"Savvy – time to get up!"

Lately, I've been sleeping a lot. Like, I'm in bed by 10pm every night and I don't wake up until my mum calls me at 8am every morning and to be honest, I could probably stay in bed a good few more hours.

Body in recovery, I'm told.

I drag myself out of bed, brush my teeth, sort my hair out and make my way downstairs. Tony's in this morning and he often likes to pretend he's Jamie Oliver so this morning he's standing in front of the cooker, with an apron on (FFS!) flipping pancakes.

Ben looks like he's on his third lot.

"Hello love, what do you want for breakfast?" he asks without turning around. The Jamie Oliver act needs concentration.

"Er... food?" I say, and he laughs.

A few months ago, Tony and my mum were both scared of mentioning food and talking to me about eating, so they would ask me nervously what I wanted for breakfast, or lunch, or dinner when I came in the room.

I got a bit bored of them being nervous so after a while, I said, "Er... food?" sarcastically.

The first time I said it, they looked shocked and then I started laughing and they joined in as well, until we were all howling with laughter so hard we had to sit down.

Ben had come into the room and looked at the three of us in disgust.

"Mental!"

It's been a joke with us ever since.

I won't pretend it's easy, recovering from an eating disorder. Some days, I eat like a "normal" person, and other days I feel the old thoughts in my head and I just want to eat and eat and eat.

Whenever my stomach is full, or if I'm a bit bloated, I still get quite panicky and I'm desperate to get the stuff out of my stomach. I even bought some herbal remedy recently because I thought it might make me crap more often.

Nice, huh?

Today, though, I think might be a "normal" day.

"A pancake please, Tony, with some blueberries and yoghurt."

Tony is careful never to give me too much. He gives me exactly how much I ask for; however big or however small that is. A lot of the time I think to myself how kind he is – he's not even my dad and he's had to cope with all my stuff.

"I love pancakes," Ben says dreamily, "can I have another one Dad?"

"Course," Tony says, pouring more batter into the pan.

"Pancakes are lovely, aren't they Savvy?" Ben asks. The thing about everyone knowing about me and my eating disorder is that Ben has been nice to me ever since. I dunno if it'll last, but I like it and I'm nice back to him too.

"Will you be OK eating that?" Ben asks, as Tony sticks the blueberry pancake down in front of me. Maybe it's the niceness, or maybe Ben's just hoping he can eat my pancake instead.

I smile at him and pick up my fork.

"I'll be fine – thanks Ben."

I don't call him the little rat anymore. Even in my head.

********************************

There's an interview with Vanda Hoffingham that's gone viral. Jan sends me the link to the interview on YouTube. It's Vanda sitting in a TV studio on the couch with some female reporter. The reporter has one of those big, fake smiles on her face, while Vanda just looks bored.

REPORTER: Hey Vanda, you're looking really well!

VANDA: Is that journalese for "fat"?

REPORTER: (looks taken aback). Noooo! Of course not, you look great. Anyway, we're here to talk about your future plans. Is it true you are leaving show biz?

VANDA: Well, I hadn't been intending to do that – but it seems this industry only wants you if you're thin. I get normal size or, heaven forbid, fat, I don't get decent roles.

REPORTER: Oh, well... but look at Melissa McCarthy and Rebel Wilson and er...

VANDA: Precisely. You don't get lead roles, do you? Anyway, I'm sick of feeling under pressure to look a certain way and living with the mental consequences of that.

REPORTER: Oh, what are the mental consequences then?

VANDA: You need me to tell you that?

[The female reporter, who is stick thin herself, nods.]

VANDA: C'mon Elisa, you must know!

Elisa shakes her head vigorously.

REPORTER: No, no I don't. Please explain to me – and the audience.

VANDA: OK, this is what it is like to know that the media focuses on the way you look and how thin you are all the time, and that you need to stay a size 4 or smaller. You employ some top nutrition expert who puts you on a calorie-controlled diet (one that is lower than the calories they fed people in concentration camps) and you work with a top trainer, four or five times a week, busting your gut on a work-out programme that's harder than the one the US marines do.

