My Sister and Other Liars

by Ruth Dugdall

  I curl into myself near the wooden headboard. I just want him to go away, and to disappear into the shadows again. I don’t want his special attention.

  ‘I understand that you have just had some very sad news yesterday about your mother’s passing. I’m so sorry. Things must feel overwhelming right now.’

  I am not overwhelmed. I feel nothing. If I begin to feel then I simply starve some more and that fixes me. Empty body, empty thoughts.

  ‘But you have been here a long time, and as you are not dead yet, I can only assume that you wish to live.’

  Quite an assumption, considering the size of me. Considering the tube running from my nose.

  Having established himself as my personal saviour, Clive reaches behind him for the bag and takes out a clear plastic bowl, the type they use in the dining room for our salads or fruit. Inside is a small pile of sliced carrot.

  ‘Twenty calories,’ he says, and in my head I correct him: Eleven.

  He then takes out a can of Enliven; this is what they force down the tube, thick as condensed milk and disgustingly rich. Just seeing the can makes me want to puke.

  ‘Or two hundred and twenty calories.’

  I watch as he places both back on the desk, side by side.

  ‘I have a proposal for you. I’d like to see what progress we can make before 1 February. I’ll be writing the report on you, with a recommendation about release.’ He smiles, as if he is about to suggest a choice of two fun outings, and I have to blink away bad thoughts. ‘I want us to make a start, right now. If you talk to me, and let me be your therapist, at the end of the session you will eat the carrots. But if you refuse, or I am unhappy with how the session has gone, then you will be tube-fed the Enliven.’

  I sit up, so fast my head spins. ‘A whole can?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You can’t do that! I’m on a controlled plan.’

  ‘And I’m now part of that control.’ He smiles again, and his eyes twinkle; he would resemble a kindly Father Christmas if he wasn’t offering such a horrific choice.

  ‘I’m not a lab rat,’ I say. ‘You can’t just force-feed me arbitrarily.’ The can would go straight under my skin, a layer of ugly fat.

  ‘But I can, Sam. You see, one of the conditions of your hospitalisation is that you co-operate with treatment.’

  I look at his pompous face, his scratchy, hairy, fat face, and hate him. I breathe in, every bit of air I can, and say with force, ‘Piss off.’

  He pauses, nods, then takes a radio from his jacket pocket. His fat thumb hovers over the talk button. ‘You’re sure, Sam?’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I say, though with less conviction this time.

  ‘Very well.’ He presses the button on his radio. ‘Sian, could you join me in Samantha Hoolihan’s room, please? She has chosen to be fed by tube.’

  I won’t tell you how I screamed and fought, how the tube came out and had to be re-inserted. I won’t tell you about the slow inevitable journey of fat from can to tube to stomach, and how heavy and ugly I felt, how sad and lonely.

  I will only tell you this: Clive is wrong. I do want to die.

  CHAPTER 3

  New Year’s Day

  Fireworks crack and hiss across the sky, heralding midnight and lighting my tiny room in pink, purple and blue flashes. I’m huddled against the radiator, wrapped tight in my lumpy duvet. Tensing with each screaming whizz and braced for the gunshots of dynamite, the shocks of light. I long for dark again, but the curtains are too thin to block out the celebrations.

  Beyond the hospital’s security wall, on the beach across the road, families and couples are huddled, mittens clasped, gazing into the night. I imagine them clinking champagne flutes, kissing each other as a new year begins. Making resolutions, knowing it won’t matter that they’ll break them before January is through. No point in resolutions for me, I won’t even make it to 1 February. If I’m lucky.

  Though Clive has a different idea. Five hours ago, my door opened, unannounced, and there he was, blocking the doorway with his bulk and filling the room with the liquorice tang of his pipe-smoke. He was wrapped in a long winter coat that had seen better days; under it was a dark suit that looked like it wouldn’t fasten over his belly, and a shirt that may once have been white. His bow tie was perfect, though.

  ‘Bit overdressed for a therapy session, aren’t you?’ I said.

  He laughed happily, because of course he wasn’t here for a therapy session but on his way to a restaurant or a party. I was just a task for him to complete before the fun started.

