big one and that means one less apple tomorrow. I want cereal, perhaps? No. One bowl leads to another. No, that’s it – nothing.
[Grace is seen to join in the conversation from time to time, but everything is far-removed from her own thoughts. There are stories of drunken nights out, kebabs and sick in the street. Friend 1 pulls her aside.]
FRIEND 1: You don’t look good. God … I hate saying that, but you were so beautiful … before …
[Friend 1 stutters over appropriate wording.]
Can’t you see the difference? I mean, you’re different now. Can you remember how you were before you were …?
[Friend tails off.]
[Grace nuzzles further into her coat. She looks as if she might try to finish the sentence for the friend, but even she struggles to utter the four syllables AN-OR-EX-IC which label and mark her. Her teeth are gritted, and through a plastered smile she tries to show that she appreciates the interference.]
FRIEND 1: It’s just as if you’ve broken your leg. Like your mum told you. There is nothing to be ashamed of.
[There are glances and nervous looks from the pub crowd. Grace looks up at the TV screen. The Spice Girls are on MTV talking about Girl Power. Grace looks at their thin figures. Some people are drunkenly singing along to the music. Grace imagines their real and loud inside voices. We hear them played over the tableau on stage.]
GIRL 1 (INSIDE VOICE):
She could change if she really wanted to, the cure is surely right there before her on a plate.
GIRL 2 (INSIDE VOICE):
Let’s be honest here, this is a disease of vanity – all you have to do is eat; it isn’t hard.
BOY 1 (INSIDE VOICE):
Three times a day, taking the food from the plate into the mouth. A forkful in the mouth – a simple process.
GIRL 1 (INSIDE VOICE):
Sympathy can only extend so far. It’s hard to keep being so understanding.
[And then we see the inside voices getting out into the room. They leak out because they have been building up. Grace’s inside voice never comes out. She swallows. There is a conversation about diets and losing weight.]
GIRL 2: I haven’t eaten anything all day – I just forgot!
[Grace gasps.]
GRACE (INSIDE VOICE):
How can they forget? Don’t they feel the thrust of anguish, the deep stretching pain in their stomachs too? What do they do with their hunger?
[Then crisps appear on the table and the crowd fearlessly demolish three bags. Grace watches them intensely, counting the grams of fat that they put inside them. One by one, counting, adding and totalling.]
[Curtain closes.]
Explanations
I need to stop my story here. My secret has started to unravel: one moment a child, then a teenager and then an anorexic. The expanse of time beneath these indentations of memory is so huge, and even those individual imprints upon it are murky and sporadic. There is not the control of the story that you may have anticipated. But perhaps you will also see how easy it is to be cast from one definition to another in a matter of words. One minute everything is fine, and the next, you are wondering how you managed to tear everything apart. Actions force things forward, and the grip you have on things is lost, and all at once. What you think you own, and order, and manipulate, is suddenly out of your hands.
I could leave my story this way, hurtling along from one action to the next as it was experienced, as it was breathed, memory layered upon memory, but I cannot. Because my story is a true one, it is not only inwardly folding. There are things in this story which happen in the real world, in real time, every day. There are parts of what I am telling you which need to be broken down, and there are questions which I want to answer. How did I get here? Let me take a step back.
Any parent or friend of a newly labelled anorexic must think about the possible factors that are to blame for this illness. First thoughts might be, ‘Why did we not see this earlier? Why did we not know this? What could we have done
[Grace is seen to join in the conversation from time to time, but everything is far-removed from her own thoughts. There are stories of drunken nights out, kebabs and sick in the street. Friend 1 pulls her aside.]
FRIEND 1: You don’t look good. God … I hate saying that, but you were so beautiful … before …
[Friend 1 stutters over appropriate wording.]
Can’t you see the difference? I mean, you’re different now. Can you remember how you were before you were …?
[Friend tails off.]
[Grace nuzzles further into her coat. She looks as if she might try to finish the sentence for the friend, but even she struggles to utter the four syllables AN-OR-EX-IC which label and mark her. Her teeth are gritted, and through a plastered smile she tries to show that she appreciates the interference.]
FRIEND 1: It’s just as if you’ve broken your leg. Like your mum told you. There is nothing to be ashamed of.
[There are glances and nervous looks from the pub crowd. Grace looks up at the TV screen. The Spice Girls are on MTV talking about Girl Power. Grace looks at their thin figures. Some people are drunkenly singing along to the music. Grace imagines their real and loud inside voices. We hear them played over the tableau on stage.]
GIRL 1 (INSIDE VOICE):
She could change if she really wanted to, the cure is surely right there before her on a plate.
GIRL 2 (INSIDE VOICE):
Let’s be honest here, this is a disease of vanity – all you have to do is eat; it isn’t hard.
BOY 1 (INSIDE VOICE):
Three times a day, taking the food from the plate into the mouth. A forkful in the mouth – a simple process.
GIRL 1 (INSIDE VOICE):
Sympathy can only extend so far. It’s hard to keep being so understanding.
[And then we see the inside voices getting out into the room. They leak out because they have been building up. Grace’s inside voice never comes out. She swallows. There is a conversation about diets and losing weight.]
GIRL 2: I haven’t eaten anything all day – I just forgot!
[Grace gasps.]
GRACE (INSIDE VOICE):
How can they forget? Don’t they feel the thrust of anguish, the deep stretching pain in their stomachs too? What do they do with their hunger?
[Then crisps appear on the table and the crowd fearlessly demolish three bags. Grace watches them intensely, counting the grams of fat that they put inside them. One by one, counting, adding and totalling.]
[Curtain closes.]
Explanations
I need to stop my story here. My secret has started to unravel: one moment a child, then a teenager and then an anorexic. The expanse of time beneath these indentations of memory is so huge, and even those individual imprints upon it are murky and sporadic. There is not the control of the story that you may have anticipated. But perhaps you will also see how easy it is to be cast from one definition to another in a matter of words. One minute everything is fine, and the next, you are wondering how you managed to tear everything apart. Actions force things forward, and the grip you have on things is lost, and all at once. What you think you own, and order, and manipulate, is suddenly out of your hands.
I could leave my story this way, hurtling along from one action to the next as it was experienced, as it was breathed, memory layered upon memory, but I cannot. Because my story is a true one, it is not only inwardly folding. There are things in this story which happen in the real world, in real time, every day. There are parts of what I am telling you which need to be broken down, and there are questions which I want to answer. How did I get here? Let me take a step back.
Any parent or friend of a newly labelled anorexic must think about the possible factors that are to blame for this illness. First thoughts might be, ‘Why did we not see this earlier? Why did we not know this? What could we have done
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