With This Turquoise Marble, I...

“That’s it, girl – keep on eating,” sneers a guy in the game room at Shoreditch House. I am caught, literally, with my hand in the candy jar, and I want to sink through the floor.

Two people at the birthday drinks I’ve attended have commented on how tiny I am, one of them squeezing me around the waist to emphasize her point. But none of it matters. At heart I’m still the fat girl caught eating – how dare I do such a thing.

And as in the old days, the comment shames me to my core yet only makes me want to eat more. Shoreditch House has huge jars of sweets that are a free-for-all, and it’s gum drops I’m eating by the handful. Goody, goody gumdrops, I think, the phrase from my childhood suddenly popping into my head.

I look around for something else to eat. It doesn’t help that I’ve been drinking alcohol, and that I’ve been, for the entire evening, vastly uncomfortable. I ripped my dress on the way out the door to the party, forcing me to tear through my wardrobe and eventually land on an old standby I’m not sure I even like anymore. In the sea of Chanel boots and designer handbags that cost more than a month’s rent, I feel like Secondhand Rose. It doesn’t help that I’ve carefully timed my arrival to avoid the dinner part of the evening – I can only afford to pay for what I drink, and can’t, as so often happens at these sorts of events, end up with a £100 share because someone else has gone a little crazy with the ordering. I hate worrying so much, and being so ungenerous.

I’ve had three of the cheapest drinks I can find on the menu – a prosecco. Then one of the women’s banker boyfriend arrives with a friend, and the birthday girl orders me to go chat to him – he and I being the only two single people there. (I’ve just spent much of the party listening to people talk about various couples events being organized. No one even suggests I should be at any of them.) The boyfriend’s friend starts buying me drinks: a Drambuie (don’t ask) along with my prosecco. I am certifiably drunk at this point.

I sit on his lap when suddenly he begins telling me about a woman he’s just started dating. Um, WTF?

At some point in there I head for the sweets. It wasn't a binge, but it was definitely a bit messy -- as a rule, I don't eat things straight from the tin (or jar); I try to take a portion. Right after Random Guy catches me with my hand in the candy jar, Cheesehead (he’s from Leicester, which makes me think of Red Leicester, which…) says: “What are you eating?”

Shoot me now, I think. (But not before I finish my handful.)

Cheesehead and I go on to have a conversation I don’t really remember. Suddenly he turns and plucks a turquoise marble out of a set of Chinese checkers and hands it to me.

“You’re lovely, you know?” he says. I find this bizarrely touching, but maybe that’s the Drambuie talking.

The group has dwindled to just four, and we put on our coats to leave. The kind of people who hang out at Shoreditch House are definitely car service types, and luckily I don’t live in the same direction as them. Still I don’t want them to see I’m taking the bus, so I say I’ve got to make a last-minute run to the bathroom and urge them all to go ahead.

I think about bingeing as I head for the bus – just disappearing into food to soothe the anxiety and the longing and the constant stress. The yearning for a few minutes of peace – the kind only brought about by sugar and fat in copious amounts – is almost more than I can bear.

But I do, somehow. I collapse on my bed, still wearing my tights. I wake up the next morning, hugely depressed in a way I’ve come to recognize comes from too much alcohol (which is, of course, a depressant), and dig through my handbag, fearing in my drunken state I’ve left my iPod somewhere. (I haven’t). What I find is the marble and I hold it up to the light and stare at it for a few moments. I should throw it out, but for some reason I don’t want to.