What Best
Friends Are For
by Sandra Crook
“Does my bum
look big in these?” asked Sue, peering over
her shoulder at her image in the fitting room
mirror.
Millie paused.
Sue’s bum looked enormous; in fact, not just
enormous, it had deep indentations where her
knickers cut into her ample buttocks, resembling
a cottage loaf wobbling on a bed of shiny candy-pink
lycra.
“Mmm…..I’ve
seen it look bigger” she said helpfully.
Sue glared at her.
“When?”
she demanded.
Millie thought for
a moment.
“When you
were pregnant, I think.”
“Great,”
snapped Sue, levering the leggings over her hips
and sitting down, flushed with exertion to peel
them off her dimpled thighs. Perspiration
trickled down her neck, finding its way into her
generous cleavage.
The assistant
appeared from behind the curtain, clutching a
pair of purple track suit bottoms. She gazed
doubtfully at the wrinkled pink leggings that had
expired on the changing room floor, now at least
twice their original size.
“Perhaps
Madam would be more comfortable in something a
little looser,” she said, nervously.
Sue snatched the
offering as the assistant scooped up the
exhausted, damp leggings, and, holding them at
arms length between her thumb and forefinger
hastily made her exit.
The changing room
was beginning to reach sauna-like ambience, and
the prevailing odour pricked at Millie’s
nostrils. She longed to be back out on the high
street breathing the fresh, if slightly nippy
January air.
Sue slid easily
into the baggy jogging trousers and tied the
drawstring cruelly into a tight knot round her
middle. She turned to survey her image in the
mirror and frowned.
“What do you
think?” she said, doubtfully.
Millie examined
her friend critically, one hand cupped round her
chin as if deep in thought.
Standing with her
legs apart, arms akimbo, and taking up most of
the slack in the joggers, Sue’s lower body
looked for all the world like a pair of shiny,
plump aubergines. It was eleven o’clock. A
skinny latte and a blueberry muffin beckoned in
Millie’s mind as she held her breath.
“Well?”
barked Sue.
Millie exhaled
slowly.
“Smashing.
They really make your bum look tiny,” she
said. “I’d get those, if I were you.”
Sue’s cross,
red face melted into a smile.
“Right.
That’s settled. I know I can always rely on
you to tell it like it is, Millie.”
Millie turned away,
and bit her lip guiltily.
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