Authors: Ricki Thomas
“Cosmopolitan. We’re having lunch at the Italia Nostra, you know, the Italian on St Giles.”
“Very nice, I like it there, the oven-baked crestelle is my favourite, it’s delicious.”
Hope chuckled. “I don’t like Italian food, none of it, pasta, pizza, gives me an excuse just to have a side salad so I won’t put on weight.” Dawn’s smile faded rapidly, Hope patted her stomach, noticing the dulling expression, needing to explain. “Dawn, I have to eat out a lot, meeting agents, publishers, journos, all sorts. If I ate what I really wanted to eat I’d be the size of a house.”
Dawn washed various sentences through her mind, deciding which one to spring on Hope. “Two weeks ago, the run in with Pat.” The name caught in Dawn’s throat and she coughed lightly. “How much was true, about hating food, anorexia, all of that.”
Hope appeared guilty, Dawn wondered whether it was for the way she’d treated her mentor, or because of a poor relationship with food. “In answer to your question, no, I don’t feel remorse about the set-to with Miss Hinds. She was in the wrong, and my privacy was violated.” Dawn recoiled, she’d only thought the question, or had she actually voiced it by accident? How else would Hope know? She felt deeply uncomfortable, an experience she’d had several times in Hope’s presence, but it only served to intrigue her more.
“I do have a poor relationship with food. I make myself sick after eating, the physical bloat makes me feel disgusting. I try to avoid food if possible, situations where I have to eat. I tell the kids I’ll eat later, or I’ve already eaten. The act of masticating, swallowing, shitting, I try to avoid it all.”
Did she challenge Hope’s knowledge of her inner thoughts? No, of course not, she shouldn’t be so silly, it was just a logical coincidence. “Do you want to discuss it, try and work out why you feel that way?” She must have said it out loud without realising.
Hope’s light tinkle lit the room. “Dawn, I know why, and I told you and Miss Hinds. Eileen. My mother. All the other fatties of this world. You know, Mum had a fine figure when she was with my father. I don’t remember, but I’ve seen the photos. She’s taller than me, just a couple of inches, or so, I’m the runt of the family.” Hope found the comparison amusing, but Dawn balked at the diffidence. “Before she had Honesty she just drank all day, ate nothing but junk, always sweet things. Her weight went up and up, she just sat on the sofa, day in, day out, scoffing, getting pissed, dragging us kids up purely by presence rather than interaction. I hated it, the wobbling flesh, the smell of sweat and sores, leaked urine. Her body was covered in boils, pus filled acne everywhere, her face, neck, back. I mean, she pulled herself together eventually, and gradually slimmed down, but her worst was during my impressionable years. I was well and truly anorexic by the time she began dieting.”
“Were you hospitalised?” The metallic blue nail-varnish glistened as her fingers drummed her mauve stained lips.
Hope’s eyes caught Dawn’s, holding the stare. “Dawn, I’m way too clever for that. When they diagnosed me as anorexic, the school watching to make sure I ate lunch, my sisters watching to make sure I ate dinner, weekly weigh-ins, fuss, fuss, fuss, I hated that. I knew I had to get them off my back somehow. I went to jumble sales, got baggy clothes, wore layers and put stones in my pockets when they weighed me, got clever at making myself sick. I can even do it without using my fingers, I swallow hard, or eat marmite with a spoon out of the jar, that never fails.”
“Have you any idea how much food you actually digest, calories, or whatever?” Hope swallowed, she strolled to the water cooler, pouring a full cup. “Oh, sorry, I forgot to ask Gayle to bring some coffee in, do you want…”
“No, thanks, water’s fine.” Dawn realised that she had never seen Hope eat any of the biscuits brought in to compliment the coffee, and now she realised why. “I don’t eat much. If I get the tummy pains I’ll eat a mouthful of something. Maybe of tuna mayo, or a crisp, a bite of an apple. As soon as it reaches my stomach the pains stop. I maybe have five bites a day.”
“What about this afternoon, with you eating out, what will you do? Surely you can’t get away with a mouthful or two, someone would pick up on that, mention it in their write up?” Dawn had her palms raised, shrugging.
Again Hope laughed, the confidence in the suit keeping her formal, yet loose somehow. She was still the Efficient Hope who had been apparent a few weeks previously, but the trust between the two women had opened up a new level, an easiness that brought greater honesty, less skeletons hidden to rot away. “Dawn, I’ve been anorexic and bulimic for the best part of twenty years. I’m an expert at avoiding food without being noticed, and at covering my tracks if I chuck.”
