Thin (5 page)

Tactic 4:
Now the game slows down. OK, so you don’t have much energy, but you need to stick to the task. Just take a single plane. Focus in and don’t relent. Watch how the longings to move and eat and think and do just disappear. Purify everything, make yourself purer, better. Squeeze out the fat cells one by one.

Tactic 5:
You need to be quiet now. Don’t make a fuss and don’t let the opposition know what you are doing. This could be a fatal error. An interception now could be your downfall. One inkling of your strategy and they will be in there with the fish and chips and pasta and all the nasty things you have stopped eating. You just don’t eat those things, OK?

Tactic 6:
Stick to your patterns. The ones that make you comfortable. The strategies that keep you sane and driven. You need to keep driven to succeed – to be the best girl. Top marks. Top girl. You will soon find yourself waking at the same time each day, eating the same foods. There are foods now that make you feel repelled. How can people be so sloppy with what they ingest?

Tactic 7:
Things are really going well for you now, but to make it better you need to bring in some exercise. Start with ten minutes a day. Exercise is a good solitary activity. Your competition is all those other fat and lazy people who aren’t doing anything. Imagine them all lying on their sofas while you are succeeding, slimming and winning.

Tactic 8:
BANG. BANG. I’m here. Can you hear me? I am the winning spirit. The voice to take you beyond the place you currently inhabit. Can you believe that we have become such close friends already? Thanks for inviting me in. You know that I’m not going to leave. I can’t possibly leave. You opened a crack and I shifted my way into place. I am there every morning, all day and all night to help you win this. We can do it together, against them all. Best keep everything on the outside clean and tidy so no one can get through to you. I won’t let them. Let’s make sure it all looks spick and span. Dirt penetrates just like food, and we must keep it out. Keep the control. Don’t slip. Don’t make one wrong move now or it will crash BANG down. BANG BANG BANG BANG. I’m here, Grace.

Tactic 9:
OK, so we need to keep this quiet. People are looking strange on the outside now. Just fold up. Folding up makes us smaller, and that can only be a good thing. That sick feeling which is permanently inside, that’s me keeping the crap out. The one thing they always get you to try, especially the girls, is alcohol. Just think how bad you will feel in the morning with all that slosh inside the pit of your stomach. Become the ‘friendly driver’ of the group. That will make everyone like you. Stick to Diet Coke with lots of ice. Just better make sure you locked the car door. Did you lock the car door? Is it locked? Do you want to go back and check and double-check? Can’t get it out your mind now, can you? Best plan the route home, and again, and have a backup, and second backup. Is it time to go already? You haven’t said a word. Just keep chewing gum and playing with your mouth and your packets of cigarettes. Stop the thinking.

Tactic 10:
They have got their eyes on you. You thought this was going to be easy. They were miles behind, but now they are starting to really play. You could do with taking a step back now. Move your pieces. Get out of their sight-line. Already you have to make concessions, taking the slices of toast that they offer you with a big smile. That smile really hurts. The numbers are starting to go up. They must be. It might not show on the scales but they are bound to climb if you don’t keep an eye on things. Already they are trying to break the routine that you have so carefully planned and implemented. Pah. There is no way now. Not a chance. They are all too frightened of saying the wrong thing. Their hand is weak, they aren’t going to show. You can carry on with your next move. They don’t believe you. They don’t make the connections. Congratulations. Phase one over. It is all black or white.

Black
Now it’s starting to show. You feel good, don’t you? There is the odd compliment, a special glance to the safety pins holding up your baggy trousers, the gaping waist of your jeans that hang from your hips. Just keep focused on the numbers. Don’t worry about what people think. Keep the numbers down. Don’t let them go up. Do anything before they are allowed to go up. Up leads to up and up, and suddenly you are spiralling out of control and the thought isn’t possible. It is not in this game plan. THIS IS A GAME, you know. You can stop … if you wanted.

