Leith, William by The Hungry Years Page A

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A Time of Great Uncertainty
    The first time I had an eating binge, I was seven years old. It was the summer before we moved to Canada, the summer before I came into contact with shopping malls and fast food, with roadside diners and drive-in movies and drive-thru burger bars, with the soft, sugary, oily sensation, in the mouth, of the burger itself.
    The burger.
    The fries.
    Before Canada, food came in two categories food you had to eat and food you wanted to eat. Canada would make me believe that the food you had to eat could also be the food you wanted to eat.
    We were flying out in the next few days. It was a time of great uncertainty. The family was staying in my grandmother's house, talking about what life would be like in Canada. There would be bears. There would be lakes and forests. Snow. I could play ice hockey. I could have skates.
    My grandmother always made this same apple pie with very thin pastry. She made it in a large, shallow baking tray, with the thin pastry on the base, about an inch of stewed apple, and more thin pastry on top. You waited for the pie to get cold, and cut it into slices. Then you poured cream on the pie, and ate it on a small, chintzy plate.
    I can see myself, sitting at my grandmother's dining table. I eat a slice of p ie. Then I eat my traditional second slice, for which I receive my traditional volley of approval and praise. My third slice is not quite as good as my second slice. I take my fourth slice on the quiet, after the pie has been moved into
    the kitchen. I cut it myself. In the tray is the rest of the pie, not cut into slices. Six of us have eaten half of the p ie. Half is left. Nobody will notice. I cut a bit of the pie away. Eat it. Now the pie looks untidy. I chop a bit more off. Eat it. Still untidy.
    Chop another bit.
    Eat it.
    And then, click.
    What Do You Think I'm Doing, Mum?
    Four years later, I'm standing on a street in a seaside town in Sussex, looking at the shop across the road. I was fat when I came back from Canada, but I'm not so fat any more. Still, I'm not quite right.
    It's mid-morning, and I'm aware that I'm not supposed to be outside the school, but hell, nobody much notices what I do. I wonder what my family are doing, my mother and father and younger brother. They're in Germany. I envy my brother. Even though he's only four years younger than me, he doesn't have to go to boarding school; he's just taking time out, doing whatever. They send me letters. Like the letters are going to improve my situation or something. My father will be at work, probably. It's June, and probably a nice day where they are, which is Konstanz, on the Swiss border, near the Alps.
    Later, I've got games, but before that, Maths and Latin, both of which I hate, neither of which I can concentrate on. This evening it's bath night, when I will be bathed by Danielle, the assistant matron, French.
    What I think about is my mother and brother, probably
    going up a mountain in a cable car or something, or taking a boat across the lake, and then later, when my father comes home from work, they'll eat something, and then just more or less do what they want. I got a letter a couple of days ago, and my mum goes, write and tell us what you're doing. What do you think I'm doing, Mum? I'm going for some nice walks around the lake, and sometimes I travel through the dormitory in a cable car.
    The best thing, really, is to just think about them for a short time, and then try to stop thinking about them, like they didn't exist or something. I mean, for all I know, they don't. For all I know, they could have been in some kind of accident.
    I could just walk across the road here, I have the money, and buy a bag of lemon crystals, which is sugar flavoured with lemon, dyed yellow, which you're supposed to dip your fingers in. It makes your fingers yellow, like the fingers of the men who hang around the arcades by the pier. But I don't dip my fingers in it much. I just pour it straight down. It's