‘She was,’ I croaked.
‘But she ate on holidays – we watched her all the time. Jesus, we spent hours trying to encourage her to eat more. How could she lose all this weight?’ Paul began to pace the room. Then, turning to Ali, he said, ‘I don’t understand – what the hell are you doing? What’s going on here?’
‘It’s no big deal. It’s just a few pounds.’ Ali pulled her arms around herself protectively.
‘Alison probably wasn’t seven stone when you last weighed her,’ Mary explained. ‘Alison, did you have stones in your pockets when you were last weighed?’
Ali nodded.
‘Oh, Ali, why did you lie to me?’ I fought back tears. ‘I was trying to help you.’
Mary walked Ali back to her chair and sat down beside her, holding her hand. ‘Alison, do you understand that you are now dangerously underweight?’ she said gently. ‘Our bodies need food to survive. If we don’t eat, we die. It’s as simple as that. You’re a beautiful young girl who has her whole life ahead of her. But I can see you’re struggling with this. So we’re going to get you the help you need to get better.’
Ali began to cry.
Mary patted her back. ‘It’s all right – you’re here now and we’re going to help. I know how hard this is for you. But we’ve caught the anorexia early, which is very good news, and you have a supportive family, which is also very important to your recovery. Don’t you worry, we’ll have you smiling and laughing again soon.’
Ali was shaking. I went over to her. She didn’t shrug me away. She rested her head on my shoulder and sobbed.
‘It’s OK, pet, we’re all here to help,’ I said, stroking her hair.
Paul was wearing a hole in the carpet.
‘Why don’t you sit down, Paul? I’d like to talk to you and Ava,’ Mary said.
He collapsed into a chair and I managed to calm Ali down. Mary then asked her if she would wait outside. ‘I want to talk to your parents for a minute and then we can have a group discussion on how to move forward with your treatment.’
The minute the door closed I couldn’t hold back the tears. ‘What do we do now? Is she going to die? I thought she was eating more – I watched her like a hawk. I don’t understand how she could have lost so much weight.’ My mouth had gone completely dry. I was in shock.
‘People suffering from anorexia become very cunning. You can’t watch Alison twenty-four hours a day. She was probably exercising all night while you were asleep and hiding food up her sleeves or in her napkin. An anorexic will always find ways to lose weight. The important thing here is that we act immediately.’
‘Just tell us what we need to do. Please just help us make her better. Where is the best place for treatment?’
‘Unfortunately the healthcare system here provides almost no assistance or funding for people with eating disorders. There are currently three public hospital beds and an estimated two hundred thousand sufferers.’
‘But that’s a joke. How can there only be three beds? It’s a bloody disgrace,’ Paul ranted. ‘We’re like a third-world nation when it comes to healthcare. How the hell is anyone supposed to get better? You look at the system in France, it’s –’
‘Will Ali be able to get one of the beds?’ I cut across him. I didn’t want to discuss the shagging state of the healthcare system. I just wanted to make my daughter better.
‘Unfortunately they’re only for the over-eighteens.’
‘But how will she get better?’ I was panicking. How could there be no help when hundreds of thousands of people were sick?
‘The only way for you to make sure that Alison is treated straight away is to get her into the Gretta Lyndon Clinic, where I also work. It has an excellent eating-disorders unit with amazing results. I would recommend that Alison goes in as a full-time patient for a few weeks. I have to warn you it will be expensive.’
‘I don’t care how much it costs. Please just get her a place.’ I would have sold my soul to the devil to make Ali better.
‘Now, just hold on a minute here,’ Paul interrupted. ‘I’m not locking my daughter up in some nuthouse.’
‘I can assure you the clinic is the furthest thing from a nuthouse. It’s a warm, modern, open facility that cares deeply about its patients. I really think Alison would benefit from going there. Once she starts eating and gains weight, she’ll be put on an outpatient programme. But for now I would urge you to admit her on a full-time basis for a few weeks to kick-start her recovery.’
‘Whatever you say. Will she be OK? Will they cure her?’ I was like a needy child. I wanted Mary to tell me that Ali was going to be fine, that I had nothing to worry about, that she and her team would fix her and that I’d have my daughter back – the old Ali, the wonderful Ali, not this stranger who lied and hid things and was angry all the time.
