I’d actually put weight on. Would you believe it. Six days of starving, really going for it, then it was as though something snapped inside me and I ate and ate. You can’t diet when you’re the one in charge of cooking and shopping. How can I sit down to a bowl of soup and a couple of slices of Nimble when Poll’s across the table tucking into toad in the hole? It’s no contest. Poll was delighted when I started eating again. ‘I thought as you were sickening for summat,’ she said, ladling out the custard. ‘You’ve been miserable as sin. Do you want to finish it off?’ I did, I had. Then I went up to my room and tried the basque on and it barely did up.
For a minute or two I was so angry I could have scraped my cheeks raw with my fingernails or banged my head against the wall until I saw stars. In the end I went downstairs, opened the kitchen drawer and got out the big scissors. Then I went back up and cut my grey cardigan to tiny pieces. Poll would be furious when she found out, but she could stuff herself. My thumb was burning by the time I’d finished and I had a red welt coming where the scissor handle had rubbed. That was good.
Stupid to get upset in one sense because I’d never, ever wear the basque; but still. It had looked nice before. Like I could have had another life.
The credits were rolling as Poll came in with the hot-cross buns, a whole plate of them. ‘There you go. I might have put too much butter on ’em, I don’t know.’
She’d cut her hand too with the bread knife, I saw, so there was also blood on some of the buns. I snatched a clean one and focused my attention back on the TV.
‘If you’ve been affected by the issues raised in this programme, then you can ring our helpline, or visit our Web site at www.talkinghelps.co.uk.’ Even though you couldn’t see him, the presenter’s voice was full of concern. I could imagine lonely women all over the country rushing to the phone to ask him how to sort out their lives. Then the credits finished and his tone changed to something more upbeat. ‘Have you experienced a holiday romance? Did you meet your other half on exotic shores? Or did your sloe-eyed lover turn out to be nothing but a foreign cheat? If you’re interested in appearing on a future show about long-distance love-affairs, why not contact us . . . ’
‘Bloody beltin’, these,’ Dogman mumbled. I tried not to look but I could see the mashed-up bun and butter in his mouth.
‘Bloody being the operative word.’
‘I sometimes reckon you’ve swallowed a dictionary,’ he quipped, spitting bun on me as he passed.
‘In that case you must have swallowed
Spot the Dog
,’ I snapped. ‘You’ve the vocabulary of a four-year-old.’
He grinned and showed more gluey bun.
‘Watch your mouth, you,’ said Poll. ‘Dickie’s never had your advantages. His dad used t’ beat him if he saw him reading so much as a comic. He never had a bedroom of his own, neither, used t’ have to sleep on t’ landing, didn’t you?’ Dogman nodded tragically. ‘So. Think on. And shift up. He’s come to watch the racing.’
Time to move.
‘I’m off to the library, then. I’m not taking Winston either, he can go in the back. I’ve revision to do.’
Poll didn’t think much of libraries. ‘Waste of a good building,’ was her verdict. Apparently when she was young, the school library was a seven-foot cupboard that opened right out, and it served the whole village too. ‘It was plenty big enough for a place like this,’ she told me many times; usually as I was putting my coat on, books ready by the door. ‘I don’t know what you want to keep trailing all the way up there for. It’s good telly tonight.’
Since its days as a cupboard, Bank Top Library’s come a long way. The front elevation is modern smoked glass and breezeblock while inside it’s cosy with its orange carpets and blue beanbag chairs, a fish tank, posters, funky mobiles. Best of all, in the far corner, there are three computer screens, because Bank Top Library is at last hooked up to the Internet.
‘Let me know if it cuts you off,’ said Miss Dragon, peering at the home page suspiciously. ‘It’s been misbehaving. I’m going to have to ring up. See how you go on, and come and get me if it disconnects itself.’
I watched her stride off. I almost love Miss Dragon, Miss Stockley to her face. She’s a stone-faced woman, traditional, solid. Everything about her says, I’m not here to be liked, I’m here to run a good library. Large-print Western, drugged-up political rant, historical passion; Miss Dragon knows instantly where to locate it. She stands behind the front desk and frowns as punters rifle through the books with their grubby fingers. She wears her grey hair bobbed, and always a print blouse under a long knitted waistcoat. You’d think she was a right old misery, but you’d be wrong.
