by K. L. Slater
A couple of minutes later, I’m driving back through the leafy gravelled corridor that leads to the main road.
My mouth might be dry and my breathing is definitely erratic, but my mission is accomplished.
I now have what I need to find out a little more about my husband’s lover and her nasty little daughter. Between them I am certain they are destroying Maisie in the most calculated way.
The information I have gleaned here today might just help to prove that.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
‘How has she been since you took her to see the doctor?’ Mum is whispering in case Maisie is skulking around listening in. ‘Do you think we’ve done the right thing, not mentioning the food waste I found?’
‘I honestly don’t know, but there’s no way she’s eating enough, Mum,’ I sigh, sitting down in the comfy seats. ‘If you hadn’t fed her when she got in from school yesterday, I don’t think she’d have had anything all evening, and she used to graze constantly before going to bed.’
‘But I didn’t feed her.’ Mum frowns. ‘She said you’d bought her a McDonald’s on the way home from school.’
‘What? She told me you’d made her a sandwich. You know what my thoughts are on fast food, and it’s nutritious food she’s badly in need of.’
‘I know, I did think that. But I thought you’d been lenient to get her to eat something. You’re in such a mad rush these days, what with work and worrying about that Joanne woman, I thought you might’ve weakened for once, especially since you’ve been so worried about her lack of appetite.’
I shake my head, feeling a shiver all the way down my arms.
‘Maisie,’ I call upstairs later. ‘We have to leave in five or we’re going to be late.’
There’s no response, but I can hear her moving around in her bedroom.
I pick up my handbag and check I have my wallet and phone. I can’t help but contrast her muted reaction to the last time we had one of our cinema and tea outings, just a couple of months ago.
‘Girls only,’ we liked to taunt Shaun when we arranged to go out, usually once a month or so, although it had been less frequent recently.
‘Charming,’ he snorted, playing the game. ‘Everyday sexism, that’s what it is.’
Last time, we saw the latest Disney Pixar offering at the Cornerhouse in Nottingham and then enjoyed tea at an Italian chain restaurant in the same complex.
Maisie had been inordinately excited all week and couldn’t wait to get her performance class out of the way on Saturday morning.
We laughed so much during the film we both got stomach ache. In the restaurant, Maisie predictably ordered her favourite choices: dough balls to start, pepperoni pizza, and finally, the pièce de résistance, ice cream with three toppings and chocolate sprinkles.
I scroll through the photos on my phone now, finding the one that’s seared into my mind. Maisie is sitting with the long silver spoon poised high above the glass sundae dish piled high with ice-cream delight.
A lump presses against my throat and I swallow.
When Maisie begged me to let her miss tonight’s dance class as she had a headache, I used it to my advantage, insisting we go out together. I didn’t buy her headache excuse and felt sure that getting her out of the house and spending time together might just be what we both need.
My finger begins scrolling again and I tap on the snap of the photograph I found in Joanne’s folder, squinting with the effort of trying to work it out. A much younger Piper is there, sat on the knee of a man who has identical bright blue eyes. It’s got to be her father, Joanne’s husband, who tragically died.
But there is a fourth person in the photograph, too. A child who looks to be around Maisie’s age now. The girl is smiling, but unless it’s my imagination, her eyes look sad. Haunted, even.
It could just be a family friend, but I just know something’s not right. I can feel it in my bones.
I hear Maisie’s bedroom door open upstairs, so I put away my phone, slip on my shoes in the hallway and check my watch. Two more minutes and we really need to leave the house.
Maisie appears at the top of the stairs dressed in what’s become her standard outfit of jeans and a baggy, shapeless top.
Her hair looks clean but thinner somehow, and hangs listlessly around her face. I wonder where all the fancy hair slides and bobbles are that she used to love to wear.
‘Looking forward to it?’ I smile, standing back as she sits on the bottom step to put on her trainers.
‘Suppose so,’ she mumbles as she pushes her feet into her shoes without undoing the laces. I guess feet can lose weight, too.
‘I can’t wait to see the film,’ I say. ‘It’s getting great reviews.’
It’s like I’m talking to myself. I pretend I don’t notice her lack of interest and grab the car keys from the hall table.
‘Ready?’
She stands up and walks towards me. All her movements are slow, lethargic. As if she hasn’t got the energy to do anything.
‘How are you feeling now?’ I say carefully. ‘I texted Miss Diane and she was concerned. She sends her love.’
‘It’s just a headache.’ She frowns. ‘I’m not dying.’
‘No,’ I say carefully. ‘That’s true. Still, it’s obvious you’ve not felt your best for a while.’
She looks away and falls silent.
On the way to the cinema, I try and engage her in conversation.
‘Having your usual?’ I say lightly. ‘At the restaurant?’
‘Oh, are we going there?’ She looks out of the window at the people bustling in and out of a cluster of local shops. ‘I didn’t think we’d be eating too.’
‘Well, it’s our thing, isn’t it?’ I glance over at her. ‘A film and then a nosh-up?’