  ‘I wanted to give you a present, Sam.’

  He placed it on my desk, and I felt glad it wasn’t a can of Enliven until I saw what it actually was; so much worse. It wasn’t a present, of course.

  ‘For you.’

  He tapped the brown wrapping so it crinkled under his red hand. Skin was peeling on the knuckles, and I thought his wife should have bought him warm gloves for Christmas, that the cold weather doesn’t suit him.

  ‘We can make a start tomorrow. No better day for it.’

  ‘If you don’t have a hangover,’ I said, drily, and he chuckled good-naturedly.

  I peeled back the brown paper, and saw it was my old chocolate box, black with a raised red rose and the words ‘Black Magic’ on the lid. Once the box was empty of chocolates, it had been too pretty to throw away, and Jena had used it for her jewellery and hair grips, bits and pieces like that. And when she started doing photography she used it to store her pictures.

  I’d found it in the attic, after she was attacked, when I was searching for something to help her remember. I began putting my own photos in it too, photos I thought of then as evidence.

  I pushed the brown paper back in place, desperate to hide the box.

  ‘How did you get this?’ I demanded. He had the temerity to look sorrowful.

  ‘It was sent in by your sister. She found it when she was clearing out your mum’s home.’

  A final poke of rage, directed at my heart. Jena knows how important this box is, what it means to me. If only I could turn back time, back to when the box wasn’t a place I kept photos, but was just a chocolate box. The chocolates were eaten years ago, in a snug front room, passed around by a woman wedged into a high-backed armchair. A happy family, enjoying a treat together.

  Tentatively, just to check on the contents, I lifted the lid, and in the light cast by a shrieking crimson comet the top photo gleamed with glossy perfection. It was a photo of Jena, the terrible one taken when she was still in a coma. I closed the lid, sat on my bed and turned my face to the wall.

  Clive spoke gently; he moved closer, and I sensed him resisting the urge to comfort me. Don’t touch girls who are destroying their bodies; they don’t like it.

  ‘The post-mortem will take place this week, Sam. Do you have anything you want to ask me, about the process?’

  The wall was all I saw. I was thinking of nothing, my best talent. He can’t break me; no one has yet.

  ‘Okay, well, I’ll come back tomorrow morning. All you have to do is talk for fifteen minutes, each day for the next month, about one of the photos in your box. That’s all I ask, and when each session is over, you get to eat the lower-calorie option. It will be a step towards recovery, Sam. If you co-operate, they can decide to release you.’

  ‘Fuck you, Clive.’

  No matter how much the therapists over the eighteen months have told me that talking will help, I don’t believe them. Control and secrets are things I understand well.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then, Sam,’ he said, hesitating as he jingled his car keys. Then he turned to leave. ‘Happy New Year. Let’s make it a good one, shall we?’

  I heard him whistling as he walked away, and the room went colder.

  True to his word, Clive arrives just after breakfast on New Year’s Day.

  It’s quiet on the unit, too still, like a pause between strangers, but the other girls return tomorrow. Manda is on duty, and she’
s in the office reading a book she got for Christmas, some historical bonkbuster, and eating toast. I’m back in bed, trying again to find undiscovered cracks on the ceiling so I don’t think about Mum. I can feel my tube-fed breakfast heavy in my stomach, seeping under my skin like a layer of blubber. I haven’t looked at the Black Magic box since I woke, which is an achievement, a sign that I can win this battle with memory if I only focus on my body. Empty body, blank mind.

  And then Clive walks in, smelling sour and with a bleary look to his eyes, which are small behind his glasses. There are crumbs of food or dandruff in his beard. The suit of last night is gone, the tweed jacket and flannel shirt have returned. He must shop at either Gentleman’s Outfitters or Oxfam. He is carrying two items: an apple and a can of Enliven.

  I roll towards the wall and close my eyes.

  ‘Fuck you, Clive. I’m not talking.’

  ‘Not even for fifteen minutes?’

