Fragile

by Nikki Grahame

  I was having weekly sessions with the unit’s counsellor but that wasn’t helping my mood. I still couldn’t see any good raking over a load of stuff I’d been asked about a million times before. Sometimes I’d sit in the armchair in front of the counsellor, close my eyes and pretend to be asleep. Other times I’d stare out of the window or hum for the entire hour.

  Mum visited me almost every day for the 17 months that I was at Great Ormond Street. To get there and back could take three hours, but she never complained even when I was a total bitch to her. Sometimes if she was late I would scream down the ward at her. Other times I wouldn’t speak or even acknowledge her for the whole time she was there. She’d sit at a table and I would move my chair around so my back was facing her. I felt so angry that she had sent me there and that she could take me away at any time but instead chose to leave me there being pumped full of calories morning, noon and night.

  Several times she turned up only to be greeted by me screaming at the nurses, ‘Tell her to fuck off. I don’t want her near me. Unless she has come to discharge me she can fuck off.’ It wouldn’t be anything specific that she had done. I’d just be having ‘one of my days’.

  When Mum visited she was allowed to take me up to the hospital’s roof garden or, if I was stronger, out for a walk. But Mum wasn’t my mum any more. She was just an excuse for me to lose weight. As soon as we got up on to the roof I’d run up and down like a loony, trying to burn off calories. And if we went out of the building I’d speed walk along the streets, leaving her desperately trying to keep up, begging me to stop.

  Some days we went to the park but once we were in the gates I’d instruct Mum, ‘Sit there while I do 20 laps.’ Each time I shot past her she’d try to start speaking but I’d just ignore her and race off on another lap. In my mind the sole purpose of her being there was to give me an excuse to get out of the unit and to exercise, and she had to realise that. And there was nothing she could do to stop me.

  ‘If you tell the nurses what I’ve been doing I’ll say I don’t want you visiting me any more,’ I’d threaten her. I was so, so cruel to Mum because I was using her huge love for me as my weapon.

  In the past, she would sit with me during my meal and I’d hide food in full view of her. ‘If you tell, though, Mum, you know you won’t be coming back again,’ I’d snarl. It was the same when I was allowed home for day visits. They never trusted me enough to let me stay there overnight and I think Mum was relieved as she knew she couldn’t control me.

  Mum would be tortured with guilt every time she gave in to me because she knew she wasn’t doing the best for me, but she was terrified I’d ban her from seeing me. I think she was scared of me physically too. In my constant anger I lashed out at her regularly. I gave her black eyes and bruises on her arms and legs. But the next moment I’d be hugging her and crying, desperate for a cuddle from my mummy. It must have been so confusing for her, like being stuck in an abusive relationship with someone who says they love you but can’t stop hurting you.

  Some people would say she should have stopped visiting me if it was only endangering me, but she couldn’t just abandon her youngest daughter in an institution surrounded by seriously mentally ill kids. In any case, the doctors had warned her that my hideous behaviour was a way of testing how much she really loved me. If I was ever going to get better I had to know deep down that she would always be there for me however much I pushed her away.

  I was so self-obsessed. Even after Mum had a car accident and hurt her back, the first thought in my mind was, Who’s going to come and visit me now she’s too ill?

  Mum also felt she had to keep visiting me because she truly thought I would be dead soon. I was so out of control that she couldn’t see any other conclusion to the hell of the past five years.

  Yet only once can I remember her really getting angry and losing it with me. One day I dragged her out for a walk to Covent Garden. Well, she was walking and I was jogging up ahead, burning off every calorie that I could. It was only when I stopped at a corner that Mum caught up with me, out of breath and boiling hot despite a chilly breeze. She started screaming at me like I hadn’t heard her do in years. And all the nervousness in her voice had disappeared, replaced by a raw anger.

  ‘I’m sick of this, Nikki. I’ve had enough,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go and die? Starve yourself to death. Run yourself into the grave if that is what you really want. Because I can’t cope with it any more. I’m sick of you dragging me around like a dog on a lead.’

