The painful room is through the double doors at the far end of the ward. Where blood tests are taken and injections given, it contains a bed and a screen and looks out over the hospital garden. A doctor and four nurses fill the room, and although I can’t see any needles, I can smell them. ‘Hop up on the bed, Claire, and turn over onto your front,’ the doctor says from behind his white mask. Rigid with fear I lie down on the bed. The nurses close ranks around me and arrange my body for the procedure. I am wearing a paper gown which ties up at the back, and no knickers, and my bottom lies cold and exposed. Wham! – in goes the injection. I shriek with shock and kick out at the nurses. They press down on my back and hold my legs and arms. ‘If you let us do it, it will be over very quickly,’ says one of the nurses. After an interval I hear him instruct the nurse ‘And again!’ Bam! – in goes another injection. I thrash like a harpooned seal, and scream and scream until the sedative takes effect and there’s no scream left. Then they turn me onto my side and insert the biggest needle of all into my spine to extract fluid from around my brain, and I don’t feel a thing.

      Later, bent with pain from the lumbar puncture and still getting headaches, I am dosed with painkillers and can’t face the hospital food. Over the next few days the nurses keep pestering me to eat, which I find irritating. ‘What’s the big deal?’ I say. ‘I’m not hungry.’ Then the threats start. ‘If you don’t start to eat, Claire, we’re going to have to feed you through a drip.’ They transfer me to the General Ward where, too weak to walk from lack of food, I lie watching the girl in the bed opposite. She has lots of aunts and is surrounded by boxes and boxes of chocolates they’ve brought in for her. I love sweets, and envy her as she absent-mindedly pops them into her mouth. She catches me staring and asks if I’d like a chocolate. ‘No, thank you,’ I say, rather surprised at the feeling of superiority it gives me.

      I haven’t eaten for three or four days when the big bossy matron settles herself on my bed with a bowl of Weetabix. She’s smothered the cereal with sugar and poured on loads of milk – I loathe milk. ‘The doctor says you have to eat this, Claire,’ she says, thrusting the bowl under my nose. ‘I don’t want it,’ I protest. ‘I’m not hungry.’ ‘You’ve got to eat it, Claire,’ she repeats. ‘No, no, no,’ I insist. ‘I can’t!’ With that she holds my nose, my mouth springs open and in goes the spoon: it rattles against my teeth as matron tips the soggy mess down my throat. She repeats the process a couple of times and then lets me up for air. ‘If you don’t want me to do it, you’ve got to feed yourself,’ she says. Burning with humiliation, I eat the rest unaided.

      I am scared of meal-times after that. Each morning I dread the rumble of the steel trolley bearing down on me with its unwanted load of Weetabix, cornflakes, puffed wheat and piles of white bread and butter. I hear the metal jugs of milk rattle and catch the nauseating smell of Ready Brek as it wafts across the ward. I’m not going to risk another force-feeding so I ask for Weetabix, and fling most of it into the cupboard by my bed.

      Matron gets wise to my trick and makes me sit at the table in the centre of the ward with the other patients. ‘I’ve got to go to the toilet,’ I say to the chocolate girl one dinner-time and leg it down the ward to the toilets next to the painful room. I bolt the cubicle door and pray: ‘Dear Lord Jesus Christ, please don’t let them know I’m in here. Please don’t let them look for me. I can’t eat. Don’t let them find me. I promise I’ll eat tomorrow.’ There is an almighty bang on the door. Matron! ‘Claire, open this door. If you don’t, we’ll come in and get you!’ Sheepishly, I unlock the door and come out. Matron propels me to the table, but I howl and scream and will not eat.

      ‘I’m going to pull the wool over your eyes,’ I think to myself when the consultant is on his rounds next day. ‘Hello, Claire. How are you this morning?’ he asks. ‘Fine, really well,’ I say brightly. ‘I’m ready to go home.’ ‘You’re not eating much, Claire,’ he says, casting his eye over the chart at the bottom of my bed. ‘It’s the food in here,’ I say, with all the conviction I can muster. ‘Mum cooks lovely food; I’ll eat loads when I get home.’ ‘Okay,’ says the doctor. ‘You can go home.’ I can’t believe it. ‘Yes!’ I think. ‘I’m going to be Mary!’

      Mum and Dad come to collect me the following morning. They’ve brought my brown polo-neck jumper and matching checked skirt for me to wear and, as Mum zips up the skirt, it spins round like a hoop on a stick. I can see by Mum’s face that she isn’t happy. Poor Mum and Dad; I’ve been in hospital for three weeks and meningitis has been ruled out; but I’m still having headaches and not eating properly. Worry puckers their faces as they exchange glances and go to speak to Matron, and I am convinced they aren’t going to take me home. ‘That’s it, I’m off!’ I think, starting for the exit, but I am so weak and full of painkillers that I collapse and throw up.

      The consultant is called and I barely notice him slip the intravenous drip into the vein in the back of my hand. But half an hour afterwards I begin to feel much, much better. I spend a week rigged up to the drip and Granddad continues to visit me most afternoons. He sits on the bed, asks how I am and gives me a Mars Bar. ‘Thank you,’ I say politely, laying it to one side, safe in the knowledge that he won’t touch me because there are other people around.

      One afternoon I actually feel like eating something, but I don’t want his Mars Bar. ‘I’m hungry,’ I say to Granddad. Looking pleased, he rushes off to tell a nurse. She comes over with the tea trolley. ‘I want that,’ I say, pointing to a little iced chocolate cake with a diamond jelly in the centre. As I bite into it the nurse says, ‘You know, if you eat we’ll take this drip down and you’ll be able to go home.’ ‘And then I can be Mary,’ I think to myself. So I eat, and 48 hours later I am home.