“What makes you want to keep doing it? I mean, being sick strains your heart, rots your teeth, starving makes you…”
Hope stood abruptly, holding her arms wide. “Do you think I look unhealthy?” Baring her teeth. “Do these look rotten?” Lifting her shirt a little to reveal a beautifully toned stomach, devoid of stretch marks, skin tight over the bones but nowhere near as revolting as Dawn had expected. “I’m a naturally tiny person. I’m five foot nothing, a size four, my bones are small. But I’m strong as an ox, very fit, and I have a wonderful dentist.” Dawn frowned, quizzical, and Hope tugged at her teeth. “Crowns. Impervious to stomach acid. I have money, remember.”
Dawn raised her arms in submission. “Okay, you’re happy the way you are, I’ll let it drop unless you want to talk about it again. Can we talk about your mother? You’ve mentioned she’s now come out as a lesbian. Do you want to explore your relationship with her?”
Hope laid her elbows on the armrests, unaware that the jacket sleeves had fallen slightly to reveal several plasters on her forearms. Dawn averted her eyes, another subject for another day. Lids low, Dawn could see the intense blue working in thought, left to right, back, as she contemplated whether to honour her mother with paid time. “Yes, why not!”
“Were you close when you were a child?” Dawn crossed her legs, leaving her foot close to Hope’s, and the difference in their foot size amazed her.
“Yes. Until my father left, set us up in that shithole in Reading, Mum was great, good, she used to cuddle me, us, give us time.”
“You can see as an adult, though, that your mother must have been severely depressed after the break-up with your father, judging by the behaviour you’ve spoken about.”
Nodding, vigorously. “Of course. I know that, I can give credence to that, of course, it’s obvious. But that doesn’t make it okay. Fine, she was suffering, but so were we. Me, Faith, Charity, and then little Honesty too. She, or society, our relatives, everybody. We were children, they should have been looking out for us. Someone should have helped us.”
“You feel like everybody let you down.”
The first flash in a long while, Dawn had hit a wound. Her words were contrite. “I don’t
feel
like everybody let us down, they did let us down. Fact.”
“Okay, fair enough. How old were you again when you moved to Reading?”
“Seven. Seven innocent years. Then I had no choice but to grow up. I was an adult by the time I was eight.”
Dawn had no idea she was saying it out loud. “But sometimes you’re still a vulnerable child now.” A tear sprung in Hope’s eye, she roughly scraped it away, angry at her loss of control. “Take me through how you grew up so quickly, tell me what it was like.”
An ironic snort, the challenging blue was hidden as her lids dropped to aid her memory. “Where to start!” Her body slumped back into the chair, legs inadvertently lifting until she was curled neatly into the chair, a tiny child, tightly wrapped and dainty. “I sort of ignored it at first. When we first moved, I was having problems at school, we all were, you know, Mum making us wear our old uniforms, things like that. We all got bullied. So home was more of an escape then, whether Mum was drunk or not. Well, when we discovered jumble sales, got new clothes, well, me more than the others, I dropped my posh accent and picked up the Reading slang, that made me fit in more.” Dawn raised her eyebrows, her client’s crystal vowels were perfect BBC English. “Soon I had a few friends, especially Tracy, she was great. She lived just around the corner from me, and I spent most of my time after school playing at hers. Rarely I brought her home, but I was embarrassed because of the smell, because of Mum. The whole house reeked of cigarettes and alcohol, and she was more often than not passed out.”
Dawn checked her watch discreetly, they had plenty of time. “Am I right in remembering that your Mum was pregnant at this point?”
The eyes opened, and a sadness drifted through, a vacant sorrow that touched Dawn’s heart. “I knew her tummy was getting bigger, but so was all of her, and I was only seven, the youngest, I had no idea there was a baby in there.” A deep sigh. “Everything changed when Honesty was born, the whole dynamic of the household. Mum let herself go even further, we, well, me and Faith, we took it in turns to skip school, make sure Honesty was fed and clean.”
“How old were you now?”
“I was just over seven and a half when Honesty was born.” Her voice began to grate, pain rattling from hidden depths. “I loved her so much. Why did that bastard take her away?” She breathed deeply, moments to minutes, reburying the hurt before it snatched her away. Dawn quietly collected two cups of ice-cold water, shivering from their chill as she carried them back to the table. Hope’s eyes were closed, the edges of her lips pushed down, tense and unhappy.