The time blind Poll knocked
Pride and Prejudice
into a full washing-up bowl, she was lovely with me. ‘It’s the sort of thing I do myself,’ she said when I explained I’d had it propped open behind the taps because I couldn’t bear to put it down. She said it was nice to come across a youngster who appreciated the classics, and had I read any Dickens? I told her I’d once started
David Copperfield
and given up, and she led me to the D shelf and found me
Bleak House
instead. She said, ‘I shall ask you what you thought of this next time you come in.’ I was back in three days.
‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Didn’t you enjoy it?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘it made me cry.’
‘Do you wish you hadn’t read it?’
I thought about it. ‘No.’
She seemed pleased.
One month after that conversation, I was expelled from Bank Top Primary in disgrace and it was Miss Dragon who helped pick up the pieces. She even offered to come to my first parents’ evening at the grammar school, when she heard Poll wasn’t going. I sometimes look at Miss Dragon and I think, she wouldn’t have given up a baby and swanned off into the blue.
Nowadays she lets me have first pick of any books they’re selling off, and asks my opinion on the ones they order in new. My opinion; fancy. And when I mentioned to her about calling me Kat, she didn’t laugh.
‘Kath?’ She put a hand behind her ear.
‘No. Kat. With a K.’
‘Kategorically?
‘Katastrophically.’
‘I hope not. I’ll katalogue it in my brain, though it may take a while for my mouth to make the switch.’
I knew Miss Dragon wouldn’t disturb my research, and if anyone else asked, it was a school project. I typed in the Talking Helps address and waited for the page to load. Scrolled up and down, found the right link, and clicked.
Here we go, I thought.
Bulimics (people who make themselves sick after eating) often have LOW SELF ESTEEM. They may have experienced A MAJOR STRESSFUL EVENT in their lives. They may have difficulty dealing with NEGATIVE EMOTIONS such as ANGER or LONELINESS. Some people who suffer from bulimia say they feel an overwhelming NEED TO BE IN CONTROL of their lives by strictly monitoring what they eat. Almost all say they are under SOCIAL PRESSURE to be thin from TV, magazines, peers etc.
The site had clearly been put together by a panel of doom-merchants.
Physical Dangers associated with self-induced vomiting:
dizziness, weakness, confusion, temperature sensitivity, low blood pressure, high blood pressure, low platelet count, hyperactivity, chronic fatigue syndrome, brittle nails, hair loss, swollen legs, muscle wasting, cramps, bloating, constipation, diarrhoea, incontinence, coeliac disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, degeneration of the jaw hinge, loss of periods, infertility, tooth erosion, easily bruising skin, hypoglycaemia, hyperglycaemia, diabetes, anaemia, respiratory infections, hairiness, temporary paralysis, peptic ulcers, tearing of the oesophagus, gastric rupture, gastrointestinal bleeding, cancer of the oesophagus, cancer of the larynx, seizures, kidney failure, liver failure, brain damage, blindness, stroke, arrhythmia, heart failure, death.
Well, OK, but the main thing was you’d be losing weight.
I clicked onto the next page, but it was all about breaking out of the cycle and loving and valuing yourself, absolutely nothing about what to stick down your throat. So I called up a search engine and started looking for Eating Disorders. What I wanted was a sort of user’s manual.
I caught a movement out of the corner of my vision. Miss Mouse, Miss Ollerton, was wandering over, clutching a stack of books and looking sad. She always looks sad. She’s very nervous too, never looks you in the eye. I couldn’t imagine her doing any other job than this, living anywhere other than in this castle of words. I leaned over the screen casually, blocking out what was loading; occasionally it’s useful being so wide. Miss Mouse drifted past in her long droopy clothes, gave me a half-smile, and disappeared into the Hobbies and Crafts section. I could hear the gentle thump thump through the back of the shelves as she slid each volume into its correct place. Her skin and hair are so pale I think she sleeps inside a book cupboard.
When I sat back, the computer was displaying a blue sky bisected by a rainbow, and a sparkly waterfall in the bottom left-hand corner. Welcome to
Cherry’s Home Page,
it twinkled. It didn’t look like a site about making yourself sick.
Cherry-not-her-real-name was twenty, and at college in Wisconsin. Her hobbies were collecting buttons, horse-riding, and bulimia. She’d been bulimic since she was seventeen, and it was a
load of bull
that it made you ill. Her friends thought she looked great, and in any case it was her life and her body and if that’s how she wanted to run the show, who had the right to tell her otherwise?
