Very rapidly, the designer began to panic and to lose it completely. I was given badly ironed clothes to put on, which he touched up with a steam iron when I already had them on. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Are you an idiot, or what?’
‘Sorry, Victoire, sorry.’
‘Just mind what you’re doing rather than apologising!’
After a while, a disgusted Mum told me to start behaving properly.
‘It’s not my fault. The guy’s a complete idiot!’
Unfortunately the photographer was even more inept than the designer. His slowness was incredibly exasperating – why did they all spend so much time examining their navels as if they were about to take the photo of the century? He got me to pose seated on the arm of a seventies chair and spent an age getting the focus right. ‘Are you OK, Victoire, not too uncomfortable?’
Not at all, you wanker – I’ve got the arm of an iron chair up my arse and I’m loving it. He carried on with his adjustments while the iron bar cut into my buttocks. When it started hurting too much, I just stood up.
‘Oh no, stay seated.’
‘No, I’m not going to stay seated, my bum hurts. When you’re done with your adjustments, I’ll sit down and we can get to work.’
The whole thing was never-ending. Every time they asked me to do something, I replied insolently. I was well aware that it was unacceptable, but I wasn’t in control of anything any more. When he clicked his fingers for the umpteenth time to summon his assistant, I yelled, ‘Florian, for fuck’s sake, his name is Florian!’ Whereupon Mum got up and left.
When I joined her in the car an hour later, she was still furious. ‘You were hateful, Victoire. You can’t behave towards people like that. It’s totally unacceptable.’
‘Oh yeah? And how do you think they’ve all been behaving towards me these last few months?’
‘We didn’t bring you up like that. I don’t recognise the person you’ve become.’
The rest of the journey home passed in silence and as soon as we arrived I went and shut myself in my room.
Everybody was pissing me off.
When Flo called the next day, I thought it would be to have a go at me because the photographer had complained, but on the contrary: ‘Victoire, guess what? I’ve just had Samuel Drira on the phone and you’ve been chosen for the Lacoste campaign!’
‘You don’t understand, Flo, I’m quitting.’
‘But surely you’re not going to say no to Samuel Drira? You adore him!’
I hung up to avoid getting cross, grabbed my bag and went out for a walk and some fresh air.
I passed in front of a bakery and saw a sign in the window saying: ‘House speciality: Nutella pizza’. That was exactly what I needed. I bought some pains au chocolat, some brioche and some Nutella pizzas – I was fully stocked up. The baker winked at me: ‘Well, you’ve certainly got an appetite!’
‘It’s for the children I’m looking after – I’m on my way to pick them up from school.’
‘What a cool babysitter they’ve got!’
I couldn’t take all that back home, so I ate while I walked through the streets. I ate the lot, until I felt thoroughly sick, and then went home to take an enema.
Dad got home from work and told me Flo had called him about the Lacoste campaign. He said, ‘It’s done! You’ve got your campaign. It’s brilliant news!’
I told him that I wasn’t going to do it. He started to argue and I went and shut myself in my room.
The following day I found another bakery that sold big loaves of brioche. They were really huge and also soft, moist and delicious. And in the afternoon, I went back to the Nutella pizza place to get some more pizzas.
Flo kept calling me, but I didn’t pick up. Then she texted me: ‘You haven’t forgotten about the Céline lookbook on 16 December?’
And I replied: ‘No, I’ll be there.’
At home I wasn’t on speaking terms with anyone except for Plume, who was always ready to listen to me. I also spoke a bit to Léo, who didn’t seem to understand his big sister at all any more. I didn’t understand anything either. Everything was beyond my control. And I just ate and ate and ate. The laxatives were no longer working at all and the enemas were becoming less effective.
On 16 December I weighed myself before heading off to see Phoebe Philo to do her lookbook: 54 kilos. I’d never get into the clothes. Perhaps into the size 8 at a squeeze, but definitely not into the size 6. I went there like a fat cow to the slaughter. When I greeted Phoebe, I wanted to die. Suzie was there, as thin as ever and still not being selected for the shows. Then it was into the make-up, hair and hanging around routine.
I tried on the first pair of trousers and I managed to button them up, but only just. The photographer began by photographing me face on, in profile and in three-quarter profile. This guy didn’t know what he wanted. Phoebe was watching me impassively without saying a word. The photographer thanked me and signalled to Suzie. I went back to the dressing room, took off that tight pair of trousers and waited for somebody to show me my next outfit, but nobody said anything to me for a very long time. I saw Suzie getting changed, going off and coming back, and getting changed once again. I waited for my turn, which never came.
I started to get bored and prowled around the buffet. There was a mountain of croissants and other sweet pastries. The bastard little voice struck up its refrain again but I told it to shut it. If they didn’t want me, I was going to eat, and that was their problem. In any case, I’d finally got to the point where I couldn’t get into the clothes. I hadn’t had a brain for a long time, but now I didn’t even have a body.
They never called me again. I spent the day waiting and eating, and then I went home.
I stayed in bed for several days on end. I only got up to go to the chemist for some laxatives, enemas and tranquillisers. I covered all the chemists in the area, one after the other, serving up my spiel to them. I covered all the bakeries and the delicatessens too, buying cakes that I hid under my bed.
