Michelle stood up and walked to the window. They were in Clare’s bedroom, the room she’d occupied since she was six. The room where she’d become Katy Perry as she sang into her hairbrush. The room she’d asked her father to paint dusky pink when she turned thirteen.

“Purple? You want a purple room?” he had teased.

“It’s dusky pink, Dad!” she’d objected. “Dusky pink!”

It was still dusky pink, but she’d call it purple if it made him happy.

“Clare, please,” said her mother, running her hands through her glossy blonde hair. “I can’t help you. I don’t know what to do. You have to see a doctor. Do it for me. Do it for Dad.”

But she stood firm. “I have to do this myself, Mom. I got myself into this, I can get myself out of it.”

“Sweetheart, you’re being unreasonable. I don’t know much about this, your illness, but I don’t think that’s how it works. If you get any thinner, you’ll have to be hospitalised and then, well, then you won’t have any choice.”

“I do have a choice now and you have to let me do it my way. Please, Mom.”

Clare knew that everyone in her family was relieved when she returned to university after the holidays. They couldn’t bear to see her eat so little, exercise so much and recede further and further into herself. Sometimes, when she tried to join in a conversation, she repeated herself. It was hard to stay focused. They stared at her with pity and annoyance. She was an embarrassment. Angus, seventeen at the time, said as much.

She was slicing a boiled egg for breakfast when he walked into the kitchen and tossed his tog bag on the table. He glanced at her plate.

“Jeez, Clare! An egg? Are you sure you should?”

She ignored him.

“You’re a freak, did you know that? Wherever I go people ask, ‘Hey Angus, what happened to your sister? Where’s she going? She’s kind of disappearing.’ It’s embarrassing. I mean, who are you? Get a grip, Clare. Please.”

She didn’t respond. What could she say? He was right; she was an embarrassment, but he didn’t realise the full extent of it.

Now, more than two years later, Clare was certain she was getting a grip. Wasn’t she? She’d not only got her degree, but she’d also spent those two years retracing the steps that had made her ill and trying to reverse what she had done to herself. It took longer to rewind than she’d hoped. Sometimes the tape got tangled and she had to go back a little and start over. But she was getting a grip, wasn’t she?