‘Doctor Scotus — I have Rhys Williams for you.’
Rhys smiled at the twig-thin receptionist as she gestured for him to enter the office, wondering as he did so where on the spectrum of pleasantly plump to morbidly obese she was mentally placing him. She smiled back. Surely that meant he wasn’t too far gone. Not compared to the other people she saw.
She was a good advert for the Scotus Clinic — thin and elegant, with blonde hair that shimmered in the light. Rhys smiled casually at her, and she smiled a professional smile back.
‘Mr Williams.’ The voice was deep and confident, with a veneer of good fellowship. ‘Can I offer you a glass of water? I never offer tea or coffee, I’m afraid — the toxins they contain build up in the system, blocking the normal nutritional channels and preventing the breakdown of fat.’
‘Right,’ Rhys said, as the door closed behind him. He wondered what Doctor Scotus’s opinion of eight pints of Murphy’s Irish Stout was, and decided that he didn’t want to find out.
Doctor Scotus was tall and reassuringly thin. He wore a black suit with a high, round collar, the kind Rhys wished he could get away with, and a shirt so white and uncreased that he might have put it on just moments before. He had blond hair, brushed straight back from his forehead, but a lock or two had escaped and hung over his eyes. He looked to Rhys to be about forty, but there was something about his healthily ruddy face that made Rhys wonder if he was actually a lot older.
‘Nothing for me, thanks,’ Rhys said, extending his hand toward Scotus. ‘But thank you for seeing me at such short notice.’
‘It’s no trouble.’ Scotus’s hand was warm, hot even, but dry. ‘Well, Mr Williams, please, take a seat.’ He walked around the side of his desk, a massive slab of stone on top of an impressively architectural mass of wood. Apart from a laptop and a photograph in a frame, facing away from Rhys, the desk was free of all clutter. A broad window behind him showed nothing but bright blue sky. ‘Fifteen years of research has allowed me to develop an entirely natural process that works
‘Sounds great,’ Rhys said, looking at the chair in front of the desk. If it was a chair. It had no back, and looked more like a knot of pine with a padded seat and what might have been a knee rest. Gingerly, he slid into it. The knee rest took the weight of his body, stopping him from sliding forward. It was oddly comfortable, if undignified.
‘How did you come to hear about the Scotus Clinic, by the way?’
‘You were recommended by a… friend of mine.’
‘What was this friend’s name?’
‘Lucy Sobel.’
Scotus’s fingers danced across the laptop’s keyboard. He gazed at the screen, and nodded. ‘Ah, yes. Lucy Sobel. She responded well to our treatments. Very well. I presume you’ve seen her since?’
‘Yeah.’ Rhys shook his head. ‘It’s almost unbelievable. She used to be… big. Very big. Now she’s…’
‘Healthy,’ Scotus said, ‘and she will probably live for ten to fifteen years longer than she would have done before she came to see us. And those years will be good years. Years of mobility and clear thinking. It all links together, Mr Williams: heart disease, cancer, senility — all a result of the body becoming clogged up with fats and toxins. Material that it cannot use but has to carry around like a rucksack filled with rocks. My job is to remove that rucksack from your back and throw away those rocks.’
‘Don’t worry about the sales pitch,’ Rhys said, ‘I’m convinced. That’s why I’m here.’
Scotus glanced at Rhys’s body. ‘To be frank, you are not in as bad a state as many of the people I see. You’re probably two or three stone overweight. Regular sessions at the gym would probably shift that for you. And it would be cheaper.’
‘Considerably cheaper,’ Rhys admitted, looking away. ‘But it’s not that easy. I’ve thought about going to the gym, but I don’t really get the time. Not on a regular basis. And…’
‘And you are embarrassed,’ Scotus said. ‘I understand, Mr Williams. And I can help. I presume you were taken through the standard set of tests before you were brought to see me?’
