The shopping is done and everything has been stuffed away into the boot. You sit in the car and Mum pulls the diet cakes out of their light-pink box. The cake is broken into four pieces and placed on a tissue that she balances in her open hand. It is all so peaceful and cosy, except that you don’t want to exist.

You are thin. But you feel cheated and as though you have been lied to. You aren’t any happier. In fact you hate yourself more because now you are so empty and tired. You don’t have the energy for romance, you don’t feel small enough anyway despite what friends say, and the hunger keeps you adrenalised and awake at night. Being thin means nothing. Your internal experience of who you are hasn’t changed. The women’s mags told you the problem lay within you, not the world, that it wasn’t society that needed to change, it was you. They promised you a day when you would finally get the love you wanted and deserved if you could reach your goal weight.

It’s as if you have finished a game of pass-the-parcel that lasted for years, only to find no gift at the centre. A smaller body has little to do with intimacy, joy, pleasure, connection and power. All thinness gives you is a feeling of having a body that doesn’t stand out. You don’t trust the diet cake. Your taste buds still remember proper cake. You look out of the window at the sad, abandoned trolleys. You both stare ahead at the back of the supermarket building at whatever ad campaign they are running.

Delicacy: A Memoir About Cake And Death by Katy Wix unwraps the toxic effects of diet culture