When you look like I do, you get used to people staring. The nudges and pointing and whispering between as they survey my matchstick legs. My body may be ravaged but my ears are not, I’ve heard the names: “freak” or “ano”; it hurts. I’ll scuttle home trying not to cry, where I’ll hide for the rest of that day feeling, funnily enough, like a freak. This is what anorexia does: it eats away at your body and soul, and overtakes your mind.

Nearly half (46 per cent) of people with anorexia will fully recover. It absolutely is possible. But unfortunately, I have not been one of them. For 30 years now I’ve been in the grip of one of the most pernicious mental illnesses there is. I know it will one day kill me. But if sharing my ugly tale helps just one person get better, it’s worth me describing it.

There’s rarely one cause, there was nothing in my childhood which spawned this. I grew up in Hertfordshire with Mum, Dad, an older sister and my twin brother. A nice, well-to-do Jewish family. Most therapists (and yes, I’ve seen many) have blamed the fact that I was raped by a stranger aged 15. This was indeed traumatic, but I don’t believe it answers everything.