Last night, she’d cooked with Faye. She watched Faye pour cream into a pot and stir melting cheese into it. She herself had suggested they add fatty pieces of Italian sausage. She’d eaten pasta and drunk wine, laughing as she’d done it and helping herself to more. With Faye, she hadn’t loathed herself or the food. In fact, she hadn’t thought much about it. She’d eaten because she wanted to. She was hungry, even though she hadn’t exercised all day. Her body needed nourishing. She felt it and responded. She ate because it was the thing normal, healthy people did. The kind of thing old Clare would’ve done.

Afterwards, she’d gone to bed and fallen asleep almost immediately. Sure, she’d run several kilometres this morning and was marching through the veld to burn calories, but that was okay, wasn’t it? She’d gained weight over the years, not a lot, but enough not to have to put a long shirt over her leggings to hide the hollows in her buttocks and the wide gaps between her thighs. The fine, fur-like hairs that had sprung up along her jawline when she was at her thinnest had disappeared. Her menstrual cycle had resumed, even if it wasn’t regular yet. She was almost normal. She knew it even if others didn’t.

It had happened so slowly that no one noticed. They still thought of her as the anorexic girl. She’d given up trying to explain what she was trying to do and her reasons for doing it. To others, her rationale was as delusional as her body dysmorphia. They thought that, just as she imagined the pinch of skin she held between her fingers was a roll of fat, Clare was mistaken to believe that continuing to assert her rigorous regime of self-control could reverse her condition. They thought she was deluded. Clare knew that her mother and whoever Michelle had told (definitely her father) thought that her strategy was ridiculous. They were disbelieving but, because she was no longer losing weight and her mind wasn’t as scattered as it had been, they didn’t fight her about it. She was ill, but she’d survive. They continued to watch her. They worried. But soon, Clare hoped, they'd realise she was still the girl they knew because she wouldn’t be ashamed of herself anymore. Her father would look at her and be proud. He’d no longer be broken. She would’ve fixed him. It was her responsibility since she’d wrecked him. When that was done, she could stop hating herself and become part of her family’s world again.