Thin Page 4

  Black

  Now it’s starting to show. You feel good, don’t you? There is the odd compliment, a special glance to the safety pins holding up your baggy trousers, the gaping waist of your jeans that hang from your hips. Just keep focused on the numbers. Don’t worry about what people think. Keep the numbers down. Don’t let them go up. Do anything before they are allowed to go up. Up leads to up and up, and suddenly you are spiralling out of control and the thought isn’t possible. It is not in this game plan. THIS IS A GAME, you know. You can stop … if you wanted.

  Just keep an eye on the others who are on the fringes of this board. Look at the girls all around you who are small and compact. Look! You are still bigger than them all. Simply compare the outlines of their forms to the obtrusive lines of your own shape: look at their small thighs, their tiny waists. Now see your curves and bumps and lines and reassert that willpower. Dig deep, Grace. Raise your game. Monday morning is a different day, a different week – a new start. Reduce your calorie intake and everything will feel different. Believe me, trust me. It will all be OK. Don’t let yourself fall here; don’t let them in.

  I bet you feel strange. You have nothing to say. You sit and you listen in but you don’t react. Watch the conversation bounce around the room. It’s not interesting because it’s not part of this great game. In fact, it’s distracting. It’s stopping you and it’s taking up your time. And time is precious. You are supposed to be focusing on the plan and with all this mindless, lazy talk, nothing is being achieved. What is the point of that? So you nod and pull smiles to agree with what is being said but really you are somewhere else. You are practically floating. How does it feel to become so transparent, so airy, so bodiless? Just don’t let the secret out. The feeling isn’t half so good if the opposition want to join in. Leave them to their cups of milky tea and sugary coffee.

  ‘Water, please.’

  Or, even better, Diet Coke, because the bubbles make you high and light and give you a full feeling in a nice sort of way. Could something better ever be invented?

  Numb the emotion. There is ‘nothing wrong’. Become the bluffer; you know you can do it. They are bound to offer you food and it is easier to take it and work out a disposal method. Wrap up your pasta in a paper towel and throw it down the toilet. Take out your microwave meal, put it on a plate, eat a little and then remove a big section to dispose of into the nearest bin. Make sure it is well buried. Return with just a little on your plate to cover your tracks. Even make a comment:

  ‘That was delicious.’ See how much I have eaten!’

  Even better, avoid the house at mealtimes and try and eat only on your own. The more you get out and about, the more you can forget to eat, plus all that extra walking kills off those nasty calories.

  If you are forced (with no option) to eat solid food then remember that running on the spot in the privacy of your own room can help get rid of the food: push that stuff out of your system. Push it. Squeeze it, Grace. Restrict and restrain.

  If you are having a bad day, one where things are getting on top of you, then push it hard for just a few hours. You will really feel the shakes. I guarantee you will have a good day after this. Awake to forty-five minutes of aerobics and eat an apple. Walk a couple of miles to the swimming pool and swim fifty lengths then walk home and repeat the aerobics session. Can you feel the body quiver? Can you feel the shake on the inside?

  Sometimes it is easier to stay inside. It is sick-making watching the outside world and all its fallacies. What is the point of caking yourself in make-up and parading through a pub? Sit tight, curl yourself up into an icy, bony ball and focus on making it right to the bottom of those scales. The world is loud and obtrusive. Watch them all letting go, drinking pint after pint, wetting their greedy lips. Lie down and feel how hard your body has worked – how good you can feel now you have battered it into submission. Lie and count the minutes slowly, one by one, and take yourself out of this world.

  Of course, the quietness won’t go down well. They will try and make you crack. They will suggest you aren’t yourself; perhaps you are depressed? But you are more yourself this way, this is the real you, not the false, outward-smiling one – you know, and you control, everything that passes your lips. You know exactly what you contain, how much it weighs and how many calories there are in each thing you take in. You are so in control it scares them. They marvel at your ferocious willpower. Believe me, they will never have such willpower.

