Thin by Bowman Grace

Author:Bowman, Grace
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141905570
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2007-01-25T05:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

‘Surprise!’

‘Happy New Me.’

I have taken it into my own hands. I am good at this. I have made my own plan and it is something I can achieve. Everyone will be so surprised and pleased with me.

‘Ten points for making this work for you,’ they will tell me.

‘You can go back to being a normal girl now.’

And I will say, ‘You see, you just have to do it on your own. A few more calories every week for as long as it takes. That’s the way for me.’

They will marvel at how I can do it. But they forget my willpower, remember? I sit in my bedroom and I draw up my strategy. There are foods that I can eat – things from the ‘Yes’ list, and so I will just eat bigger quantities of them. Instead of one tomato, I make it two, and instead of 100 grams of cottage cheese, I scribble down ‘150 grams’.

I come in from the pub and I go straight into the kitchen.

‘Hello, I’m back.’

I take a plate (medium size) out of the cupboard (bang, bang). Listen to me, in the kitchen. Listen to me eating. I put small portions of my foods on to the plate: a piece of processed ham, two crackers, half a carrot and three low-fat crisps. The plate is full with a mix of different, brightly coloured foods. I take it into the room where Mum and Dad are sitting. I sit on the sofa and eat it all without stopping (chomp, chomp) and they watch me and I smile back at them, and I put the plate down on the arm of the sofa and tuck my feet under my legs. See what I can do!

In my 400-calorie-a-day-week I have plenty of low-calorie bread. Sometimes the supermarket runs out, and I wonder if all the other anorexics have got there before me. I dip it in my reduced calorie Cup-a-Soup: a whole meal in under seventy calories. When I finish I need to clean it up. It’s just the way I do things, or I start thinking about more food and it spirals. I could eat all day, I think, if I allowed myself. I don’t allow myself, of course. I keep things bare and hollow and cold. I make sure that things are all placed and neat and ordered.

400, 500, 600, 700, 800 calories … Nearly at four figures … and counting.

My friends are back from university and I go to the pub with them to show them that I am are better. Can they see the difference? I can feel it. I can feel every sour mouthful for hours afterwards. They drink half-pints of lager and lime and I stick to my usual. Sometimes my Coke tastes like it might be the full-fat variety. I make sure I ask the barman more loudly next time, ‘DIET Coke, my friend!’

If it is full-fat Coke, then things are out of place. I can’t concentrate on the conversation because

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