Someone Like You (53 page)

So she was peering pointlessly into the oven at the casserole when Abby meandered into the kitchen, with her French grammar book.

‘What’s for dinner?’ Abby asked, perching on a chair and pulling her tracksuit-covered legs up under her.

‘Coq au vin with a twist - the twist being there’s no vin in it.’ Leonie rarely cooked with alcohol. When she bought a bottle of wine, she preferred to save it for those nights when she needed a restorative glass or two.

‘Yuck,’ Abby said. ‘Do I have to eat it? I’d prefer a baked potato.’

‘Yes, you do have to eat it and we’re having rice tonight, so there’s no baked potato option.’

‘Mum! Nobody should have to eat what they don’t want. Meat is murder,’ she added as an afterthought.

‘Meat has only become murder recently in your mind,’

Leonie remarked, thinking that tonight was turning into one of those restorative glass of wine nights. ‘You ate sausages on Tuesday.’

Abby sniffed. ‘Can’t I have a veggie burger?’

‘Darling, I’ve made dinner. If you wanted veggie burgers, you should have said so before I started cooking. And anyway, I can’t spend the evening making different meals for everyone. This isn’t McDonald’s.’

Abby said nothing but stomped off sulkily. Leonie closed her eyes and counted to ten. Abby had become so difficult about food lately. She was drinking loads of water, apparently to improve her skin, and she was so fussy about what she ate it was like running a health farm. Nowadays Abby insisted on fruit and cereal for breakfast, shunning Danny’s inevitable bacon sandwiches although she used to love them. Leonie was spending a fortune in the supermarket buying exotic fruit because Abby said she’d love starfruit and mango salad in the morning. Then, Abby would decide she didn’t actually like mango and the poor thing would sit in the fridge going off until Leonie had to throw it out.

She remembered those marvellous days when they’d all eaten everything she put in front of them. Abby particularly had always had a great appetite, probably too good really, because she was overly fond of dessert and anything with chocolate sauce on it. Leonie had watched her putting on weight and had cringed at the thought that some cruel kid would come along and taunt her about her figure and she’d feel fat forever.

If she had told Abby to cut down on desserts, it would have given the poor girl the impression that even her mother thought she was too big. So Leonie had held her tongue and tried to serve healthy foods, hoping that Abby would lose her puppy fat sooner rather than later. But now Abby appeared to have made the connection between dessert and being plump. At least the new healthier diet was having a good effect on her figure. She’d been much heavier than the dainty Mel for years, but now the difference was lessening. Abby still didn’t possess her twin’s sleek limbs and tiny waist, but she was much slimmer than she had been.

Leonie hoped she wasn’t being too careful about what she ate. Both girls were still growing and needed plenty of protein, vitamins and minerals. They’d discuss it over dinner, she decided.

Come dinnertime, Leonie had succumbed to the lure of a glass of wine and Mel was back on the phone, squealing excitedly to Susie about ‘this amazing thing that happened …!’

‘Whatever marvellous thing it was, could you talk about it later?’ Leonie said, poking her head into the sitting room where Mel was perched on the arm of a chair, one eye on Home and Away.

‘And could Susie phone you next time,’ Leonie added, ‘because the last phone bill was the size of the national debt.’

Mel raised her eyes heavenwards.

There was more raising of eyes when Abby slouched into the kitchen and looked at the dishes on the table.

‘I told you, I’m not eating that,’ she said shrilly, pointing to the bubbling casserole.

‘I’ll have yours, then,’ said Danny, loading up his plate.

‘You won’t,’ Leonie said patiently. ‘You have to eat some dinner, Abigail. And you’re not leaving the table until you do. Tomorrow, I’ll make you veggie burgers but, today, this is what we’re eating.’

She missed the look of panic that crossed Abby’s face before she sat down and helped herself to a minuscule portion of chicken and a slightly bigger spoonful of rice.

‘That’s hardly enough,’ Leonie said, turning back to the table with a steaming bowl of mangetout and broccoli.

‘It’s loads.’ Abby helped herself to a huge portion of vegetables. She then got a large glass of water and drank it down before filling another one.

Dinner was a silent affair. Danny just wolfed his down in ten minutes while Mel picked at her food delicately, reading the magazine she’d hidden on her lap. Leonie hated people reading at the table when they were all eating together.

