just want my family to understand me, but they are frightened by what’s happening to me, and fear makes them lash out. ‘What are you trying to do – kill yourself and kill us with you?’ yells Mum at the top of her voice. And Dad hits me across the face, hard. I go into hysterics, screaming so much that I can hardly breathe. I grab my handbag and run from the house. My brother tears down the street after me, but I am running so fast I give him the slip. Mum and Dad jump into the car and start to scour the streets.
I get as far as The Favourite pub and ring the McCanns. ‘It’s Claire. Please help me, please!’ I yell into the telephone. ‘Just tell me where you are, and we’ll come and get you,’ says Matt who’s picked up the phone. Ten minutes later I see Claire and her dad draw up outside the pub. As I come out of the building, Mum and Dad pull up as well. I run to my friend who bundles me into the back of her dad’s car. ‘You’re coming home with us,’ says Matt, getting out of the car to speak to my parents.
‘Come on, Claire,’ says Mum, peering at me through the car window. ‘You’re showing us up. Come home with us now.’ I bury my face in my friend’s shoulder. ‘What shall I do?’ ‘Stay. Stay with us,’ she whispers. But I’m scared to: I know my parents won’t like it. Matt’s saying to them, ‘There is no point taking her home and having a go at her. Your daughter is not well.’ ‘We just don’t know what to do,’ says Mum, starting to cry. I say goodbye to Claire and get out of the car. ‘Your daughter needs help; you’ve got to see she needs help,’ I hear Matt saying as I climb slowly into Mum and Dad’s car.
Too shocked to speak, we drive home in silence, and troop into the front room. Dad sits on the organ stool, looking beaten. Mum flops on the settee, her eyes fixing on her treasured photograph collection of pet Alsatians past and present. I curl up in an armchair in the corner and look at my lap. ‘I am so sorry,’ I say eventually, starting to cry. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’ ‘We’ve got to get you sorted out,’ says Mum softly. ‘I’ll make an appointment for you to see the doctor.’
‘What can I do for you, Claire?’ says Dr O’Donnell, looking at me over his half-spectacles. ‘I’m having bad period pains,’ I lie. ‘Can I have some Ponstan Forte?’ Period pain? I’m not even having periods! ‘Of course,’ he says, writing out the prescription and handing it to me. ‘Thank you,’ I say, picking up my handbag. ‘Is there anything else, Claire?’ he asks. ‘No,’ I reply, starting for the door.
‘Can you step on the scales for me, please?’ he says, casual as you like. I freeze. ‘Why?’ I ask. ‘I just want to have a quick check on your weight,’ he replies. ‘No,’ I say, panicking. ‘Why not?’ he says. ‘I can’t,’ I reply, fear creeping into my voice. ‘You look very thin to me, Claire,’ he says. It suddenly dawns on me that Mum must have been to see him. ‘Well, looks are deceiving!’ I retort angrily. ‘I’m about 8½ stone – that’s how much I am!’ ‘Well, let’s just check, shall we?’ he says, patiently. The floodgates open – ‘I can’t, I can’t!’ I weep. He walks round the desk, guides me back to the chair and pushes a box of tissues towards me. Then, after I’ve dried my tears, he says softly, ‘I need you to get on the scales.’ So I do, and I weigh just under 7 stone.
‘For your height you should be anything from a minimum of 8 stone 11 to a maximum of 10 stone 12,’ he says, consulting the Body Mass Index. He points to a red bit on a chart. ‘Your weight is right down here in the danger zone.’ Then he takes my pulse. ‘You are emaciated and your pulse is too low,’ he says, making notes in my file.
‘Have you heard of anorexia nervosa, Claire?’ he asks, putting his pen down and eyeing me over his glasses. ‘Yeah,’ I reply sullenly. ‘That’s what you’ve got,’ he says. But I don’t believe him. ‘No I haven’t,’ I insist. ‘What makes you say that, Claire?’ he asks. ‘Those people are really thin,’ I say.
‘Right,’ says Dr O’Donnell finally, ‘I’d like to see you every week and I am also going to refer you to the hospital, to someone who is experienced in these matters.’ Hospital! ‘Will I have to go to hospital?’ I ask, mortified. ‘You might have to,’ he says gently.
‘You shouldn’t have told them,’ says the bullying voice in my head. ‘That was weak, and now they’re going to make you extremely fat.’ An army of people are joining forces against me and I have to do something.
I tell Mum that I’m not going to take laxatives any more; but I lie and bury them under my bedroom carpet. I start to eat more regularly. For breakfast, I have a slice of Nimble toasted with the lowest of low-fat spreads. Dinner is a bowl of Weight Watchers minestrone soup. In the evening I have a roll with a wafer of cheese melted in the middle. It is a starvation diet; but I get away with it, because Mum and Dad know nothing about calories. They are just relieved to see me eat.
I am scared. I want to stop taking the laxatives which make me feel so ill, and I don’t want to end up in hospital. In a rash moment I give all my laxatives to Claire McCann. She puts them in her locker, and the instant she shuts the door I regret it.
I spin a story to Shirley, a girl at work, and she promises to get me some laxatives when she goes out at lunch-time. On her way back Shirley bumps into Claire and hands her the tablets to give to me. Claire goes ballistic. ‘Keep ’em, keep ’em!’ she shouts, taking all the laxatives from her locker and throwing them at me. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ I plead, scrabbling around the floor to gather up the packets and thinking, ‘I’ve pushed her too far.’ ‘I can’t deal with this any more!’ she yells at me. ‘Please don’t stop being my friend,’ I cry. ‘I won’t,’ she says, calming down, ‘but I can’t cope any more.’ ‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I’ll have a sandwich’ – anything to pacify her. So we go up to the canteen and I eat a sandwich. Afterwards I go to the toilet. I am so intent on getting rid of the food that I don’t notice that my friend has followed and can hear me throwing up.
In desperation, Claire McCann rings her GP. She gets talking to the doctor’s receptionist, who says that her daughter Lesley is anorexic and has been for years. She wonders if Claire and I would like to come to her house the following night to meet Lesley.
‘So you hide yourself in baggy clothes,’ says Lesley, eyeing me up and down. ‘I always dress like this,’ I protest weakly, feeling awkward. Lesley is quite a bit older than me, and has short brown hair and massive eyes. Her top half is very thin but her legs are quite muscular because she exercises so much. ‘You won’t have any friends – I don’t,’ she says. ‘They stick you in hospital where you won’t be allowed visitors; you’ll be made to stay in bed and they won’t let you wash your hair. But,’ she adds, ‘your hair will fall out anyway.’ It sounds barbaric. ‘You’ll lose everything,’ she continues, ‘so, stop! Stop it now while you still can.’ But I don’t know how.
I start going to Lesley’s house on Sunday afternoons: Mum would stop me if she knew Lesley was anorexic, but she just thinks Lesley’s a friend of Claire McCann’s. When Lesley picks me up in her Mini, she’s usually wearing a duffle coat to keep out the cold and her little nose is always red. Lesley is a hardened anorexic, but she does allow herself proper meals after she’s been to aerobics: I am subsisting on fewer than 250 calories a day.
‘Get in the car, skinny,’ says Lesley, eyeing my stick-like legs beneath my black skirt. I am feeling cold and ill. My eyes have started to sink in their sockets and Mum and Dad are in despair. Up in Lesley’s room I huddle
