Читать книгу Size Zero: My Life as a Disappearing Model - Victoire Dauxerre - Страница 16

I missed Sophie, but I didn’t dare ring her – I’d cancelled all the plans we’d had for July and we hadn’t seen each other for ages. And what would I have said to her if I did ring her? That I was stressing out about the idea of going to work in New York, the city that I had been dreaming of for ever? That I wasn’t sure if I wanted to become a supermodel, something that all the girls of my age dreamed about? That I was afraid of not being able to put one foot in front of the other on the catwalk and that I would have to make do with eating fruit while I was living out the dream? She had her own dreams of studying and becoming a journalist – what would she make of my little existential crises?

Fortunately, Léo was on hand to listen to me. Even though he was much younger than me, I’d always shared a lot with him. Whereas Alexis put me on edge with all his emotional stuff and intimate questions, Léopold listened to me very attentively and responded with tenderness and common sense. He would often say: ‘You tell me about so many things that I’ll be able to become a psychiatrist and I won’t even have to study for it!’ He was so cute when he explained to me that I was beautiful now and so there was just no way that, suddenly overnight, I wouldn’t be beautiful any more. That I was too clever not to make a success of my new life. That I looked perfectly slim to him and he couldn’t see what the problem was. That he was convinced that I would be taken on for all the fashion shows. And above all else, that I shouldn’t worry, because what with Skype and texting and emails, we’d be able to speak to each other every day and they would always be with me. Nothing could separate us from each other, not even the 3,500 miles and the big time difference. ‘And you know what, Vic? We really are all so proud of you. Not everybody has a supermodel for a sister. And at Elite, to boot!’

Dad eventually joined us. I did my best not to spoil the atmosphere, but I just couldn’t shake off my anxiety. Happily, the scales finally deigned to drop again: I was slowly closing in on 51 kilos. So much so that Dad asked me if I was contemplating starting to eat a bit of meat and vegetables again. I think he just didn’t get it. He’d always loved Mum and thought she was the most beautiful woman ever, but it had never occurred to him to wonder how she managed to stay so slim. The fact was that she had the appetite of a sparrow. I’d only ever seen her picking at food, never really eating. There was just no chance of her ever putting on weight. And in fact when Dad looked like he was going to insist on the meat and vegetables, she told him not to worry.

As the thing that scared me the most was the idea of being away from my family, I asked my parents to buy me a cuddly toy that I could take everywhere with me and would make me feel like I had them with me everywhere too. While they went off to look for one, Léo and I gave some thought to the name we could give it. As a lover of Asian culture, he explained to me that Japanese first names had actual meanings and so we went on the internet to have a look. That was a lot of fun. We ruled out Suki, which means ‘love’, Fuku, which means ‘luck’ but which didn’t sound very appealing, and Kasoku, which means ‘family’. In the end, we opted for Yùki, with an accent on the u. That means ‘courage’. Léo said, ‘That way, your courage will never fail you.’ Leo really was so sweet and he was right, too: courage was exactly what I needed.

My parents returned with a cute little white rabbit, all soft and gentle, and I immediately adopted him. I sprayed Yùki with Mum’s perfume and from that point on he never left my side.

We headed home from Marseille, Alex rejoined us, we packed our bags and we set off to the States.