he didn’t even acknowledge that himself. 

“I haven’t seen her,” he said, keeping his words measured with what seemed to be some effort. “She’ll be here later working. She has the middle of the day off.” 

“Thank you,” I said, turning my back on him and cursing to myself. 

I considered trying another door and asking around but that seemed pointless. Nevertheless, I wavered, pausing at an external door. I pushed that open and checked the little smoking courtyard outside to be sure. She wasn’t there. 

I hurried back to the foyer and left the hotel through the front door, going down the bumpy drive to the street. 

There was a shopping area with restaurants a walk away. I wondered if I should go down there and look for her or go back up to her room. I’d shut the door now so I couldn’t wait inside. 

I was so angry with myself for messing this up. I should have managed it all differently. Today had been a disaster. If only I could have rewound the day and tried again but all I could do now was try and salvage something. Or maybe that was the worst play. Maybe hanging around and trying to find her was the wrong move. Maybe I should have been giving her time and space to think. 

But then again, how could that help? The impression she’d been left of me was of a manipulative nutter with childish ideas about forcing her to swap lives with me. I’d blown our “friendship,” such as it was, out of the water with my outburst. All that crap I’d spouted... She must have thought I was crazy! If I left her to herself now then every minute she was just being given more time to dwell on what an idiot I was – how stupid an idea all of this was and ever had been. 

And that was the horror of this of course. It was stupid. It had never been sane or sensible to consider, for either of us, the idea of taking on the other’s life. Whenever I thought about it, it always seemed like something that couldn’t really be happening. It was just so preposterous! How did we even get as far as we had already? I had no idea. 

But I did know that this wasn’t going to go any further unless I could find her fast and try to mend the damage I’d done. Maybe if I could show her a calmer side and try to work back to persuading her. I knew she’d told me she didn’t want to proceed but just maybe she could be persuaded to give it a bit more thought. If given another week or so to think about it, maybe I could inveigle my way back into her good graces and persuade her to continue after all. 

“Oh Christ!” It was hopeless. It was mother-fucking hopeless. 

Feeling increasingly frantic, I hurried down the side of the road toward the distant tourist area. The pavement was largely non-existent and I almost hobbled myself in my heels several times within the first three minutes. I was far too tense and uptight. I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t coordinated. Half way there I made myself stop and pressed my hands to the sides of my temple. 

“Just calm down,” I murmured. “Calm down or you’re going to fuck this up even more.” 

That was the real worry: that I was so tense I’d charge on in there and make things worse if I did see her. I was supposed to be a master manipulator, carefully plucking the threads of my web as I drew her in toward my slavering jaws. I wasn’t supposed to be like this: All panic and flap, sweating and panting like a toddler in mid-tantrum. 

Why was I saw overwrought? Why couldn’t I calm down? 

But the answer was obvious. The question was moot. 

I was overwrought because I’d had a winning lottery ticket in my hand (or thought I had) and now, because of my own messed-up actions, that ticket was out of my fingers and fluttering away in a breeze just fast enough to be carrying it further and further from my reach. I was going after it, desperately, chasing it down, but every time I reached for it, the very action; the sweep of my frantic arms; was blowing a wind that pushed it further away. And there was a cliff just ahead. If I didn’t reach that lottery ticker before it got there then I would forever lose my chance and might as well pitch myself over the edge to my watery and rocky doom. 

“Just calm the fuck down!” I snapped at myself. “Calm the fuck down!” 

I pressed my hands tightly in on my head; hard enough for it to hurt. Then I hurried on, getting more and more frantic, just unable inside me to take hold of my rampant spirit. 

I could have had everything. I could have had it all. But I’d ruined things or I'd let her ruin them, and I’d only made things worse. 

All was lost and it was my fault. 

There was no chance for me to rectify this now. I’d blown it.

Chapter Six - Part Seventeen

DAHLIA 

Melissa had talked about synchronicity up in my room and, on the back foot as much as I was, it had only bewildered me. 

But after she had gone, when I simply couldn’t remain in that filthy room anymore; when I had been driven from the hotel building and found myself very suddenly outside on the street, alone, that concept had come back to me... because there was a taxi there waiting as though it were waiting for me; as though the universe had set it there so that I could leave that place quickly and quietly. 

When Melissa had left me upstairs it had been a physical relief tantamount to the release of clenched fingers from my throat but it hadn’t been enough. I couldn’t stay there anymore. I had to get away. Truth be told I wanted to leap from the window and sail up into the sky like a bloated balloon. I wanted the air currents to carry me above the clouds and into the jet stream; away to the far north; to England, to the Vale of Nockton, to my home at Summertop; to the downy covers of my bed. 

I left so soon after her I might well have run into her diminishing back going down the stairs, but I didn’t. There was no sign of her and then there was the taxi, waiting empty. 

I took it. 

Now, bumping along on the narrow, rocky road, I considered what Melissa had said about the coincidence of us meeting on the side of the Banbury Way that night. 