  I stood there totally stunned, aware of people in the street staring at us, but unable to take my eyes off Mum’s flaring eyes.

  ‘Because this isn’t just your life you’re screwing up here, you know,’ she went on. ‘It’s mine and your Dad’s and Natalie’s and Tony’s too. But you’re the one getting all the help and all the attention and you’re still choosing not to get better. So just do whatever it is you want.’

  Then she spun round and, propelled by fury, rushed back to Great Ormond Street. For the first time in years I was the one scurrying along behind, desperately trying to catch up and win favour. For a short while the tables were turned.

  When we got back to the hospital one of the nurses grabbed Mum and said, ‘Well done, Mrs Grahame – someone saw you in the street standing up to Nikki. This is what you have got to do.’

  They’d been telling Mum for ages that she had to get angry with me but she had found it too hard.

  That day was a big turning point for Mum. I didn’t ban her from visiting for standing up to me, so it taught her that she did have some power in our relationship. And it taught me I could have a strong mother.

  Dad used to visit at least a couple of times each week. Some days I’d get him to take me swimming and I’d pound up and down the pool while he stood there watching me, uncertain how to stop me. Other times he would run around the park with me a couple of times, thinking if he let me do a bit of exercise it would stop me overdoing it. But however many laps we did, it was never enough for me.

  Some afternoons Dad would bring a football and we’d go down to the park for a kick-around. He thought it was a bit of father-and-daughter bonding, like the old days. But it wasn’t – we were there for just one reason and that was for me to burn up the calories.

  Natalie was really supportive too and would visit me on a Friday evening, coming on the tube straight from college in Stanmore. We got on better then than we had for years. Maybe it was because we had been apart for a while or maybe we were simply growing up. Whatever it was, at least we had stopped acting like banshees every time we were in the same room.

  At that time, Natalie was hanging around with a load of hippies, learning the guitar, smoking spliffs and getting her nose pierced. I’d got into all that too through Nina, so finally Nat and I had something in common. She’d turn up with tapes she had recorded for me of bands like Kula Shaker, Blur and Oasis and I thought she was dead cool. On her sixteenth birthday I sent her a card and inside I wrote, ‘I’m so proud to have a sister who is 16.’ I meant it.

  All this time my weight was gradually increasing and every day my flesh felt a little more padded. I knew it was time for desperate action.

  To hell with the pain, I thought. I’ll cut it out. My next perfect opportunity was during a visit to the Great Ormond Street classroom. We were doing art and crafts and there was a box of scissors lying on a table. I didn’t think for a second. I pulled down the waistband of my trousers, pulled the tube out as far as I could and snipped just where the plastic entered my stomach.

  I felt victorious again.

  The next time a nurse came to feed me, she pulled up my top looking for the end of the tube. I watched the look of shock on her face as she realised it had gone.

  ‘What’ve you done, Nikki?’ she said in horror. ‘If we don’t reopen this gastrostomy immediately the wound will close up with the rest of the tube inside you.’

  Yeah, like I was bothered about that!

  But they wer
en’t giving in either. I was hauled back to my bed, where a group of doctors and nurses hurriedly planned their next move.

  They decided to insert a new style tube. It worked by being inserted and then injected with a little water to create a balloon just inside my stomach which I wouldn’t be able to pull back out. Imagine it like pushing a round balloon through a letterbox, then blowing it up so you can’t pull it out again. The feed was to be pumped through another tube attached to the balloon. Fairly simple really, but apparently very effective.

  The inflatable tube worked for a good few months before I came up with my counter-attack. Oh my God, I thought. Why didn’t I think of this five months ago? It was obvious – all I had to do was deflate the balloon and then it and the tube would simply slip out. But what I needed for that was a syringe. They were still counting the syringes on our ward, so that was no good. Then a week or so later, by sheer good fortune for me, Parjeet became critically ill and was taken to the Accident & Emergency Department.