Just keep an eye on the others who are on the fringes of this board. Look at the girls all around you who are small and compact. Look! You are still bigger than them all. Simply compare the outlines of their forms to the obtrusive lines of your own shape: look at their small thighs, their tiny waists. Now see your curves and bumps and lines and reassert
that willpower. Dig deep, Grace. Raise your game. Monday morning is a different day, a different week – a new start. Reduce your calorie intake and everything will feel different. Believe me, trust me. It will all be OK. Don’t let yourself fall here; don’t let them in.

I bet you feel strange. You have nothing to say. You sit and you listen in but you don’t react. Watch the conversation bounce around the room. It’s not interesting because it’s not part of this great game. In fact, it’s distracting. It’s stopping you and it’s taking up your time. And time is precious. You are supposed to be focusing on the plan and with all this mindless, lazy talk, nothing is being achieved. What is the point of that? So you nod and pull smiles to agree with what is being said but really you are somewhere else. You are practically floating. How does it feel to become so transparent, so airy, so bodiless? Just don’t let the secret out. The feeling isn’t half so good if the opposition want to join in. Leave them to their cups of milky tea and sugary coffee.

‘Water, please.’

Or, even better, Diet Coke, because the bubbles make you high and light and give you a full feeling in a nice sort of way. Could something better ever be invented?

Numb the emotion. There is ‘nothing wrong’. Become the bluffer; you know you can do it. They are bound to offer you food and it is easier to take it and work out a disposal method. Wrap up your pasta in a paper towel and throw it down the toilet. Take out your microwave meal, put it on a plate, eat a little and then remove a big section to dispose of into the nearest bin. Make sure it is well buried. Return with just a little on your plate to cover your tracks. Even make a comment:

‘That was delicious.’ See how much I have eaten!’

Even better, avoid the house at mealtimes and try and eat
only on your own. The more you get out and about, the more you can forget to eat, plus all that extra walking kills off those nasty calories.

If you are forced (with no option) to eat solid food then remember that running on the spot in the privacy of your own room can help get rid of the food: push that stuff out of your system. Push it. Squeeze it, Grace. Restrict and restrain.

If you are having a bad day, one where things are getting on top of you, then push it hard for just a few hours. You will really feel the shakes. I guarantee you will have a good day after this. Awake to forty-five minutes of aerobics and eat an apple. Walk a couple of miles to the swimming pool and swim fifty lengths then walk home and repeat the aerobics session. Can you feel the body quiver? Can you feel the shake on the inside?

Sometimes it is easier to stay inside. It is sick-making watching the outside world and all its fallacies. What is the point of caking yourself in make-up and parading through a pub? Sit tight, curl yourself up into an icy, bony ball and focus on making it right to the bottom of those scales. The world is loud and obtrusive. Watch them all letting go, drinking pint after pint, wetting their greedy lips. Lie down and feel how hard your body has worked – how good you can feel now you have battered it into submission. Lie and count the minutes slowly, one by one, and take yourself out of this world.

Of course, the quietness won’t go down well. They will try and make you crack. They will suggest you aren’t yourself; perhaps you are depressed? But you are
more
yourself this way, this is the real you, not the false, outward-smiling one – you know, and you control, everything that passes your lips. You know exactly what you contain, how much it weighs and how many calories there are in each thing you
take in. You are so in control it scares them. They marvel at your ferocious willpower. Believe me, they will never have such willpower.

Just turn the conversation to them, put the onus back on their own messed-up, uncontrolled existences. ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine, honestly. I’m glad you care, but I can sort it out. Anyway, how are you feeling?’ It does the trick. Put them in the position of vulnerability and watch them squirm.

Now, if you are starting to feel that things aren’t exactly as you wanted, just remember the strategy. Your case is very simple. There are just a few more pounds to lose. You feel, and look, much healthier. They really can’t have been looking closely before, because you had seriously chubby legs. Remind them that you know your body best and you definitely need to know it inside out. You need to make sure that if one ounce of fat develops it is squeezed out, refined, purified and beaten.

I’m here.

BANG.