There were links to
My Button Collection
and
Some Great Pics of Horses,
and
Cherry’s Guest Book
. In spite of myself, I had to check out the button page. Possibly what we had here was somebody even sadder than myself. I mean, buttons? Poll’s got about five hundred of them in a tin under the stairs, mainly boring old shirt ones of Vince’s.
Turned out she meant badges, which wasn’t quite so nerdy.
I have over 2,000 buttons! I have catalogued them as follows: Animals, Brand-Names, Drugs, Humor, Miscellaneous, Music, Places, Political, Portraits, Religious, Vintage.
I skipped to the Guest Book.
Congrats, Cherry, on your great site. You tell it like it is. I use a toothbrush!
was the first entry I read, from The Kookie Monster. Cherry had replied:
Yeah, I tried that one time, but it scratched my throat.
You weren’t using the bristle end were you?!!!
The Kookie Monster had typed.
Doh!
Was Cherry’s response.
Trust me to get it wrong! Ha-ha, only joking, stay Cool!
There was an emoticon of a laughing face next to some kisses.
In the next thread, Genius-Girl was tickling her tonsils with a ruler because she didn’t like to smell vomit on her hands afterwards.
Kind of appropriate as I’m a math grad.
Anni86 was still living at home with her parents, but she’d come up with a brilliant excuse for hogging the bathroom.
I say I’m using a face-pack and don’t like to be disturbed for twenty minutes. Then I turn up the radio real loud. I always make sure I dab a little of the face pack round the sink or on the taps before I come out, and sometimes I leave a smear round my hair-line or jaw.
That is so smart.
– Cherry
I’ll try that one myself.
– Forestsprite
Has anyone here used a proprietary emetic?
– Deepsouth
Too risky. You have no control over where you puke. People start asking questions.
– Genius-Girl.
Wanna swap some buttons? Mail me with your wants list.
– Maddyfan.
I unrolled the messages slowly, taking in the good bits. It was true what they said about the Internet, how it opened whole new worlds.
Thanks a bunch, girls,
I could have added.
It’s been a real eye-opener.
– Barm-cake.
I closed the site and heaved myself out of the swivel seat. With luck, racing from Chepstow would still be on for another hour.
*
Sometimes think I lost my virginity under a horse-chestnut tree, by moonlight. That there was moss under my head, and the leaves rustled as we moved together. Shadows played across his closed eyelids; I couldn’t stop looking at his beautiful sad face. ‘Your hair’s the colour of conkers,’ he whispered. The rain began to patter on the leaves as he entered me, but I didn’t feel it on my skin till afterwards. He whirled the stars around the sky the way a child waves a sparkler. There was no pain. ‘I shan’t go to university,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t bear to leave you now.’
I reckon Poll’s got an eating disorder, of sorts. That larder’s stocked for a siege, terrorist attack, deadly virus outbreak, asteroid collision, economic collapse, etc. Cissie says it’s to do with the war and being forced to make three square meals a day out of potato peelings and thin air. She tells tales of having to make tea-substitute (grate a pile of carrot onto a baking tray and dry it out on a low heat) and jam-substitute (mix in a pint of appropriate-coloured jelly and re-pot) or almond substitute (crack open a prune stone and dig out the kernel). She’s cooked with blackcurrant leaves, onion skins, dandelions and nettles; she knows a recipe for fatless pastry, can bottle fruit without sugar, and scramble one egg to feed two people (add half an ounce of cornflour in with your butter).
‘What’s for tea?’ the infant Poll used to ask her mother.
‘Three jumps at t’ cupboard an’ a bite at t’ knob,’ Florence would reply, flicking through her Ministry of Food leaflets. Desperate times all round.
It’s from these lean years, Cissie says, that Poll’s developed her skewed relationship with food. So we have
two
bread bins, one for bread, and the other for sticky no-brand cakes with lurid icing and foreign writing on the packet. She buys these off Chorley market, or they get brought along in tribute by the Dogman, and they don’t last two minutes. ‘It’s a shame to let ’em go stale,’ she’ll say, licking hundreds and thousands off her fingertips. For breakfasts we have tram-scotcher toast – slices two inches thick – and condensed milk sandwiches for suppers. In between it’s compulsive chain-snacking. The only reason Poll’s not built like a sumo is she’s Queen Fidget.