Fragile

by Nikki Grahame

  Natalie came to visit a couple of times but only because she was ordered to by Mum. I could tell from the way she looked around the place out the corner of her eyes that she hated it. I don’t blame her at all. She was still just a kid herself and it was a dark, horrible, looming building filled with all these nutcase kids.

  I think she also felt sorry for me having to live there. As my big sister, she felt bad I was there and not her, but at the same time she couldn’t help feeling glad it wasn’t her too.

  Spending all weekend on the ward was really miserable. All the other kids went home on a Friday evening so I’d be on my own apart from a couple of nurses who were called in especially to look after me.

  Chesney Hawkes’s ‘The One and Only’ was number one in the charts at the time and whenever I hear that song I’m instantly transported back to the Maudsley with that playing on radio and me playing the hundredth game of KerPlunk with a nurse in a deserted day room on a Saturday afternoon.

  Those weekends dragged on for ever. Sometimes one of the nurses would take me out on a little trip but other times I’d just watch films or write letters to my friends.

  Then, after three months, I was told that as long as I continued to reach my target weight each week I would be allowed to go home at weekends. I was over the moon.

  I was weighed every Friday afternoon and if I hit my target, Mum and Dad could come and collect me. If I didn’t hit the target, though, there was no way on earth I could persuade the doctors to let me go.

  The first weekend I was allowed home, I was so excited. Mum and Dad came to pick me up and we went home together on the tube.

  I kept thinking about climbing into my old bed, seeing Natalie and my friends. And best of all, I wouldn’t have to eat as much as in hospital. Re-sult!

  ‘Am I going to have to eat this weekend?’ I asked Mum as the train doors slid shut at Elephant & Castle.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ Mum replied firmly. ‘We’ve been instructed by the hospital exactly what you have to eat – they have given us menu sheets and told us how much weight you’ve got to maintain over the weekend. So you have to eat.’

  Mum and Dad would take it in turns to pick me up for ‘home weekends’. Their divorce was finalised in July that year but they were still living under the same roof and on reasonable enough terms to present a united front to me. You didn’t have to dig far below the surface, though, to hit a wall of mutual resentment between them.

  The moment I walked out of the gates of the Maudsley on a Friday evening, rush-hour traffic roaring up and down Denmark Hill, I felt elated, free and victorious that Mum and Dad were there together to pick me up.

  But by the time I’d stepped through my front door an hour and a half later my thoughts had already turned to how I was going to get out of eating between then and Sunday night. My goal for home weekends soon became purely to lose the weight I’d had to put on during the week – and I’d do my damnedest to achieve it.

  Relations with Nat could be pretty fraught on my home weekends too. In the months I’d been away she had been transformed from ‘Natalie Grahame’ to ‘Nikki Grahame’s sister’. At school she felt other kids and teachers only wanted to talk about me and how I was getting on, when I might be back and if I was feeling any better.

  Things were tense between Natalie and Dad too, as she was mad at him about the divorce. She had always been closer to Mum than to him and in some ways had been quite pleased at first that they were splitting up because she felt he had been so horrid to Mum. But then Nat didn’t want Tony being close to Mum either. So she was mad at Dad for allowing that to happen too.

  There was certainly a lot of anger in our house back then. Some of the doctors were concerned about me returning to that environment at weekends but Mum and Dad could have been attacking each other with chainsaws as far as I was concerned – I just wanted to be at home.

  Yet as the weeks rolled by, home visits became more and more about skipping meals and exercising secretly in my bedroom than about seeing my family. In fact the longer I stayed away from home the less I cared about Mum and Dad, Nat, friends, school, gymnastics, everything really. All I could think about was how I was going to lose all the weight they had made me put on in hospital. But while I was at the Maudsley I complied with their rules.

  Each morning after breakfast of a bowl of cereal and a slice of toast we would go to the hospital’s classroom. It wasn’t like a proper school but it was OK. I did a project about flowers, learning their names and colouring in pictures. That took us up to lunchtime – and one of their stomach-churning meals.

