Girls Under Pressure Read online

  “They just want you to get better.”

  “It’s all right for you to talk. You’re looking really thin yourself, Ellie. You’re OK. You’re not forced to eat huge mounds of mashed potato and drink great mugs of milk.”

  “Come off it. I’m still huge compared to you. So’s everyone. Zoë, you’re not seeing things straight. Look at yourself.” I pick up her stick arm, terrified my fingers might poke right through her papery skin. “You’re literally skin and bone. You’re starving yourself to death.”

  “Good. I don’t want to live. There’s absolutely no point, not like this, when everyone’s against me and my parents keep yelling at me or they cry and they just won’t understand, and all the nurses spy on me in case I can hide some of the food and they even ration my water now, just because I drink a lot before I get weighed. What sort of a life is it when I can’t even go to the toilet without a nurse hanging round outside, listening?”

  “So why can’t you eat a bit? Then you can come out of hospital and get back to school. Zoë, listen, there’s this fabulous new art master, Mr. Windsor, he’s really young and good-looking, and he’s great at telling you all sorts of things about art. I made a bit of a fool of myself in our first art lesson actually, it was dead embarrassing––”

  But Zoë isn’t listening. She’s not interested in a new teacher, or art, or me. She’s not able to think of anything else in the whole world but starving herself.

  She curls up in her ball again, her eyes shut.

  “Do you want me to go, Zoë?”

  She nods.

  I reach out and touch the awful unpadded jut of her hip. She jumps at my touch.

  “Goodbye, Zoë. I’ll come back again soon, if you don’t mind,” I say, patting her gently.

  A tear dribbles from under her closed eyelids.

  I’m in tears myself as I walk down the ward. The nurse looks at me sympathetically.

  “Did she give you a hard time? You mustn’t take it personally. Poor Zoë thinks we’re all conspiring against her at the moment.”

  “Will she get better?”

  The nurse sighs. “I hope so. I don’t know. We try to get the girls to a healthier weight and they have group therapy and individual counseling but so much depends on the girls themselves. Some of them get completely better. Some recover for a while but then go spiraling downward. And others––”

  “Do they . . . die?”

  “It’s inevitable after a certain stage. The body burns up all its fat and then starts on the muscle. The girls know what they’re doing but they can’t stop it.”

  I can stop it. I can’t stop Zoë. But I can stop myself getting to be like her.

  I still feel fat, even though I’ve lost weight. I’d still like to be really thin. But I don’t want to be sick. I don’t want to starve.

  I go home. Anna is full of questions but she can see I can’t really bear to talk about it. She’s prepared a salad for tea.

  “Oh, boring. I want chips,” says Eggs.

  “You can have crisps with your salad,” says Anna.

  She doesn’t say so, but this is a carefully chosen special meal for me: yogurt, strawberries, avocado, rocket and radicchio. Anna is darting little apprehensive looks at me. I nibble my lip. My head is automatically calculating calories, panicking at the avocado. I put my hand up to my forehead to try to stop it. I look at the plate of lovingly prepared nourishing food, so carefully arranged in rings of red and green around the yogurt.

  “This looks lovely, Anna,” I say. “Thank you very much.”

  I start to eat it. I bite. I chew. I swallow. Eggs is chattering but Anna and Dad are silent. Watching. Practically holding their breath.

  “It’s OK,” I say. “I’m not going to hide bits in my lap. I’m not going to spit it into my hankie. I’m not going to make myself sick.”

  “Thank God!” says Dad. “Oh Ellie. I can’t believe it. You’re actually eating!”

  “I’m eating too!” says Eggs. “I always eat and yet no one makes a fuss of me. We don’t have to have special salads for Ellie every day, do we?”

  “Of course we do,” I say, but I wink at Anna to show I’m joking.

  Dad gets all fussed and suspicious when I make for the stairs straight after tea.

  “Where are you off to, then?”

  “I’m going to do my homework, Dad. Honestly.”

  I’m telling the truth. Well, I’m not that fussed about my French homework. And I’m going to have to bribe Magda to do my maths for me tomorrow morning. But I spend all evening on my art homework, attempting a self portrait.

  I don’t just do one, I do half a dozen and they’re all hopeless. I peer into the mirror and I still see this fat frizzy-haired girl staring back at me. When I draw her she gets even fatter and she’s frowning, looking like she’s about to burst into tears.

  There’s a knock on the door. Anna.

  “OK, Ellie? I’ve just put Eggs to bed. Your dad and I are having a coffee. Want one?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She comes in the room when she hears me sigh.

  “What’s up? Oh, Ellie, these are so good!”

  “No, they’re not. I look hideous.”

  “You’ve made yourself look much fatter than you are—and you don’t look very happy.”

  “No wonder. I can’t draw for toffee,” I say, and I crumple them all up.

  “Oh, don’t! They were so good. Show your dad.”

  “No. I’ll have another go tomorrow.” I rub my eyes. “I’m tired.”

  “Me too.”

  “Anna—thanks for being so nice.”

  It’s a silly inadequate little word. Our English teacher always has a fit if I put it in an essay. But Anna smiles as if I’ve declared an entire poem of praise.

  She is nice. I’ll never love her the way I love my own mother. But if I can’t have my mum maybe Anna’s the next best thing.

  I go downstairs for my coffee. I have one of Anna’s homemade cookies too, savoring every mouthful. I’m scared I’ll want another and another, eating until I’ve emptied the tin.

  No. I don’t have to binge. I don’t have to starve. I don’t want to end up one of those sad sick girls in Zoë’s ward. I’m going to eat what I want, when I want. I can do it. I can.

  I sleep soundly for the first time in ages and wake up early, feeling full of energy. I feel like a swim but I can’t, because of Mick and all his horrible friends.

  I can. I’m not going to let those idiots stop me doing what I want.

  I put my swimming costume on under my school uniform and grab a towel. Anna is in the kitchen buttering rolls.

  “I don’t want breakfast, Anna.”

  “What?” She looks stricken.

  “Only because I’m going swimming. I’ll take a roll with me and eat it after, OK?”

  “OK,” says Anna.

  I don’t know if she totally trusts me. I’m not even sure I trust myself. I stride out toward the swimming pool but as I get nearer I start to feel sick. There’s every chance Mick and his mates will be there. I don’t know what they’re going to say to me, do to me. I slapped his face hard last time. There’ll be a lifeguard on duty so they can’t really drag me into the pool and drown me but they can still say stuff.

  If they called Magda a slag they’ll think up something far worse for me. I’m shivering now. I must be mad. I can’t go swimming.

  I can, I can, I can.

  I pay, I go in the changing room, I take off my clothes. I fiddle desperately with my new swimming costume, pulling it down over my bottom, then haul it up to cover more of my chest, tugging it this way and that. I still feel so fat, even though I’m thinner than I’ve ever been before. I feel my figure in the dark of the changing cubicle. I think of poor Zoë and her desperate delusion that she’s fat, even though she’s a seventy-pound skeleton.

  “I’m not fat,” I whisper. “I think I am, but I’m not, and even if I am, it doesn’t matter, it’s not worth dying for. N