Someone Like You (66 page)

The woman on the eating disorder helpline was called Brenda and had heard it all before. Her soft, friendly voice and non-judgemental manner were a balm to Leonie’s bruised soul. She judged herself badly for not noticing Abby’s problem, therefore she expected everyone else to judge her badly too.

But Brenda swept aside the idea of blame or guilt: ‘It’s great that you finally know how Abby feels,’ she said once she’d been told the story. ‘You can help. Before, you couldn’t. Surely that’s positive.’

‘I suppose,’ Leonie said numbly.

‘Trust is an important part of how you cope from now on,’ Brenda explained in her kind, matterof-fact manner. ‘There’s no use you watching over Abby like a hawk, forcing her to eat up her dinner or insisting she has large portions. That’ll just make her more secretive than ever.’

‘But what do I do?’ cried Leonie. ‘I want to help but I feel so helpless. She’s pushing me away.’

‘That’s common. Don’t think it’s just you. She’s upset and hurt. She wants to hurt someone back, and she’s trying to keep you away from her so she can remain in control of what she’s doing. If she lets her guard down, she thinks she won’t be in control.’

‘She was always so good, the best kid imaginable,’

Leonie said in anguish. ‘If anyone was destined to develop this, I would never have thought of Abby. Her twin, Melanie, is much more interested in how she looks, in clothes and boys. Mel’s the gorgeous, feminine one. Abby’s reliable and easygoing.’

‘Perhaps,’ Brenda said delicately, ‘she got tired of being reliable. It may be hard living in her sister’s shadow.’

‘You’re right.’

‘It sounds as if you have caught this in the early stages, although you can never be sure. People with eating disorders are very successful at hiding it.’ Brenda laughed. ‘I should know, I was anorexic for five years and bulimic for eight.’

On the other end of the phone, Leonie gasped.

‘I know you’re surprised,’ Brenda added, ‘but think about it: the best person to help someone with an eating disorder is someone who’s actually gone through it all themselves. You cannot force your daughter to eat. All you can do at this stage is provide her with support and help her to deal with it. You’re doing fine.’

She recommended some books that would be useful and added that if there was any way Leonie could get Abby along to a meeting, then it would be a wonderful help.

‘Some of the girls come here for the first time and they’re scared stiff. They don’t know anyone else who feels the way they do, they feel utterly alone. They rarely say anything at the first meeting, they just sit and stare, amazed that they’re in a room full of people who’ve gone through the same thing. Try and bring your daughter, Leonie.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Leonie promised.

She could barely concentrate on work.

‘Has Hugh asked you to marry him or something?’

Angie enquired laconically when Leonie produced the wrong rabbit for neutering during morning surgery. ‘This is a female.’

‘Sorry,’ Leonie said, scooping the bewildered, struggling rabbit up again. ‘Migraine, that’s all.’

‘Do you want to go home?’ Angie asked sympathetically.

Leonie shook her head. The last thing she wanted to do was go home and spend the afternoon on her own, alone with all her miserable thoughts about Abby.

After lunch, she went into one of the upstairs offices and braced herself to phone Ray. He had to be told.

Ray was in a bad mood and, once Leonie had reassured him - untruthfully - that there was nothing wrong, he spent five minutes muttering about the appalling weather in Boston. ‘Damned climate,’ he grumbled.

‘Yeah,’ said Leonie absently. ‘It’s cold here too. Listen, Ray,’ she said heavily, ‘we’ve got to talk.’

‘You mean there is something wrong,’ he said.

‘I hate to simply phone up and say, “Ray, there’s something terribly wrong,” ‘ Leonie muttered.

‘Tell me,’ he said.

She’d expected Ray to be upset and even tearful. What she hadn’t expected was for him to get furious with her.

‘For Chrissake, Leonie, how the hell did it happen without you knowing? You can’t turn on the TV here without hearing about kids with anorexia or bulimia. Schools and parents are totally aware of it and you apparently haven’t a clue!’

‘That’s not fair,’ protested Leonie. ‘By its very nature, it’s a secretive illness. I love the kids, I’d do anything for them. I hope you’re not accusing me of neglecting them!’

‘You certainly took your eye off the ball this time,’ Ray snapped.

‘They’ve just come back from Cannes with you. How come you didn’t notice?’ she shrieked at him.