Just in case you haven't noticed American film stars and American TV stars have got thinner and thinner over the years. And it's not enough to be thin either – you have to be muscular too. Basically, you need a body that looks like a 12-year-old boy with implants.

You think about food and your body all the time, and I mean all the time. You live in fear of putting on a single pound so you make excuses not to meet up with your family and friends – just in case there is forbidden food on offer – and you never go to a restaurant before ringing up beforehand and checking they'll be able to serve up a plate of poached fish and steamed vegetables.

You go to all these award nights where they employ top chefs to create delicious dishes and you never eat them and you never drink the champagne that's on offer either. Mind you, it's OK if they offer you cocaine, as we all know that coke's great for taking away your appetite.

REPORTER: (sounding alarmed) Oh, er... I don't know about–

VANDA: ...and you are too afraid to keep food in your house just in case you end up eating it all one night because you're so FUCKING HUNGRY...

REPORTER: Oh heavens, I'm so sorry folks for that f-bomb there. Sincere apologies if you're offended.

Vanda laughs.

VANDA: See being hungry all the time isn't at all good for your mood! Another thing, here we are viewed as these sexy, desirable women and none of ever think about sex because we're too busy obsessing about what we look like and what we can or can't eat.

Don't you ever feel that being made to conform to this thin body image is oppressive Elisa – why do we let the industry do this to us?

The camera pans to Elisa, who looks like a rabbit trapped in the headlights.

Vanda stands up.

VANDA: You really don't know what I'm talking about Elisa? Anyway, I'm off.

She walks out of the studio – and the audience bursts into cheers.

I check the viewing figures for the video. It's had more than 4 million views, and it's been shared by more than one million folks. One million plus one now. I guess a lot of people agree with her.

And Matt Rogham?

Matt Rogham did something stupid. Two stupid things actually.

His first stupid thing was immediately after that video of his ex went viral, he posted something online saying that Vanda had mental issues and she was clearly bonkers. It wasn't true that Hollywood only liked women to be thin and young. Vanda just didn't have the discipline and self-control you needed to succeed.

Oops, Matt. Or, seeing as it was well-written, oops Matt's agent.

#deluded #stupididiot #mendontunderstand #tosser #mattsucks And worse, as you can imagine.

The second stupid thing he did involved Cheryl.

See, after I landed up in hospital, I couldn't do her Twitter for her any more. I didn't want to either. I was sick of pretending to be someone I wasn't, and I was sick of all the lies I'd told online.

Cheryl tried to keep up with her accounts, but Cheryl has a bit of temper and she likes to reply quickly. When she saw what Matt had said about Vanda and that he was starting to get stick about it, she started posting things to her thousands of fans.

Fuck u, leave Matt alone!, was maybe the best of the replies. The other one was "Yeah Matt, stupid, fat bitch that she is". Matt agreed with that one so the two of them ended up annoying a whole lot of people.

Vanda's video had gone viral. People had shared it on Twitter and Facebook, it got millions of views on YouTube. Bloggers talked about it. People demanded producers and film makers started using people of all shapes and sizes instead of just skinny women. For a few moments at least, the whole world seemed to be in agreement with Vanda Hoffingham.

Except for Matt Rogham and Cheryl.

The world turned on them. The comments that came back at them on Twitter were awful. I mean, I don't think they were right but the stuff they got on Twitter was vicious and horrible. And someone did a bit of digging about Cheryl and found out she was a not-quite 16-year-old schoolgirl.

I don't think Matt knew that she was as young as 16, but it looked pretty bad – he's 28 after all and he'd been sending all these comments and making suggestive remarks to a 16-year-old girl. There had been a role as a voice over in a Disney cartoon he'd been up for. A few days later, it was announced that the role had been given to someone else.

Last I heard, he was off Twitter.

For some reason, Cheryl never told anyone or never Tweeted that someone else had been writing her Tweets for her, or that it had been another person flirting with Matt for her. Not even when her Twitter account was being flooded with nasty messages from strangers telling her what a horrible little cow she was. And worse, the C U Next Tuesday word came up A LOT.

