Page 88 of While I’m Still Here

“You don't have to look like I've shot your dog. Bloody hell.”

“I don’t,” he defends.

“You do slightly.”

“I'll work on my face, but I want to be here for you…” I start to say something, but he holds up a hand. “But I understand your need to be alone, you independent bitch. So I’ll go home, but only because you obviously need time to process this without me being here.” That almost gets me. Almost. He reaches across the table and takes my hand. “Call me if you change your mind.”

“I will.”

“And if you don't want to talk, call me anyway. We can sit there and say nothing.”

“I know.”

“You can be frightened with me, Bea.”

My throat tightens. “I know.”

“You don't have to protect me from this.”

Fuck.

I look down, and Colin squeezes my fingers once. He knows. Of course he fucking knows.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you too.”

He doesn't make me explain.

He leaves twenty minutes later after checking, with insulting subtlety, that there is food in the fridge. At the door he kisses me, properly this time, and I hold onto the front of his jacket for longer than necessary.

Then he's gone.

I last forty-three minutes before taking my bra off. Not because it's uncomfortable but because I need to look. I stand in front of the bedroom mirror wearing only my knickers and stare at my breasts.

Both of them.

I've done this more times in the last few weeks than I have in the previous ten years. Before cancer, mirrors were functional. Hair. Makeup. Check that nothing was tucked into my skirt. Occasionally stand sideways and wonder whether sucking my stomach in actually changed anything or merely deprived my brain of oxygen.

Now I study myself like evidence.

I know the left one differently because I know what's inside it. I've spent weeks calling it the murder tit, as though turning it into the villain makes everything easier. It doesn't look evil. It doesn't even look particularly interesting. It looks like the same breast I've had since puberty, the same one I've complained is marginally larger than the other, the same one I've stuffed into push-up bras and accidentally trapped in badly designed dresses.

My right breast looks the same too.

Healthy.

That word hurts more than I expected.

Healthy.

I'm removing a healthy breast. I know why… I understand why. I was in the room. I heard the explanation. I agreed to the plan. I know this isn't somebody stealing body parts while I'm unconscious.

Knowing doesn't stop grief.

I lift both breasts in my hands. They're warm and heavy.

Mine.