The peaches first started appearing a year after she'd rescued Toby. Sarah found a beautifully ripened peach on the vanity in her room. Thinking that her stepmother had left it for her Sarah ate it without thinking. Her appetite had dramatically increased over the year before and she'd eat anything she could get her hands on. Two more peaches appeared, the first in her lunch pail and a third on the hallway table next to her car keys. Each year they appeared on the anniversary of Toby's abduction and each year she ate them, never pausing to notice that she hadn't packed one in her lunch or wondering what a peach would be doing on the hall table. It wasn't until her first year of university, shortly after the tell-tale lecture that one appeared in her dorm. It was then she realized what Jareth had been doing. Over the years her appetite had increased more each year. Sarah thought it was hormones, and part of being a teenager- that's the answer her stepmother gave when she questioned her ferocious appetite. But the day the peach appeared on her bedside table in her dorm room she knew that she had fallen into the Goblin King's trap.
Sarah had thrown the peach away, but the next day another appeared, then another, and another. Each time Sarah disposed of the offending fruit it would reappear. Finally she left them. It became a running joke amongst her friends, every time someone would visit they would comment on the enticing fruit that almost seem to call to them, begging to be eaten. Sarah refused each and every request to share and refused to reveal where she 'bought' it.
Several months later, Sarah finally realized that she couldn't ignore the fruit any longer. A friend had been visiting and after being denied the fruit for the umpteenth time had launched herself at Sarah in anger, fighting with her to get to the forbidden fruit. It was then that Sarah resigned herself to her fate and ate the peach. She realized that the king would never relent and that it was a danger to those around her if she left the fruit in the open. She considered keeping her friends from her dorm but what if later on she gained a roommate? When she settled down to marriage and had children? She would not be able to monitor the fruit and those she loved all the time. It scared Sarah to think that by the time she was married the Goblin King would still be pursuing her, and she half hoped that by that time the King would have grown bored, but she knew that years could pass in the mortal world and feel like only minutes to the fae. The King stopped replacing the peach and resumed his earlier habit of delivering just one peach a year.
She stopped ignoring the peach when it appeared, and simply sighed when she saw the day approaching on the calendar. Eventually stopped sleeping in the day or two before the anniversary- so anxious she was about the fruit. She told herself it was fear, that it was not an excited anticipation but a fearful one. In truth Sarah looked forward to the day when her peach would come, because on that day and that day alone Sarah could eat and not feel hungry. For a few moments each year her appetite would be sated. But the feeling would last only a few moments before the unrelenting hunger would again ravage her body.