Hot New Lad Danny spotted Cheryl's flirting with Matt online and he turned on her too, tweeting that she was supposed to have been his girlfriend and here she was messing around with a celeb. There was a lot of response to that too.

But Cheryl kept mum. She didn't tell anyone she wasn't the author of those tweets.

Last I heard, she was off Twitter too.

I'm glad that she never told anyone about me writing her Twitter and Instagram stuff for her. It means I have forgiven her for letting the cat out of the bag about the blog.

At the end of the day, the blog was my fault.

I dunno if me and Cheryl can be friends again. I kind of miss her. She was good fun, but then I was so jealous of her and how she looked so I don't know if that is that a good thing for friendship. Maybe not. And she didn't want to know when I ended up in hospital. I guess a real friend would have visited me or at least tried to find out how I was.

*******************************

Daniella left her job.

Oh yeah. You're thinking – why are you talking about Daniella? Last we heard you told her to go away and leave you alone.

Well, she did save my life. Chances are I might have puked again that night and ended up dying by choking on my own vomit, which is an undignified and lame way to go. It's not like I'm a rock star or anything. I felt guilty that I'd been so mean to her, and I kept going over and over in my head what she had told me.

Anyway, I was curious about her. Here she was, someone "normal", this person who worked in an office and looked terrific, and yet she was stuffing herself with chocolate all the time because she hated her job, her boss stressed her out and she didn't know what to do.

It kind of felt nice that there was someone else like me – someone who knew what it was like to eat tonnes and tonnes of food, hating yourself but at the same time unable to stop yourself. She told me later it wasn't just the chocolate bars either. Often on a Sunday night she would order whole, giant-sized pizzas and swig them down with litres of diet coke until she felt she would explode if she swallowed anything else.

Eventually she talked to her mum and her boyfriend. Neither of them knew about her eating disorder either. They said they could lend her some money if she wanted to quit her job, which she did.

We laughed a lot when she told me just what she'd said to Nicole when she told her she was leaving. Let's just say she wiped the smile off that bitch's face.

Now Daniella does PR for a charity. It's not well paid, but she loves her work.

And she and I go along to support group meetings regularly.

"What if these bitches spend their whole time moaning about their mums and their dads being mean to them?" I'd said, the first time we went along.

We walked in the door. We saw women glance up. There were all sorts and all shapes and size of women in there, and we saw teas, coffees and biscuits. Both of us stiffened automatically. They were chocolate biscuits too, and I noticed there were a lot of crumbs on the table which made me twitch.

"What if they do?" Daniella said back to me. "Maybe that's their lives. Maybe their mums and dads do suck."

"But..." I said.

"But what? Bitch!" She was grinning, though, so I didn't take offence. I think she'd read some stuff about teenage slang so she was trying to fit in with me. Maybe I'll tell her about the court one day and the judgment of the court thing me and Cheryl used to do. Maybe she'll let me help her with her life decisions.

"What caused your fucked-up food thing?" Daniella added, as we hesitated at the door still too nervous to walk in. "We might as well get this over with before we settle down to this digging deep into our souls shit."

"I dunno," I say, because I don't. I read stuff. This is what causes it, they said:

Girls don't want to be adults. Girls try to take control. Girls get overwhelmed by all these pics of women they see. Girls get low self-esteem because of it. Girls think they need to restrict this. They think they need to restrict that. The restriction inevitably causes binge eating disorder. They only feel good if life is HARD, right, and they think they will only ever feel good when they get to a certain weight. But the feeling good bit never comes.

Me? I thought to myself, I am all the above. Those girls. All of them and none of them.

"I don't know, Daniella," I said, though, in answer to her question, "And what about you, freak?"

I looked at her quickly just to make sure that she knew I was joking.

"I am a fat, fucking useless blip," she said quickly and I was so shocked I had to stop and look at her.

"You..." I started to say and I was about to say, "You stupid cow! Why do you think that??"

