My room looks like it’s been hit by a clothes tsunami.

As I pull out yet another top, try it on, take it off, and throw it onto the bed in disgust, I try not to think about how long it’s going to take me to clear up this mess. Why can’t I make up my mind? Why?

I was going to be so orderly and logical about this. I went through my cupboard carefully, short-listing all the most likely outfits. Then I entered them onto my laptop and considered their pros and cons.

Then I burst into tears and started ripping clothes out of my cupboard at random.

I think I may be getting a tad too intense about baby-sitting Farouk’s nephew.

I mean, let’s face it, the chances that I’ll actually spend more than about three minutes in Farouk’s company this evening are pretty slim. It’ll be Hi, how are you? at the beginning of the evening, and Everything was fine, goodnight! at the end. So what am I getting so stressed out about?

I suppose it’s because I’ve been hoping that this day would come ever since Gemma first mentioned the possibility that she might ask me to baby-sit for her. I was starting to think it would never happen. By the time she finally did call I had forgotten all about it.

A tiny part of me can’t help hoping that when Farouk sees me in his own house, making friends with his sister, and looking after his little nephew, he’ll warm up towards me a bit. And no, I’m not one of those sad girls who just can’t tell when a guy’s not interested in them. He is interested. I know he is.

He’s just fighting it for some reason or other.

And yes, I know we’re not really right for each other – blah, blah, blah. But I want to be the one who makes that decision. Not him.

I toss yet another unwanted top onto the bed and sigh deeply. I am never going to find the perfect outfit. I should have gone shopping today while there was still time, instead of lingering over brunch with Tyson and the girls. Well, it’s definitely too late now. The shops are closing right now, and I’m due at Farouk’s place in less than two hours.

I wonder if Steph has something I can borrow. The only problem is – I know all her clothes so well that I can flick through her whole wardrobe mentally without even going into her room. There’s not a single thing in there that’s going to make me look just right. I really wish Kealiboga’s clothes fitted me. She’s got some awesome dresses. But nothing under a size sixteen.

******

The door opens and Steph strolls in, just as I’m about to SMS her to come and help me make up my mind.

‘Thank God you’re here!’ I exclaim. ‘I’ve got absolutely nothing to wear. Literally not one single thing. I…’

I break off when I see how serious she’s looking. There’s a worried little crease between her eyebrows that only appears when she’s really stressed out about something.

‘Hey, is everything okay?’ I ask in concern. ‘You’re looking a bit freaked out.’

‘Trinity … listen …’ she says, pulling out her cellphone. ‘I really hate to do this to you when you’re all excited about going out tonight, but this is important. I need you to take a look at this picture. A friend of mine just sent it to me.’

I switch on my overhead light because it’s getting a bit gloomy. She opens a photo on her phone and hands it to me to look at. I take it curiously, wondering what could possibly be making her so worried.

I glance at the screen and recoil in disgust.

‘Eeyuw! Steph, that’s gross! Why did I have to look at that? Don’t tell me this is another one of your anti-anorexia campaigns?’

Almost involuntarily, I glance at it again.

It’s a horrible photo of a painfully thin girl. She looks like a skeleton, with papery yellow skin stretched over her bones. It reminds me of the pictures my high-school history teachers used to show us when we were learning about the concentration camp victims in World War Two.

‘Can’t you see who it is?’ asks Steph.

‘It’s a girl who looks like a skeleton.’ I say. ‘What more do I need to know?’

‘No, look carefully. Don’t you recognise her?’

I take the phone from her again with an impatient sigh and look at it closely, trying to work out what she means. It’s a girl with long, curly black hair. She looks quite young, maybe about our age, but it’s hard to tell. She’s wearing a pair of jeans that must have come from the kiddies’ department at Woolworths. There’s a tattoo on her right upper arm. I can’t quite see what it is. It looks like …

Oh God … it looks like a cat.

With a sickening thud of recognition, I realise that I know that tattoo.

I was with her when she got it. Our parents said we couldn’t get any ink until after we matriculated, so we went to a tattoo parlour in Rosebank in the December holidays. I got a bee on my butt and she got a cat silhouette on her upper arm. All I can remember is that we giggled nonstop that entire day.

It’s Lael.

I’m looking at a picture of my best friend.

I sit down heavily on the bed. ‘How did you get this?’ I whisper.

‘One of my old school friends is at UCT,’ says Steph. ‘I explained to her exactly who Lael was and asked her to send me a recent picture of her. She used her cellphone camera when Lael wasn’t looking.’

‘But … but how did you know? How did you even begin to suspect that it had got this bad? I mean, I saw her in the July vac. And, okay, she was pretty thin, but nothing like this.’

‘It was a lot of little things,’ Steph says thoughtfully. ‘First she stopped responding to my SMSes. Then she blocked me as a friend on Facebook. Then you started saying that you hadn’t heard from her in ages. It’s all classic anorexic behaviour – withdrawing from the people who care about you so they can’t force you to change your behaviour.’

‘You sound like an expert. How do you know so much about it?’

‘I’ve been reading up about it on the Internet,’ Steph says, shrugging. ‘Ever since I first suspected that Lael was on her way to becoming anorexic, I’ve been arming myself with as much information as I can.’

‘But you’ve never even met her.’

‘I know. But we really clicked at the beginning of the year when I started getting to know her through you. I just knew something was wrong when she tried to cut me out of her life.’

I wince a little, feeling pinpricks of guilt attacking my conscience. I’ve known Lael since we were babies, but I chose to ignore all the warning signs. I’ve been putting my head in the sand about her condition. Steph has never even met her face to face, and yet she’s the one who uncovered the truth.

‘Sometimes it takes a person who’s more removed from the situation to see what’s really going on,’ Steph says kindly, guessing my thoughts. ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it, Trinity. What we need to focus on is what we’re going to do about it now.’

I’m staring at the photo in renewed horror. ‘What’s all this stuff on her face and arms?’ I ask queasily. ‘It looks almost like … hair.’

‘It is hair,’ Steph answers, matter-of-factly. ‘When your weight drops below a certain level your body stops producing female hormones and the male hormones take over. You start growing hair on your face and body, almost like a guy. It’s your body’s way of trying to keep warm.’

‘Yuck! How can she possibly think that that’s attractive?’

‘Anorexia is a disease, Trinity. She’s not thinking rationally.’

‘I still don’t understand how anyone can do this to themselves.’

‘At least she’s not in the last stages of the disease yet. It’s not like she’s bedridden or anything. You can see that she’s still very much up and about. My friend tells me she’s quite active on campus, although she doesn’t have a lot of friends.’

‘What are we going to do about this? What on earth are we going to do?’

‘Well, I thought for a start that you might phone up her parents and tell them what’s been going on with their daughter. There’s no way they can know about this and not do something.’

‘Her parents? ’ My heart sinks a little at the thought.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Lael’s family situation isn’t exactly simple,’ I explain. ‘Her parents are divorced, you see, and they don’t really get on. Her mom is this glamorous international globetrotter, and her dad got remarried. He now has a whole new family in Pietermaritzburg. They’re both so busy with their own lives that they don’t really have a lot of time for Lael. It’s not going to be easy getting either of them to take this seriously.’

‘They have to, Trinity. They have to! Because if they don’t ….’

‘I know,’ I say, nodding sombrely. ‘You don’t have to say it. I know.’

Tell us: What do you know about eating disorders?