Cara revised her opinion. Peggy wasn’t cuddly. At all. ‘It wasn’t really bulimia. It was just a temporary thing and I’ve stopped now. I hadn’t realized people were so worried about me.’
‘So? Fear of food? And love of food? Hatred of your size? Overeating when you’re angry, anxious, stressed or lonely? Eating in secret? Once you start eating sugar you can’t stop? Guilt after overeating? Promises to yourself to eat normally? How’s that sounding?’
Defiantly, Cara said, ‘I barely know any woman who has a normal relationship with food or her body.’
‘But not every woman has a seizure as a result of her disordered eating.’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t really a –’
‘You. Could. Have. Died,’ Peggy enunciated.
‘I couldn’t have.’
‘You could have. You still could, if you carry on like this.’
‘I’ve stopped.’
‘You’ll start again, without proper help.’ Peggy raised her palm. ‘Don’t tell me you can control it. You can’t. I know a lot more about this than you do. Now you’re thinking you know yourself better than I do. Once again, you’re wrong.’
A cold trickle of fear leaked through Cara. Peggy’s confidence was a worry. What if she was right?
But she probably wasn’t.
Every weekday for the following four weeks, Cara had seen Peggy for an hour and had had every one of her preconceptions shot down in flames.
When Cara said, ‘Eating disorder to me means anorexia’, Peggy had responded with, ‘Eating far more food than your body can digest, then making yourself sick, that’s an eating disorder.’
When Cara said, ‘I ate too much because I’m a pig with no self-control’, Peggy said, ‘You’ve an illness. You became addicted to the dopamine your brain produced every time you overate. It’s exactly like being addicted to drugs.’
When Cara said, ‘Don’t eating disorders happen because of traumas?’ Peggy was blunt: ‘Not necessarily.’
Peggy was opinionated and non-negotiable. She wasn’t entirely unsympathetic, but she didn’t pull any punches.
As well as daily one-on-one time with Peggy, Cara had sessions with a dietician in which she had to dismantle all her dyed-in-the-wool beliefs about food: carbs were not the work of the devil; skipping breakfast wasn’t a great idea. She was shown videos on how craving cycles worked, how will-power was useless. She learnt about the chemical changes in human brains when a large amount of food flooded into the digestive system. She was told that it was an act of self-hatred to fill her body with food it didn’t need and couldn’t digest.
Sessions with a cognitive behavioural therapist offered her healthier ways to manage her stress and anxiety.
Every day that month she was loaded up with so much information that she was too tired to resist all the parts she didn’t think applied to her.
Five weeks later, she still didn’t like Peggy, but she trusted her. Peggy wanted her to ‘get well’.
Even though Cara still didn’t really believe that she wasn’t ‘well’.
SEVENTY-TWO
Nell necked a triple espresso in the silent kitchen. No one else was up, not even Jessie.
Outside, grapefruit-coloured mist hung, like gauze, in the air. The sun, barely risen, was just starting to warm the land. Ferdia, in a pair of cargos and a crumpled shirt missing half its buttons, was waiting by the car. ‘All right?’
‘Yep.’
‘Music on?’
‘Too early.’
For about forty minutes, the roads stayed empty. Nell leant against her window, stunned by so much beauty, watching the fuzzy edges of the world burn away in the heat of the sun.
Without much warning, they reached the surprisingly horrible outskirts of Florence. Traffic slowed almost to a standstill.
‘Don’t worry,’ Ferdia said, the first words either had spoken. ‘We’ll be there in time.’
‘Okay.’ Maybe they would. What could she do anyway?
‘When we get to the gallery,’ he said, ‘we start at the top floor – it’s where all the best stuff is – then work our way down. Okay?’
She smiled. He’d obviously read TripAdvisor too.
‘Every time you see a Ladies, use it. They’re few and far between.’
‘What if I don’t need to go?’
He flashed a grin. ‘Try anyway. We can’t bring food or drink in. I’ve got protein bars we should eat before we start.’
‘You’ve done your research.’
‘Up all night, making the most of my high-quality Wi-Fi.’
As they advanced on the centre of Florence, winding though ever-narrowing streets, the traffic was a snarly, beepy nightmare. Every centimetre of road space was aggressively contested. Ferdia was doing his best to hide his anxiety but his face was white and his hands on the steering wheel were so tense she thought his bones might break the skin.