down to the shop floor, and I look forward to my morning break. Dinner is home-made lasagne or steak and kidney pie with vegetables, and a hot pudding like jam roly-poly and custard. I tell Mum not to do me tea because I am eating so much at work.
At the end of my work experience Mrs Sansom, the personnel manageress, calls me into her office. ‘We’d like to offer you four hours’ work every Saturday,’ she says; and I am so pleased. My hours are 10 a.m. till 2 p.m. and my wages are £5.53 a day. With my bus fare at 55p each way I am left with a grand total of £4.43 – but I think it’s a fortune. Soon after, the summer holidays begin, and a vacancy comes up for a Saturday job with more hours. I am thrilled when Mrs Sansom gives it to me and increases my money to £10.37.
That summer, when I’m not working at BHS, I spend my days at Alka Patel’s house. I’ve known Alka since infant school, but after Yvonne dies we hang around together. Alka is pretty, and can put on liquid eyeliner perfectly – being Indian she’s worn make-up since she was little. Her family are so different – Alka has to help with the cooking and cleaning before she’s allowed out.
I watch Alka making chapattis. Her little flour-covered fingers coax the doughy mixture into perfect circles: she makes it look easy and I ask if I can have a go. Well I huff and puff over this chapatti, and the more I labour the more leaden and lumpy it becomes. ‘It looks like the map of India!’ I announce when I’ve finished, and Alka and her mother laugh their heads off.
I am the only English girl Alka’s mother likes because she thinks I’m polite – she doesn’t realize what we get up to when she goes out. Once we get into a play fight with a couple of squeezy bottles of tomato ketchup. Up and down the street we dash, squirting each other’s bare legs red, and my sister from head to toe!
Back at school after the summer holidays, despair descends. I am still being bullied at school and abused at home. When I know I have to go to Granddad’s house after a day of bullying, I feel absolutely desperate. The abuse seems to affect me more now that I am 15. It had always felt wrong; but now we are doing reproduction in biology, I know it’s wrong. It isn’t the sort of thing a grandfather is supposed to do to his granddaughter, and I begin to think that if Granddad stops perhaps I’ll feel better. I make up my mind to say something next time I see him.
It is a Sunday afternoon when he comes round. I am sitting at the kitchen table pondering over my essay which is called ‘Why I would make a good head girl’. Whoever writes the best essay becomes the next head girl, and I really want to show my parents that I can do something. Michael and Lisa study hard but I don’t, and Mum and Dad always say that I don’t try. ‘You won’t pass, Claire,’ they said when I asked them to pay for me to do English ‘O’ level. Even my English teacher said, ‘I don’t know why you are bothering. You’re not going to be able to do it.’ Everyone thinks I am incapable; but I’m insisting on doing it, and paying to take the exam with my paper-round money.
Mum and Dad are getting ready to take the dog for a walk when Granddad turns up. My essay has to be in on Monday morning and I really want to do a good job. ‘Oh, no!’ I think to myself. ‘If they go out, he’s going to start on me and I won’t get my essay done.’ I begin to get stroppy, trying to start an argument in the hope that it might stop my parents going out. Dad ends up slapping my face, but they go out anyway.
I begin to write my essay, but can’t concentrate because I can feel Granddad all around me. ‘Give me a hug,’ he says. I put down the pen, stand up and give him as loose a hug as I can. I go to sit down, but he clings on like an old mollusc. ‘I love you, I love you,’ he mutters, rubbing my boobs. ‘Stop; just stop!’ I say, my heart pounding and my voice rising. ‘I don’t like what you’re doing!’ There, I’ve said it. His hands fall away from my breasts and tears fly from his eyes. He stumbles from the kitchen into the front room where he crumples into a pathetic heap. I follow and find him sobbing into his handkerchief, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry darlin’. I just love you.’ I feel really bad about upsetting him and start to cry too. ‘I’m sorry too,’ I weep, ‘but you love me in the wrong way.’ He wipes his eyes and is gone before Mum and Dad get home, but my essay never gets written.
We have some right laughs, Lisa Duxbury and I. She has a Saturday job at British Home Stores too and, being the same age, we’ve become friends. In the early summer of 1986 we are both looking forward to getting our exams out of the way and leaving school for good. She’s at Icknield High, but we meet up in the town centre after school.
One day we are messing about in Boots on one of those electronic machines that print out your weight. We have great fun jumping on and off the scales and ripping off the print-outs. I don’t even bother to look at the slip of paper, just stuff it in my skirt pocket. Later, when I’m polishing my ATC boots on a piece of newspaper by the back door, I remember the print-out. ‘I wonder what my weight is,’ I think, pulling it out of my pocket. 8 stone 2. ‘Wouldn’t it be good if it said 8 stone?’ says a little voice in my head, and I agree.
‘I know,’ I think to myself, ‘I’ll have an apple for breakfast, an orange for lunch and a banana for tea.’ I tell Mum what I’m going to do and she just gives me a look as if to say, ‘Faddy!’
Three days later the print-out says 7 stone 13. ‘It works!’ I say to myself. Up pipes the little voice, ‘Wouldn’t it be good if it said 7 stone 10?’ ‘Mmm, that sounds good,’ I think.
‘You’ve got to eat more than an apple, an orange and a banana,’ Mum says, having no nonsense. ‘I dunno,’ I think, inspecting myself in the mirror, ‘the scales say I’m losing weight but I think I’m getting bigger.’ Down at Boots again the slip says 7 stone 10, but the number isn’t magic any more and the voice insists, ‘Wouldn’t it be good if it said 7 stone 7?’
‘You don’t need to lose any more weight,’ says Mum, putting her foot down. ‘You’ve got to eat.’ ‘Okay,’ I say – anything for a quiet life. It’s June and I’ve left school early to start working full-time at British Home Stores, so it’s easy to tell Mum that I’m eating my main meal in the canteen.
When Lisa Duxbury comes to work on a Saturday, she says, ‘Claire, you’re only eating an apple, an orange and a banana and you’re looking really thin.’ ‘Don’t be stupid,’ I say. ‘I’m fat.’
‘Everyone’s stopping for a break, Claire. I think you should too,’ says Mrs Sansom. We are doing a Sunday stock-take and I’ve been asked to dress a set of mannequins – everyone says I’ve a flair for it. I’ve chosen emerald green and royal blue clothes, and am fiddling about with beads and bangles and having a great time. ‘Okay, Mrs Sansom, let me just finish this.’ ‘You can finish it in a minute, Claire.’ ‘Yeah, but I just want…’ ‘You can do that in a minute. Please go up to the canteen and have something to eat.’ The rest of the staff are tucking in to their roast dinners but I just have a glass of lemon. My stomach is grinding round and round like a washing machine. I am running on empty, but I’m high on an overwhelming feeling of control. I take agitated little sips with one eye on my watch: I want the lunch-break to end so that I can get back to being creative.
‘What did you eat at work today, Claire?’ asks Mum when she picks me up in the car. ‘Chicken, roast potatoes, vegetables,’ I say, automatically. ‘Liar!’ she spits. ‘Mrs Sansom rang to tell me you haven’t eaten