‘They have a very high success rate, especially with teenage anorexia, and Alison should be fine. But the sooner she gets proper care the better her chances of a full recovery become.’
‘So you don’t think she’s going to die.’ I was desperate for reassurance.
‘With the correct help, I’m confident she’ll make a full recovery.’
‘Ava,’ Paul said, turning me by the shoulders to face him, ‘we are not sending our seventeen-year-old to be locked up in this place. I don’t care how good it is. She can come and have sessions with Mary and we’ll watch her more closely at home.’
‘We have been watching her,’ I snapped, ‘and she’s got much worse. She’s starving herself to death. We need help.’
‘I’m not locking her up. There must be another way.’ Paul dug his heels in.
I didn’t want to argue in front of Mary, but I lost my temper. ‘Jesus, Paul, I’m not happy about this either, but Ali could die. You need to get that into your thick head. It’s not a diet or some silly teenage phase. Our daughter has a serious problem.’
Mary stepped in. ‘It could take up to a week before I can get Alison admitted. In the meantime, why don’t you see if you can persuade her to eat? If she does gain weight before she’s due to go to the clinic, we can reassess the situation.’
‘Excellent. We’ll get her back on track this week,’ Paul said, pleased.
I wanted to punch him. How could he be so naïve? Ali was beyond our help. She needed professional and experienced people who knew how to cure her.
Mary called Ali back in and gently explained to her that if she didn’t start putting on weight immediately she would have to go to a clinic for a few weeks to get better. ‘It’s a very nice place, so don’t worry if you do have to be admitted. But if you manage to put on weight by yourself, then we can look at an outpatient programme for you.’
‘Forget the clinic. We’ll sort you out, Ali.’ Paul put his arm around her. ‘You just need to get your appetite back.’
Mary took Ali’s blood pressure. It was very low. ‘Alison, you must rest as much as possible, no exercise at all, and try to eat small amounts of food regularly. OK?’
‘OK,’ Ali whispered.
‘Come on, let’s get you home.’ Paul walked Ali out to the car.
Mary handed me an information leaflet about the clinic. I took it and tried to say thank you, but a strange noise came out of my mouth. She put her hand on my shoulder. ‘You’ve had a shock today. It’s impossible to process all the information at once. Go home and think about your options. I’ll call you as soon as I have a bed for Alison in the clinic and you can decide what to do then. Stay strong, Ava.’
I walked to the car in silence. My hands were shaking violently and I couldn’t get my seatbelt on. Ali was crying silently in the back seat. ‘Why are you doing this to yourself? I don’t understand?’ I wailed. ‘Why do you want to starve yourself like this? Why, Ali? Why?’ I beat the dashboard with my fists.
‘I’m sorry, Mum. Please don’t send me away to that clinic. I’ll eat, I promise.’
‘Stop shouting at her. The poor girl’s in a state.’ Paul glared at me. ‘Don
’t worry, Ali, you’re not going to any clinic.’
‘Are you deaf?’ I shouted. ‘She’s really bad. You can’t fix this with one bloody meal.’
‘Calm down, you’re upsetting Ali. I’ll sort this mess out.’
‘Thanks, Dad. I’ll eat now, I promise,’ Ali said.
‘See?’ Paul said to me. ‘There’s no need to panic.’
I gripped my bag and stared out of the window. There was no point arguing with him when he was like this. I knew Ali wouldn’t eat, but he had to see it for himself. I’d let him take charge of her meals for a day or two so he could see first hand that he was dealing with a serious illness.
When we got to the house, Charlie, Nadia and Sarah were in the lounge watching an old video of the kids that Charlie had taken years ago. In it, Ali was wearing a little nurse’s uniform and she was carefully wrapping a bandage around Sarah’s head. They were five and three and a half, so happy and carefree. My heart ached.
Charlie looked up and noticed my blotchy face. ‘What happened?’
Everyone turned to us.
‘Ali’s very sick. She’s lost more weight.’