We spent Christmas as a family, but I have hardly any recollection of it, except that I ate incessantly.
By the morning of 29 December, I’d reached 58 kilos and so I was back to where I’d started. Flo hadn’t rung me in days. When I saw her name come up on my phone, I didn’t answer – I was terrified. But she was persistent and eventually I picked up. ‘Victoire, my dear, you’ll never guess! I’ve just got the confirmation that you’ve been chosen for the cover of Vogue Italia.’
‘Flo, it’s no. I’ve told you, it’s finished. I’m quitting.’ I hung up.
Even if I changed my mind, who would still want me? I’d become enormous, monstrous, unshowable.
Disappearing
I weighed myself this morning and I was 64 kilos. I didn’t even know why I was still weighing myself. I’d had the perfect body and I’d ruined it like everything else, including my friendships and my relationship with my parents, who I hadn’t spoken to for days except to listen to them telling me that I was eating too much, as if I didn’t know that already. I’d failed the Sciences Po exam too and I had no plans and no future. Even acting was screwed.
I was screwed.
The previous month, Seb had called: ‘Victoire, sweetheart! Everybody wants you for February.’ Go to hell, Seb.
Flo didn’t give up and rolled off a list of names to me: Russell Marsh, Calvin Klein, Phillip Lim, Samuel Drira etc. Apparently she was just refusing to listen. I should have told her that it was dead in the water, that I was now a size 10 – that would soon have quietened her down.
The previous week my cousin Thomas had become persistent too: he wanted me to go to the cinema with him. He’d been coming to see me regularly and was trying to persuade me that I was ‘much better off like this. You were terribly thin, Victoire.’ Nan said the same thing to me, but she loved me so much that she’d have said anything to make me feel better. I ended up giving in to Tom and spent an hour finding an outfit I could still get into. I bumped into M
um in the hall and she jumped: ‘I didn’t recognise you! I’ve got to get used to you having cheeks again.’
I went back up to my room and texted Thomas – I couldn’t show myself like that in public.
The only time I forced myself to go out was when I accompanied Granddaddy to the Pompidou Centre, disguised in a long coat and a big black hat. As we were coming out of the exhibition, I heard somebody calling out to me by my first name: it was Daniel Peddle, a New York casting director. ‘I saw you from the back and I knew straight away that you were a model.’ An ex-model. He listed all the shows I was already booked for in February and the requests for options that kept flooding in. I told him that I wouldn’t be at the next fashion week because I was resuming my studies. He seemed to be genuinely disappointed, but also happy for me.
Sophie never called me back and I didn’t dare chase her up. I could understand her disgust, because she’d been so patient with me. And what would I have said to her if I had rung her? I had nothing else to say.
Alex was still getting me to listen to music and Puggy’s album was on a loop in my ears:
Safe from them all
Those evil little motherfuckers at my door
Yeah, well I’ve kept score
And I believe they owe me more than life is
Short
So I will stay with you
I will stay with you
I will stay with you
How I needed you
Rather than expressing his feelings by telling me directly how he felt, Alex was getting Puggy to do it for him.
I thought back to his moist eyes at San Francisco airport just before he said to me: ‘Sis, you’re the most beautiful girl. And I love you.’ He had the same eyes now when he looked at me. As for my little Léo, he often came into my room to talk to me. At the grand old age of 12, he listened to me and tried to find the right words: ‘But Vic, you’ll always be the most beautiful of them all! Don’t worry, things are going to be fine.’
I wasn’t worried, Léo, but no, things weren’t going to be fine. The suffering had become unbearable, as had that bastard little voice, which was repeating incessantly: ‘You’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re crap. You screwed everything up. Eat, eat! That’s the only thing you’re good at.’ I wanted to rest, to get out of this unspeakable, hateful world. I wanted it all to stop.
I wanted it all to stop.
I went round the house collecting up all the boxes of pills, got a large glass of water from the kitchen and got back into bed between Plume and Yùki. I emptied all the pills out into my hand and then I swallowed them. All the way down.
Léo came into my room as if through a fog.
He said, ‘Vic, what are you doing?’
And I replied, ‘Don’t worry, my darling.’
And then everything did stop.
Not Alone Any More
I woke up in a hospital bed with a terrible urge to vomit. Everything around me was white and blurred and the place smelled of medicine.
So I’d screwed that up too. Mum and Dad came into my room accompanied by a guy in a white coat. They looked lost, sad and determined all at the same time – determined to act and to take things in hand.
The doctor began to explain to them in a professional tone and using incomprehensible jargon what was happening to my body and to me, as if I wasn’t there and didn’t exist.
So here we go again.
My hatred of everything poured forth. I snarled like a rabid dog at this guy who couldn’t even be bothered to speak intelligibly and directly to me. In the midst of my fog, I heard him say condescendingly, ‘OK, she’s doing her teenager crisis routine.’ Wanker.
I adopted a calmer tone and told him that, on the contrary, everything was absolutely fine. ‘It was all just a mistake. I want to go home.’