  Just turn the conversation to them, put the onus back on their own messed-up, uncontrolled existences. ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine, honestly. I’m glad you care, but I can sort it out. Anyway, how are you feeling?’ It does the trick. Put them in the position of vulnerability and watch them squirm.

  Now, if you are starting to feel that things aren’t exactly as you wanted, just remember the strategy. Your case is very simple. There are just a few more pounds to lose. You feel, and look, much healthier. They really can’t have been looking closely before, because you had seriously chubby legs. Remind them that you know your body best and you definitely need to know it inside out. You need to make sure that if one ounce of fat develops it is squeezed out, refined, purified and beaten.

  I’m here.

  BANG.

  White

  Hazy white. Lying on the floor. Sit up and sit down and sit up and sit down. Fuzzy. Lying on the bed before sleep on the white sheet. Press up and press down and press up and press down. Things are light now. Slower, softer, gentle. La la la. Here we are. On to the next thing. Move along now. Look into the tunnel. Focus in. Walk in the white snow. Press each foot into the crisp, untouched whiteness. Lift your foot and place it down. Look ahead. Don’t turn round. Just keep looking at the seamless white stretched ahead of you.

  PLAY

  [There are five girls sitting around a wooden table in a pub. They are eating dinner. Four of the girls are eating plates full of hot food, one girl is eating a bowl of soup. This girl is Grace. A bread roll is perched on the side of the big plate on which the soup is resting. Grace picks up the bread roll and slides it off the edge of the plate on to the table. The other girls look at each other. The table is noisy with chatter until this movement of the bread. Then Grace interrupts the silence.]

  GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE): So, has anyone got their cases packed yet? I’m going to buy mine tomorrow. Mum is taking me shopping.

  GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): Don’t make me eat it. The bread roll.

  [There is silence again and then the awkward sound of cutlery indicating that each girl is eating louder and louder as if to draw attention away from the silence and towards the food.]

  GIRL 1 [bravely]: Grace, I don’t know how to say this, but do you think that you might see a doctor about things? I could come with you to see a counsellor?

  GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): Soup only. Liquid soup. No bread roll.

  GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE): Yes, maybe. That is very kind of you.

  GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): Not even one mouthful.

  GIRL 2: Don’t you want that bread roll?

  [Grace looks up and down as if to try and get away from their intrusive eyes.]

  GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE) [meekly]: No, no thank you.

  GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): Just the soup.

  GIRL 3: Can we talk about it? I mean … will you be OK when you go to university? Perhaps you could see someone there?

  GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): I ate that apple earlier so I can’t eat a bread roll now.

  GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE): Sorry?

  GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): Now, how many calories could potentially be in a bread roll of this size?

  GIRL 3: About university? Will you be all right because, well … we are … you know …

  GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): Maybe 120? Too many, don’t eat it.

  GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE): I’m fine. I’m fine, no thank you, thanks anyway, though.

  [The girls continue to eat and we see them talk to each other and to Grace but we do not hear what they are saying. Instead, Grace’s vo
ice takes over.]

  GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): I would cry if I had to eat the bread, not out loud, but inside-crying caught up in my mouth. Trapped and stuck tears in the goo of the thick, brown crusty bread. I don’t want to eat it. That’s how I feel. I can’t. I know that something might be wrong because I feel this way, but I do eat things – certain things. They probably think that I don’t. How would that be possible, not to eat anything at all? I couldn’t do it. I do eat. I did some work experience this week and I ate two packets of chewing gum and Tic Tacs (only two calories each!), and an apple and a banana for my lunch. I walked round the shopping centre to distract myself from eating. Things were shivery inside and I felt a bit hollow but I didn’t feel scared, not like the fear that I felt on Thursday night when people from the office took me to the pub. I ordered a jacket potato with tuna and probably butter and mayonnaise. I ate it all too, because with strange people it is harder to get away with it. Strangers make inappropriate comments and I want to make sure that they like me, so I go along with what they are doing. Also, I was starving and my tummy was hurting so I think I had to eat it. Other people in the pub had chips and greasy fried food. Then we were drinking, and at least I lost myself a bit there and felt a little bit less icy. The boy that I fancied said he fancied me back. He walked me to the bus stop and kissed me. It felt so strange, like I was floating off the ground, but not in a romantic way, more in a suspended, hovering, bodiless one. It’s like the back of my eyes have melted into my head and I feel a bit more distant. That is the way it is now. No bread roll, just soupy liquid and a glass of water. I’m afraid I just can’t eat much else.

