A fat woman in an orange overall banged a plate of chops and turnip down in front of me.

‘Thank you.’ I smiled graciously. ‘But I’m actually a vegetarian.’

‘And?’ She curled her lip at me in an Elvisesque manner.

‘I don’t eat meat,’ I explained, unsettled by her aggression.

‘That’s tough,’ she said. ‘You’d better start.’

‘P… pardon?’ I asked nervously.

‘You’ll eat what’s put in front of you,’ she threatened. ‘I’ve no time for any of that nonsense, not eating or eating too much or eating it and then making yourself sick. I never heard the like! And if I catch you in my kitchen trying to find where I hide the jelly, you’re straight out.’

‘Sadie, leave her alone,’ said a man diagonally across from me. I immediately warmed to him, even though he looked like a prizefighter, and, even worse, had tight curly hair in the style favoured by Roman Emperors. ‘She’s here for drugs, not food. So knock it off.’

‘Oh, I beg your pardon, miss.’ Sadie was effusive in her apologies. ‘But you’re very thin and I just assumed that you were one of the not-eating brigade and they give me the pip, so they do. If they knew about real hunger they’d quickly put a stop to their carry-on.’

The warm glow of being mistaken for an anorexic momentarily overrode my anxiety.

‘Sadie wishes she was a therapist, don’t you, Sadie?’ joked the man. ‘But you’re too thick, aren’t you, Sadie?’

‘Shut up with yourself, Mike.’ Sadie sounded in remarkably high spirits for a woman who’d just been insulted by (if I’d remembered correctly) an alcoholic.

‘But you can’t even read and write, can you, Sadie?’ said the man – Mike?

‘I can so.’ She smiled. (Smiled! I would have belted him.)

‘The only thing she can do is cook and she can’t even do that,’ said Mike, gesturing to the table at large and receiving enthusiastic agreement.

‘You’re crap, Sadie!’ someone shouted from the end of the room.

‘Yeah, bleedin’ useless,’ called a young boy who didn’t look a day over fourteen. How could he be an alcoholic?

After she had assured us that ‘None of yiz will be getting any tea this evening,’ Sadie moved off and I was surprised to find that I felt like crying. The good-natured insults, even though, for once, they hadn’t been directed at me, nearly reduced me to tears.

‘Talk to Billings after lunch,’ advised the Mike man, who must have seen my wobbly lip. ‘In the meantime why don’t you eat the spuds and the turnip and leave the chops.’

‘Can I have them?’ A moonfaced man stuck his head around the fat old man on my right.

‘You can have the lot,’ I said. I didn’t want turnip and potatoes. I wouldn’t eat that kind of thing at home, never mind in a luxury place like this. While I knew that the fashionable restaurants had re-embraced sausages and mash, onion gravy, steamed puddings and similar, I still couldn’t bring myself to like it. Even though it might no longer be fashionable, I had been looking forward to fruit. Where was the help-yourself salad buffet? Where were the delicious calorie-counted meals? Where was the freshly squeezed fruit juice?

I shoved my plate towards the fat man and it caused uproar.

‘Rachel, don’t give it to him.’

‘Someone stop her.’

‘Eamonn isn’t allowed.’

‘He’s a compulsive overeater.’

‘Please do not feed the elephant.’

‘It’s not our policy to do special food for anyone,’ Dr Billings said.

‘Isn’t it?’ I was astonished.

‘No.’

‘But,’ I protested, ‘it’s not special food, I’m a vegetarian.’

‘Most people who come here have eating disorders and it’s very important for them to learn to eat what’s put in front of them,’ he said.

‘I quite understand,’ I said nicely. ‘You’re worried about the anorexics or bulimics or overeaters or whatever. They might get upset when they see my special dinner.’

‘No, Rachel,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m actually worried about you.’

Me? Worried about me? What on earth for?

‘Why?’ I struggled to sound polite.

‘Because although your primary addiction is to drugs, you may well have unhealthy relationships with other substances, food and alcohol for example. And you run the risk of cross-addiction.’

But I wasn’t addicted to drugs. Although I couldn’t say that because he’d tell me to leave. And what was cross-addiction?

‘Cross-addiction can occur when you try to tackle your primary addiction. You may get the primary addiction under control but become addicted to another substance. Or you may simply add the second addiction to your first one and remain addicted to both.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘I come here to get treated for drugs and, by the time I leave, I’m an alcoholic and a bulimic. Sort of like going into prison for not paying a fine and coming out knowing how to rob a bank and make a bomb.’

‘Not quite,’ he said with a cryptic little smile.

‘So what am I supposed to eat?’

‘Whatever you’re given.’

‘You sound like my mother.’

‘Do I?’ He smiled neutrally.

‘And I never ate what she gave me either.’

That was because my mother was the worst cook in the known universe. All that talk of tinfoil and turkeys when she first found out about my so-called suicide was just wishful thinking on her part. No matter how much tinfoil she had her turkeys always ended up shrivelled and dehydrated.

Dr Billings just shrugged.

‘So how am I supposed to manage for protein?’ I was surprised that he didn’t seem worried.

‘There’s eggs, milk, cheese. Do you eat fish?’

‘No,’ I said. Although I did.

I was shocked that he didn’t seem to care. Dr Billings ignored my obvious confusion.

‘You’ll be fine.’ He smiled. ‘Come and meet Jackie.’

Who was Jackie?

‘The woman you’ll be sharing your room with,’ he added.

Sharing with? I thought, shock being heaped upon shock. Surely at the prices they were charging I’d get a private room? But before I could question him further, he had opened the office door and led me towards a blonde, glamorous woman who was half-heartedly rubbing the reception area with a hoover. So I stuck a ‘I’m nice, you’ll like me’ smile on my face. I’d just have to wait until she was gone before I complained. Nicely, of course.