And then I got a grip of myself. Ah yeah, this is what I say to myself. Every. Single. Day.

I tell myself I am a fat, fucking freak.

"Aw, Daniella," I said instead, "you are not a fat, useless blip. You are a kind, considerate, helpful, first aid knowing, fabulous at charity PR, what every mother wants for their son kind of girl."

She nudged me. "Steady on!" but her smile had got a lot wider.

A bosomy woman who looked a lot like Jan got to her feet as we sat down, beaming smiles at everyone around her.

"Hello ladies and–" a quick glance around "–gentleman. Welcome to our group!"

*******************************

This is what happened with the Annies...

Mum thought – and I agreed – that it was a good idea not to go online much or at all for a few weeks/months, and closing various accounts that I had, so I did.

I couldn't help myself though. I thought I needed to check in with the Annies. I'd told them lots of stuff after all, and it felt a bit weird, rude even, just to leave suddenly. Even though in the months I'd been in the chatrooms, people would appear and disappear all the time.

You would wonder what had happened to them. Had they got over their problems, or had something worse happened..?

I found FatGirlThin, Mali-Minx and Ally904 in a conversation from some time ago when I had last posted. I had said that stuff had happened to me, and I was being "allowed" not to eat, which was wonderful when you are the person who spends all their time trying to keep their eating habits secret from everyone around them.

So, there had been replies to that comment. Some of the Annies had joined in, telling me about when they had been able to use events as an excuse not to eat because they were too stressed. I mean, that's allowed, isn't it? Famous people, people in books or people whose relatives have died, they are all allowed not to eat because of stress, aren't they?

The Annies talked about all kinds of events they had used as an excuse not to eat. Exams, grandmothers being ill, worries about friends, being dumped by a boy. Mali-Minx had even managed to use her favourite boyband splitting up as a reason why she wasn't eating, dragging that out for three or four days before her mum put her foot down.

Then FatGirlThin started wondering where I was and why I hadn't answered. Maybe she was worried about me, like I had worried about those Annies who suddenly disappeared from the chatrooms on the site from time to time. Maybe she thought something had happened to me. Maybe she thought I had been hospitalised, or worse...

Mali-minx replied that she'd done a bit of research. My "anonymous" account on the site turned out to be not so anonymous after all. I reckon she's quite clever, Mali-minx, because she managed to find a picture of me through SnapChat. Yeah, yeah, that site where everything disappears, not – which had been taken some time ago when I was...

As I have been taught, you have to steer away from describing or thinking of yourself in a certain way. You fat, fat flip kind of thing. But that picture she found wasn't great. I did look... er, big in it.

Mali-minx posted the pic up in the discussion thread. I started reading the comments and then stopped because I was too scared to read any more. The Annies turned on me. They don't like people who pretend to be something they are not, and they do not think that their issue with food is anything like my issue with food. To them, it is not a different side of the same coin.

As I read their stuff, my skin crawled with their comments their words itching their way across my head and onto my body. I could feel my face flushing even though there was no-one in the room and the comments had been posted up a while ago. I thought about... oh god, cakes and chocolate and crisps and chips and cheese, tonnes and tonnes of it waiting for me to dive in and cover myself with it, hiding and hidden.

Have you ever noticed that all the best food begins with a 'C'?

Those C-word foods buzzed around in my head loudly and I started to shake. I hadn't heard her, but Mum had come into the room.

"You all right Savvy love?" she asked, and the C-words stopped.

She'd come up behind me and had leaned over me to give me a cuddle. The screen caught her eyes. I tried to close the site so she wouldn't see what was written there, but she hugged me tighter, batting my hand away and read down the thread, scrolling down with the mouse before minimising the screen herself.

"Wow."

She kissed the side of my head. "Oh dear Savvy, what a lot of unhappy people."

I nodded, but I didn't know what to say, how to explain the Annies and how to explain why I had been on the site and why I had been on it for so long.

"I don't think–" It's kind of sweet how my mum always hesitates a little bit now before she suggests something, but her suggestions are usually good ones and ones I want to hear and take notice of.