  We may not have been buddies but as her room mate I was allowed to visit her. I was sitting chatting to her when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a syringe lying on a trolley. The whole time I was talking to Parjeet, my eyes kept going back to the syringe. I was determined I wasn’t leaving that ward without it. As I got up to go I wandered over casually, slipped two syringes into my pocket and walked back up to the Mildred Creak Unit.

  That night after lights out I stuck the syringe up the tube and sucked out the water. The balloon deflated immediately and with one gentle tug it was out. No pain, nothing. I’d won again. Brilliant.

  The following morning I woke up and looked at my stomach under my pyjamas and the hole had already closed up. This time I had really won, I knew it. I was so proud of myself, I felt jubilant.

  Half an hour later, at breakfast, the nurse came over with her breezy morning chorus, ‘Right, Nikki, time to connect your feed now.’

  That’s what you think, I thought, smiling broadly at her.

  Again she lifted my top and again the tube had disappeared. Her face was a picture of confusion.

  ‘Where’s your tube gone?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said innocently. ‘It’s just gone.’

  Afterwards I heard the nurses panicking about how they were going to explain it to their bosses. That was two tubes I’d managed to magic into thin air without any of them noticing.

  When Dr Lask arrived on the ward later that day even he looked exhausted with me.

  ‘OK, Nikki, I’m going to have to book you in for another operation,’ he said.

  But I’d already planned my response.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll eat. I want to eat.’

  It was the early spring of 1997 and by then I hadn’t put anything solid in my mouth for more than a year but I just couldn’t face another day of the tube.

  Dr Lask agreed to give me one last chance to prove myself.

  They started me off on Forté Juice high-calorie drinks, then after a fortnight introduced baby food because it was easy for me to digest. It was disgusting and Mum and I would wander around the hospital shop looking for jars which looked slightly more appetising than the usual chicken and potato mush.

  It was a really weird sensation having food in my mouth and it took a while before I moved on to soup and bread and biscuits. But it wasn’t long before the bread and biscuits were going in my knickers and I was back to my old ways again.

  One afternoon Dr Lask called a meeting with Mum and Dad. ‘I’m sorry, Mr and Mrs Grahame,’ he said. ‘But I honestly don’t think there’s anything more I can do for Nikki. We’ve tried everything over the past 17 months but nothing has worked.

  ‘She has driven herself to the point of death, is destroying her body, will probably deprive herself of ever having children, but we can’t stop her.’

  Dr Lask was one of the leading authorities on anorexia in Britain but even he couldn’t save me.

  ‘Nikki is not the worst case of anorexia I’ve ever had to deal with in my 32-year career,’ he said slowly. ‘She is by far the worst.’

  Mum was desperate, begging him to try a bit longer.

  But Dr Lask was adamant that keeping me in a hospital environment was starting to do more harm than good and felt I might fare better in a more relaxed setting. He recommended a foster home called Sedgemoor in Taunton, Somerset, which might kick-start me into getting my life back.

  Mum and Dad were worried at the thought of my being so far from home and away from medical support with foster carers. But, like me, their options had run out.

  So on 27 March 1997, a month before my fifteenth birthday, I walked out of the Mildred Creak Unit for the last time. I weighed 29 kilos (4 stone 4 lb) and was 150.1 centimetres (4 feet 11 inches) tall. In the time I’d been there I hadn’t managed to keep on any weight at all.

  Mentally I’d made no progress either. I still wanted exactly the same things as the moment I’d walked into the place – to be as skinny as possible and to fight as hard as possible anyone who prevented me achieving my goal.

  Great Ormond Street had admitted defeat – they couldn’t cope with me any longer and were sending me away, to somewhere it would be even easier to avoid food.

  I was triumphant.