Rhys shuddered, thinking back over the previous hour or so. The poking, prodding, weighing and measuring. The big pair of callipers that had pinched the spare tyre around his waist, measuring how much fat there was. The things he’d had to hold and push and pull to check his muscle mass. The tube he’d had to breathe into to see what his lung volume was. And all by professional young men and women who hadn’t even made eye contact while they were talking to him. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I was taken through them.’
‘Good. It’s important that we calibrate your physical attributes before we start the process.’ He moved the mouse slightly, gazing at the screen on his desk, and clicked a few times. ‘Let me just see what the results are. Body mass index… weight… height… lung capacity… Oh my.’ He sneaked a quick glance at Rhys. The sunlight streaming in through the window behind him highlighted what looked like a halo of stray blond hairs around his head. They seemed to be waving gently in the breeze, although the window was closed. Scotus reached beneath his desk. Rhys heard the sound of a drawer sliding out. ‘The good news is that, according to your physical profile, you will react well to the treatment. You have not yet travelled too far down the wrong path, and you should find the weight leaving your body rapidly, with no side effects.’ His hand reappeared above the surface of the desk, holding a small blister pack. He slid it across the desk towards Rhys. The pack contained two tablets, each about the size of a large mint. One of the tablets was yellow; the other was purple. Printed above the yellow tablet was the word ‘Start’. Printed above the purple tablet was the word ‘Stop’.
‘Does it come with instructions?’ Rhys asked.
Scotus laughed. ‘At least you’ve retained your sense of humour,’ he said. ‘I appreciate that. Too many people come through that door having lost all hope. They sit there, grey and dull, pleading with me to help them. You, on the other hand, still have a spark.’ He gestured towards the blister pack. ‘You take one tablet, with water, when you want to start losing weight, and the process will start. You take the other tablet when you have achieved the weight you find most aesthetically pleasing, and the process will stop. It really is that easy. You don’t have to avoid anything, like alcohol or drugs, but I would advise some changes in your dietary patterns if you wish the weight to stay off after you’ve taken the second tablet. My receptionist will provide you with a diet sheet when you leave.’
‘How does it work?’ Rhys asked. ‘I’m assuming… some kind of steroid?’
Doctor Scotus shook his head, and Rhys was struck again by those thin wisps of hair that seemed to float around his head like a halo. ‘Ah, trade secret, I’m afraid. The Scotus Clinic needs to protect its intellectual property rights in our revolutionary dietary treatment. It’s a cut-throat business, Mr Williams, and I do not intend that our competitors get a jump on us. Suffice it to say that they are a combination of plant-based esters and sterols distilled from a rare orchid that I discovered in the upper reaches of the Zambesi river. The orchid has yet to be classified by science.’
‘You’re an explorer?’
Scotus reached out for the framed photograph on the desk in front of him, and turned it around so that Rhys could see it. ‘I was, once,’ he said. The photograph showed a young man with long blond hair in a light khaki jacket and trousers. He was squinting, as if staring into the sun, and his face was glossy with sweat. Behind him, the background was a patchwork of different hues of green: leaves, vines, bushes, an explosion of plant life.
It took a few seconds for Rhys to realise that the man in the picture was Scotus. He looked only a few years younger than he was now, but he was at least twice the weight: his jacket and trousers were straining to contain the flesh inside, and his face ballooned out into a series of curves: cheeks, chin, forehead, all fighting for space on his skull.
‘My mission is to make people thin,’ Scotus said, ‘and my reputation is your guarantee. You’ve seen, from your friend Lucy, that the tablets work.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I couldn’t help but note from her records that the address we have for Miss Sobel is wrong. Do you know if she has moved recently?’
‘She moved in with her boyfriend,’ Rhys replied, ‘but I think she might be moving out soon. Is there a problem?’
‘No problem.’ Scotus smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s part of our regular follow-up process. We wanted to check that she was happy with the weight that she had lost. We do offer a money-back guarantee, you know.’
‘That’s good to know.’
‘Do you have Miss Sobel’s current address?’
‘I’ll get her to get in touch with you,’ Rhys said, cautiously. He thought he’d better check with Lucy first that