A silent minute passed before she was ready to continue. “Tracy went to lots of youth groups, she was always at something or other. When Mum was passed out I would go with her.” Her voice lowered to a growl. “They were run by the school, I think, one by the church.”
“That’s one thing I’ve been meaning to ask, actually.” Dawn leaned forward, chin onto her hands, the rapid drop in the room temperature forcing a shudder through her shoulders. “Religion. You all have classic Catholic names. Is it important to you?”
The legs came down and Hope was sitting erect, the fire from her eyes burning into Dawn, searing her brain and squeezing her soul. Her nails dug into the armrests, scratching, wounding. Her words were clear, slowly meted for maximum effect. “I. Detest. Religion.”
Dawn felt as if she’d been thrown from a cliff top, the anger was so acute, and she realised they had reached a pivotal point. She needed to dig deeper without opening the festering wound too far. The physical effects of Hope’s insane anger were something Dawn had never witnessed before. Fisted hands shaking uncontrollably, speedy, shallow breaths, a glimmer of sweat on her brow, and, most frightening to Dawn, the blue had left her eyes, they were hollow pools of black, wide, furious. “I don’t want to talk about religion.”
“Okay, okay, no problem.” A wave of unexplained fear passed, and she crossed her arms against the chill in the room. “Let’s go back. You went to some groups.”
The rage seeped away swiftly, the moment gone, but certainly not forgotten to Dawn. Religion appeared to be the core of Hope’s rage, but why? An elaborate fairy tale, a few moralistic nods. Maybe some parts were hypercritical, but not enough to project such an extreme level of angst. If she couldn’t mention religion, she’d have to dance around the subject some other way.
“The Friendly Club was one. One of the leaders, Griffin, he really took to me, took me under his wing, if you like. He let me talk to him, tell him about what it was like at home.”
“Did he do anything about the situation at home, call in Social Services, or anything?”
“He didn’t have to. Mum took an overdose when Honesty was two months old. We went to a children’s home while she was in hospital. It was horrid. You know, she was always passed out, drunk, but at least we were at home, at least we felt secure with our surroundings. Going to that place, it was dreadful. It was the only one they could find that could accommodate all four of us, and it was for kids younger than us, well, me, Faith and Charity. Charity was the eldest there.”
“How long were you there?”
A dismissive wave, Hope was relaxed again, but her feet remained on the floor. “Only two nights, Mum had her stomach pumped, a rap on the knuckles, and a promise of a counsellor in maybe two years time, you know how the NHS is.”
Dawn knew better than to nod, but she understood. If you were seriously suicidal you had no hope with the waiting lists and lack of resources.
“Because Honesty was a baby they insisted on keeping her in a different wing to us. We sat there, in this room, bloody unwanted pieces of shit, surrounded by toys too young for us, kids too loud for us, wishing we were at school, at home, with our Mum, with our Dad. But the nights were the killer. We had a room to ourselves, it was small, and had bunk beds, and a mattress on the floor. Charity had the top bunk, Faith had the bottom, and I had the mattress. Once all the noise and bustle had died down and the toddlers had gone to sleep, all we could hear was Honesty’s plaintive cry. Faith and I, we both tried to go to her, but they told us off, sent us back to bed, but we knew she needed us, she missed us.”
Hope’s face was contorted, she was holding back tears, and Dawn guessed that if she hadn’t been immaculately made-up for the interview, she wouldn’t be inhibited about releasing them any more. “Faith and I cuddled up on her bunk, we cried, just wanting to console our baby, shower her with love and let her know she wasn’t alone. She wanted her Mummy. She wanted us.” She swallowed hard, the soreness of her throat was apparent from the grating in her voice. She reached for the water, now warmed enough to drink, and sipped, gulped, draining the cup.
“Mum was back from hospital when we were brought home. She was sober. Clean, dressed, her hair was brushed. She had some new glasses. Our new social worker, her name was Jeanne, she wrote down her number and told us to call her if we needed her, fat fucking load of good that was because Mum kept a lock on the phone.” The familiar ironic snort. “But she was good, Jeanne, because she came round regularly, she talked to Mum, to all of us, she cooed over Honesty. It felt like she really cared.”