  Then, in the afternoons, we would either go to the park or play outside. The Maudsley offered us lots of things to do and sometimes we did have fun. There was a toy room, an art room, a gym and a Sega room where you could play computer games. We could watch telly and videos too. My favourite video was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I watched it over and over again and loved the bit where the Golden Ticket-winning kids were allowed inside the factory. I’d look at all the chocolate and think, Oh, I wish I could eat that. But I knew there was absolutely no way I could allow myself – the guilt would be too unbearable.

  There was also a day room where we’d sit around and do jigsaws or play board games like Buckaroo and draw Spirograph pictures.

  In the evenings I’d write letters to Mum. Each week she sent me writing paper and stamps and I’d spend hours drawing pictures and writing notes for her and my friends from school. By now I’d been gone a matter of months and almost every day letters decorated with childish colourings and stickers arrived from my old classmates. I glued them up all around my room.

  Evening was also the time for us kids to visit the tuck shop. Of course all the other children were beyond excited about that – but I hated it. The doctors encouraged Mum and Dad to give me 50 pence a week to spend on sweets. But why on earth would I want to do that? I was already eating massive meals every day. I didn’t want to spend money on sweets in the evenings. I wanted to buy comics and magazines but the staff weren’t having any of that. It was Chewits, Chewits and more Chewits. Sweets felt like a punishment to me.

  There were some good times at the Maudsley, though. One time they took us camping in the New Forest for a few days. One of the nurses, Clive, left a trail of red paint through the woods and we had to follow it. It was such a laugh just doing normal kids’ stuff.

  But even that trip had its moments. Mary was there and one morning she said to me, ‘It’s snack time, Nikki. You can have a packet of crisps and a fizzy drink.’

  ‘I can’t eat crisps,’ I said. ‘I can’t.’

  Mary barely looked up and just threw four biscuits at me instead.

  The following evening everyone else was making warm bananas with melted chocolate around the camp fire. ‘Can I have my banana cold, on its own, please?’ I asked. Mary tossed the banana in my direction with a look of disgust.

  They also took us on trips around London and to the Water Palace in Croydon, an indoor water park. It was fun, but there was a lot of crying and shouting too.

  At the hospital there was an occupational therapist called Charlotte. Her job was to help me express my feelings through art and crafts. I liked making things but I just wasn’t interested in her constant questions about my mum. Did she watch what she ate? Had she encouraged me to diet? Did I get on with her? It all seemed so irrelevant. Why couldn’t everyone just leave me alone to eat – and not eat – exactly what I wanted? What none of them realised was that I couldn’t give a toss about getting better. I just wanted to get out.

  The staff did try really hard to make us kids feel comfortable. There was a young nurse called Billy who everyone thought was really cool. And there was lovely Pauline who used to cuddle me when I was sad.

  Clive was cool too. But one morning he said to me, ‘You’re filling out a bit.’ Surely anyone – most of all a qualified nurse – would know that is not the sort of thing you say to an anorexic. That had a massive effect on me.
I already hated what they were doing to my body. I could feel my thighs become softer and see my tummy getting rounder and it disgusted me. I was gutted that they were undoing all the work I’d done to my body over the past year. So for Clive to then say I was filling out threw me into a new depression.

  But worst of all the nurses was Mary. I remained terrified of her until the day I left the Maudsley. She would stand behind me during meals and make me scrape every last scrap of food off my plate. If I didn’t finish it, she’d tell me off. I was still just a child and found her really frightening.

  If any of us played up we were given a certain number of ‘minutes’ to stand and face the wall. Mary was always handing out the minutes to me for being cheeky by saying ‘Shut up’ to the nurses or even a couple of times ‘I hate you’ when they made me eat something I couldn’t face.