Mum looked at me sternly and told me in no uncertain terms to stop pretending. ‘No, you’re not fine, Victoire. You’re not fine at all.’
God, they were pissing me off with all this wanting to save me! It was my life and I would do what I wanted to do.
As soon as they’d sorted out the formalities, I called Sophie: it was an SOS. I knew that she’d always be there for me. I begged her to call my mother and tell her to get me out of there.
‘Don’t worry, Vic, I’ll take care of it. Just you hang on in there …’
By the end of the afternoon, I was still writhing angrily in my hospital bed and feeling nauseous. Mum and Dad finally came to pick me up. ‘We’re taking you out of here, Loutch, and we’re going to help you. We’ve found just the right place for you.’
I didn’t try to argue and off we went. I don’t remember the journey, except that there were the three of us in the car and I was fighting against the urge to vomit and to sleep. I wasn’t even angry any more – I wasn’t anything any more. My eyes were flickering open and shut and I could hear snippets of what Mum was saying: ‘She mustn’t find herself in an ugly, depressing clinic. The environment counts for a lot … She’s got to have activities to keep her busy all the time.’ Dad didn’t say a word and neither did I. I think we were all completely overwhelmed by the situation.
When we came to a halt outside what looked like a council block, Mum checked the address twice before declaring that leaving me here was out of the question. Dad started to get cross but she’d already gone into the clinic to retrieve my patient records, which the Sainte-Anne psychiatric hospital had sent them a few hours earlier. When she came back, she had her phone to her ear and proceeded to tap a new address into the satnav: Garches, on the western outskirts of Paris.
We passed through a large black gate into an attractive estate which felt like it was in the middle of the countryside. There was a gravel avenue lined with trees and small huddles of people in the grounds. At the end of the avenue, there was a massive white house, a palace virtually. Mum told me that this was where Antoine de Saint-Exupéry had written The Little Prince. Dad parked the car, they helped me out and then hugged me tightly against them while we walked up to the door of the annexe adjoining the house. We rang the bell and the door opened onto a welcoming hall which led to a library. It smelled of wax and fireplaces – you’d have thought it was a family home.
A tall blond-haired man with very blue eyes came towards us with a smile on his face. He held out his hand: ‘Victoire, I presume? I’m Dr Vincent Jost. Nice to meet you. Would you like your parents to come with us or would you prefer to come with me on your own?’
I didn’t know the answer to anything any more. It had been such a long time since I’d last made a decision for myself.
All of us sat down opposite him in his office. ‘So tell me, what has brought you here?’
I lowered my eyes and started to cry. Mum took my hand and squeezed it very tightly. She started to speak and then Dad filled in the details. I looked at him and as I listened, I realised that he’d understood.
I wasn’t alone any more.
Dr Jost asked my parents to wait for us in the library. He told me that I would be staying here for three months, if that was OK with me, that I would have time to myself, that we’d see each other every day, that I could do some acting, some yoga, some sport and some art therapy, that I’d decide how often my family came to see me and that I’d feel at home here and safe. He was funny, sensitive, intelligent and delicate. He spoke to me as an equal, and yes, of course I was OK with it.
When I came out of his room, Mum smiled at me: ‘It’s such a long time since we last heard you laugh.’ They had found the right place and the right doctor and I was finally going to be able to let go.
The director of the establishment came to get us to escort us to the far side of the grounds. Mum took my hand and on the way we saw two terribly thin young women who were being reprimanded by a nurse for running around. We arrived at an outbuilding that contained quite a number of small bedrooms. There was a man in his fifties sitting at one of the tables on the terrace who looked absolutely exhausted. No doubt he was shot
full of drugs and completely out of it.
These people were like me, and I was like them. I fitted into this environment and I felt good, at last. At the top of the steps, Dad took me in his arms and hugged me very tightly. ‘You’re going to get better, my love.’
That was the moment when I knew that I was saved.
It’s a Wonderful Life
I spent three restful and wholesome months at the clinic. The medical examination revealed the sheer extent of the damage: amenorrhoea, hypotension, a good deal of hair loss and the skeleton of a 70-year-old woman.
I took an unconscionable number of calcium pills every day, I devised my diet with my nutritionist and I talked – an awful lot. I drew and I cried and I danced in the rain, and little by little I got back on my feet.
It was as if I were retrieving my true self.
I looked at the photos and videos from my season in fashion. There was me and the others with our thin bodies and our eyes shining brightly from lack of food – ghostlike figures in our sophisticated make-up. It was a parade of dark-ringed eyes set against porcelain skin.
I wrote short notes to the people I’d enjoyed meeting in order to thank them and to tell them that I’d decided to resume my studies. Phillip Lim replied: ‘I’m so sad, but also so proud of you. It was a real honour to work with you. If more girls were like you, the industry would be a much better place … Please do stay in touch, I’ll miss you. Come to New York whenever you like …’
Bouba replied too: ‘Dear Victoire, you’re very definitely not like all the other girls, and so much the better. Fill your already well-stocked head – you’ve made the right choice.’
And Louis and Émile: ‘That doesn’t surprise us, you asked far too many questions! In this profession, yours is not to reason why …’
Size Zero Page 18