Charlie went over to hug Ali, who was crying. Sarah sat open-mouthed on the couch with Nadia. Then she said, ‘How much more?’
‘Nearly a stone.’
‘Oh, my God!’ Sarah’s eyes welled up.
‘What did the psychologist say?’ Charlie asked.
‘Ali may need to go to a clinic for a while, to get help.’
‘No, she won’t, because we’re going to make her better here at home,’ Paul said. ‘If Ali puts on weight in the next few days, she’ll be staying with us.’
‘I’ll eat, I promise,’ Ali said.
‘Ali, I just want you to get the best help so you can get better quickly and put all this behind you,’ I explained.
‘But you’ll eat now, won’t you, Ali?’ Sarah said. ‘I mean, now that you understand you have anorexia and you’ve accepted it you can start eating. Right?’
‘You ate a bit more when we were in Tenerife, didn’t you?’ Charlie asked her.
‘Yeah, I did,’ Ali said.
‘It probably takes a few days for that weight to show up on the scales,’ said Paul, ‘so we all need to calm down.’
‘She not eating in Tenerife. I see her putting the food into the napkin when you no looking,’ Nadia announced.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Only once and it was because I didn’t like it,’ Ali tried to explain.
‘I saw her putting food into her napkin in Tenerife too and she was exercising in the bathroom every night,’ Sarah said.
‘Shut up, you bitch,’ Ali shouted.
‘I’m sorry, Ali.’ Sarah’s voice quivered. She looked at me. ‘Ali was doing star jumps in the toilet for hours – I could hear her – and when I told her to stop she wouldn’t and I could see it was hurting her to do them.’
Paul was staring at Ali. ‘Why did you do that?’ he asked.
‘Because she’s sick,’ I reminded him, for the millionth time.
‘I’m not sick,’ Ali screamed. ‘You’re all overreacting. It’s just a few pounds.’
My phone rang. It was Mary Boland. Ali had a place in the clinic, starting on Wednesday, or if we wanted to wait and see if she put on weight we could have a bed the following Monday.
I walked outside to speak to Mary. ‘Book us in for Wednesday.’
‘I think that’s wise,’ she said.
I knew Ali was beyond our help. I now had two days to convince my husband.
29
Later that day I tried talking to Paul alone to get him to consider the clinic. ‘It’s like this. If Ali had cancer, we’d send her to hospital for chemotherapy. If we don’t treat it, the anorexia could kill her. We’ve tried and failed miserably to help her. We need professionals – more importantly, she needs them. We don’t know what we’re dealing with. Look how bad it’s got in only a few months. I’ve been researching it on the Internet and the most important thing with anorexia is to treat it early with proper professional input. We have to make up for lost time. We have to act now.’
‘We are acting. We’ll continue taking her to doctors and psychologists and whoever else she needs to see, but I am not locking her up in a clinic and that’s final. She promised me she’d eat a good dinner tonight.’
‘Well, you can cook it and sit with her on your own and persuade her to eat it. And when you’ve succeeded, hell will have frozen over,’ I said, and stormed out of the room.
Paul went to Ali’s bedroom and told her to come down and have some dinner with him. They went into the kitchen and he cooked her a bacon sandwich. It had been one of her favourites.
I hovered outside, listening.
‘What are you doing?’ Charlie came up behind me.
‘Listening to see how Paul’s getting on.’
‘Is he having any luck?’
‘Not so far and he won’t either.’
‘You never know, he might get her to eat.’
‘No, Charlie, he won’t. Ali’s too far gone. He just doesn’t realize it yet. I’ve tried to explain it, but he is so stubborn.’
‘Go easy on him. Men like to fix things. It’s what we do – if something’s broken, we fix it. Paul just wants to make Ali better.’
‘But he can’t and we can’t waste any more time trying. She’s really bad, Charlie,’ my voice began to quiver, ‘and she needs to get into that clinic as soon as possible. I want to fix her too – I’m just more realistic about it.’
Charlie hugged me as I cried quietly into his shoulder. ‘I’ll talk to Paul later, pet, and see if I can convince him. Let him try this first. He needs to do it.’