  One of the nurses would read me a story when I got into bed but when she turned the light out there were no cuddles or goodnight kisses like at home. Often I would lie there and quietly cry. About missing Mum, missing Dad, being stuck in hospital and another destroyed Felt by Numbers.

  Other nights I’d feel stronger and make plans about what I’d do when I got out of there, how I’d set about losing the weight they’d made me put on and how I’d get back in control of my life. All I could focus on was the day they would let me home. To reach that day, though, I knew I just had to get on with doing what I was told and so I did start gaining weight.

  After a couple of months of eating all my meals properly, sitting at the table in my cubicle, I was allowed to eat in the main sitting area, although my table was still shoved so that I was facing the wall with a member of staff sitting next to me.

  When I’d done that OK for a month, I was allowed to eat in a downstairs office, although still it was only a blank wall and a nurse for company.

  Then finally, four months after arriving at the Maudsley, I was allowed to eat my meals with the other children in the main dining room. Chatting and giggling during meals again was fantastic. I felt normal. There were three tables in the children’s dining room: the Dinosaur table, the Happy Eaters table and the Care Bears table. They put me on the Happy Eaters table! What a joke that was. If only it had been funny.

  It had taken me virtually my entire stay at the Maudsley to work my way up to that table but it meant I was one of the kids who behaved during mealtimes and, most importantly for my doctors, I was eating my meals.

  At the beginning of September, after six months at the hospital, I was told I would be going home. I’d gained 6 kilos (13 lb), to bring my weight up to 26 kilos (4 stone 1 lb) and although still skinny I was closer to the average weight for a child of my age.

  But although on the outside I appeared to have recovered, inside my head I was still as intent on starving myself as the day I’d arrived there. If anything, I was more determined than ever. The big difference was that I was now far cleverer at fooling people about what I was thinking.

  To celebrate my last day at the Maudsley the staff treated all the kids on the unit to a McDonald’s. I ordered a hamburger, chips and a strawberry milkshake and hated every minute of it. For me the entire trip was a nightmare, although the other kids were having a great time. I ate and drank with a smile on my face, making sure everyone thought I’d come through my problems and was as right as rain again.

  But in my mind there was no doubt – as soon as I was home the starving would begin. And this time it was going to be serious.

  CHAPTER 6

  I DON’T BELONG HERE

  Brand-new, neatly pressed grey skirt, new red woollen cardigan and new Kylie pencil tin. It was the beginning of the school year at Hillside Infants when I emerged from the Maudsley in September 1991.

  After six months in hospital I’d gained more than 3.2 kilos (7 lb). There was colour in my cheeks, a slight curve around my thighs and tummy and a shine to my hair. And I hated it. I hated every millimetre of fat they’d made me put on my body and I wanted it starved off my bones as quickly as possible.

  I found it hard to settle back into school. In fact I loathed it. I hadn’t been away that long but, at nine years old, things move fast. My old friends Joanna, Emily and Erin had found new best mates and I felt I was constantly hanging around the edge of conversations.

  And I felt different. I was different. In the six months I’d been away I’d seen things my classmates didn’t know existed – kids with severe psychiatric problems, others torn from their families, girls who had been abused by their dads. And I too had behaved in ways I’d never thought possible, being rude, aggressive and hysterical when pushed to the limit. The way other kids acted in hospital had rubbed off on me and I’d seen how being naughty and rude could get you attention when you needed it.

  Everyone I bumped up against at school wanted to know where I’d been and what I’d been doing, even though I’m sure they all knew already.

  Kids would come up to me in the playground and say, ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I’ve been at private school for a while,’ I replied, not batting an eyelid. I’d become a pretty accomplished liar.

  But even though I was back at school, I still stood out as different. Mum had to pick me up every lunchtime, take me home and try to get me to eat my lunch before bringing me back for afternoon lessons.

