Chapter five

      I am working in the children’s department when Kim Speight comes in for her interview. She’s wearing an electric-blue skirt, a leather jacket and carrying a fold-up umbrella under her arm. Her long brown hair has been tonged at the back into two fat sausages which bounce up and down as she walks upstairs to the office. ‘Snooty cow,’ I say to myself, peering at her from behind a rack.

      ‘I dunno,’ I think when Kim starts a week later. ‘Maybe she isn’t so snooty, and at least she’s someone my own age.’ So when I bump into her in the stock room, I say hello and we get chatting. The following week, BHS holds a shopping evening for staff and their families. Mum can’t make it, so Kim asks me to go with her and her mum. I go back to Kim’s house after work and her mum is really nice: she cooks sausages and jacket potatoes for tea, which are lovely. We have a real giggle at the shopping evening and go on to become inseparable: Sheila calls us the terrible twins.

      I still see Lisa Duxbury, but not as often because she’s given up her Saturday job and is studying at college to be a hotel receptionist. Kim and I start going clubbing together and spend hours in her bedroom trying on clothes. Her parents live apart, and sometimes we go round to her dad’s for tea. Often he gets us a Chinese takeaway and he always has bowls of sweets and fun-size chocolate bars dotted around the house. Kim stuffs herself – Kim is skinny; and somehow it seems okay if I do the same. I rush at the sweets, excited by the forbidden. ‘This is bad; you’re bad,’ says the little voice as I chew and swallow and, afterwards, I hate myself.

      ‘What does your waist measure, Kim?’ I ask, eyeing her with envy. She’s bought the most beautiful royal-blue pleated skirt from Dorothy Perkins and her waist looks tiny. I’ve got the same skirt, but it isn’t as nice on me because my waist is bigger than Kim’s. ‘Twenty-two inches,’ she says. And with those three little words, the game cranks back to life. ‘Right,’ I say to myself, ‘I’m going on a diet.’ The delicate balance that has kept me at a steady 7½ stone tips, and sends me helter-skelter into the land of fun-house mirrors where thin is fat and food is greed, and the calorie book rules okay.

      ‘Do you girls want a Chinese?’ asks Kim’s dad, one night after work. ‘Yes please,’ says Kim. ‘No thanks,’ I say. ‘Are you sure?’ Kim asks. ‘You haven’t eaten much today.’ ‘I’m alright, I’m just not hungry,’ I lie. Kim chooses what I usually have – chicken fried rice, curry sauce and chips – and I want it so much. I watch her eat and, smelling it, I can almost taste it. I am hungry and cold and my body is growling in protest. I touch my tummy, but it isn’t there and I am temporarily sated by a sense of superiority. Later Kim and I go upstairs to change to go out. ‘Bloody hell,’ says Kim as I undress. ‘Look at your stomach – it’s gone right in!’

      At work my uniform flops off me. ‘Wow! My legs have got longer and my bum’s disappeared!’ I think to myself as I run my hand down my skirt. ‘What an achievement!’ If someone offers me a sweet I say, ‘No thank you.’

      There are rows at home and people notice at work. I am summoned to Mrs Sansom’s office where she and Mr Warner tell me that if I don’t eat properly, my parents will be informed and I’ll be suspended. My job entails running up and down ladders and lifting things, and it seems I am a danger in the workplace. I run crying to Kim. ‘But Claire,’ she says, ‘you know you’re not eating.’ The voice in my head is insistent: ‘They’re trying to make you fa-at!’

      With all eyes upon me I have to go to the canteen every day and struggle with a salad. With Mum and Dad bullying me at home it is impossible not to eat, so once again the merry-go-round slows and I stop starving myself and put on a little weight.

      A few months later Mum and I are watching telly together. A programme about a girl called Catherine Dunbar starts. I am riveted because the actress playing Catherine has the most beautiful long hair, and I want to grow my hair as long as that. It’s a true story about a stupid girl who worries about her weight one minute and stuffs her face the next. ‘What’s she doing, Mum?’ I ask when Catherine starts shovelling handfuls of pills into her mouth. ‘She’s taking laxatives,’ says Mum, and I can tell from her voice that it’s an awful thing to do.

      ‘You’re not going out of this house looking like a tart!’ yells Dad. ‘I don’t look like a tart,’ I protest. ‘Tell him, Mum.’ ‘Your Dad’s right, Claire,’ she says. I am into Madonna, big-time, and even dress like her. I wear big crosses and chains, gloves and masses of blue eyeliner. My hair is dyed blonde and permed, and I dry it upside down for maximum effect. My cropped top shows my black bra underneath, and a tiny black skirt falls around my hip bones. ‘It’s barely a belt!’ splutters my outraged father.

      ‘You can’t stop me,’ I say, stomping back upstairs to my room where Kim and my brother’s friend Kevin are waiting for me to finish getting ready. Seconds later Dad is at my bedroom door, ‘Out!’ he says to Kim and Kevin – you’ve never seen two people scarper so fast. ‘If you don’t take those clothes off, I’m going to rip them off you, throw petrol over them and burn them,’ he says, and leaves the room. I know he means business. Crying with frustration I take off the skirt and stick on some trousers. Then I go to The Saracen’s Head in Dunstable and get drunk.

      Kim and I virtually live at The Saracen’s Head – we’re there Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. I am going through a ‘what the hell’ stage and get drunk on cider and snog anybody. I am still paranoid about my weight and food is a problem, but not as big a problem as getting out of the house with my Madonna outfit intact! I am having one almighty crack, and later I will look back on the year that I was 17 as being one of the happiest of my life.

      I love my job. I am made a senior sales assistant and, soon after, supervisor of menswear – it has been my dream to be a supervisor and I love it. My sales team consists of Claire McCann, a full-time assistant, and a college student called Veronica who comes in on Saturdays and in the holidays. Veronica is a big girl with albino colouring and a nervous tic. She is sweet but painfully shy, and whenever anybody speaks to her she goes bright red. Claire is the complete opposite. A chatty, laughing Irish girl, she is a year older than me and has worked as a butcher in her dad’s shop. She is stocky with short hair and huge owly glasses, and we get on like a house on fire.

      ‘Once, for a laugh, my friend and I stuck our fingers down our throat to see if it worked,’ says Claire one night when we are out drinking. ‘What do you mean?’ I ask. ‘You know,’ she says. ‘You stick your fingers down your throat to make yourself sick.’ ‘Oh,’ I say.

      I get home, eat two Jaffa cakes, go into the bathroom, put my hair in a ponytail, turn on the cold tap, lift the loo seat and stick my index finger down my throat. Nothing happens. I try again, and graze the inside of my throat with my nail by mistake. I cough. Another jab with the finger and I cough again. My eyes start watering and the glands in my neck begin to swell. Poke, poke; cough, cough. My stomach jumps upwards towards my throat and bleaugh the contents hurtle through my fingers into the toilet bowl. The smell is awful,

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