"Shall we close this account then?" she asked, and I nodded, relieved. I hadn't realised that Mum was pretty good at computers and social media stuff, and I watched as she clicked on a few things and confirmed closure of the account, checking my emails to make sure I wasn't subscribed to any updates from the site.

"We can't help those poor unhappy girls," she said to me. "But we – and I mean you and me and Tony and Ben – we can help YOU, can't we?"

And yes, we can.

********************************

Jan's idea was a good one. It was time, she said, that I used my creative writing skills for something good.

"You should write the truth, Savvy," she said. "Write the truth about what it's like to be you, what it's like to worry about food all the time and to feel as if you need to make up an affair with a teacher. I think people would want to read that."

I admitted I was worried about writing anything ever again. Look at the damage I'd done, I said.

"But writing things always makes you feel better, doesn't it?" she said, and I nodded.

"You can write the truth and say how sorry you are in it."

So I did, or rather I do. I am writing about what happened to me and, even though it makes my skin crawl in shame sometimes, I am truthful and I admit all my mistakes.

Someday I hope Mr A will read it. Someday I hope he will forgive me.

*********************************

"Long time no see."

Of all the places to bump into him, I wouldn't have expected it to be here – the discount supermarket on a Tuesday afternoon.

I feel self-conscious as he glances quickly into my basket, but I guess that is left-over paranoia from my bingeing days. This afternoon, I'm just picking up bread and milk for Mum. There are no giant packets of crisps, family-size bars of Fruit and Nut or cakes on their sell-by date.

Even though I still have to make a big effort to walk past or avoid certain aisles and certain tables piled high with those kinds of things in this supermarket.

He looks a little different from what I remember, as I glance up at him shyly. Better, though, I reckon. Some of the old feelings come back. My heart is thumping a bit faster, and I feel quite nervous. He's standing quite close to me and I wish I'd made a bit more of an effort. I've no make-up and I'm wearing my old grey hoodie and jeans.

"I changed schools," I say.

"Yeah, I heard. What's it like?"

"Good," I say. "It's a sixth form college. The classes are pretty cool and the teachers are..." I trail off. I guess he doesn't want to know what I think of the teachers, or maybe what I think of them is exactly what he wants to know.

"I don't – y'know," I stumble a bit, but I feel like I have to say this. "I don't, fancy any of them or anything. I learned my lesson. I'm just concentrating on my classes, avoiding the internet and trying to eat like a normal person."

There. Said it. 'Fessed up to someone that I, Savannah Dunn, did something wrong, but I learned from it and that I have an eating disorder that I still struggle with it though it's a lot better than it was.

He grins at me. "Do normal people go out for coffees?" he asks. "No cake – or cake if you want there to be cake?"

"If I'm hungry, I'll eat cake," I say, smiling at him because I don't want him to think I'm a complete idiot, telling him the obvious – even if the "obvious" was never obvious to me. "If I'm not hungry, I'll not eat cake."

"What are you then," he asks, moving ever so slightly closer to me, "hungry?"

"Not hungry," I say. The support group focuses a lot on identifying your correct feelings. The feelings you spend all the time disguising when you have an eating disorder, stuffing them down with food or blunting them with starvation.

His face registers a flicker of disappointment so I add quickly, "But I'd love a coffee, please."

He grins once again. "C'mon then! One coffee coming up."

I pay for the milk and bread and we head out of the supermarket. I'd like him to hold my hand, I realise, dangling it down by my side so it's there if he wants to take it.

Maybe he will, maybe he won't. Who knows? But I'm excited to think about what might happen now and in the future. Things I can't help imagining, though believe you me I'll never write down those imaginings again. I'm thrilled that I don't feel worried or uptight about going for a coffee with him and I'm not worried or uptight about the issue of cake – will I or won't I eat it etc.

The door to the coffee shop opens and the woman inside smiles at us in recognition.

"Sandy – great to see you! And a friend too! Now I've got this carrot cake here, needs using up... I can give you a couple of slices half price..?"

THE END

75,N?