‘Suppose.’ She shrugs without taking her eyes from the window. ‘I’m just not that hungry.’
I know that if I refer to her lack of appetite, she’ll blow. I can feel it bubbling under the surface. It’s so easy for her to counter anything I say. She’s got a well-practised pool of excuses and observations, most of which I’ve already heard: she ate earlier; she feels a bit off; she doesn’t fancy food because she has a headache; she’s losing weight because of a growth spurt.
It’s hard to disagree with any of these perfectly reasonable observations. Except they’re not reasonable at all, because I’m her mother. And as her mother, I know there’s something very, very wrong.
It’s hard work at the cinema, like wading through treacle. Maisie has no opinion on where we should sit, and of course she isn’t interested in snacks or sugary drinks before we go in.
Throughout the film, she sits stone-like. No whispering, laughing or nudging me in the funny bits like she used to. Her eyes are unfocused, staring. I honestly begin to wonder if she’s in some sort of chemically enhanced zombie trance.
But then she turns and catches me looking, and her eyes flash, registering her irritation with me. She shuffles in her seat, folds her arms and resumes her vacant stare.
Ironically, I soon realise that I’ve stopped watching the film myself. I’m staring at the screen just like Maisie, but my head is full of thoughts and concerns. I’m not fully present either.
I’m going to have to broach some unpleasant things with Maisie. I have no choice if I want to get to the bottom of her personality change.
I feel afraid of what I might find out.
Does she blame me for her dad leaving? She hardly ever talks about him, or her visits to Joanne’s house, if she can help it.
I’ve tried to encourage her as much as I can without putting her under pressure. It’s hard to mention her dad’s new girlfriend and her daughter without her eyes growing dark and sad.
Chapter Sixty
Maisie
Nothing seemed to excite her any more. Watching her favourite vloggers on YouTube, listening to Ariana’s new album, the tickets Mum got to see Mariah at the Arena in town. It all seemed so… pointless.
But she’d been starting to feel really unwell. Light-headed and sick, and sometimes her eyes couldn’t seem to focus on anything.
She had always liked watching movies, and she still did. She liked the way you could escape your own horrible life and get caught up in the story, in the lives of other people. For an hour and a half, you could actually be someone else entirely.
She could choose the movie she wanted to watch. At school you got told what to do from the moment you arrived until the moment you left. Then when you got home, your parents took over… well, her mum did. Dad lived with Joanne and Piper now.
Every day, it felt like she lost another little piece of him.
When Maisie emerged from the school gates after attending the art after-school club, she had all of twenty seconds before she got into her mum’s waiting car, with the questions that never changed from day to day.
How did it go? What did you have for lunch? What lessons did you have?
Maisie knew all the stock answers.
It went OK. I had a jacket potato and salad. Maths, English and science.
Her mum didn’t want the truth. Not really.
She didn’t want to know that Maisie’s whole day had been an ordeal, that she no longer had anyone to sit with at lunch and so didn’t even bother going into the food hall these days.
It made Maisie feel sick to think how she used to easily sink a burger with sweet potato wedges and then wolf down a creamy yoghurt and possibly a chocolate bar. Her body had got so fat and flabby, it was no wonder that nobody liked her any more. She couldn’t blame Dad for preferring the perfectly slender Piper for a daughter.
Mum and Gran had spent her whole life telling her what to eat, when to eat and how it was vital she had three meals a day. Feeding her greed, storing the surplus calories up like lard under her dry, flaky skin.
She wasn’t a little kid any more. Although no one seemed to realise it, she could think for herself and make her own decisions in life.
Yet the more she tried to take control, the more adults seemed to tighten their grasp. She’d tried to explain to Mum that she didn’t want to go to Joanne’s house or her dance classes any more, and she’d tried to please her dad by being as perfect as Piper.
Nothing she said worked, because nobody ever listened.
The one person who took an interest in her, who pretended in front of others that she was her friend, hated her. At first, when she started being so nasty, Maisie had tried not to listen to the horrible things she said.
But after a short time, she began to see her own ugliness when she looked in the mirror. She noticed her dad didn’t seem to want to spend time with her any more. Even her mum got angry at the least little thing.
Literally, the only thing she felt like she had full control over any more was what she put into her mouth.
Maisie felt sure it would solve everything if she wasn’t so fat.
Chapter Sixty-One
Emma
I creep upstairs and stand outside Maisie’s bedroom door.
I can’t hear the television, or music. The room seems deathly quiet.
I open the door very slowly and see that, as I suspected, she has fallen asleep, fully clothed, on the bed.
The light from the landing floods the room and illuminates her face. Her skin is pale, almost translucent. Dark curls lie fanned on the white pillow beneath her head, and her eyes are closed. I watch as her eyelids flutter like butterfly wings caught in a light breeze.
I draw comfort from this. A sign that she is still in there somewhere, dreaming of happier times we have shared, perhaps. Something more than a narrow chest rising and falling with laboured breaths.
Her body looks so small now, too small to properly match her head. Too frail to do all the things that she used to do now that food has become her enemy.