Was it true that she had been planning to end her life? Had my appearance prevented that? Or... only deferred it? 

Was there some force pushing us together; some fate nudging us to go on with this? I didn’t really believe the old stories about the yellow ghost of Nockton Vale and surely in the tales a magical transformation invariably occurred, but was it possible all this was the coerced scheming of that spirit; all p0loanned out and inevitable, no matter how much either one of us might thing we had free will in the matter? 

I lowered my eyes and shook my head, chuckling, despite everything; despite the trauma of the past half hour and the awful conversation I had just come from. 

When I’d got in the taxi I’d told him to just drive but I spoke up again now. I didn’t know where I wanted to go. “Could you just pull over here please,” I said. 

He struggled to catch my meaning so I rephrased feeling slightly ashamed I wasn’t making the slightest attempt to learn the local language. That time he got it and pulled to the side of the road. He left the engine and the clock running. The shopping area wasn’t far ahead. I considered getting out and going there; buying myself some food. That would sweep away this horrible tension. It would make me feel better. 

But that wasn’t who I was supposed to be anymore. If my claim was correct, I was supposed to be Dahlia again now; or be ready to be her. 

That was the problem though. I didn’t feel like Dahlia anymore, inside or out. 

I knew I didn’t look like her, fat as I was, but my habitual thinking was just so far away from the supermodel mode of thought she was supposed to possess. 

“She.” Dahlia. 

Even the name seemed like somebody else’s. I couldn’t think of her as being myself anymore. How could I hope to take control of the appetite I’d made myself assume while I’d been abroad? How could I ever go back now? 

I did want to eat. And I knew it would make me feel better. But maybe I shouldn’t. Surely, I shouldn’t. 

I sat there, struggling to decide, feeling hot and stressed, then I grumpily asked him to drop me at the colonnade up ahead where the first of the restaurants were. He did so and I paid him the small fair required. 

The first restaurant was pleasant enough, open to the sky out front with plenty of meaty dishes with mouth-watering photos on the menu displays. The place was a little bit trashy but it was cheap enough for the money I had on me so I climbed down the steps and found a table. 

The waiter who emerged from the back was pleasant enough and very encouraging but I felt uncomfortable being there. I had made my declaration of intent to end this. What was I doing treading the familiar path to gluttony, satiation and even more weight? 

He pegged me as British immediately and exuded a slightly creepy Grecian charm. “Hello, hello, my good lady. What can I get for you today?” He laid out the menu and I looked at it guiltily. “A drink perhaps while you wait?” 

I nodded and hesitated, faltering between asking for a Coke (fattening) or a cider (fattening and stress-relieving). 

“Please can I have some cider?” 

He grinned, nodded eagerly and vanished. I continued to sit there, staring at the colourful food photos inside the menu. 

It all looked so delicious and my stomach was rumbling. My mouth was a vacuum nozzle nowadays and my belly: the deep and unending catch-bag. 

I had told Melissa I wanted to put a stop to this. This was my chance now to throw some actual activity into that proclamation, but when the waiter returned I pointed awkwardly to the picture of two large lamb cutlets swamped by chips and garnished with salad. I felt like I was shrinking inside myself but he smiled warmly as though he felt I’d made the perfect choice. He exchanged the menu for my cider and slipped away into the back. 

I took the drink and raised it to my lips, taking a long draught. It was gloriously cool and refreshing and immediately gave me the dull-edged tingling of promised inebriation. 

I sat there, and now that I was still and I had this waiting period, my thoughts fell backward to the incident that I’d just escaped from; the time in my room with Melissa. 

I closed my eyes, shaking my head to clear the emotion that came with the memory. It was cringe-worthy; all of it; from start to finish. I hated that it had happened. I hated everything about it. My stress level flickered higher and higher in notches the more I considered it, my pulse rate going with it. But I needed to think this through. I needed to lay it out. 

It wasn’t enough just to run away from Melissa and that situation; pretend it hadn’t come to a conclusion. As far as she was concerned it clearly had. The threats she had made had been clear enough, shocking and incongruous to the person I thought she was though they were. 

Because this wasn’t over. I couldn’t hide from it. We were going to have to meet again and talk again and then, finally, we would have to come to a conclusion. This new conversation might be days away if I tried to delay it, but surely it couldn’t be staved off forever and for all I knew it might Melissa already somehow know where I was and be bearing inexorably down on me even as I sat. 

This might be my only time to think and to find my own mind and I had to use it. 

I had to come to my own conclusions while I had the head space to do so. 

Hand shaking, I lit up a cigarette, hating myself for doing so but needing it all the same. 

Then I took another draught of cider and tried to set it out in my mind; work out the way forward; plan for the inevitable confrontation that had to happen between the two of us... a final confrontation that would... that had to decide everything once and for all.

Chapter Six - Part Eighteen

DAHLIA

 

What did I hate most about this - this awful new status quo?

