Free The Truth About Julia: A Chillingly Timely Psychological Novel by Schaffner Anna Page A

since Amy had been battling with anorexia for many years and was refusing treatment. Amy’s parents didn’t get back to me until later.
    Amy’s story troubled me, on various levels. Although I did find her account utterly heart-wrenching (and there is no doubt that she really was and still is suffering), I couldn’t help but feel that there was also a passive-aggressive impulse that was driving her to starve herself to death. Anorexia is one of those conditions that is masochistic only on the surface. After all, while Amy is getting some (admittedly very sad and twisted) form of pleasure from her physical vanishing act, she is forcing those who love her to watch helplessly from the sidelines. Most acts of self-destruction are ultimately fuelled by reproach. You observed something similar once about Lailah: sometimes, you told me, you could catch fleeting glimpses of the furious hatred behind your wife’s limp and lifeless facade – and it made your blood freeze.
    Although Julia’s manner of dealing with Amy’s pain seemed hard, I could at least partly understand her reaction: her refusal to play the role that Amy wanted her to play in her psychodrama was also a refusal to be coerced into feeling guilty when, in fact, she had done nothing wrong. After all, what seems to have triggered Amy’s rapid physical decline is simply the fact that Julia had fallen in love with someone and subsequently loosened her sister’s dependency on her, which had, in any case, become decidedly odd. Perhaps she severed these strings too abruptly. But then again, being in love can be overpowering. I had to fight very hard not to lose focus when we got together for the first time, George – it cost me all my energy and willpower. I could have succumbed so easily to the impulse to let our relationship transform all my priorities and everything I ever cared for, in that radical, fairy-tale metamorphosis kind of way. But something in me resisted it. Whether it was genuinely my love of work, as I thought back then, or perhaps fear, I don’t know. And I still believe that you never forgave me for that.
    In any case, it was strange that Julia responded to her sister’s psychological problems so strongly, almost with aversion, and that her affection for Amy, which appeared deep and genuine, could have been stifled so abruptly. But even that reaction, I am ashamed to admit, wasn’t one that was completely unfamiliar to me. Amy’s story reminded me of a scene when Amanda and I were teenagers. I think I might have told you about it, during that phase when we told each other (almost) everything about ourselves, when we, with a mixture of anxiety and shy pride, spread out the darker details of our past lives before each other, hoping that they, too, would be met with approval. When I was young, I was driven by an insatiable curiosity. My mind was always busy – I read everything I could lay my hands on, indiscriminately, sucking up all kinds of information like a starved sponge; I wrote; I loved to argue; I liked to be among people; I was always pursuing projects. I wished the days had a hundred hours, and I simply didn’t have time for teenage angst, skipping that phase completely. But Amanda didn’t, and when she was fourteen and I was sixteen, it began to affect our relationship. I think in some strange way it still does.
    Even you admitted once that Amanda is much more beautiful than me. I have always thought that she looks like a skilfully Photoshopped and more feminine version of me: she is taller and her figure is fuller, her skin is purer and smoother, her hair longer and glossier. Her hair colour, too, is much more striking than mine, a richer, deeper shade of the dark burgundy that both of us inherited from our mother. Hers always made me think of moist Tuscan clay sizzling in the sun. Amanda would never be seen without mascara and her signature stardust-coloured eye-shadow, both of which further enhance the beauty of her eyes, which