‘A’ IS FOR ANOREXIA by Richard Boston ©2002 Sample chapters [email protected] © Richard Boston 2002 A is for Anorexia Remember me? Of course you do. You’ve always been convinced that you’re The Great Rememberer, that you can and do recall virtually everyone you’ve ever met. I remember you telling me how you’d often sit and think about your encounters, how you’d trawl through the past on a regular basis, ploughing up one-off meetings as readily as a month-long fling. And you were convinced these people wouldn’t remember you - or at least, if they did, that they’d rarely spare a thought for you. Ten years on, I find myself wondering how much trawling you do now - now that anyone who’s met you can’t help but remember it, can’t help but be reminded of you every time they pass a bookshop or open a tabloid or trashy magazine. Thinking back to that sunny afternoon at the start of a long student summer, picturing us sitting beside Camden Lock with our bottle of rosé, I know you weren’t fishing for compliments. You didn’t work like that. I’m as sure of that now as I was then – even after all that happened in between. It’s just not in your nature. You aren’t, and never have been, the slightest bit devious. You couldn’t be manipulative if you tried. But that’s just it, isn’t it? You don’t try. It’s not a conscious thing with you. That’s just the way it works out. Take that innocuous revelation in Camden, for instance. It was just typical of the way you’ve always operated. There we sat, close but not quite touching, sipping one of the cheapest wines could buy in a bottle, and you served up the latest in a feast of lethal baits that would draw me further and further into the open. And you didn’t even know you were doing it. You simply didn’t see those moments for what they were. To you, those tantalising glimpses of your soul were nothing more than conversation. You could have been telling me anything, your tone was that nonchalant. That whimsical manner of yours, the matter-of-fact-ness you managed whenever you leaked an insight – it was all part of the charm, the web of defenceless honesty in which so many of us have come unstrung. It was the same a month later, when you told me you were sure you had guardian spirits. We were here in Bristol. I was back at my parents’ and you’d come to visit for I forget quite how long, and we’d taken a picnic up to the Camera Obscura. It seemed so ridiculous: you - the Philosophy student - embracing an old superstition I can’t imagine many people even considering. If it hadn’t been for your blinding sincerity, I’d have laughed and called you an idiot. As we lay on our backs in the freshly mown grass, gazing at the sunlit suspension bridge, you told me your life had always seemed blessed. You’d always landed on your feet, always felt guided, as if you were being nudged through life by unseen forces. Things simply happened to you, you insisted, and it invariably worked out for the best. Even apparent disasters proved a blessing once you’d seen them through. You never called it karma and you never mentioned clouds with silver linings. I suppose, as a fledgling Philosophy student, you needed a more imaginative mythology, something sophisticated you’d created yourself – a realm in which God was well-and-truly dead but guardian angels were still going strong. Now that I’m more level-headed, I think your beliefs can all be written off as overzealous positive attitude. 1 © Richard Boston 2002 A is for Anorexia Maybe those ‘apparent disasters’ would have stayed disasters if you hadn’t been so determined to see good in them. I wonder how it’s doing, though – that mythology of yours. As far as I know, you’ve never mentioned it in interviews, and it certainly didn’t appear in your first book. Maybe you’ve decided it’s all a bit too crackpot to be published, that you don’t want to be tarred with the same brush you’ve used to tar a few of your characters. It wouldn’t really go with the down-to-earth image you’ve built for yourself, would it? It wouldn’t really do for the man whose done so much for Twenty-First Century masculinity, honesty and self- actualisation to go harping on about guardian angels. So, perhaps you’ve sent them packing, thanked them for their influence, then squeezed their little harps into their little astral suitcases and sent them on their way. Or maybe you’re biding your time, polishing your pantheon for the great coup d’état , when you’ll turn the literary cult that’s risen around you into something that stirs not just the hearts and minds of your readers, but their naked souls as well. Who knows, maybe angels are due for a comeback. Of course, there’s always a third option. You might have decided, like I have, that your own subconscious is the guardian angel – that it’s really you who’s pulling the strings. I’ve often wondered if that’s what’s behind the title of your first published novel, The Reluctant Puppeteer . I reckon that title proves you’ve at least some insight into the effect you have on the people around you. Thinking back, you were probably well on the way to working it out when you and I were still together. One particular conversation springs to mind. It was 1996, three years since that drunken afternoon in Camden, a year since you’d come to live with me in Bristol at the end of your degree. You’d grown bitter since University and, although I hoped otherwise at the time, things were set to get a hell of a lot worse. We were back in that same spot by the Camera Obscura, up on the hill by the bridge, sharing a picnic with two of my friends – friends you’d never accept as your own. I don’t remember the context, but at some point you declared that Truth was the ultimate weapon. It wasn’t freedom of information you were talking about, or knowledge as power. You weren’t making some well-worn point about First World governments and rapacious multinationals. You were talking about Truth very specifically as a weapon, on all scales - from global to corporate, right down to personal relationships and deep into our own inner psyches. “The truth hurts”, you reminded us, “Plus, you can never effectively deny what’s true. Not only that, but truth walks hand in hand with virtue, and there isn’t a thing in this world that we’re taught to respect more than virtue. As long as you stick to the truth, not only is it easier to remember what you’ve said, but no one can ever hold it against you.” It was this attitude to truth that convinces me that, at some deeper level, you knew what you were doing. That you then went on to choose The Reluctant Puppeteer as the title of the book you were writing 2 © Richard Boston 2002 A is for Anorexia at the time only makes it clearer. In some way, each time you tightened the noose on my heart by exposing a part of yourself, there was an inner you consciously manipulating everything. And it wasn’t just me you did it to. You’d done it before – and I doubt you’ve stopped doing it since. We’d begin our ‘acquaintance’ as friends but, before long, you’d be dropping us little titbits, flippant statements that filled our silly heads with romantic ideas. Opening up like most men never do, you’d tease us, drawing us in and convincing us that we could be trusted. And all in the guise of friendship. It would never occur to you that we, your confidants, were falling in love – just as it would never occur to us that you acted that way with everyone. Not that it would have made the slightest difference if we’d known we were nothing special. It didn’t with me. All it did was convince me how different you were – so unlike other men, so wonderfully honest. You could never understand why even the strongest of friendships quickly collapsed into more. In most cases, you assumed it was some weakness on our part. You’d never be so vain to think there was something unique about you, something none of us could hope to resist. And you were always so stunned when we fell in love with you without your permission, as if by never saying the words you could stop it from happening. For a while, in the aftermath, I was sure that, far from being naive, you were actually being malicious. It all seemed so bloody convenient. By forbidding us to love you when you knew we couldn’t resist, you could leech on our emotions, bleed us dry, then leave us and blame the whole messy ending on us. I soon got over it, though, and until recently I’ve been giving you the benefit of the doubt. Like all of your other women, I’ve written it off as ‘not meant to be’.