Abby ate slowly, endlessly rearranging the food on her plate until Leonie told her to eat it all. ‘I know you’re trying to eat carefully, Abby,’ Leonie began, ‘but you are still growing and your body needs nutrients. I don’t want to see you on a diet,’ she warned. ‘You’re too young to diet. Eating sensibly is one thing, but missing meals is another. If I get you both some multivitamins, will you take them?’

‘Mmm,’ said Mel, engrossed in her magazine.

‘I suppose,’ answered Abby in a tight little voice.

She continued to fiddle with her food. Leonie knew she shouldn’t say anything but couldn’t help herself.

‘Abigail, stop playing with your dinner and eat it!’ she said, much more sharply than she’d intended.

‘Stop telling me what to do!’ shrieked Abby in retaliation.

‘I’m not a child! Stop treating me like one. Fliss and Dad don’t!’

Everyone looked at her in surprise. Abby never got into a rage, ever. But she was in one now.

‘I hate this sort of horrible food, and I hate you for making me eat it!’ she roared at her mother. ‘When are you going to learn that I’m not like you? That I’m different, a different person. Not a bloody child!’

Leonie stared at her beloved daughter in shock; not just shock at Abby using bad language, but shock at the whole thing. ‘Abby, stop it,’ she said weakly.

But nothing could stop Abby now: ‘It’s my body and I can do what I want with it!’ she said fiercely. ‘You don’t understand what it’s like, Mum. Nobody does.’

Shoving her chair back violently, she ran from the room.

‘Hormones,’ said Danny sagely.

‘Must phone Louise about homework,’ Mel said, before racing off.

It was their turn to do the washing up, but Leonie was too shell-shocked to say a word.

What was happening to them all?

Chicken casserole was horrible, especially the way Mum made it, with olive oil and stuff. It was bound to make you huge if you ate it. And as for rice, that couldn’t be good for you. She’d have to look it up in her calorie book, Abby decided, as she leaned against the bathroom door, taking a few deep breaths to calm herself before she started.

She hadn’t meant to shout, but she had felt so tense, it had just happened. It was important that Mum didn’t cop on to what was happening.

Veggie burgers were her favourite meal now; there was only just over two hundred calories per burger and it looked like a big meal to everyone else, particularly if you ate it with a baked potato. No butter on the potato, though.

Butter was a killer. And lots of water with the meal. Abby had told everyone she was drinking plenty of water because it was good for your skin. Mel had even started joining her, trying to outdo her in the eight-glasses-a-day stakes.

The only thing was that Mel had no idea the real reason her twin consumed so much water with meals: it made throwing up easier.

It was handy in school because there was less time to spend in the loo after lunch, so drinking lots of water meant Abby could simply rush into the upper years’ bathroom, wait for someone else to flush and then puke quickly and efficiently. She always saved her apple and ate that afterwards; otherwise, her stomach rumbled terribly all afternoon. It had been quite noticeable in History one day.

Luckily, the history teacher, Miss Parker, had such a loud voice that her droning on about Lenin quite drowned out Abby’s intestinal rumbling. Mel had given her a funny look at one point, though.

She’d have to be careful in case Mel copped on to what she was doing. That was the problem with a twin: they noticed stuff that other people didn’t. Like Mum never noticed her giving her cereal to Penny in the morning, and she didn’t seem to realize that Abby never ate the chocolate biscuits she brought out at night when they were watching the telly. Instead, Abby would hide them in her sleeve and put them back in the cupboard later, although once she’d kept some under her bed and ate eight of them in one go.

Puking them up had been horrible; her throat hurt like hell and she was sure she hadn’t got them all up.

But Mel was cute enough. Even though she always seemed more interested in herself than in anyone else, she just might notice what Abby was up to. Anyway, it was none of her business if she did. Mel was so bloody lucky to be naturally thin, like Fliss. She didn’t need to puke four times a day to lose weight. So she’d better keep her mouth shut if she did cop on. This was Abby’s secret.

As for Mum, she’d apologize to her later. She hated upsetting her mother but she had to do this, had to.

When she was finished, she sat on the floor of the bathroom, shattered from retching, her stomach aching and her throat burning. She felt terrible. Hot tears ran down her face and, as she wiped them away, her jade bracelet rattled.