  CHAPTER 14

  SEDGEMOOR

  Fields and trees skidded past the back seat window of our Volkswagen Golf as I sat staring out on that long drive down the M4 to Somerset.

  I gazed out, excited to be in the real world again after so long in Great Ormond Street. But it felt scary too, being sent so far from home without Mum or Dad or Natalie. Yet I was pleased there’d be no doctors and nurses telling me to eat any more. Now I could starve myself just as much as I wanted.

  The doctors had decided that as the hospital just wasn’t making me any better it might be better off to put me in a more normal home-like environment. But going home was not an option. Towards the end of my time at Great Ormond Street there had been a mammoth meeting between my doctors, social worker, family therapist and Mum and Dad. As soon as I was called into the meeting room for the last ten minutes I could tell by Mum’s blank expression that something bad had happened.

  ‘We’ve been talking and have decided you won’t be going home until you are at least 18 years old,’ Dr Lask explained. ‘If you go home we have no confidence that you won’t just go straight back to starving yourself.’

  It was a total body blow. It made everything so pointless. If I was never going home – because that’s what it seemed like to me – what exactly was the point of being alive? I started screaming and went into one of my temper fits, throwing my body around as people tried to restrain me, arching my back and whacking my head against the wall. It went on for almost two hours before eventually I collapsed from exhaustion and fell asleep.

  The doctors felt foster care at Sedgemoor was a better option for me than home in that relationships I’d create with foster carers would not be as intense as with Mum and Tony and might prevent me relapsing. But the doctors were also aware my family was in no real state to take me back either. My anorexia had taken a terrible toll on them all.

  Mum had borne the brunt of it and was in a bad way. Depression had swept over her gradually. She was still in a low place after Grandad’s death and the divorce. But it was knowing that there was nothing she could do to make me eat which really plunged her into torment. Worse still, whenever I was with her I seemed to be an even more successful anorexic.

  It is quite common in families where there is an anorexic child for something called ‘reverse parenting’ to take hold. Basically it means the kid is in charge while Mum and Dad do what they are told by them because they’re so scared their child might die or shut them out if they don’t. That is exactly what was going on between me and Mum.

  Then Mum had a car accident and suffered constant back pain for months which only added to her depression. On top of that she heard people gossiping about her, questioning whether she was t
o blame for my anorexia. ‘Well, Sue’s always been thin herself,’ they were saying. ‘Makes you wonder if she encouraged it.’ If those silly old cows had seen just one of Mum’s amazing sponge puddings they’d have known there was no way that was true.

  But rather than fight back, Mum just shrank into herself. There was no fight left in her.

  And if all that wasn’t enough to deal with, Natalie was still furious about all the attention being lavished on me and was staging a full-on teenage rebellion. Mum felt she had failed me and Natalie and so was a failure as a mother – as well as as a wife. She was tearful a lot of the time and found it harder and harder to do even the simplest jobs around the house. Gradually it reached the point where she was spending every day just lying on the sofa, unable to face the world.

  She’d get up in the morning thinking, Right, today I’ll go down the town, do some shopping, come home and have a good tidy-up. She’d shower, put some nice clothes on and come downstairs, up and ready for the world. But once Natalie and Tony were out of the house her resolve would start to slip and her strength would ebb away.

  Some days she would make it out of the house and round the corner. But by then the outside world would all seem too much and she would run home crying and gasping for breath. She’d collapse on the sofa, crying in front of the telly, and only get the energy to tidy herself up when Natalie was about to come in from college. The only time she could get herself out of the house was to visit me.

  For a while she managed to lie quite convincingly to Tony and Natalie about how she was feeling, but she was sinking fast.

  She and Tony were sitting at the kitchen table talking and for the millionth time trying to make sense of it all. Then Mum calmly walked over to the draining board, where she kept the big bottle of ibuprofen pills she needed for her back pain. She undid it, tipped a handful of pills into her palm and shoved the lot into her mouth. She swallowed as many as she could get down her, then did it again.