FOUR
‘Ellie. Hey, Ellie. Wake up.’ Fee’s voice woke her, and Ellie opened her eyes blearily.
‘What happened?’ she whispered, blinking in the light. Fee had opened the blue and red tartan curtains in the bedroom part of the motorhome. Marilyn’s whole décor wasn’t exactly Ellie’s style, but she hadn’t been overly bothered about changing anything in it. She planned to sell it after the road trip.
‘You passed out when we got here, remember? Here, I walked into the village and got us some bacon rolls and coffee. There’s a great little bakery down there. Maude’s Fine Buns, it’s called. And there’s a really nice café, too, so we won’t starve. It’s just a few streets away.’
Fee placed a paper bag next to Ellie on the bed, and set a takeaway cup of coffee on the small table that was bolted to the floor next to it.
‘Thanks.’ Ellie sat up groggily, reached for the coffee and sipped it. ‘Oh. This is good. I expected instant.’
‘I guess you can still get good coffee down here in the middle of nowhere.’ Fee grinned. ‘Don’t let your bacon roll get cold,’ she added, as she bit into hers. ‘Mark’s working on the engine as we speak. He started on it yesterday but he hasn’t said much yet. I don’t think he says much as a rule, actually.’
‘The strong, silent type.’ Ellie yawned. ‘I didn’t know they actually existed.’
‘That’s because all the guys you know are lawyers.’ Fee sipped her coffee. ‘If I was into guys, though, I would definitely ask him for a tune-up. He’s like the Brad Pitt of Cornwall.’
‘I hadn’t noticed,’ Ellie lied.
Fee snorted. ‘Come on. You might be convalescing but you’re not dead.’ She looked mortified as soon as she’d said it. ‘Ellie, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘What? I’mnotdead. Very happy to be alive, in fact.’ Ellie took a bite of the bacon roll, and almost gasped. The bacon was thick, salty and perfectly cooked, and the bun was the softest brioche roll she thought she’d ever had. ‘My God, this is amazing.’ She chewed for a second and started to feel more human. ‘I’m so sorry. Were you okay here last night? I think the painkillers knocked me out a bit, and the travelling. I didn’t realise I was still so tired.’
‘You’re going to take a while to recover, Ellie. You just haven’t actually listened to your body for years. You can’t thrash it like a sports car anymore and expect it to be okay.’
‘I guess so.’ Ellie drank more coffee. ‘Pass me my pills, would you?’ She looked at the packets. She had plenty of the anti-cancer drug that the doctor had started her on, but the painkillers were coming to an end. It was true – she knew she didn’t need them as much anymore, but she still felt a sense of slight panic realising that she was running out ofthe hard stuff, as Fee called it.
‘Want to come down to the beach? I saw it from the high street. It looks beautiful,’ Fee asked, tactfully changing the subject. ‘It’s not far. We can sit down when we get there, I saw benches.’
‘Okay. Let me have a shower and get up first, though.’
Marilyn had a surprisingly capacious bathroom, and there was a water tank incorporated in the motorhome that only needed topping up every few days, which was easy to do if you called into a campsite.
Ellie caught sight of her reflection in the mirror at the other side of the room and made a face. ‘I look awful.’
‘You look disgustingly gorgeous, just like you always do.’ Fee swatted Ellie playfully on the arm and stood up, screwing up the paper bag her roll had come in. ‘I’ll see you outside.’
In the shower, Ellie found it hard to look at her scar. She was so used to her breasts just being there, it was weird now that one of them was gone. It felt wrong. Unbalanced. And it looked horrible to Ellie, even though the surgeon had been as neat as he could.
He’d assured her that not only could she have reconstructive surgery, but that the scars would heal and fade, and eventually no one would ever know that she’d had a mastectomy at all.Don’t worry. We’ll make you look normal again –wasn’t that what he’d said?
Normal.
Whatever that was.
The thing was that she didn’t know if she really felt up to reconstruction surgery. She didn’t know if she really wanted one fake boob. It felt… weird. In normal circumstances, she’d never have chosen plastic surgery, so why do it now?
Because you look like a freak. That’s why, her inner voice muttered as she towelled herself dry.In the event that a man is ever interested in you, then he’s going to run screaming once he sees that. Run from the Terrifying One-Breasted Woman.
She was used to that voice. It was relentless. It was the same voice that told her she was fat, that she needed to work out more, that she absolutely shouldn’t get a Chinese takeaway after a long work week because it was full of calories and salt, and that she’d never be as pretty or as successful as the other women she worked with.
That voice had kept her on a diet since she was twenty. Seventeen years of self-denial.
Tears welled up in Ellie’s eyes. It was a cruel thing to say to anyone, never mind yourself.
I’m not a freak, she argued back.I’m me. And I didn’t choose this. Maybe I don’t want a reconstruction. Maybe, if someone likes me, then they’ll like me for who I am, however many boobs I have. If you love someone, then none of that matters.
Yeah, right, said the voice.Keep telling yourself that, and see where it gets you.
