There was something about the message I immediately didn’t like.
Weren’t you at the hospital today? How did it go? I asked.
Three dots undulated on the screen for too long. When she finally responded, it was with four short words.
Not according to plan x
Worse was that Rose’s husband Angel was over in Spain visiting his mum. Yes, he’s really called Angel. The standing jokes you might expect – about whether he took her to heavenand back – were all duly forthcoming when she first started seeing him 15 years ago.
The funny thing is, he lives up to his name in all the ways that count. He’s one of the kindest people you could meet, a sweet, energetic primary school teacher, avid Real Madrid fan and owner of the biggest smile in south Manchester. He’s impossible to dislike and would do anything for Rose. Except on this occasion, stuck in another country, he couldn’t do much.
His only option was to frantically book a flight back to the UK the following day. I couldn’t let her be alone that first night, so my mum came over to watch the kids while I stayed at her house. Rose wasn’t ready to break her news to anyone other than me at that stage, including her dad, the only one of her parents still alive. She planned to phone him later in the week, when she’d be less liable to burst into tears and ‘give him a heart attack, which would be the icing on the fucking cake, let me tell you’.
I felt helpless. All I could do was bring wine. Order pizza. Arrange the supermarket flowers I’d grabbed on the way there in a vase on her kitchen table. We were quite drunk by the end of the evening, but neither of us very sleepy, so we flicked around on TV until we landed onDirty Dancing. An absolute favourite for both of us.
‘On any other day, this would be a great sleepover. We must do it again,’ she said, through reddened eyes.
‘I agree. We can watchWhen Harry Met Sallynext time and I’ll bring some yogurt face packs.’
‘Done,’ she said and managed to smile.
At that point, they weren’t able to give a prognosis, but reading between the lines, it seemed relatively positive. She was told that the lump – because underneath that puckering therewasa lump – was only 1cm in diameter. Small and contained.
A few weeks later, the story changed.
The operation to remove the tumour revealed that it was twice the size they’d originally thought. Worse, it gone into one of her lymph nodes. Even accounting for the fact that the surgeon thought they had managed to get it all out, her anxiety was through the roof. Quite understandably, it still is.
‘I went to see a counsellor this week for group therapy,’ she says.
‘How was that?’
‘Bit odd. All that sitting in a circle with a bunch of strangers. But . . . it was good on balance. I think it was the first time I’ve really stopped and thought about everything that’s happened since December. What a crazy time it’s been.’
‘I think the way you’re handling this is incredible, just for the record,’ I tell her.
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ she sighs. ‘I’m just handling it. What other option is there? I just keep reminding myself throughout that all this could’ve been worse. I mean . . . I don’t need chemotherapy, so that’s something. Did I tell you what the first thing I thought of was when they told me I had cancer?’
‘Your hair,’ I say.
She smiles. ‘So I did tell you. How silly is that?’
‘It’s your crowning glory,’ I say, nodding to the silky pre-Raphaelite tendrils spilling over her shoulders. ‘I don’t know anyone who’d want to lose that.’
‘Well, Angel thinks that’s very weird.’
‘I think what he means is he’d love you just as much, with or without your lustrous locks.’
She presses her mouth into a smile and lowers her eyes. ‘I feel lucky to have him at the moment. Honestly, I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d had to go through this by myself.’
The next thought seems to occur to both of us before she’d even finished her sentence: if this had happened to me, not her, that’s exactly what I’d have been. By myself. Obviously, I’d havemy parents, kids and friends, all of which counts for a lot, I know. But there would be no life partner to hold my hand in the middle of the night or kiss away my tears whenever things got too much.
‘I mean, I’d have coped,’ she adds, hastily. ‘And family makes all the difference, doesn’t it? Anyway, tell me about what’s going on at work. I want every last bit of gossip.’
I briefly fill her in about a few major work-related developments before getting down to the stuff I know she really wants.
‘Andrea’s had to start wearing flat shoes and compression tights because she did something to her Achilles playing golf.’
‘She won’t like that.’