Fliss had sent it to her as a present from the honeymoon in China. Abby loved it. It was so pretty. Fliss was kind and knew exactly what things she liked without having to ask. Fliss would understand about this, Abby thought darkly, even if her mother didn’t.

By six the following Saturday, Leonie wondered why she hadn’t had her tubes tied years ago. Children were a nightmare. Well, her lot certainly were. She could remember the far-off happy days when they’d confined their energies to drawing on the wallpaper, eating clay in the garden and hitting other small children over the head with their wooden alphabet bricks. She’d thought those days were difficult. How wrong could you be? Small children were a joy compared to three teenagers. At least when Abby had been sweet and amiable, there had been some let-up in the constant warfare that made up the Delaney household but since Abby had turned into a cranky, health-food obsessed creature, it had been sheer hell all the way. They’d made up after Abby’s outburst the other night, but Leonie still felt as if she was walking on eggshells with her.

Today had started well enough: Leonie, happily thinking about her first date with investment-banking Hugh that evening,,had bounced out of bed early, enjoyed a peaceful breakfast with Penny and the pair of them had gone for a wonderful three-mile-walk, buffeted by brisk January winds. As the rain started just when they reached home again, she was delighted they’d escaped a drenching. At half twelve, she left the house to do some grocery shopping and had bought herself a pair of pretty pink glass earrings in a local dress shop for her date. With a nice juicy magazine thrown into the shopping trolley along with a pack of her favourite low-cal chocolate drinks, Leonie decided she had a relaxing afternoon sorted out for herself. Saturday was the day when the kids did their bit of housework, which meant ten minutes of bickering over who did the kitchen, who did the bathroom and who did the hoovering and dusting. Leonie never minded the bickering. She’d long ago stopped herself from entering into the fray by screaming that she’d have the whole place clean in the time it took them to argue over who did what. That type of involvement got you on the slippery slope of doing it yourself anyway. Now, Leonie let them argue.

However, when she got home, it was apparent that the vacuum cleaner hadn’t moved from the last time Leonie used it. The inevitable layer of Penny’s blonde hairs was still scattered all over the hall carpet and the kitchen was unswept. Worse still, the remains of teenage breakfasts still littered every surface and an empty carton of milk stood on the worktop beside the bin. Whoever had emptied it hadn’t bothered to move it the eighteen inches required to put it into the bin. Furious, she dropped her grocery bags on the floor and went in search of the people responsible.

Unfortunately, this meant passing the bathroom. The door was open and a pile of towels were clumped damply on the floor. The toothpaste, squeezed in the middle, was abandoned in the hand-basin and there was so much water in the soap dish that the soap itself, carelessly abandoned, was melting slowly into a puddle of sludge.

The lazy so-and-sos, she thought furiously. They expected her to do bloody everything. Well, it wasn’t good enough. They weren’t getting away with it this time.

‘Melanie, Abigail and Daniel!’ yelled Leonie. ‘Why is this house such a pit? It’s your turn to tidy up. Twenty minutes each, that’s all I’m asking for.’

She flew into the twins’ room but there was nobody there. Danny, looking outraged at being interrupted, was rubbing gel on his wet hair when she knocked brusquely and entered his den without waiting for a reply.

‘Have you got the slave’s wages?’ she demanded.

Danny looked understandably blank.

‘Because you and your sisters insist on treating me like a slave, so I presume I’m going to get paid some sort of pittance.’ Leonie glared at her son.

He began to look mildly ashamed.

Leonie ploughed on: ‘I work hard all week and I cook, clean and tidy up after you lot. Saturday is the only day when I expect some serious help keeping this house clean, and what do I get? Nothing!’

‘Cool it, Ma. I’ll start now,’ Danny said.

‘Where are your sisters?’ she demanded.

‘I’m here, Mum,’ said Mel meekly, appearing in her dressing gown with what had to be the remains of Leonie’s last bit of avocado face mask plastered all over her face.

‘Is that my face mask?’ Leonie asked.

‘Er yes, I’m going out in half an hour and my skin’s a mess…’

‘Going out in half an hour? So when exactly were you going to help clean the house?’ Leonie demanded icily.