The Flavours of Love by Dorothy Koomson

Author:Dorothy Koomson [Koomson, Dorothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781743514931
Google: 6dshAQAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00EDOBZGW
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2013-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

I am 29

‘I thought you’d stopped doing this, Ffrony. You said you didn’t need any help and you promised me you would stop.’

‘I didn’t promise. I said I’d try.’

‘Why can’t you just eat and stop this?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘This is killing me, Ffrony. It’s killing me that I can’t help you, that I can’t get you to stop this. Don’t I make you happy enough? Is it me preventing you from being happy enough to stop this? It’ll destroy me to split up, but we can do that if it means you’ll be able to stop this.’

‘No, no, no. That’s not what I want. I don’t want to split up. Never. I am so happy with you and Phoebe, I don’t know why I can’t stop, I just can’t.’

‘If it’s because you want to become thin, believe me, you’re thin enough. You’re perfect. I don’t love you for what size you are. I don’t care what size you are or what you weigh.’

‘I know. But everyone out there does.’

‘No they don’t. And if they do, so what? Why does it matter what people out there think?’

‘It doesn’t. But, if I lose a little bit more weight I know that no one will ever be able to say anything about the way I look. They won’t be able to think I’m a fat cow. They won’t be able to see there’s anything wrong with me. I only need to lose a little bit more.’

‘You don’t need to lose any more weight. You’ve never needed to lose weight.’

‘You didn’t know me when I was younger. That’s why I’ve kept all the photos away from you. I was huge.’

‘Even if you were huge, so what? What’s wrong with being large?’

‘What’s wrong with being large? Are you mad? There’s everything wrong with it. People look down on you, they think you’re lazy and greedy and unattractive. You can’t fit into clothes and everyone’s always got some statistic about how you’re going to die young because you’re so greedy and lazy.’

‘Thin people die, too. Everyone dies, no matter what their size. And I’ve read just a small amount about what you do and the permanent damage it causes: crumbling teeth, swollen salivary ducts, osteoporosis, irregular heartbe—’

‘Everything is so much easier and better if you’re thin. Life is easier and people treat you better. If you’re large you’re worthless.’

‘And do you feel any less worthless now you’ve lost all that weight?’

‘No.’

I manage to keep my pace normal, I do not tear up the stairs like I want to. I climb each one as though I do not have a volcano desperate to erupt inside me. I walk along the corridor towards the bathroom.

Exiting the toilet, the sound of a cistern refilling itself behind him, is Damien, Imogen’s eldest son from her first marriage. He is tall, athletic without being too broad, and wears his hair long and floppy, so – I’d imagine – he can spend a lot of time sweeping it back off his face or hiding behind it.

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