  ‘Why do you go home at lunchtime?’ one nosy parker after another would ask me. Sometimes I’d just ignore them, other times I was more inventive. ‘I’ve got diabetes and can only eat certain things,’ I’d lie. It was none of their business. It was none of anyone’s business.

  As the weeks went passed I suppose it became a bit more normal but I felt as though from now on I was never going to be plain Nikki Grahame ever again. Oh no, I was always going to be Nikki-the-girl-who-got-so-skinny-she-had-to-leave-school-and-go-into-hospital-Grahame. I hated it.

  Things at home were no better either. Mum, Natalie and I were still living in the attic bedroom while Dad was downstairs on his own.

  The only good thing about being home was that I was able to control my eating again – and that meant only eating what I wanted. Within weeks of leaving the Maudsley I’d cut right back on what I was eating – just like I’d planned all the time I was away.

  At first, breakfast was cereal and a slice of toast. Then at school I got a free packed lunchbox which Mum took me home to eat. (Since the divorce she’d been struggling for money, so we qualified for free school meals.)

  Dinner would be something hot like spag Bol or fish pie. Again, at first I’d eat what Mum put in front of me but within a couple of weeks I started hiding food again and was back to all my old tricks – and more.

  Mealtimes became a war zone. I’d seen so much bad behaviour, fighting and swearing in the Maudsley that I had emerged from there a very different child. I knew what kind of behaviour could get results because I’d seen it close up day after day. So I’d shout and swear at Mum in a way I’d never have thought of doing before. I hadn’t even known the words existed.

  ‘You can shove that up your fat fucking arse!’ I’d scream when she tried to put a meal in front of me.

  Mum must have wondered where this monster had come from.

  Part of it was copying what I had witnessed in hospital but I think being away from my family for so long had made me more brutal. I didn’t care who I upset with my antics any more. The slightest thing could tip me into a full-scale tantrum. And, as I got older, I was physically stronger and less scared of Mum or anyone else who might try to force me to eat.

  I had to go to my GP every week to be weighed and I knew that there they would quickly realise what I was up to, hiding food and refusing meals. But that didn’t stop me. I’d only been home a month when Mum first suspected I had vomited up my dinner one evening and marched me back to the doctor.

  To be fair to myself, I never made my anorexic career out of vomiting. It was just something I did if I felt really uncomfortable about the amount I’d eaten.

  A bigger
problem for me was my obsession with exercise. After school I ran up and down the slope outside our house until I was breathless. And I never sat down in the evenings, ever. I would pace up and down the living room while Mum and Natalie watched television. And when they’d finally had enough of me disrupting their viewing and were shouting at me to stop, I’d stand by the fireplace. I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting down – you don’t burn any calories like that. Then, once everyone was in bed, it was more sit-ups, hundreds of them.

  Once again I was feeling very low. I was unhappy at home and school and took my misery out on both myself and those around me. I hit myself and bit myself during temper tantrums if Mum tried to make me eat. My arms and legs would get covered in bruises and I pulled my hair out in clumps.

  And I was spiteful to Natalie too. I wouldn’t let her near any of my toys and would lash out violently in our fights.

  ‘I just want to be dead,’ I said to Mum one evening. ‘Why can’t I be dead?’ And I meant it.

  Then, in the run-up to Christmas, Dad finally moved out. I felt split down the middle. Part of me was glad he was gone because I was still so angry with him for everything that had happened. But another part of me was devastated that any hopes of my life returning to how it once was were totally dashed.

  What was worse, Dad’s old employer, the bank, had called in our mortgage, so it was just a matter of time until we would all have to be out and the house sold. It was a Monday lunchtime and Mum had picked me up from school for lunch when she broke the news. We were sitting in the kitchen when she turned and fixed me with one of those despairing looks that left even my nine-year-old mind in no doubt there was more trouble coming down the line.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Nikki,’ she said, ‘but we’re going to have to sell the house. Your Dad’s not working any more and the bank want their money back.’