  [The light is taken away from the pub table and towards a woman talking to a girl. The woman is Grace’s mum. The girl is Grace’s best friend. Grace joins them.]

  MUM: So, did you have a good day?

  GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE): Yep. Great. Fine. We just stayed in, watched videos and went into town.

  MUM [turning to Best Friend]: And have you eaten dinner? Did Grace eat some dinner at your house?

  GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): Don’t ask her that. I’m not a little girl.

  BEST FRIEND: Yes, we did … she did actually. Don’t worry.

  We had tea at my house. I’m keeping an eye on her!

  GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): Don’t talk about me. It’s so demeaning, having your little secret chats in the kitchen, conspiring behind my back.

  BEST FRIEND: Well, I have to go, but I’ll see you tomorrow.

  Are you OK?

  GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE): I’m fine. I wish you wouldn’t talk about things like that. I’m OK, you know. Bye-bye. See you tomorrow.

  GRACE (INSIDE VOICE): Better alone. Be quiet. Don’t give anything away. I am not a little girl any more!

  [Curtain closes.]

  Four

  It is a hot, slow September Saturday. Grace’s head is fuzzy and empty through hunger. She has only eaten an apple today. Mum is eating lunch with her friend in the cathedral café. Grace joins them. She stares at the food and orders a large Diet Coke. She eats some green salad too. Normal enough. There is numbness in the room. Everything is at a distance removed from her body. There are conversations flying off the walls and there is noisy cutlery and an intense smell of coffee. She feels her body pulse and her head throb. She walks to the car with Mum and they start driving. They are going to buy some things for university – a suitcase, some pots and pans and plates. Grace has picked out self-catering accommodation so that she doesn’t have to eat the university food. The thought of being fed, like school dinners, is too terrifying.

  Grace tells Mum that she is feeling tired. Mum implies that maybe it is because she isn’t eating enough and suggests that she makes her some food when they get home – some chicken and some potatoes. Grace chokes. There is a silence and a stiffening of her throat. The words get trapped. The throat won’t open to breathe or speak for fear that it might ingest something impossible. Food is now an impossibility.

  There are two words. Two small words, which open up a crevice of pain in the car.

  ‘I can’t.’

  Perhaps if the second word had been different, the blackness/whiteness of the controlling and the not-eating would have stayed, and the game would have carried on. Perhaps if she had said, ‘I don’t’, ‘I refuse’, ‘I won’t’, then it might have sounded like there was someone in there fighting, someone with confidence and energy, someone on a determined drive, at least someone recognizable. But now there was an admission. An admission so strange that the silence compressed the air to such a degree that everything went tight. In the ‘can’t’ there was so little fight, so little voice. Just non-oxygenated air.

  The car stops and there are tears and a strange, unallowable conversation which suggests that somebody is angry with her. The conversation does not exist in real time, but in a blurred slow-motion where things just fall out of mouths and into space. The very presence of this conversation threatens everything. Grace decides to improve tomorrow – she must cut back on those apples.

  Monday morning and things are grey. There is a doctor’s waiting room and two parents. Then they are inside the doctor’s office, and there are questions and speeches on her behalf. Everything is blank. Blank words and numbness. There is a heavy weight on her chest as she feels the walls of her breastbone stiffen. There is a prescription pad and a doctor confused by the entrance of three people who all look grey with worry, and one of whom looks very thin.

