Thin by Grace Bowman Read Free Book Online Page A

admission so strange that the silence compressed the air to such a degree that everything went tight. In the ‘can’t’ there was so little fight, so little voice. Just non-oxygenated air.
    The car stops and there are tears and a strange, unallowable conversation which suggests that somebody is angry with her. The conversation does not exist in real time, but in a blurred slow-motion where things just fall out of mouths and into space. The very presence of this conversation threatens everything. Grace decides to improve tomorrow – she must cut back on those apples.
    Monday morning and things are grey. There is a doctor’s waiting room and two parents. Then they are inside the doctor’s office, and there are questions and speeches on her behalf. Everything is blank. Blank words and numbness. There is a heavy weight on her chest as she feels the walls of her breastbone stiffen. There is a prescription pad and a doctor confused by the entrance of three people who all look grey with worry, and one of whom looks very thin.
    Suddenly a voice: ‘She can’t eat. She won’t eat. At first she cut out sweets and chocolates, then all she would eat was pasta, then only rice cakes and tuna, and now … we should have noticed before, but we just didn’t know what to look for. It seemed normal – just a diet, and then a bit more of a diet – and now we are blaming ourselves that we have watched it get to this stage. Now she just seems sad. Not herself. She is secretive and quiet; she seems to be alone more. We don’t understand what is going on.’
    The prescription pad is put down. Parents are ushered out.
    There must be a conversation because it ends.
    ‘I think you have anorexia nervosa.’
    Then there are parents again and decisions and agreements.
    Then there are just tears. Endless, streaming tears. There is not even any energy to push them out; they just fall out of her eyes apathetically.
    And, secretly, there is a sense of pride and accomplishment. She now has a title: she is real and authentic. If she was an anorexic, then she was going to be the best anorexic there could be.
    They drive back home in cold silence. The noise of the car heater drowns out the sound of their breathing. For the first time in ages she actually isn’t hungry. Her tears fill her mouth as she sits, rocking herself in front of the fire, dribbling over a bowl of Special K.

Five
    The evidence of Grace is still there: her make-up, her shoes, her toothbrush, everything still in place. The photos of her friends are stuck firmly on to the white MFI wardrobe with Blu-Tack, all smiling, all pretty, all ready. The wardrobe is filled with her clothes, hanging, not swinging, not moving at all.
    There are callers for her still. There are letters marked with her name and posted through the letter box by the regular-as-clockwork postman whistling down an early-morning icy drive. Does he know? This is a place where gossip trips along the cobbled streets. He knew about her A-level results – the postman – he heard her on the radio; she was being interviewed about falling standards (an appropriate topic for someone with such high ones) and he recognized the name. She didn’t like that – the lack of anonymity. Not a place for secrets or secret-hiders.
    The house is now filled only by a cruel silence and an uncomfortable hovering sense of emptiness, the Grace they thought they knew now distinctly absent. Mum and Dad sit silently in front of the six o’clock news. They sip their white wine and eat their tea. There is not much talking done. There is just loss and a hole, and vacuous feelings, which come from staring into the distance for hours with tired eyes, plus a roller-coaster-style sense of a wave, or a drop, in the seat of their stomachs.
    They were not really watching at first, not deep-watching. Of course, as interested and engaged parents, they were always observing, looking out for stages and changes,indications and signs, of what their children