  ‘Not even for fifteen seconds.’ And then I shut up, because silence is my friend, as is hunger. Memory and thought are noisy imposters, but I am strong and can beat them. I’ve been beating them for eighteen months, and my final victory is so close I’m dizzy with longing. Oblivion.

  There is a pause, then I hear him speaking into the radio-mic for Manda’s assistance. He sounds reluctant, even sad, and I want to scream at him to not give up on me, to please try again, but I keep the words locked inside and close my eyes, waiting. I tense, my body ready for the hands, the struggle, then the creamy fat they will force into me, though my stomach is still full from the first can. But I will not give in.

  I start to cry, I can’t help it, and I hold myself in a hug that feels pathetically limp, thin arms around scraggy body. I know how skeletal I am; I do not suffer from body dysmorphia. I hug myself, even though I am my own enemy; I cannot protect myself from me, from the thoughts that keep intruding. My dad is gone and my mother is dead, and I miss them both. Fuck you, Sam. Fuck you.

  CHAPTER 4

  2 January

  I’m glad when the other girls return; their noise and drama distract me.

  Fiona’s bed is sunken in the middle from the weight of designer-shop bags, ones featuring half-naked teenagers and ducks wearing top hats. She’s showing us the Christmas presents her parents bought her. Joelle is sifting through the bags with the tips of her fingers, looking superior because her family know better than to buy her clothes; she’s drowning in her uniform of black sweater and black leggings.

  Fiona is a pony-club anorexic; her symptoms are so recent that her blonde hair is still thick and glossy, she doesn’t yet have any down on her face, and there are no dark circles under her blue eyes. She didn’t even get NHS funding to be here; her darling parents are paying for her to be counselled and cured.

  Fiona just loves having a label – AN with BM tendencies – meaning she starves herself until she gives in to chocolate. She’s not even that small, not even in children’s sizes yet, but Clive must have felt unable to say no to the extra money. Treatment here costs the earth, and we have three empty rooms. How can they keep the place going with only five of us to treat?

  Stacey is pretending to be disinterested in the bags, but really she’s as shocked as me by how much stuff Fiona has. She’s always on the lookout for what the other girls get, especially clothes or make-up. She’d like to be one of their gang, but they don’t want her, so she’s stuck with me. I put up with her as she pops sugar-free pink bubbles and reads about Paris Hilton’s new haircut or Brangelina’s messy divorce. Shame really; she’s not as dumb as she makes out. Her brain works well enough, but she stuffs her head with what nail polish doesn’t chip, what spray tan will make her legs look slimmest.

  What’s best about Stacey is that she doesn’t ask about my family. I told her once, in a weak moment when the feelings wouldn’t disappear, how Jena had been attacked, how I’ve been refusing her visits for eighteen months, not replying to her many letters. Seeing her, seeing anyone, would break me. Jena needs a fresh start after all she’s been through.

  Stacey listened and didn’t judge. That’s what she’s like: Angel perfume and shaved legs and hugs and not too many questions. It’s why we get on. We let each other be. After my disclosure, I punished myself with hunger, and the feelings disappeared again, leaving me to focus only on my body.

  Also in the room is Mina, but you could forget she’s here. She’s sitting in the corner, and she’s made herself small. She never speaks, just sits there nibbling her fingertips to the quick. I daren’t ask how her Christmas was, but she should never have been allowed to go home. She didn’t want to leave, she told us in therapy group, but her father insisted and she can’t say no to him. So she says no to food.

  Unable to stop herself, Stacey reaches forward and lifts a lace red vest from one of Fiona’s bags; her fingers run over the silk and she admires it until she sees it’s a size 2 – she herself is a 0 – and drops it like it’s on fire. She glances at me, and in that second I know we are both thinking the same thing: Fiona is a fraud. She doesn’t belong here with us.

  ‘Did you eat much?’ I ask Fiona, my treacherous thoughts sneaking back to Manda’s Christmas lecture, starring turkey and chipolatas and cake with marzipan and jellied fruits. And chocolates in black boxes. Fiona looks sheepish. I know the answer anyway; her face has filled out. She’ll be home for good before long.

  Joelle won’t be, though. She looks skinny as always. I tell her so.

