anything until you’ve had something to eat.’ ‘Oh my God, I can’t!’ I think, shaky with panic and anger. ‘How dare Mrs Sansom ring Mum up! How dare she!’
‘Go and sit in the garden and I’ll bring you out something,’ says Mum. I sink into a deckchair at the far end of the garden and watch Mum walk towards me with a tray and a determined look on her face. ‘They’re trying to make you fat,’ whispers the voice in my head as I gaze in horror at the two thick slices of freshly cut bread, the slab of butter and tub of cream cheese. To me they are huge doorsteps, if not whole loaves, and the sight of the cream cheese makes me want to retch. I can’t eat it. It’ll fill my emptiness and I won’t feel light any more. I’ll never reach 7 stone 4. Tears pour from my eyes as I beg my mother not to make me eat. Fear flickers across her face, and it makes her angry. ‘You’re not bloody moving until you’ve eaten that!’ she yells, adding, ‘I rang your granddad up this afternoon and told him about you and you broke his heart.’ Then I howl.
A few days later I nip into Boots and weigh myself again – 7 stone 4. ‘Wow!’ I think to myself. ‘I can’t stop this now; I want to get to 7. I want to be 7 stone.’ I have something that is mine, but it’s a game that people keep trying to take away from me and I’m not going to let them. Manipulation becomes my middle name. ‘I am eating,’ I lie to Mrs Sansom. ‘I’m just going to lose a few pounds and then I’ll stop,’ I convince my friend Lisa, adding ‘but don’t tell Mum; she doesn’t understand.’ I start taking a sandwich with me to work. I make sure people see me put it in the fridge at work and take it out again at dinner-time. Then I go out for my dinner hour, and bin the sandwich in the town centre.
I buy a calorie-counting book which gives the calories in every sort of food you can think of, and a set of bathroom scales. Stupid with worry, my parents think I’m going to work out a sensible diet with the book and use the scales to maintain my weight. And I let them believe it.
‘Nimble bread – 55 calories a slice.’ I read the calorie book like a bible every night. ‘Weight Watchers soup, minestrone – 53 calories per can; apple – 50 calories; banana – a whopping 95 calories!’ The banana will have to go! By the time I get down to 7 stone, my periods have stopped and Mum is at the end of her tether. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘If you’re eating at work, that’s fine; but you’re going to have something in front of me each night.’ There are tears, rows and screaming matches. ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid, Claire. Are you trying to kill yourself? Think of all the starving children in Africa!’ Mum and Dad rant and rave. On and on at me they go until things get so bad, I give in.
Because I am so thin, I gain weight on just one meal a day. The game appears to be over, but inside I am still trying to outwit the enemy. Destructive thoughts race about my head. ‘Look at that disgusting fat body. I’m too big. I take up too much space. I shouldn’t have had that. I’ve got to be small.’
I am working in the children’s department when Kim Speight comes in for her interview. She’s wearing an electric-blue skirt, a leather jacket and carrying a fold-up umbrella under her arm. Her long brown hair has been tonged at the back into two fat sausages which bounce up and down as she walks upstairs to the office. ‘Snooty cow,’ I say to myself, peering at her from behind a rack.
‘I dunno,’ I think when Kim starts a week later. ‘Maybe she isn’t so snooty, and at least she’s someone my own age.’ So when I bump into her in the stock room, I say hello and we get chatting. The following week, BHS holds a shopping evening for staff and their families. Mum can’t make it, so Kim asks me to go with her and her mum. I go back to Kim’s house after work and her mum is really nice: she cooks sausages and jacket potatoes for tea, which are lovely. We have a real giggle at the shopping evening and go on to become inseparable: Sheila calls us the terrible twins.
I still see Lisa Duxbury, but not as often because she’s given up her Saturday job and is studying at college to be a hotel receptionist. Kim and I start going clubbing together and spend hours in her bedroom trying on clothes. Her parents live apart, and sometimes we go round to her dad’s for tea. Often he gets us a Chinese takeaway and he always has bowls of sweets and fun-size chocolate bars dotted around the house. Kim stuffs herself – Kim is skinny; and somehow it seems okay if I do the same. I rush at the sweets, excited by the forbidden. ‘This is bad; you’re bad,’ says the little voice as I chew and swallow and, afterwards, I hate myself.
‘What does your waist measure, Kim?’ I ask, eyeing her with envy. She’s bought the most beautiful royal-blue pleated skirt from Dorothy Perkins and her waist looks tiny. I’ve got the same skirt, but it isn’t as nice on me because my waist is bigger than Kim’s. ‘Twenty-two inches,’ she says. And with those three little words, the game cranks back to life. ‘Right,’ I say to myself, ‘I’m going on a diet.’ The delicate balance that has kept me at a steady 7½ stone tips, and sends me helter-skelter into the land of fun-house mirrors where thin is fat and food is greed, and the calorie book rules okay.
‘Do you girls want a Chinese?’ asks Kim’s dad, one night after work. ‘Yes please,’ says Kim. ‘No thanks,’ I say. ‘Are you sure?’ Kim asks. ‘You haven’t eaten much today.’ ‘I’m alright, I’m just not hungry,’ I lie. Kim chooses what I usually have – chicken fried rice, curry sauce and chips – and I want it so much. I watch her eat and, smelling it, I can almost taste it. I am hungry and cold and my body is growling in protest. I touch my tummy, but it isn’t there and I am temporarily sated by a sense of superiority. Later Kim and I go upstairs to change to go out. ‘Bloody hell,’ says Kim as I undress. ‘Look at your stomach – it’s gone right in!’
At work my uniform flops off me. ‘Wow! My legs have got longer and my bum’s disappeared!’ I think to myself as I run my hand down my skirt. ‘What an achievement!’ If someone offers me a sweet I say, ‘No thank you.’
There are rows at home and people notice at work. I am summoned to Mrs Sansom’s office where she and Mr Warner tell me that if I don’t eat properly, my parents will be informed and I’ll be suspended. My job entails running up and down ladders and lifting things, and it seems I am a danger in the workplace. I run crying to Kim. ‘But Claire,’ she says, ‘you know you’re not eating.’ The voice in my head is insistent: ‘They’re trying to make you fa-at!’
With all eyes upon me I have to go to the canteen every day and struggle with a salad. With Mum and Dad bullying me at home it is impossible not to eat, so once again the merry-go-round slows and I stop starving myself and put on a little weight.
A few months later Mum and I are watching telly together. A programme about a girl called Catherine Dunbar starts. I am riveted because the actress playing Catherine has the most beautiful long hair, and I want to grow my hair as long as that. It’s a true story about a stupid girl who worries about her weight one minute and stuffs her face the next. ‘What’s she doing, Mum?’ I ask when Catherine starts shovelling handfuls of pills into her mouth. ‘She’s taking laxatives,’ says Mum, and I can tell from her voice that it’s an awful thing to do.
‘You’re not going out of this house looking like a tart!’ yells Dad. ‘I don’t look like a tart,’ I protest. ‘Tell him, Mum.’ ‘Your Dad’s right, Claire,’ she says. I am into Madonna, big-time, and even dress like her. I wear big crosses and chains, gloves and masses of blue eyeliner. My hair is dyed blonde and permed, and I dry it upside down
