I had so much energy. My body wasn't big enough to contain all the energy that flowed through me. I went from having no energy to having far too much of it. I had no idea what to do with it. I felt as if I was going to explode with it. Or go crazy with it. I was torn because I didn't want to leave the house but I felt as if I could run a hundred miles. That I would go crazy if I didn't. I had the strength of ten men. During those awful couple of weeks I could have won gold medals in the Olympic games in any sport you care to mention.

I felt that I could run faster, jump higher, throw farther, lift heavier, punch harder than anyone alive.

That first night that the jealousy kicked in, I drank half a bottle of vodka.

I bullied Anna into loaning me fifteen pounds for it and Helen into going to the liquor store for it.

Anna would have willingly gone to the store for me.

And Anna would have willingly come back from the store for me.

But when, is the question.

She might have reappeared in a week with some vague story about how on the way to the store she met some people in a van who were going to Stonehenge and how she thought it might be nice to join them. Or how she had some strange out-of-body experience and lost a week.

I could have told her that there was nothing strange about it. That if she went over to her boyfriend Shane's apartment and smoked a lot of drugs that was what generally happened. And that the correct name for it was an out-of-your-head experience, not an out-of-body experience.

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Not that it was an easy battle to win with Helen. "I'll drown," she grumbled, the weather still being inclement.

"You won't," I assured her grimly through gritted teeth, my tone of voice implying, "But it would be no trouble at all to arrange."

"It'll cost you," she told me, changing tack.

"How much?"

"A fiver."

"Give her another fiver," I ordered Anna.

Money changed hands.

"That's twenty that you owe me now," said Anna anxiously.

"Have I ever reneged on my debts before?" I asked Anna coldly.

"Er, no," said the poor girl, far too frightened to remind me that I still owed her for the bottle of wine that I "borrowed" from her the first night that she was home.

"And where are you going?" I asked Helen imperiously.

"Upstairs to change into my Speedos."

When Helen returned from the liquor store, a long time later, drenched wet and dripping water everywhere and complaining loudly, she handed me the liter bottle of vodka, which was in a soaking wet bag.

Change from the fifteen pounds was not asked for.

Nor was it offered.

By the time I discovered that the bottle had already been opened and about a quarter of it was missing, Helen was long gone.

As were her chances of making it alive to her nineteenth birthday.

My vengeance would be a terrible and awesome spectacle to behold, once I got my hands on her.

I was not a woman to be trifled with.

In spite of the vodka I still couldn't sleep. I roamed the house from room to room late at night when everyone else was asleep. Carrying the bottle and my glass. Looking for somewhere that I felt safe. Hoping to find a place where those horrible pictures would stop running through my head. But my jealousy and hatred kept me awake. They kept prodding at me and I couldn't settle anywhere. I couldn't find any peace.

75

In desperation, I thought that perhaps if I tried a different bed or a differ- ent room I might be able to sleep.

I went into Rachel's old room. (You know, the room you'll be staying in when you come on your starvation week.) I turned on the light.

The room had that same ghostly feeling that my and Margaret's room had had when I first arrived back from London, the feeling that no one had slept in there for a long time. Although clothes still hung in the wardrobe and posters were still on the wall and a plate was still under the bed. Then I came across the exercise bike and the rowing machine that Dad had bought about nine years ago in an enthusiastic but short-lived attempt to get fit.

There they were, on the floor of Rachel's room, covered in dust, looking old-fashioned and creaky and cobwebby, a far cry from the exercise bikes and rowing machines of today, with their computer programs, their video screens and their electronic calorie counters.

I looked at them affectionately, prehistoric and all that they were, and memories came rushing back in waves.

The excitement the day the van delivered them! Dad, my sisters and I were thrilled.

Mum was the only one who wasn't excited. She said that she couldn't understand what all the fuss was about, that she had no need to go courting pain and suffering. That she already had a surfeit of that in her life, what with being married to Dad and mother to the five of us.

The rest of us were beside ourselves.

We all clustered around oohing and aahing as the chrome-and-metal machines were unloaded and installed. We all held great hopes and high expectations. We thought that we would have bodies like Jamie Lee Curtis (she was very in then) from the briefest contact with them, and naturally demand to use them was high. Dad also said that he wanted a body like Jamie Lee Curtis, and Mum didn't speak to him for a week.

We all jostled and fought to use the machines in the beginning. Like a wartime munitions production line, they were in use around the clock, and more than one tear was shed and more than one harsh word was spoken in the pitched battles about who was next.

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We especially loved the bike. Margaret, Rachel and I were obsessed with the size of our butts and thighs, and we spent the best part of our teenage years standing with our backs to full-length mirrors, almost breaking our respective necks as we tried to swivel our heads around without moving our bodies to see what our butts looked like from the back.

Asking each other anxiously, "What does my butt look like? Really big or just mediumly big?"

We wasted so much time torturing ourselves and worrying about the size of our butts.

It was so sad!

Because we were beautiful.

We had such lovely figures.

And we had no idea.

I'd now pay very large sums of money indeed to have the body that I had then. This made me think in alarm, "Jesus, will a day come when I look back at the body I have today and wish that I still had it?" Although I couldn't possibly imagine ever being that desperate.

A combination of accidents and disappointed expectations eventually caused the novelty of the madness to wear off.