“It seemed like the most logical thing,” Saskia found herself continuing. “In my line of work, image was – is – everything. I was always at some sort of function – a working lunch, a dinner party, meetings with snack tables in them. This way, nobody would think I wasn’t eating, and I’d still get to enjoy the food, but without the calories sticking.”
Kivi swallowed, and appeared to rediscover her voice.
“You… you know thatisan eating disorder, right? Bulimia?”
And the award for Sensitive Person Of The Year goes to…
Rather than snipe, Saskia rolled her eyes. “Yes, of course I do. I know that now. Although it’s not actually bulimia. If you must know, it’s technically called Purging Disorder. Bulimia is associated with binge-eating, as well as purging, and I never did that. What I did was purely for weight control.” Now her tone turned scathing. “Hardly asdramaticas you make it sound.”
Kivi stared at her. Saskia stared back. She knew her expression was glowering – sulky, almost – and stubborn. What she really wanted was to don that death glare she’d used just now, the one that had made Kivi almost quake in her boots. But her heart was pounding, and it was all she could do to keep her expression frozen in place. One false move, one expression of tenderness from Kivi, and it would all be over.
Then, without warning, Kivi launched herself towards Saskia. Saskia felt the beer bottle slip from her fingers as her arms opened on instinct to catch her. Kivi’s arms wrapped tight, almost putting Saskia in mind of a koala clinging to its tree. In fact, she squeezed so hard that Saskia was actuallygladshe’d put on a little weight recently. Otherwise Kivi’s embrace probably would have crushed her to dust. Her hands balled to fists as she tried to think of a way to dig herself out of this conversation.
“I’m sorry, I really don’t know what to say,” Kivi said. She was close to tears – Saskia could hear it in her voice. “Do you still do it? Have you done it since you got here?”
“No,” Saskia said immediately, her own voice surprisingly steady. “No. Before, I didn’twantto stop. I had accepted it as just one of life’s necessities. Some women need to shave their legs every day; some need to drink two coffees before they go to work; I needed to use these techniques to control my weight. But I stopped at the start of the pandemic, when I moved in with my mum. Haven’t done it since – I don’t need to watch my figure so much, now that I don’t work in the fashion industry. And doesn’t that… invalidate the whole thing, anyway? If I could start and stop at will? Isn’t an eating disorder some… wild, out-of-control, life-ruinous thing?”
“I don’t know,” Kivi said, still with her arms tight around Saskia. Her voice was muffled, but it didn’t sound as if shewas crying now. “I’m not a qualified doctor. I’m not a qualified anything. But I mean… you still did it, didn’t you? You still have all the symptoms, even if you were never diagnosed. Wait –wereyou diagnosed?”
Saskia shook her head, then realised Kivi couldn’t see that, the way she was sitting. “No. Nobody else knows about it. Nobody except you.”
Kivi said nothing, but Saskia felt her take a deep breath. Then she let go, finally, and returned to her seat. Her eyes were red, and Saskia could feel that her own were stinging. It felt surprisingly surreal, finally telling someone about it after all these years.Keep it together, girl, keep it together…
“Saskia?”
“Mm?” If she spoke, she’d cry.
“Promise me that if you ever so much asthinkabout going back to it, you’ll seek out some help.”
“I promise.” The words came out hoarse, but they’d burst forth from her without any conscious input, such was their eagerness. “I don’t want to go back to that. I don’t want to have scars on my hands, or dizzy spells whenever I stand up, or heartburn after eating and not purging. It wasn’t every time, you know.” Now her words were spilling out with no control, but she felt lighter with every one she uttered. “For example, I always ate breakfast. Most important meal of the day, they say, so I always forced myself to keep that down. And there would be some days I wouldn’t do it at all. It all depended onwhatI was eating. How calorie-rich it was. And howhealthyit was. If I was eatingpurefoods – as opposed to junk – then I didn’t purge so much. I had a whole classification system in my head, and I assigned different purity levels to different foodstuffs, and then combined them and totalled them up, and then went by that with regardsto whether I purged or not. I’m sorry, this probably makes no sense to you, but it does to me.”
Finally she stopped for air. Poor Kivi. Her brain must be utterly bamboozled by this. Saskia didn’t dare look at her.
“There is no need to apologise,” Kivi said firmly. “You must never apologise to me for how you feel. And if there’s anything you think I can do to make it easier for you while you’re staying here, you know I will. Just say the word.”
“Thank you,” Saskia whispered. The two words seemed paltry in comparison to the sweet mixture of gratitude and relief that was slowly filling her veins. “Thank you.” Then she found herself leaning forward and reaching for Kivi’s hand, almost missing it the first time due to the tears blurring her vision. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Kivi murmured.
Saskia squeezed her hand for a brief moment, then self-consciousness caught up with her. She sprang back, turning her face away while she brushed at her eyes and tried not to sniff loudly. “God, I’m ridiculous.” She tried to laugh. “Look at me. I thought I was immune to all these… theatrical disclosures and… silly tears.”
“No, you’re not,” Kivi said quietly. “Not ridiculous. And not immune.”
Saskia chuckled, but there was no mirth behind it. “Someone caught me at it, once. I was at a networking event, where a seated luncheon was served. This older woman must have been behind me when I sloped off to the bathroom, because when I came out, she asked me if I was okay. And dear God, I was shit-scared. I thought she’d start spreading the word, telling everyone that Saskia Saltmarshe was bulimic. But then she started talking about morning sickness. And hyperemesis. And how she suffered during her pregnancies. She thought I was pregnant.And the worst part of all of that? I was relieved. Pregnancy in the fashion circles is much more acceptable than an eating disorder. You cantalkabout babies. You can’t talk about bulimia.”
Chapter Thirty
Kivi
You can talk about babies. You can’t talk about bulimia.
Saskia’s parting shot was still ringing in her ears the next morning.
After her emotional disclosure last night, she’d run off. Well, not quite. But she hadn’t hung around. She’d simply taken her empty beer bottle into the annex kitchen, and then headed straight for the guest house. She’d given Kivi a quick wave and a brave smile, but Kivi had almost been able tofeelthe embarrassment radiating off her. It had been on the tip of her tongue to call out, “Hey. You don’t need to hide from me. I’m glad you’ve told me. Because now you’re not facing it alone.”
But she hadn’t. Instead, she’d folded up the two chairs, whistled for Toto, and gone inside herself. Her intention had been to finish off the evening with some cooking – she was planning vegetable skewers for tomorrow’s dinner and had wanted to get ahead. But the last thing she had wanted to do was be around food. Her stomach had been roiling. So she had taken herself off to bed for an early night instead – except her mind had refused to switch off, so she’d ended up going back into the living room and grabbing her laptop. Déjà vu.
Only this time, she’d Googled purging disorder. And orthorexia, which was a term she’d heard before, and which seemed to match Saskia’s descriptions of ‘pure’ foods quite well. The latter was not an official, diagnosable eating disorder; anything that wasn’t anorexia, bulimia or binge-eating disorder seemed to fall under the category of ‘Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder’. And Kivi wasn’t a diagnostician. She really hadn’t had any right to bring up the topic of conversation at all. She had no idea if she’d said the right things, and she almost certainly hadn’t approached it with the level of tact required for such a sensitive subject. In books or movies, characters always seemed to know the perfect thing to say – but Kivi was only an ordinary human being. She just hoped that she hadn’t said thewrongthing. She managed to refrain from Googling what to say – that would just make her thoughts spin even more.
