You could see it sometimes when she forgot people could see. Charlie's head would come down and her shoulders would come forward and she tucked her hands under her arms. Her hair fell down over her face and masked her from other people. And behind the veil of dark wavy hair, she was hidden from the world, protected.
When Charlie hunched over you could see her shoulder blades sticking out at angles and her spine raised up like a long mountain range through her top. She always said she was eating properly, but she was not. She hadn't been for a while.
Charlie had been drinking, day and night, for about a week solid. They were getting scared, about what was happening to her, and for her. If she kept going like that, she wouldn't be around for much longer.
Alex looked at his twin brother, he was staring across the room at Charlie, curled up on the sofa with her broken leg sticking out away from her. She'd cleaned the break with alcohol of some description and bound it with strips of cloth that she tore from an older t-shirt. It couldn't be good for her, staying in the same place for days on end, especially with an injury like that.
Charlie had just finished the sandwich they had given her. Now she had stopped eating, she curled up again - they could see her bones through her top. She looks like a picture the boys had seen at school, of a prisoner of war - dark circles around her eyes, her bones sticking out, she's paler than she was before - not pretty like Snow White, like she used to be, but deathly, waxy white. Her hair is getting greasy and she smelt of sweat and vodka. They loved her but they didn't even want to look at their sister - she wasn't what she used to be.
Charlie used to be strong, brave. She could fight off the violence and abuse, protect them all. Now she was weak, she could barely stand, she has no strength to get up and get help. They thought she was dying; they could have easily been right.
If the boys were still around, they would have seen her returning to that state. She was getting thinner, paler, less beautiful. Everyone could see it - Lestrade remembered her from when they first met; granted, she was much better than she had been, but the air of deterioration that surrounded her was still there - she hadn't become healthy again for months, not until after she and Sherlock moved in together.
Lestrade had never seen her at her worst, but if he had, what was to come would been a quickly solidifying shadow of what had been before.