Chapter Twenty-One
Saskia
It’s okay. It’s just one meal. Skipping one meal won’t kill you. You just forgot to eat – doesn’t mean you’re instantly going to relapse.
Saskia swallowed the nausea down, and tried to quell the flickering fire of panic in her belly.
Yes, but the disordered thinking has been coming back, the panicking side of her brain retorted to the rationalising side.
The obsession with calories, how much I’ve ingested versus how much I’ve burnt.
That was the first sign of something being wrong before.
I’ve worked so hard to retrain my thought processes – it can’t all be undone now!
Then go and eat something, the other side of her brain responded. Kivi won’t mind if you tell her you forgot to eat dinner. Which is true.
But her body remained stubbornly curled up on the bed.
Even on her worst days, she hadn’t ever gone a whole day without food.
But today was looking different. She’d slept through breakfast, worked through lunch, and chatted through dinner.
And even last night, she’d only eaten half of her food because of that argument with Kivi.
For the fifth time, Saskia checked that her alarm was set.
She’d have to have something substantial for breakfast tomorrow.
It was too late in the day to eat now. Digestion and calorie processing slows down in the evening, after all- oh, fuck, stop it, Saskia.
It wasn’t like she was inexperienced in ignoring hunger pangs.
In fact, it had always been a sort of challenge to herself: ‘You can be hungrier than this. You’ve not earned your food yet.
’ And, indeed, she had spent the last two hours buried in her work.
The low battery status on her laptop confirmed it.
And while it charged quietly in the corner, Saskia knew she should have been recharging herself.
Refuelling. But Kivi would judge. Saskia had a sneaky feeling that she already suspected something.
There was tea and coffee downstairs. Saskia had used up all the tea bags in her room, and forgotten to ask Kivi for some more. She decided to go downstairs and make herself a cup of tea in the lounge. That would be something in her stomach, at least. Tide her over until the morning.
It took her a moment to stand up. The head-rush was unpleasant, but probably a sign that her iron levels were dipping low. Anaemia had been an on-and-off companion over the years. Once the pain in her head receded, she made her way out of her bedroom and down the corridor to the stairs.
Halfway down, the head-rush returned, and she had to grip onto the banister for balance. You can’t collapse here. Just get to the bottom of the stairs and then you can sit down. Her ears began to ring. Her vision began to go staticky. Just a few more steps. Just a few…
“Oh my God!”
“Is she all right?”
“What happened?”
“She fell down the stairs!”
Voices clamoured above her head. She was aware of being on her back, the blurry blobs of people moving around her.
She tried to get up, tried to laugh it off, but her muscles wouldn’t do her bidding.
Someone touched her arm. Trying to feel for a pulse?
That’s ridiculous. You can see I’m not dead, you idiot.
Then, miracle of miracles, Kivi’s voice. Cutting through the fog – loud, clear, and confident.
“Okay, everyone, let’s have some space here. Let’s give the lady some space.”
“I’m a trained first-aider,” she heard another voice say. “We need to get her some-”
“I know what to do,” Kivi said firmly. “I am also a first-aider. But we’re not doing her any good by crowding her, so please, everyone take a step back.”
Saskia could see the blobs move back obediently. Just one remained, and she blinked frantically until her eyes focused again and she could see Kivi’s concerned face peering down at her.
“Miss Jepps, please get a glass of water from the lounge,” she said to one blob – which she now realised were guests.
“And Mr Cartwright, please bring us a chair from the dining room.” Saskia moved her eyes to the left, and saw two more people, who she recognised from delivering them their dinner earlier in the evening.
They wore matching concerned expressions, and Saskia felt her insides cringe with embarrassment.
“Saskia, can you hear me?” Kivi asked, and Saskia nodded.
The small movement of her head made it spin again, and she closed her eyes for a second before forcing them back open again.
The sound of a chair being dragged along the floor made her ears resume ringing, and she was very glad when it stopped right in front of her. “Saskia, do you have any pain?”
Kivi ran through a few diagnostic tests, presumably to check that nothing was broken, then lifted Saskia’s legs onto the chair.
In that position, legs raised above her head, Saskia’s awareness began to gradually return to her.
The floor was hard beneath her back, and her neck hurt from the position she lay in, but she assessed the rest of her body and nothing seemed to be badly injured.
There were several strangers around her.
Other guests. They were all looking at her.
She pursed her lips, and moved her head to the right so that she couldn’t see them.
“Can you all just go?” she managed in a kitten-weak voice. She felt her face flush – even better.
“I’ve got it from here, everyone,” Kivi said. “Thank you for all your help.”
“Do you need anything else?” One of them seemed reluctant to leave. Probably just being helpful, but Saskia gritted her teeth at the intrusiveness.
“Nope, we’ll be fine.” Kivi was chirpy but firm. “Thank you.”
The room seemed to grow quieter as they left. Kivi shut the door to the guest lounge, and then returned to kneel again next to Saskia’s side.
“Do you remember what happened?” she asked quietly.
“I just wanted a cup of tea, then my legs went out from under me.”
“Do you remember where you were on the stairs when you fell?”
“Near the bottom, I think. I was trying to get down before my legs went.”
“I’m debating calling you an ambulance.”
“No!”
The vehemence of Saskia’s protest made her head start hurting again. She raised a shaky hand to press it to her temple.
“You clearly aren’t-”
“No,” Saskia said again, firmly. “I know why it happened. I just haven’t eaten enough today. It’s happened once or twice before over the years when I’ve been on my own. I just need to get something in my body.”
Five minutes later, Saskia was sitting on the chair with a cheese sandwich, a chocolate biscuit and Kivi holding the glass of water.
The food made her feel nauseous, but she forced it down, knowing that her body would settle when it had something to run on.
Kivi was sitting on the bottom stair next to her, looking thoughtful.
Saskia didn’t want to know what she was thinking.
“I’m going to get an early night,” she said once the sandwich and biscuit had been consumed.
“You didn’t eat dinner, did you?” Kivi said. “I wondered how I’d ended up with an extra cottage pie.”
“I forgot.” Saskia tried to chuckle, but it sounded false to her own ears. “My head was too absorbed in what I’ve been writing.”
“And you missed breakfast.”
“True.” Another attempt at a laugh.
“Did you even eat lunch?”
There was nothing she could say that wouldn’t sound like a brush-off. So in the end, she made a third game attempt at a chuckle and said, “Mystery solved.”
“I’d like to take you out tomorrow.”
“Huh?” Saskia nearly choked on her water, it was such an abrupt subject change.
“You contacted some caterers, right? And gave them my email? Two of them have contacted me asking to meet. With Cass’s allergy, it’s easier to deal with them face-to-face so we can gauge their allergy safety. I’d like you to come along.”
“I can’t do tomorrow,” Saskia said regretfully. “I have a couple of online meetings about my progress with the Cornwall articles. We could go out between them, but it would be a rush.”
“Wednesday then.” Kivi wasn’t letting her get away that easily. “We’ll make it a day trip. One caterer is in Millsbrooke and the other is in Lygate – I’ll take you to Lygate shopping centre and we can get lunch. What do you say?”
Saskia knew exactly what she was doing with the lunch thing. An ‘If I can’t trust you to eat on your own, I’ll do it with you’ sort of arrangement. It made her want to snap, and push her away, but she bit her tongue. If it would prove to Kivi that everything was all right, then so be it.
“I say yes. We can make the arrangements tomorrow, can’t we?”