‘Four days is nothing,’ he said curtly. ‘I’ve got to go.

I’ve a ten o’clock. I have a day, you know. I’ll call tonight to talk to Abby. I think it’d be a good idea if she came to stay with Fliss and me for a while. We can keep an eye on her. Fliss is great with Abby. They had a fantastic time in Cannes.’

He hung up, leaving Leonie horrified.

Desperate for reassurance, she phoned Emma but got her voice mail. A polite woman in Hannah’s office said she was out. She didn’t try Hugh. This was something she felt she couldn’t talk to Hugh about. Bloody Jane had been such a perfect teenager, according to him, that Leonie couldn’t bear to tell him what had been happening with Abby.

Feeling very alone, Leonie buried her face in her hands and sobbed her heart out. How was she ever going to cope with this? Why had she been so interested in herself that she’d neglected her beloved kids?

She went home early and took Penny out for a walk, despite the fact that the so-far balmy May afternoon had been transformed into a raging gale with hailstones like bullets hurtling down. Leonie didn’t mind the weather: it suited her current mood of introspective self-loathing. She deserved hailstones whipping against her face and the wind threatening to whisk her off her feet. Bad mothers couldn’t expect anything else. Penny, on the other hand, loved the wind. She held her head aloft and sniffed ecstatically, breathing in scents that no human nose could identify.

She danced along, landing heavily in puddles, with Leonie stomping along behind her, head down against the gale.

As they reached the heavy black gates at the end of Doug Mansell’s drive, Penny, accustomed to meeting his two collies on their evening walks, decided she’d pay them a visit now. Ignoring Leonie’s demands that she come back here immediately, she trotted confidently up the drive to see her friends. Leonie groaned but set out after her quickly.

It might be nice to talk to Doug, she thought. They often walked together in the evenings now, talking about everything and nothing. It was a companionable, easy relationship.

Doug could be very funny in a dry way and once he’d let his guard down with Leonie and the kids, he did so wholeheartedly. He’d been to dinner loads of times and appeared to enjoy the banter of the Delaney household.

He’d been giving Danny driving lessons in his Jeep and had promised that when the girls were old enough, he’d teach them too. ‘I better get the pacemaker fitted first,’ he’d kidded Mel, who was not mechanically inclined and who viewed driving as a method of getting out and about to meet more guys than she could on the bus.

Leonie didn’t tell Hugh about these cosy dinners. She felt he might interpret them incorrectly. It was hard to explain her friendship with Doug because it was totally unlike any other friendship she’d ever had. Not romantic, obviously, but, well … It was about companionship and camaraderie. You couldn’t explain that.

She went round the back to the kitchen door because she knew Doug would either be there or in his studio beside the kitchen. He opened the door without her having to knock on it, alerted to her presence by the demented barking of three dogs, all desperate to play with each other.

‘Sorry to butt in, but Penny decided she wanted to see Alfie and Jasper,’ she said.

Doug screwed up his face in mock disgust: ‘You mean you wouldn’t bother to come and see me unless Penny wanted a date?’ he demanded. But seeing how Leonie’s face crumpled at his remark, his looked immediately contrite.

‘What’s wrong, Leo?’ he asked in concern. He was the only person who called her that and she liked it. It was special, private.

She told him everything. It was a relief to talk to someone about it all. She’d felt too raw and hurt to tell Angie, and she hated telling her mother, because she’d be so upset.

But Doug was a good person to tell things to. He installed her in the comfiest of the small couches in the warm kitchen, gave her hot, sweet tea and the Italian biscuits he always seemed to have on hand. After listening to the whole story calmly, feeding the three slavering dogs biscuit crumbs, he said that Ray had overreacted and ought to be shot. ‘It’s very easy to tell you where you’re going wrong from three thousand miles away,’ he remarked. ‘Ray feels guilty as hell because he’s not here, so he gets that off his chest by snapping at you. You don’t have to take that, Leo.’

‘I’ve failed as a mother,’ she wailed.

Doug was stern, the hooded eyes severe. ‘You haven’t failed. You have three great kids, but they’re not saints.

They make mistakes - we all do, Leo. If Mel, Abby and Danny were three plaster saints, they’d be boring individuals who’d never amount to anything in the world. But they’re not. They’re funny, clever, sensitive - too sensitive, in Abby’s case - people who are feeling their way in life.