Food. Always there for all of us; a pleasure, a necessity… at times in my own life, a terrible temptation I have had to fight.
After our visit to Dr Yesufu, I became more aware. I watched how Maisie had become skilled at carefully deconstructing each meal I served so that it looked as if she’d eaten some of it when in actual fact barely a morsel had passed her lips.
Her method became recognisable.
The way she’d spear a clutch of green beans on her fork and flatten her new potatoes. Shunt a chunk of salmon under a pile of untouched dark green leafy vegetables.
An impressively inventive and successful way to decrease the volume of food without actually swallowing it.
But I too have become skilled – in covertly watching her. She has never been fat but was once slightly plump around her middle in a perfectly healthy pre-teen way, with apple cheeks that shone when she laughed.
I’ve learned to refrain from commenting when the waistband of her smallest jeans bags looser still. When her favourite pink glittery belt can’t be pulled any tighter yet is obviously still too big.
After the doctor’s advice, I bought her a whole new set of school uniform without comment. Not because she’d outgrown the old one, but because it hung off her now slender frame.
It’s all I can do.
She won’t talk to me, you see, so I began to gather evidence, adding my daily observations to a heartbreaking, password-protected spreadsheet on my laptop.
Dr Yesufu said it might well just be a phase.
His advice reflected the professional opinions of the numerous eating disorder websites I researched online.
Don’t watch her eat.
Don’t comment on her appetite.
Don’t talk about food or the profusion of perfectly photoshopped celebrity bodies that flood our screens.
Believe me, it’s not as easy as you might think; to take action, I mean.
You can’t force food down someone’s throat any more than you can make them chew and swallow and keep it down. You just can’t.
So I have watched as my beautiful, vibrant Maisie teeters on a tightrope. Knowing that any quick movement or panicky shout could send her over the edge.
She’s moved just far enough away from the end of the tightrope that I can no longer reach her to pull her back to safety. This bit happened stealthily, the damage done before I even fully realised.
My daughter used to adore dancing and lip-synching in her bedroom to Ariana Grande.
She loved reading and drawing and watching make-up vlogs for teens on YouTube at the kitchen table while I prepared dinner.
Now she sits surly and miserable, staring blankly at the television each night because I insist she stays downstairs at least for a couple of hours. But as soon as she is able, she darts upstairs, keen to be alone again in her bedroom.
I resist the urge to wake her now, to pull her closer to me. To kiss the top of her small, warm head, to breathe in her scent, her life essence. To beg her to just eat.
My influence on her has somehow waned to the extent that I can no longer get close enough to help her.
If someone hurts your child by beating them, hitting them, forcing them to act in a way that is obviously harmful, most parents will react in the same way.
But when someone causes such devastating harm emotionally to your child and you can’t actually prove it, what does that do to a parent? It destroys you too.
I now believe that Joanne and Piper Dent are hurting my daughter in the cruellest way possible. Destroying her self-esteem, her confidence, her enjoyment of life. They’ve done it while Maisie’s father and I were right there by her side.
Have they broken the law? Probably not.
But it’s been enough to ruin a life, and whatever it takes, it has to stop.
I feel completely justified in what I’m about to do.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Shaun stands there staring at me as if I’ve gone crazy.
‘For God’s sake, Emma, calm down. I can’t believe
you’re saying this stuff.’
‘You’d better believe it, because I’m not going to stop saying it until I’ve got some answers. If I have to get social services involved, then I will. Trust me.’
‘So, let me get this straight. You’re accusing Joanne and Piper of giving Maisie anorexia?’ He shakes his head. ‘It’s a psychological condition, not something you can catch. It would be laughable if you weren’t so serious. You can’t go around saying this stuff, Em. You just can’t.’
‘She’s changed! You must see that, Shaun. Our vibrant little girl, full of enthusiasm, full of life. She lies upstairs, listless most of the time now, wasting away in her own bedroom. Tell me that’s normal.’
‘I’m not saying it’s normal. But it’s not necessarily anyone’s fault. You told me that even the doctor said it could just be a pre-teen stage and she may grow out of it.’
‘And in the meantime I’m supposed to just sit back and watch her fading away to nothing? What does she eat at yours?’
‘Exactly the same as we do.’ He falters slightly. ‘I think.’
‘It’s since you left home and she’s been in the company of that woman and her daughter.’ I grit my teeth. ‘I know they’re destroying her. Who is Joanne Dent, really? What happened to her husband?’
Shaun sighs.
‘Emma. Have you looked at yourself lately? You’re heading for some kind of breakdown, accusing people of all sorts of things, making stories up in your head. Don’t you think Maisie feels the pressure of that, too? Even your own mum is worried about you.’
‘Don’t you dare try and turn this back onto me!’ I step towards him and narrow my eyes, wondering if he’s been secretly talking to my mum. ‘I’m telling you. Someone has got to our daughter. They are killing her right under our nose, Shaun. Literally killing her! You need to ask some questions of Joanne.’
