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I still repeat to myself, was this: I’ll eat if you can . That’s why people email me every week, because anorexia is lonely and frightening, because you need reassurance every step of the way. I’ll eat if you can . That’s the promise I made to all those strangers; that’s the promise they’re making to me.
    * * *
    As well as for them, I did it for myself, because I was desperate for a solution. Anorexia is an addiction and a compulsion, a brain disorder and a crutch. When I use the word “addiction,” I don’t use it lightly. In my case, I am addicted to hunger.
    I set myself the challenge in public because I didn’t know what else to do: I hoped it would succeed where everything else—therapy, drugs, and determination—had failed. The question I had been avoiding for ten years wouldn’t go away: how long was I planning to starve myself? I’ve always prided myself on honesty, clarity of thought and expression, but anorexia involves a remarkable amount of self-deceit. As much as I denied the problem, to others and to myself, I couldn’t keep looking the other way. Something had shaken me up: the thought of having a baby maybe, finding myself in my early thirties, or just alonging to take part in life again. I knew that with anorexia I’d stay trapped forever.
    And then there was Tom. Even if I didn’t believe I could recover from anorexia—even if I didn’t want to save myself—I had to think about him now too.

Chapter 2
    Love at First Sight?
    W hen Tom and I met I wasn’t looking for a man and I certainly wasn’t looking for love. To be honest, I wasn’t even in the mood to go out—it was a drizzly February evening and I’d been at the office since 7 AM . At that time I was Commissioning Editor at a London publisher (I’ve been in publishing since the age of twenty-one, mostly in psychology and the humanities). Work had been the usual round of exasperating meetings, and I wasn’t in the mood to be chatty or sociable. All I really wanted was to cycle home, take a long hot bath, and spend a few hours reading before bed. I have no idea what had impelled me to agree to the blind date in the first place; I didn’t have time for myself, let alone a new boyfriend.
    A mixture of curiosity and politeness overcame my reluctance—it would be rude to cancel on this guy at the last minute, and I was a little bit intrigued. Also, why on Earth had I been set up? The matchmaker responsible was my mother’s best friend’s daughter Leo; I hadn’t seen her for years—hardly a close confidante. I wondered what it was about him and me that had made Leo think the two of us should meet.
    I decided to go along, but just for one drink. If he’s an oddball or boring, I’ll simply make conversation for half an hour and then excuse myself, I thought as I changed in the ladies’ room at work.My midnight blue silk top with dark blue jeans (smart but also sexy, in case the date went well), a spritz of perfume and some fresh makeup, and I was ready to go.
    That night, weaving my way through Hammersmith Broadway in the rain, I wasn’t exactly nervous, just slightly uneasy. I didn’t know what to expect. To be honest, I assumed that any guy who suggested meeting for a blind date in Hammersmith would be a loser. I had no idea meeting Tom would change everything.
    I pushed open the glass doors of the Lyric Bar and paused for a moment. Three or four men glanced up but I had no idea which one I was looking for. It was probably no more than a minute that I stood there, but it felt like ages. Then a bespectacled young man rushed up, waving a book, and I knew this must be Tom. He was small and neatly dressed, and looked somehow familiar. Kermit the Frog, or Casper the Friendly Ghost? No, the broadcaster Andrew Marr, that was it, the glasses and the ears, a kind of geeky seriousness. He wore a pale blue shirt