  ‘BMI of fourteen,’ she boasts, running a hand over her hip bone. ‘Not my all-time record, but acceptable. Looks like you win the prize, though, Sam. You must have really done well to get this.’

  She reaches to tentatively touch my tube. I let her; it’s something we do here, touch each other, though we’re prickly about outside people doing it. This is a tight club. We are all fascinated with starving bodies, not just our own, and because we are beyond anything sexual we study each other with the detached interest of clinicians. She feels the tube with wonder.

  ‘Lucky,’ she says. ‘Now you don’t even have to eat.’

  Joelle is a blue-blood anorexic, a pedigree. She’s third generation; Mummy and Grandmummy taught her all they know. They’re proud of her, though they wouldn’t say so directly, of course. They visit every fortnight, three wasted women in designer clothes, sculpted from the same source, with dark hair cut pixie-short to show their cheekbones. Her mother was an actress, and Joelle used to model for catalogues before she got too skinny. Unlike Fiona, Joelle doesn’t have a chance of recovery, not in that family. Their Christmas present to her was a silver-plated handheld mirror, which is a fucked-up gift because anorexics simply love gazing at their own reflection, checking for changes, worrying over a spot or downy hair on the cheeks. They understand that, though, and that’s what makes the gift special. It’s like Joelle’s family are with her.

  My own family are only with me when I can’t control it, like in dreams, or the photos in the Black Magic box.

  I can’t fight the need anymore; I open the lid and look again at the first picture in the pile, the first one I ever took with the camera, secretively taken when Mum and Dad were out of the room, talking to the surgeon, just after Jena came out of the operating theatre. In the picture, she is in a coma. Her face is red and puffy, her right eye half-closed and purple; she looks like she’s been in a fight. There are metal grips, studded across her head to keep it from breaking apart, and her eyes are taped shut. I took the picture on impulse, not knowing where it would lead, but unsure what else to do with the camera round my neck in the awful silence of the hospital room.

  How I loved my broken, bruised sister.

  When my sister’s head hit the concrete she was knocked unconscious. I cradled her and cried, calling to her all the time, oblivious to the blood on my hands. I couldn’t tell you how long I was there. I was only vaguely aware that Mum and Dad had joined us, that someone, we never did discover who, had called an ambulance to take her to hospital.

  Still
unconscious after surgery, Jena had her own room in Intensive Care. Only the inhuman beeping machines and the changing of drips marked the passage of time; her hands swelled as the liquid became harder for her body to process. For four days this part of the nightmare continued, with Jena unreachable. The hospital gave us a pager so that if we weren’t by Jena’s side – if we’d gone home for a sleep or were in the hospital café eating a sandwich – the nurses could contact us. Dad disappeared into himself, weeping silently, letting Mum do all the talking, but even she didn’t want to carry the pager; she said it made her panicky, and she’d hold it like it was a bomb. It had a belt-clip, but the waistband of her skirt was already tight, so it dug in and hurt her. Dad didn’t offer, and I could see Mum hated that pager, so I wore it instead, tucked into the belt of my jeans. I remember going to the loo and thinking, What if it rings now? I was afraid it would go off when we were at home, trying to get some sleep, and I wouldn’t hear it. I knew that the hospital calling could mean Jena had woken up, or it could mean that she’d gone into an even-deeper sleep.

  Those first few days, I felt so tired. Depressed, I suppose, though I didn’t know it then. I wanted to go back to school, think about my upcoming GCSE exams. But Mum was so stressed that if I said anything about that she’d get angry and shout at me for being selfish. Dad cried silently and hugged me so tightly I felt my bones crack. Mum and Dad were almost always in each other’s arms, that’s what I remember. The two of them, totally united.

  We would sit in a line by Jena’s bed like the three wise monkeys, gazing abstractly out on the Ipswich skyline, listening to the beep of the machine. We watched nurses press buttons, shine a torch into Jena’s eyes and clip her finger with a gadget to measure her pulse. Minutes ticked by with no change. Meanwhile, my presents waited unopened on the kitchen worktop, all except one: the camera hanging around my neck. I couldn’t bear to take it off.