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When I was nine and my brother was seven, our dad and his girlfriend took us to the fairground. I had only met dad’s girlfriend a few times before. Her name was Ursula, and I wished she did look like Ursula the sea witch. Really, she looked as though she had stepped right out of a magazine.

When Ursula saw us, her red lips stretched really wide to show her perfect white teeth, but her eyes didn’t smile. My brother didn’t seem to notice. He chatted away to both of them about his favourite rides, but I didn't want to look up at her face after that. When my dad went to get change from a machine, I sat next to Ursula on the bench, looking at her pointy tanned knees. Mine looked almost see-through and were soft in comparison, sprinkled with freckles like the chocolate flecked foam on one of dad’s cappuccinos.The fairground music was tinny and loud. It reminded me of the Pink Elephants on Parade scene in Dumbo.

When dad returned, I tugged at my brother’s arm pointing towards the teacups. ''No way, I’m not going on those, they’re too girly'' he said, so I rode on them alone. I loved the teacups best of all because they made me feel really small, like Thumbelina trapped in a human’s china cabinet. I was bigger than my brother, with a belly starting to hang over my jeans like cake batter slipping over the rim of a mixing bowl, but spinning in a large pink cup with the world melting into chalky swirls all around me made me feel so light and free. I tried to hold in my squeals and swallowed them down with gulps of air.

My brother rode on a boy’s ride. He straddled a tiny pirate ship as though it were a baby pony and jammed the heels of his Converses into the ship’s sides shouting ''ahoy there matiethhh'' with his tongue lisping against his teeth. He was bigger than the ship. I fantasised that it was going to sink.

Later my brother demanded sweets and our father patted him on the head, proud of his growing lad. They bought him a plastic sword full of multi-coloured Smarties and he brandished it proudly. ''Arrrr, I can beat you even with only one eye and one arrrm,'' he boasted, balling up one fist whilst jabbing me with the sword in his other hand. Everyone chuckled. ''Boys will be boys'' said Ursula.

I wanted Smarties too but the old woman behind the little wooden shack told me that they were all out of fairy wand Smartie tubes. ''How about a pretty pink candyfloss instead dear?'' she said, and I was too shy to tell them that the sharp sweet smell of candyfloss made me feel sick. I watched the pink sugar spinning onto the stick. It made me dizzy. When she handed the candyfloss to me I clutched it tight, wishing that it really were a magic wand so that I could make my parents love each other again, or make myself small and cute like I used to be. I imagined that I was a fairy and the airy candyfloss was a balloon, carrying my light body up up high into the sky. I also wished that I could have a sword like my brother and make everyone laugh and ruffle my hair.

When I brushed my sticky lips against the sweet pink candy froth, I saw small dark pink bubbles beading on its surface like droplets of blood. ''You don’t have to finish it if you don’t want to sweetheart,'' said Ursula. Maybe I had turned an even paler shade than usual. I hesitated, wondering whether I could ask for an ice-cream instead, until she winked at me and stroked her small waist saying ''us girlies have got to watch our waistlines, am I right?'' My dad hissed at me through thin lips, ''don’t be rude and ungrateful, she bought it for you, she’s making an effort so you could at least try to be thankful and eat the damn thing.'' I didn’t know whether it was worse to be rude and ungrateful or to not watch your waistline. I thought of my poor mother at home alone with nobody to cup a palm into the curve of her pudgy waist and I panicked. But I made myself finish the candyfloss anyway, licking the bitter wooden stick.

We were allowed one more turn each on our favourite rides and I pretended to be excited, but this time the safety bar in the teacup felt heavy on my lap, squeezing my stomach. I noticed that I was the only one riding alone in my teacup and could imagine how silly I looked. Something tight balled up in my throat and beads of sweat formed under the strands of my wispy fringe like the dark pink spit bubbles on my candyfloss. The heat from my hands clutching the metal safety bar produced a bloody metallic smell. When I got off I headed for the nearest bush and threw up. I threw up all the loud music and the pink sugar and my bitterness and sadness and confusion. Ursula tottered away towards the fairground exit. ''Oh dear'', she said. At least dad clumsily tried to hold back my hair. I felt much lighter after that, like I wanted to walk on tiptoes.

On the way back home they stopped off at the supermarket and bought my brother a gingerbread man. I was still feeling peaky, but he hadn’t lost his appetite. ''They’re called gingerbread men anyway, so they’re only for men,'' my brother said, poking the tip of his tongue behind his lower lip to say so there.

Two years later I started my period. The week before I saw the blood, I followed the arm of the clock at school with my eyes as it crawled towards three o’clock. I couldn’t wait to go home and watch myself cry in front of the mirror again, surprised at where the tears were gushing from. Sad thoughts and images inflated themselves inside my head. Sometimes they collided like bumper cars and sometimes they walked through each other like ghosts. I often liked to imagine that I was crying at school, with my best friend there to loop her bony arm against the back of my neck to comfort me. I fantasised that the teacher I loved took me by the hand to have a word outside, patting the small of my back.

The night before the blood appeared I dreamed it, lying like spilled pomegranate seeds on snow. I dreamed that I was Snow White, made of blood and snow, towering above the little men around me. And then they were made of gingerbread, and I ate them ravenously, destroying them whilst their smiley mouths turned into shocked little zeros. Next I dreamed that I was Alice, awkwardly bulging out of her house one minute and then floating like a speck the next, on a sea of tears through a tiny key-hole. The blood was browner than I expected, like dry rose-petals. I cried when I saw it, because a pretty princess never had brown knickers, stomach pains and a bloated stomach. Crying made a spider diagram of sad things branch out in my head. I felt too big and too small and too confused.

''Oh if only I could go back in time,'' I thought. So I threw up again and again, meal after meal. It was as though I had spun around and around in a teacup all the way back to being nine years old once again. This time I made the decision to be everything good at once; to watch my waistline but not be rude or ungrateful either. As I sat in the GP’s office, I could still feel my belly pushing against the safety bar, but it was surreal because he was telling me that my liver was struggling; I didn’t have enough fat around my organs. This made no sense to me. I had no periods once again, which was great. But my throat was always sore, and my mum was always crying, and my friends thought I was boring. I wanted to disappear completely but there were bones in the way. I was too old to be cute but too small to be a woman, so I kept on spinning.