from that old album Dad is pushing me in the buggy while Mum holds Nat’s hand. ‘But why weren’t you pushing me that day, Mum?’ I said. Even though I had Dad’s total devotion, I wanted Mum’s too. And if that meant trampling all over Natalie to get it, so be it.
My competitive nature and quick temper had probably been bubbling under since birth. I cried pretty much continuously for the first fortnight after I was born, which should have given Mum a bit of a clue what she was in for.
And as a toddler I was pretty tough. Certainly any three-year-old who ever went for a spin in my favourite bubble car at the Early Learning Centre in Watford never made that mistake twice. Mum found me pulling one kid out of the car by his jumper before leaping in and driving off round the shop myself.
At play school I had to stand in the toilet on my own one morning for putting a wooden brick on one of the other kids’ heads. Another time I was hauled up for kicking one of the boys.
At infant and then junior school I was always up to something, getting into scrapes. Dad called me his ‘little bruiser’ but I knew he was proud of me for sticking up for myself. But I was popular in class too – I had a big group of friends and I was always the leader.
I was in the Brownies, went to the church’s holiday club, loved swimming at weekends and was always out playing on my bike after school with kids from our street. My friends Zanep and Julidah from down the road were always round our house and we’d play for hours in the twin room I shared with Natalie.
Our house was a fairly typical chalet bungalow in the north-western suburbs of London, with two bedrooms overlooking the street at the front and above these a big attic which we used as a playroom. Our garden was magical. Back then it seemed huge to me, with its long slope of grass stretching from a wooden-boarded summerhouse all the way down to the living room window. To one side of the garden was a ‘secret’ passageway which got narrower and narrower until it reached the special spot Natalie and I used for burying treasure – well, Mum’s old jewellery from the 1970s. In another corner there were swings, a slide and a climbing tree.
On the patio at the top of the garden, we would help Dad light bonfires in the winter and in summer we would stage our theatrical productions there, prancing and dancing up and down.
Sometimes I think that house in Stanley Road will haunt me for the rest of my life – I was so happy there and I was a kid there. Because what I didn’t know then was that the time spent living in that house up until I was seven was my childhood – all of it.
The only thing that made it OK to be called inside from that magical garden was the thought of one of Mum’s dinners. Up until the age of seven I would eat pretty much anything she put in front of me. I was never one of those ‘just three chips and half an organic sausage’ type of kids.
I’d fed well as a baby and as soon as I went on to solids, anything Mum served up, I’d eat. On Sunday it would be a big roast and then midweek we would have home-made burgers, meatballs or liver and veg. And that would be followed by a proper dessert – a steamed pudding or fruit with custard. I loved Mum’s food. We all did.
And going out to restaurants was a real treat too. I was only two when we all went on holiday to Crete and I ordered a huge plate of mussels in a restaurant. ‘You might not like those, Nikki darling,’ Mum warned, but I wasn’t going to be dissuaded.
When my meal arrived everyone in the restaurant was staring at this tiny little toddler tucking into a huge plate of shellfish – but I loved it.
Back then food was fun and a big part of our family life. But within a few short years there was no fun left in either food or our family.
‘Will you please stand on your feet and not on your head?’ Mum yelled at me one Saturday morning. ‘You spend more time upside down than the right way up,’ she grumbled.
It was about the millionth time she’d had a go at me about it, half jokingly, half worried I might do myself some permanent damage by spending so much time performing handstands. I’d even watch TV upside down. And when I wasn’t doing that I would be cartwheeling and backflipping my way up and down the wooden floor of our hall.
‘OK,’ Mum finally said, ‘if you love all this acrobatics so much we might as well put it to some use.’ The following week she’d signed me up for the Northwood Gymnastics Club. I was beyond excited. I was still only six years old but getting dressed up in a royal-blue leotard, my long, dark-brown hair pulled back in a pony tail, I felt so important – like a proper gymnast.
All those hours spent on my head had obviously been worth it, because I quickly showed a real ability at gymnastics. And I loved it all – the training, the competitions and just messing around with the other girls afterwards. Cartwheels, somersaults and flips on the mats, vaulting and the asymmetric bars – I couldn’t get enough of it.
Within a couple of weeks the coach must have decided I had some natural talent because I was selected to become part of the gym’s squad.
I was so proud of myself. It was amazing. But being part of the squad instantly meant a lot more pressure. I was representing the London Borough of Hillingdon and there was a gala every six months and a new grade to work for every couple of months. And that meant a lot more training. Within a couple of months this had shot up from gymnastics once a week to sessions three evenings a week and for three hours on a Saturday morning. We’d often do a full hour of tumbling followed by an hour of vaulting. It was exhausting and any sense of enjoyment quickly seeped away.
Being the way I was, I couldn’t be happy unless I was the best in the squad and unfortunately there were girls there who were clearly better than me. One Saturday morning we were in the changing rooms, messing around in our leotards at the end of a tough, three-hour session. One of the other girls was standing behind me, staring at me, when she suddenly said, ‘Haven’t you got a big bum, Nikki?’
I could feel myself going bright red but I just laughed and pulled my shell suit on quickly. How embarrassing.
That evening I crept into Mum’s bedroom when she and Dad were watching telly downstairs. I opened their wardrobe door and stood in front of the full length mirror bolted to its inside.
I analysed my bum carefully. Then I stared at the slight curve of my tummy and then my fleshy upper arms.
Maybe that girl at gymnastics was right – maybe my bum was a bit on the lardy side. Maybe that was why I still couldn’t get those flips right.
After all, that other girl’s arms were much thinner than mine. And she had a tiny bum and virtually no tummy at all and she was brilliant at flips. In fact she was better than me at almost all the routines. Plus, she was really popular with the other girls too.
And I guess that is how it all began. Somewhere in my seven-year-old brain I started to think that to be better at gymnastics and to be more popular, I had to be skinny. And because I didn’t just want to be better than I was at gymnastics, but to be the best, then I couldn’t just be skinny. Oh no, I would have to be the skinniest.
‘I’ll keep my tracksuit bottoms on today, Mum,’ I said as I went into the gym the following week. She didn’t think anything of it then, but I’d decided I didn’t want anyone laughing at my fat bum ever again.
Yet it would be too easy to say that one girl’s catty comments sparked off the illness which was to blight the next ten years of my life and which will inevitably be with me in some way until the day I die.
No, I think that was just what brought things to a head. Looking back, I think I was already vulnerable to any kind of comment that may have been made about my size. Because already a whole truckload of misery was slowly building up behind the front door