Dalila’s illness had begun about a year earlier. She does not know why she began refusing food, only that she started to see herself differently and could no longer recognise her body as her own. She started losing weight and withdrawing from friends and social events, and grew stiff around food. She refused to eat with her family and avoided meals with them. Sometimes she’d stay out, saying she’d already eaten and send them pictures of food.Rita, her husband Giuseppe, 62, and their son Cristiano, who is two years younger than Dalila, “were afraid”.“We didn’t understand what was happening,” Rita explains. “And [we were] angry, too. She was evasive, almost absent, disappearing for hours.” There was “constant tension”.By January 2018, knowing her daughter was critically unwell and in need of urgent help, Rita persuaded her to visit a public centre for eating disorders. By then, Dalila, who is five feet three inches tall, weighed just 31kg (68 pounds).The specialised centre in Fermo, about an hour’s drive away, had initially directed Rita to services closer to the family’s home when she contacted them. “They didn’t want to take her case. I was sitting here in the living room, and I told them, ‘Either I die, or she die …