‘Thanks, Charlie.’ I kissed him on the cheek.
‘I’m off out to meet George for a pint. I’ll be back at eleven and I’ll talk to Paul then.’
‘OK.’ I watched my father walk out of the house and then went back to listening at the kitchen door. I could hear Paul chatting to Ali, trying to cajole her into eating.
‘Listen, Ali, men like women with flesh on their bones. Why do you think Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe and Halle Berry and Eva Mendes are considered sex symbols? Because curvy is sexy. No guy finds skinny girls attractive. Now come on, eat up.’
Half an hour went by.
‘Is there something you want to talk about? You can tell me anything. If you’re in trouble or upset about something, I’ll help you. That’s what dads are here for. We fix things.’
Then an hour.
‘Ali, you have to eat up. If you don’t you’ll have to go to the clinic and I know you don’t want to go there and I don’t want to send you, but if you don’t eat I won’t be able to stop it happening. I’ll tell you what, if you have a few small bites, I’ll get you the new iPhone. Come on, Ali – for God’s sake, it’s just a bacon sandwich.’
An hour and a half. Suddenly I heard a raised voice.
‘Just eat the sandwich … Do you want to go to that place? … Well, then, put it in your bloody mouth. It’s just a sandwich … What’s the big deal? … You promised you’d eat … I don’t want to send you there, but you have to eat … Jesus, Ali, don’t do this … Please, Ali … Eat it or I swear I’ll shove it down your throat … EAT!’
The door swung open. Ali ran out and up the stairs. I went in and Paul was sitting with his head in his hands.
‘What happened?’ I asked, rushing over to him.
‘I hit her.’ He had tears in his eyes. ‘I spent nearly two hours trying to get her to eat one bite, but she just wouldn’t. I begged her, I pleaded with her – I even tried bribing her – and then I lost my temper and slapped her. I slapped my daughter.’ He buried his face in his hands. ‘I’ve never hit the girls. Ever. I just lost it. She was sitting there looking like a flaming skeleton and she wouldn’t eat even a tiny piece. It’s like trying to get through to a brick wall. Where’s our girl? Where’s my Ali?’
‘Look at me.’ I pulled his h
ands down from his face. ‘You’re a brilliant dad. Ali loves you. You just lost your temper because you’re scared. You’re terrified of what could happen. I’ve wanted to hit her loads of times lately. I’m not saying it’s a great idea, but it’s just fear, Paul.’
‘What’s wrong with her? Why the bloody hell can’t she eat?’
‘She’s sick, Paul. She’s very sick.’
‘But why?’
‘That’s what we need to find out. That’s what Mary and the other professionals are going to help us figure out.’
He took my hand and squeezed it. ‘I love you and I love our kids. This family is all I’ve ever wanted in life. I can’t let anything happen to her. She can’t die, Ava, she just can’t. I won’t let it happen.’
‘That’s why we’re going to get the best professional help we can. Ali needs proper care, Paul, and we can’t do it on our own. I’m devastated about the clinic too, but if it makes her better it’s worth it. I Googled it and it has hundreds of letters from former patients who are completely cured. She’s going to be fine.’
*
When I went to check on Ali she was in bed asleep – or pretending to be. I brushed her hair off her face, kissed her cheek and told her I loved her. She didn’t move.
Later that night, Sarah came into my room. I was sitting in bed with my laptop, going through websites on how to treat anorexia.
‘Where’s Dad?’ she asked, climbing up beside me.
‘He’s gone to work.’
‘Is Ali going to be OK?’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘Then why are you sending her to a nuthouse?’
‘Because she needs a lot of help and I can’t do it on my own. And it’s not a nuthouse, it’s a clinic that specializes in eating disorders.’
‘What if we all worked together to help her? I’ll watch her at school, and Charlie could watch her at the weekends when you’re working, and Dad could watch her on Mondays and we could do it that way so she wouldn’t have to go away.’
I shook my head. ‘It wouldn’t work. None of us is equipped to deal with this. We don’t have the tools. Look how bad it’s got already. I don’t want to send her away, Sarah, but I have to.’
Pieces of My Heart Page 21
