she slid down our living room wall and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.
Mum had always adored her father and it was obvious there was something special between them. I think that is why she had always understood and accepted the closeness of the bond between me and Dad.
Mum’s childhood had been pretty tough. Her family were hard-up and Grandad had a fierce temper, but no matter how violent or angry he had been, she always idolised him and never blamed him for any of the troubles between her parents.
When Grandma died of cancer when she was 51 and Mum was 18, Mum had been upset, but not devastated. But, faced with the prospect of losing Grandad, she just went into freefall – she couldn’t cope at all.
Grown-ups don’t use the word ‘terminal’ to kids and even if she had done, I don’t suppose I would have known what it meant. But I could see myself that every time we went to visit Grandad he was thinner, paler and more ill-looking. He didn’t have the energy for corny jokes any more and seemed to find it exhausting enough just breathing in and out. He was fading away in front of us.
And as Grandad slipped away, it seemed Mum was going the same way. ‘But he’s never been ill in his life and he’s not even 70,’ she would repeat again and again. She would get choked up at the slightest thing and tears were never far away.
So there we were that summer of 1990. Mum sad all the time, Dad mad all the time. Mum and Dad fighting, me and Natalie fighting. Grandad dying.
Then Rex fell ill and was taken back and forth to the vet. He was diagnosed with a tumour on his back leg and the vet said there was nothing more they could do. He’d have to be put down. Dad adored Rex, so when I saw him crying as he stroked his head one morning, I knew what it meant.
Rex was 18 and he’d been there all my life. The house felt so quiet without him. No mad mongrel racing up and down the hall every time the doorbell went. Just silence.
It was tough going back to school at the start of that new term. I’d never been academic but I’d always had fun at Hillside and been popular with the other girls. But even teachers noticed I had lost my energy and enthusiasm. Now there were so many more things to think about in my life than there had been a year ago.
And rather than just playing French skipping in the playground with all the other girls, I would spend more and more time staring at my friends, asking myself the same old questions: ‘Is my bum bigger than theirs?’, ‘Are my legs chubbier?’, ‘Is my tummy fatter?’
Nicola Carter was one of my best friends even though her bum was smaller than mine, her tummy flatter and her legs thinner. She had long, brown hair like mine and freckles scattered across her nose but oh, she was so skinny. She looked amazing.
All the kids in our class called us ‘Big Nikki’ and ‘Small Nikki’. Well, you can imagine how that made me feel. I was clearly just too big.
With so much bad stuff going on at home I threw myself into gymnastics more and more. And the more gymnastics I did, the more competitive I became about it. I may only have been seven but I was incredibly determined and driven. I only ever wanted to be the best. I knew I wasn’t as good as the other girls, not as pretty as them and not as thin as them. But rather than just think, Oh well, that’s the way it goes, I was determined to become the best, the prettiest and the skinniest.
Gymnastics had become a constant round of grades and competitions and although there wasn’t much enjoyment left in it for me, I was still desperate to excel.
One evening I was standing in the gym with the other nine girls as we waited for the results of our grade five to be read out. Finally the coach got to me. ‘Pass,’ she said. ‘Not distinction this time, Nikki. That’s a bit useless for you, isn’t it?’ She probably didn’t mean anything by it and if she did she was probably just trying to gee me up a bit, but all I heard was the word ‘useless’. It stuck in my brain like a rock and I just couldn’t shift it.
Shortly afterwards Mum was watching me line up to collect my badge at a county trials competition. She remembers that as I waited my turn she looked at my face and all she could see was torment and misery. I was only seven and I’d reached a pretty good standard as a gymnast but I felt useless.
I had to improve, I had to get better. And for that, I had to get thinner. I also deserved to be punished for not being as good as I should have been. Well, that’s what I thought. So I started denying myself treats.
Every week Mum would buy me a Milky Bar and Natalie a Galaxy to keep in our sock drawer. It was up to us when we ate them but we were both ultra-sensible and limited ourselves to one cube a day as that way they lasted longer. I’d also treat myself to a cube before training on a Saturday morning.
But when I started feeling more and more useless at gymnastics and more and more unhappy finding myself in the crossfire between Mum and Dad at home, I thought, I’m not going to have my cube of Milky Bar today. I don’t need it.
That very first time I denied myself, it felt good. Like I’d finally achieved something myself. And I liked the feeling so much that I did it again.
The other treats I had loved as a little kid were Kinder Eggs. I’d always been an early riser, which drove my parents mad, so years earlier Mum had made a deal with me that if I stayed in bed until seven o’clock I got a chocolate egg.
For ages it was just brilliant. Early in the morning I’d be wide awake but as soon as seven o’clock came round on my panda bear alarm clock, I’d go rushing into Mum and Dad’s room, climb into bed between them and claim my Kinder Egg.
But when I started wanting to be skinnier I started opening my reward, throwing away the chocolate and just keeping the toy inside.
And if anyone else, like my auntie, offered me a bag of sweets I’d just say I was full up or I didn’t like them. When I deprived myself it felt good. But even then I knew this had to remain a secret – I couldn’t tell anyone.
During that long, miserable summer the rows between Mum and Dad just grew more vicious. Mum was usually teary and weak, Dad raging or sullen. And Grandad was fading away. Everyone was pulling in different directions, caught up in their own personal tragedy.
For me, how to avoid eating became something to think about instead of what was going on at home.
By the end of the summer Grandad was really ill. One evening all four of us went to visit him. After a while Dad, Natalie and I went and sat in the corridor so that Mum and Grandad could have a bit of time alone together. We’d been sitting there about 20 minutes when she came out of his room shaking. She didn’t need to say anything. Grandad had gone. He was 69.
All the way home in the car I wailed until we got back indoors and Dad tipped me into bed exhausted.
Mum was utterly distraught and lost the plot entirely. She was 36 but felt her life was over too. It was like she was drowning but had no idea how to save herself.
‘Pull yourself together,’ Dad would shout at her when he found her crying yet again. It was his idea of tough love but Mum couldn’t pull herself together. Dad couldn’t understand why not, so they drifted even further apart.
Mum went to the doctor and said she was in a mess, she couldn’t cope any more with her grief, Dad’s anger and their fighting. The doctor said she would talk to Dad about things if he’d make an appointment to see her.
‘Please go to the GP, Dave,’ Mum begged one evening as she washed the dishes. ‘You need support for all the stress at work otherwise we’re not going to survive this. I haven’t got any energy left to fight you any more. We need proper help.’
But Dad just refused. ‘I’m not going,’ he said. And I think at that moment, with Mum leaning against the kitchen sink and Dad standing in the conservatory, my parents’ marriage ended.
A couple of days later – about a fortnight after Grandad died – Mum woke up and thought, Right, this is it. Life really is too short for all the rowing and fighting. I