White
Hazy white. Lying on the floor. Sit up and sit down and sit up and sit down. Fuzzy. Lying on the bed before sleep on the white sheet. Press up and press down and press up and press down. Things are light now. Slower, softer, gentle. La la la. Here we are. On to the next thing. Move along now. Look into the tunnel. Focus in. Walk in the white snow. Press each foot into the crisp, untouched whiteness. Lift your foot and place it down. Look ahead. Don’t turn round. Just keep looking at the seamless white stretched ahead of you.

[There are five girls sitting around a wooden table in a pub. They are eating dinner. Four of the girls are eating plates full of hot food, one girl is eating a bowl of soup. This girl is Grace. A bread roll is perched on the side of the big plate on which the soup is resting. Grace picks up the bread roll and slides it off the edge of the plate on to the table. The other girls look at each other. The table is noisy with chatter until this movement of the bread. Then Grace interrupts the silence.]

GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE
): So, has anyone got their cases packed yet? I’m going to buy mine tomorrow. Mum is taking me shopping.

GRACE (INSIDE VOICE
):
Don’t make me eat it. The bread roll.

[There is silence again and then the awkward sound of cutlery indicating that each girl is eating louder and louder as if to draw attention away from the silence and towards the food.]

GIRL
1
[bravely]
: Grace, I don’t know how to say this, but do you think that you might see a doctor about things? I could come with you to see a counsellor?

GRACE (INSIDE VOICE
):
Soup only. Liquid soup. No bread roll.

GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE
): Yes, maybe. That is very kind of you.

GRACE (INSIDE VOICE
):
Not even one mouthful.

GIRL
2: Don’t you want that bread roll?

[Grace looks up and down as if to try and get away from their intrusive eyes.]

GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE
)
[meekly]
: No, no thank you.

GRACE (INSIDE VOICE
):
Just the soup.

GIRL
3: Can we talk about it? I mean … will you be OK when you go to university? Perhaps you could see someone there?

GRACE (INSIDE VOICE
):
I ate that apple earlier so I can’t eat a bread roll now.

GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE
): Sorry?

GRACE (INSIDE VOICE
):
Now, how many calories could potentially be in a bread roll of this size?

GIRL
3: About university? Will you be all right because, well … we are … you know …

GRACE (INSIDE VOICE
):
Maybe 120? Too many, don’t eat it.

GRACE (OUTSIDE VOICE
): I’m fine. I’m fine, no thank you, thanks anyway, though.

[The girls continue to eat and we see them talk to each other and to Grace but we do not hear what they are saying. Instead, Grace’s voice takes over.]

GRACE (INSIDE VOICE
):
I would cry if I had to eat the bread, not out loud, but inside-crying caught up in my mouth. Trapped and stuck tears in the goo of the thick, brown crusty bread. I don’t want to eat it. That’s how I feel. I can’t. I know that something might be wrong because I feel this way, but I do eat things – certain things. They probably think that I don’t. How would that be possible, not to eat anything at all? I couldn’t do it. I do eat. I did some work experience this week and I ate two packets of chewing gum and Tic Tacs (only two calories each!), and an apple and a banana for my lunch. I walked round the shopping centre to distract myself from eating. Things were shivery inside and I felt a bit hollow but I didn’t feel scared, not like the fear that I felt on Thursday night when people from the office took me to the pub. I ordered a jacket potato with
tuna and probably butter and mayonnaise. I ate it all too, because with strange people it is harder to get away with it. Strangers make inappropriate comments and I want to make sure that they like me, so I go along with what they are doing. Also, I was starving and my tummy was hurting so I think I had to eat it. Other people in the pub had chips and greasy fried food. Then we were drinking, and at least I lost myself a bit there and felt a little bit less icy. The boy that I fancied said he fancied me back. He walked me to the bus stop and kissed me. It felt so strange, like I was floating off the ground, but not in a romantic way, more in a suspended, hovering, bodiless one. It’s like the back of my eyes have melted into my head and I feel a bit more distant. That is the way it is now. No bread roll, just soupy liquid and a glass of water. I’m afraid I just can’t eat much else.