When I eventually managed to get a word in, she reluctantly confirmed that, yes, she and Dad were coming in to make shite of me.
I found it hard to believe. Even though I was in a treatment centre and this kind of thing happened to people, it wasn’t supposed to happen to me. I wasn’t like the others. And that wasn’t some sort of mad, addict’s denial. I really wasn’t like the others.
‘Well, come if you must,’ I sighed. ‘But you’d better not be mean about me, or who knows what I might do.’
Barry Grant reached for a pen as soon as I said that.
‘Of course we won’t be mean about you,’ Mum quavered. ‘But we have to answer the woman’s questions.’
Which was exactly what I was afraid of.
‘Maybe, but you don’t have to be mean about me.’ Even to my own ears I sounded like a thirteen-year-old.
‘Are you coming in the morning or afternoon?’ I asked.
‘Afternoon.’
That was slightly better because if they were coming in the morning there was a chance they might stay all day.
‘And, Rachel love,’ Mum sounded like she was going to cry, ‘we’re not going to be mean. We’re only trying to help.’
‘Good,’ I said grimly.
‘All rice?’ Barry Grant asked, gimlet-eyed, when I hung up.
I nodded. The situation was under control and I was all rice.
Anyway, I reminded myself. Four more days. What harm can it do?
48
Brigit and I were both lying on her bed, barely able to move from the August heat. Enervated by the dazzling, white light of a New York summer, which reflected off the concrete sidewalks and the concrete buildings, throwing back a hundredfold more heat and bleachedness. It had gone beyond bright and was now almost something evil.
‘… so the night he first claps eyes on you, you’ve never been so skinny, you’re all ribs and cheekbones,’ Brigit was saying.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But how? Surgery?’
‘Noooo,’ she twisted her mouth thoughtfully. ‘That wouldn’t work because the scars would show in the little Dolce and Gabbana chiffon frock that you’re wearing when you spill your glass of champagne on him.’
‘Cor,’ I breathed. ‘Dolce and Gabbana, that’s very decent of you, thanks! And champagne. Nice one!’
‘Let’s see,’ she said, and got a faraway look in her eyes. I watched in reverential silence as she sought to pad out my fantasy.
‘OK, I know!’ she announced. ‘You’ve one of those worms that live in your intestine and eat all your food so that you don’t get any of it and you lose tons of weight.’
‘Inspired,’ I declared.
Then a thought struck me. ‘But how did the worm get into my intestines?’
‘It was in some meat that wasn’t cooked properly…’
‘But I’m a vegetarian.’
‘Look it doesn’t matter,’ she exploded. ‘I keep telling you. This is make-believe.’
‘Sorry.’
I was suitably humble for a moment and then I said ‘And how did I afford the Dolce and Gabbana dress? Have I got a new job?’
‘No,’ she said shortly. ‘You stole it.
‘And you got caught nicking it,’ she added. ‘You’re out on bail and due up in court the following Monday. And as soon as the dream man finds out you’re a potential jailbird he does a runner on you.’
Brigit appeared to be tired of playing the game.
‘Anyway, you don’t need me to do this for you anymore,’ she said. ‘You have a fella.’
‘Don’t,’ I squirmed.
‘But you do,’ she said. ‘What’s Luke? He’s a fella, there’s no denying it.’
‘Stop.’
‘What’s up with you?’ she said in exasperation. ‘I think he’s lovely.’
‘Why don’t you go out with him then?’
‘Rachel,’ she said in a loud voice. ‘Stop it. I said I liked him, I didn’t say I fancied him. You’d really want to do something about that jealousy of yours.’
‘I’m not jealous,’ I objected hotly. I hated being called jealous.
‘Well, you’re something,’ she said.
I didn’t reply because she’d started me thinking about Luke. Even though I couldn’t make up my mind what I felt about him, I always became mildly hypnotized at the mere mention of him. My brain kind of glazed over.
He was officiallyish, my boyfriend. Since the dinner in The Good and Dear, I’d spent every weekend with him. But now that I was back in control with him, my previous ambivalence reared its head and I wasn’t so sure I still wanted him.
Every Sunday I promised myself that the following Saturday I would do something different. Something glamorous that involved trendy people whose star couldn’t have been more in the ascendant if it tried. Not Luke Costello. But every six days later I was powerless to resist when Luke said ‘What do you want to do tonight, babe?’
‘Right, now your turn,’ I said, coming to. I was keen to change the subject. ‘You’ve just had a really bad dose of the flu, no wait, food poisoning, because you ate some gone-off ice cream and you puked for a week.’
‘Ice cream doesn’t go off,’ she interrupted.
‘Doesn’t it? I’m sure it does. Not that it ever gets the chance around me. Anyway, who cares, you got food poisoning and you’re like a skeleton. So thin that people come up to you and say, “I think you’ve lost too much, Brigit, you’d really want to put some back on, you’re like someone from a concentration camp.” ’
‘Lovely.’ Brigit drummed her heels on the bed with pleasure.
‘Yes, people are muttering about you and you can hear them saying, “She looks absolutely wretched.” So we go to a party and you haven’t seen Carlos for ages, but he’s there…’
‘No,’ she interrupted. ‘Not Carlos.’
‘Why not?’ I hooted in surprise.
‘Because I’m over him.’
‘Are you?’ I was even more surprised. ‘But I didn’t know you’d met someone else.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘But then how can you be over him?’