times got a lot harder too. For a long while I had been eating the meals Mum made me at night – I’d allowed myself that much, but no more. But that autumn, as the days grew shorter and the weather colder, I just got stricter and stricter on myself until there were only certain bits of dinner I would allow myself to eat.
Why was I doing it? I had started out just wanting to be thinner and a better gymnast but quite quickly my eight-year-old mind had come to see not eating as something I had to do. It was like a compulsion. I had to eat less and be in total control of what I was eating. And if Mum tried to stop me I had to find a way to get away with it.
By now, depriving myself was just as important as, if not more than, becoming skinny.
Dinner times became a battleground. As soon as the front door slammed shut behind me as I walked in from school there would be the usual yell, ‘What’s for dinner, Mum?’, that is heard in millions of homes across the country every afternoon. But while most mothers’ replies are normally greeted with a ‘Yeah, yummy’ or at worst a ‘Yuk, that’s gross,’ in our house Mum’s evening menu was just the beginning of a negotiating session that could last for hours.
Usually Mum gave in and made me whatever I demanded because she was desperate for me to eat something and she thought that if she gave in to me, at least I would have something. But even that didn’t always work. Often she would slave for ages cooking something that she thought I might find acceptable, chicken or fish, only for me to shove it away the moment she laid it down on the table.
Mum tried everything to make me eat. She tried persuading me: ‘Go on, Nikki, just for me, please eat your dinner up.’ And she tried disciplining me, threatening that I wouldn’t be allowed to go out with my friends or to gymnastics unless I ate.
Sometimes she got so frustrated with me that she totally lost it and started screaming and shouting. But that was fine. I’d just scream and shout back.
Other times she simply sobbed and sobbed, begging me to eat while I looked at her blankly. Getting Mum crying was always a result. It meant she hadn’t the strength to fight that particular mealtime and it was a victory for me. Dad was still living in the house but he was normally at work at mealtimes, which meant Mum was desperately trying to cope with me on her own – as well as watching her marriage collapse and trying to come to terms with having lost Grandad.
Although only eight, I was already an accomplished liar. ‘Did you eat your lunch at school today, Nikki?’ Mum would ask. ‘Yes thanks. The egg sandwiches were great,’ I’d say. I always gave just enough detail that Mum couldn’t be entirely sure whether I was lying, although deep down she must have thought I probably was.
I’d also discovered a brilliant new way of getting thin – exercise. I started with sit-ups every single night in my bedroom. It was great because Natalie now slept in the attic room, which meant I could get up to anything in my room and no one would know.
‘Night, darling,’ Mum would say, tucking me into bed and kissing my forehead. ‘Night, Mum,’ I’d call out to her as she shut the door, already throwing back the duvet, ready for at least 200 sit-ups before allowing myself to sleep.
Soon the bones started to jut out at my elbows and my legs looked like sticks. Mum was becoming more and more worried. She was equally concerned by what she saw in my face – a haunted, troubled look and eyes that had lost every bit of sparkle. My sense of fun had disappeared and I was withdrawn, distracted and sullen.
One Sunday lunchtime all four of us went to the Beefeater for a roast. It was a birthday ‘do’ and so we were all making a show of togetherness.
When we got to the table, Mum, Dad and Nat all sat down while I hovered at the edge. ‘Sit down, Nikki,’ said Mum. But I couldn’t. I had to keep moving, had to keep using up that energy inside me to make me thinner. And I didn’t want to be near all that food – it felt disgusting.
I refused to sit down for the entire meal. Mum and Dad both tried to persuade me and got mad with me, but nothing could make me sit at that table. That was when they really started to worry there was a major problem emerging. And they were scared.
It was about this time that The Karen Carpenter Story was on television. It was on too late at night for me but Mum saw it and immediately spotted the similarities. And it was then that the presence of ‘anorexia’ as an illness first entered our lives.
Anorexia – the name given to a condition where people, usually women, starve themselves to reduce their weight – has probably been around since the end of the 19th century. In Victorian times it was thought to be a form of ‘hysteria’ affecting middle- or upper-class women. It was only in the 1980s in America that it became more recognised and clinics began treating sufferers.
The death of Karen Carpenter, one half of the brother-and-sister singing duo The Carpenters, played a huge part in increasing understanding of the illness. She had refused food for years and used laxatives to control her weight before dying in 1983 from heart failure caused by her anorexia.
It was only after the film of her life, made in 1989, was aired in Britain that people here had any idea about what anorexia really was. And even then it was regarded as a condition which only affected teenage girls. That’s what made Mum think at first that it couldn’t be what was wrong with me. I was only eight, so how could I possibly have it? But still she was worried.
‘Right, if you won’t eat your dinner, I’m taking you to the doctor – tomorrow!’ she shouted at me at the end of another fraught meal.
The following evening after school – it was towards the end of 1990 – Mum marched me into our local surgery in Northwood. Our family GP was off on maternity leave, so we saw a locum instead. Mum explained to him how I would agree to eat only certain things and how at other times I’d refuse to eat entirely or shove food in the bin or down the sink when I thought no one was watching.
The doctor was one of those types who treat children as if they’re all a bit thick. ‘So, my dear,’ he said slowly, ‘what have you eaten today?’
This was going to be a breeze, I just knew it.
‘Well,’ I said quietly and hesitantly, my very best ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ look on my face. ‘I had a slice of toast for breakfast, then my packed lunch at school, although I didn’t have the crisps because they’re not very good for you, are they?’
Mum looked at me in disbelief. ‘Tell the truth, Nikki,’ she hissed.
‘But I am, Mum,’ I lied effortlessly, thinking of the one mouthful of sandwich that had passed my lips all day.
‘Well, Mrs Grahame,’ said the doctor. ‘I can see she’s a bit on the skinny side but I don’t think it’s anything to worry about at this time. It’ll all blow over, no doubt. You know what girls are like with their fads and fashions.’
‘She’s not faddy,’ insisted Mum. ‘I know my daughter and it’s more serious than that.’
‘Well, let’s just keep an eye on her and see what happens,’ said the doctor, his decision clearly made.
We drove home in silence, Mum feeling defeated again and me victorious once more. No way was anyone going to be ‘keeping an eye’ on me!
And when I wasn’t doing the screaming and shouting it was Mum or Dad’s turn. After their initial decision to split they had decided to give their marriage another go. Then the rows just became even more vicious and after a torturous couple of months they returned to the idea of divorce. But because they couldn’t agree on what to do about selling the house and splitting the money, we all carried on living under the same roof.
In my eyes Dad was still acting like a monster. He’d gone from someone I would chase down the road every time he left the house to someone so bitter and angry that I didn’t want to be around him. I transferred all the intensity of my feelings for Dad straight over to Mum. And now I’d lost Grandad and Dad, I clung to her, both emotionally and physically.