  Suddenly a voice: ‘She can’t eat. She won’t eat. At first she cut out sweets and chocolates, then all she would eat was pasta, then only rice cakes and tuna, and now … we should have noticed before, but we just didn’t know what to look for. It seemed normal – just a diet, and then a bit more of a diet – and now we are blaming ourselves that we have watched it get to this stage. Now she just seems sad. Not herself. She is secretive and quiet; she seems to be alone more. We don’t understand what is going on.’

  The prescription pad is put down. Parents are ushered out.

  There must be a conversation because it ends.

  ‘I think you have anorexia nervosa.’

  Then there are parents again and decisions and agreements.

  Then there are just tears. Endless, streaming tears. There is not even any energy to push them out; they just fall out of her eyes apathetically.

  And, secretly, there is a sense of pride and accomplishment. She now has a title: she is real and authentic. If she was an anorexic, then she was going to be the best anorexic there could be.

  They drive back home in cold silence. The noise of the car heater drowns out the sound of their breathing. For the first time in ages she actually isn’t hungry. Her tears fill her mouth as she sits, rocking herself in front of the fire, dribbling over a bowl of Special K.

  Five

  The evidence of Grace is still there: her make-up, her shoes, her toothbrush, everything still in place. The photos of her friends are stuck firmly on to the white MFI wardrobe with Blu-Tack, all smiling, all pretty, all ready. The wardrobe is filled with her clothes, hanging, not swinging, not moving at all.

  There are callers for her still. There are letters marked with her name and posted through the letter box by the regular-as-clockwork postman whistling down an early-morning icy drive. Does he know? This is a place where gossip trips along the cobbled streets. He knew about her A-level results – the postman – he heard her on the radio; she was being interviewed about falling standards (an appropriate topic for someone with such high ones) and he recognized the name. She didn’t like that – the lack of anonymity. Not a place for secrets or secret-hiders.

  The house is now filled only by a cruel silence and an uncomfortable hovering sense of emptiness, the Grace they thought they knew now distinctly absent. Mum and Dad sit silently in front of the six o’clock news. They sip their white wine and eat their tea. There is not much talking done. There is just loss and a hole, and vacuous feelings, which come from staring into the distance for hours with tired ey
es, plus a roller-coaster-style sense of a wave, or a drop, in the seat of their stomachs.

  They were not really watching at first, not deep-watching. Of course, as interested and engaged parents, they were always observing, looking out for stages and changes, indications and signs, of what their children might be telling them, or not telling them. But this specific something they did not know how to look for. And when it did arrive, it took a while to be able to interpret it, and decipher what it was all about, and where it was heading. It came suddenly, over the course of a short few months. It came without warning and it came silently. So silently. She was there; a vibrant, full, loving daughter, maintaining a balanced control. She was not excessive or extreme, she was not overly rebellious, nor acutely shy and quiet, she was strong and she was fun, or so they thought. Then she disappeared behind an invisible layer – a see-through layer – and all of a sudden she was gone.

  Dad and Grace go to the botanical gardens. They walk round and round. Grace feels a sort of excitement, tinged with a strange sense that she is outside of her body and that this can’t be happening to her. The cases are packed, her bedroom is cleared out, she surely couldn’t not go to university. How would that happen? How would that sort of thing work out? She has a room paid for, a place taken. What will they do when they call out the register and there is no answer to her name? What will the other students think about her? Will someone tell them the story, or will they just bypass it/her? Dad tells her that it is OK, those things will just be handled for her, because when you have anorexia people do things for you. Other people take care of the hard things, like ringing up a university and speaking to people over the phone, making cancellations, getting refunds, checking you out, without you having to do anything but listen through the door to phone conversations, where parents notify strangers of your illness on your eighteen-year-old behalf.