That Melissa had thrown off her cloak and unmasked herself as someone manipulative and even cruel, trying to use me to achieve only what she wanted?

That she had told me how trapped I already was in her cast-off persona?

That she had threatened to use all my stolen resources to keep me stuck and never let me be myself again?

Or that she was fundamentally right? That her actions didn't matter? That I had long since trapped myself like this?

I did hate the fact that she had been so unkind. I couldn't hold back that thought I: my new identity as being real, however close the contrary memories were in functional time. Once upon a time, with my wealth all about me, my life could have been perceived as a great flotilla of white sail boats, stretching up the river toward the sea, untethered; unhindered by any practicalities or concerns.

But there had been so many disruptions and distortions of that; my brother's and parents’ deaths,' the collapse if my career... With that fleet breaking up, Melissa had been the only person standing back on the last remaining raft, tossing me a life ring tied to a rope while the rest of the people in my life had been turned away from me. And it didn't matter that the name on the ring said HMS INSANITY, I was drowning - I had been for years - and she was there to save me.

How could that entire save have been a fallacy? Had she really been plotting against me all this time? Surely that wasn't possible, though from her own words there seemed no other possible interpretation. 

Melissa couldn't have planned it all - it was me that approached her in the first place about swapping - but it seemed as though she had gone on pressing; encouraging me when I faltered and pushing me toward what she presumably hoped was an inexorable conclusion: where I would end up surrendering my identity in its entirety.

Was that what she had meant in her tirade? It was so confusing to me now, to leech out the shocking truth from the expected fiction.

How long had she been plotting actively to usurp me? And how did I feel about that?

Because it was more likely that I felt I that I ought to be angry than that I actually was.

This was what I had wanted, deep down, after all.

From the beginning. It was what I had wanted.

I could pretend that wasn't so, but who would I be pretending it to? There was only me and the restaurant owner here and he didn't care as long as I paid for my food and ate up in good time.

He set my plate down on the table and politely withdrew. The glistening meat looked (and smelled) even more delicious than it had in the menu, drawing instant moisture from my salivary glands. God, I wanted it so badly.

How could I go back to being Dahlia? Surely, I was too far gone now.

I tucked in, loving the taste and the texture so much. It was delectable. I gobbled at it, letting each chunk enter and fill my mouth, the juices seeping into my every crevice. How could I have ever let food retain the distance it had for me, all my life? Playing out the part of a dainty sparrow-like model simply wasn't me. This was me; this voraciousness; this desperation to fill and fill the ever-gaping maw of my squirming, smiling mouth, as I struggled to cram as much as I could into what felt like the little time I had.

Was this how gluttons the world over felt? That there really was a limit... To the time... To the resources... To the health?

Suck it in! Devour! Before it was too late! A netted curtain laid across my life of struggles and stresses, blending one feature into the next such that there was little to no definition left; no stress; no conflict. No horror.

The restaurateur produced more cider, sweat gliding down his curling cheeks as he mumbled supplication. I accepted, asking for mayonnaise and pointing artlessly at a picture of some juicy garlic bread in the side order section of the menu.  His smile widened and he went to go fetch. I kept tucking in.

Now when I thought of Melissa, I felt a strange gust of that old wantonness. I felt the charge of arousal. It shocked me; especially with the other evocacies that had come to light in the intervening months since that had been what it had all been about. It made me stop with the next greasy chunk resting on my lower lip, gazing away down the street, questioning myself and my own quest; where I was meant for be going; who I was meant to be travelling with.

It was a revelation, suddenly as impactive as anything else that had happened, tantamount to something earth-shattering within me.

Because surely I was doing something now that Melissa had fallen into too when she had entered my room.

Both of us were victims of it. I could see that now so blatantly, but especially for me.

This - all of this - the decision of what to happen next - what our lives would become.

It had nothing to do with the other person and their needs or desires. It couldn't have. It shouldn't have. Our smouldering destinies should never be allowed to be determined by any such casual acquaintance; perhaps even beyond that and into the deepest kind of intimacy.

It wasn't up to Melissa to determine my future any more than it was up to me to determine hers.

We were two individuals on this earth, joined, but also far, far more separate. It was that distinction that needed to stay the path for us now, now the ever-entangling complication of our connections and pasts.

"My God!"

I clapped my hand round my mouth.

It was all so clear to me now. So clear.

I set my knife and fork down. I emptied the first glass of cider.

I reached up and took hold of my thick pebble glasses and took them off, lowering them to the table.

With my eyes closed, I lay them on the table to the side of my place and pushed gently back in my chair. I raised my head and looked up onto the street, knowing exactly what... exactly who I would see... understanding now about that perfect, swirling synchronicity that was around us at all times.

And through the tears and blur of my immaculately maculate vision, I saw her; the woman I knew I would.

Melissa; cheeks flushed, tears in her own eyes, her gaze bright and questing; yearning; desperate and frighteningly naive in its openness.

She saw me too and we shared a quietness, and then, with a gesture, I drew her on into the cafe.