Life on Point

I had lain in bed all night, staring angrily at the clock and begging for sleep that would not come. The passing of each minute seemed to take an eternity as I turned over and over in my bed, counting endless lines of sheep with no effect. When the time reached 4.30am I gave up. Sitting up in bed I scrabbled around for my phone and dialled Sophia’s number. I needed to apologise. I had been selfish, cruel and bitchy throughout our relationship and even if she wouldn’t take me back I needed her to know I was sorry for that. Pressing the phone to my ear I waited for her to pick up on the other end. “Hello?” croaked a voice that was not Sophia’s. “Hi it’s Libby here. Who is this?” There was a pause at the other end before the voice replied “It’s Kate.” “Is Soph there?” I asked. This time the reply was immediate “Umm yeah she is but we’re kind of in the middle of something. And no offence but you’re slightly killing the mood.” I wondered over what her words could mean but only reached one horrible conclusion. “You have broken up haven’t you? Only Sophia said you had...” Kate asked sweetly. A sick feeling began to take hold in my stomach and my hands began to shake, for some reason I heard myself muttering an apology for ringing before hanging up the phone.

It hadn’t taken her long to get over me had it? Suddenly I pictured her in my mind: her pearl coloured skin brushing against someone else’, her soft lips tracing their way along the curve of another person’s neck. The images kept coming, each one worse than the one before until I was left feeling queasy with confusion. It was as though the very core of me has grown weaker, I felt so tired from so deep within me it made me feel sick. They say betrayal tastes bitter but that’s not what this tasted like to me: it tasted sweet, sickly and artificially sweet. The images cloyed inside me just like candyfloss; it was like I couldn’t shake the taste away.

I jumped up from my bed and ran into the kitchenette, opening the nearly bare cupboards in search of something that would make the taste go away. I found a stale packed of custard creams, a reminder of the days I let myself eat what I wanted and sitting down at the little faded table I devoured the lot of them – 22 in total. Sophia had loved custard creams, she would pull the two sides apart from one another and eat the cream first, which is precisely what I did then. The sudden intake of food made me feel even worse and yet I didn’t want to stop. I opened a packet of raisins and thrust fistfuls into my mouth, forcing them down with long, painful gulps. My eyes were watering as my stomach twisted painfully, shocked by the gorge of food after such a long famine.

Pain bought me back to my senses.

Rushing into the bathroom I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror: crumbs lay around my mouth - traces of my sin. It was Sophia’s face that filled my mind as I forced myself not to give in to temptation, not to allow my body to remain full and weak. “You never deserved her,” I told my pathetic reflection before cruelly thrusting my fingers down my throat.