They’re not kids any more. You have to accept that. You can be there for them when they make mistakes, but you can’t stop them making those mistakes. Right,’ he said, seeing Leonie’s bottom lip wobbling, ‘lecture over. I believe in you, Leo, and so do the kids. The twins and Danny would go to hell and back for you. That’s because of all the sacrifices you made for them. Don’t forget that.’

She nodded.

Doug eyed the three dogs, who were now splayed out on the kitchen floor, exhausted after playing a frenzied game of tag with each other all over the downstairs of the house. ‘Penny has had enough exercise for one day.

I’ll drive you home and if you show me which bit of the freezer you keep that amazing lasagne in, I’ll make dinner.

Deal?’

‘Deal.’

Fliss rang late that night when Doug had gone home and the twins were going to bed. Leonie felt her hackles rise at the sound of the other woman’s voice, the same way Penny’s hackles rose when she spotted a cat other than her housemate, Clover.

‘Leonie, this is a terrible experience for you and for the whole family. I feel just awful for you.’

‘Well, thanks, Fliss,’ said Leonie woodenly, hating Fliss for having access to this most private family secret.

‘Ray told me he lost it with you earlier and I wanted to apologize because he had no right to do that,’ Fliss continued.

‘We’ve been talking it over and we came up with a solution that might be appropriate for everyone.’

‘Really?’

Without losing any of her calmness, despite Leonie’s sarcastic tone, Fliss continued: ‘Ray and I think it would be good for Abby if she came to stay with us for a while - and Mel too. I think it’d be a mistake to part them.’

‘What? That’s ridiculous,’ Leonie said. ‘They’ve just gone back to school after taking two extra days to go to France. They can’t miss any time now. They’ve got their end-of-year exams.’

‘It’s only transition year. Besides, they were due to come in August anyway,’ Fliss interrupted. ‘They’ll just be coming a few months early. It would be so good for Abby to have a change of scenery to take her mind off what’s been going on.’

‘Even though it is their transition year,’ Leonie said hesitantly, ‘the school probably won’t want them to miss the exams.’

‘You could always say it’s about parental access,’ Fliss suggested. ‘I’m not that familiar with family law cases, but I know it’s not unusual for kids to take time out to live with the other parent for a while. Even two or three months could make a difference for Abby.’

‘Two or three months!’ gasped Leonie, horrified. ‘I was thinking more of a couple of weeks. I’d be lost without them.’

‘Yeah, I guessed you’d feel that way.’ Fliss was very gentle. ‘Leonie, I’m not trying to take your girls away from you. They’re your kids, they love you. Nobody can take that away. This isn’t about that, it’s about Abby. You are the best support she could have, but right now, I believe that breaking the cycle of what she’s been doing is the best thing for her. She needs another environment. You know her father would love to have her here - and Mel, too.’

Leonie knew she had to get off the phone quickly or she’d burst into tears.

‘Let me think about it, Fliss,’ she said abruptly and hung up. Then she did burst into tears.

Doug offered to drive them to the airport. ‘You won’t be in any fit state to drive anywhere,’ he told Leonie candidly.

She knew he was right. In the three days since she’d told the girls about the trip, she hadn’t been able to do anything right. She’d taken time off work because it was quite possible she’d make an awful mistake in the surgery and be responsible for the demise of some poor animal. Angie had been wonderfully sympathetic when she heard about Abby.

‘Change of scenery is probably a good idea for both Abby and you,’ she said. ‘When the girls are gone, why don’t you and Hugh go away for a week? Drive down to Kerry or Clare and do absolutely nothing but eat, drink and go for tramps in the woods. You deserve a break, and if Hugh is boring, you can go off with that tramp from the woods!’

But Leonie wasn’t in the mood for joking or a holiday, any holiday. She wanted to crawl into her lair and hibernate to lick her wounds.

It was ten in the morning and the twins’ flight was leaving at half two. Leonie wanted to make sure they were there on time for the lengthy US immigration process. How ironic, she thought, that she was rushing to make sure they caught a flight she didn’t really want them to be on.

‘Ready, girls?’ she called with false gaiety.

Mel and Abby had been up since seven, in a frenzy of last-minute packing, hair-washing and even one final, triumphant phone call to Mel’s long-time enemy, Dervla Malone, to boast about flying to Boston while she was heading off to school for double French followed by netball practice in the rain.