‘Oh! Hattie said you still have horses.’
‘No. No. Honey died five years ago.’ I clasp my mother-in-law’s hand. ‘As we’ve told you, Hattie can get confused sometimes.’
Hattie sips her tea. ‘Shall we go shopping? London. I need a new dress. I haven’t been shopping for a long time.’
I squeeze her hand. ‘Not today, Hattie. Some other time.’
‘Have you still got cancer?’ Hattie asks.
Immy drinks her water, watching us out of the corner of her eye.
‘Yes, Hattie.’
‘Too hot to drink tea,’ Hattie says. ‘I want to go and rest.’
Immy jumps up. ‘I’ll come with you?’
‘No. I’m fine to go alone,’ Hattie barks and shuffles out.
‘Ignore her,’ I say. ‘She doesn’t mean it. Her memory fails her so much these days.’
‘She told me she and her husband used to live here.’
I grunt, a laugh that gets stuck. ‘The poor woman has such a history of being an unreliable narrator that it’s hard to distinguish between the truth and another one of her fabrications. Even before she fell ill, she liked making up stories. It’s what made it so hard to diagnose her condition. No, Harold and Hattie never used to live here. We bought the house off a couple whose kids had flown the nest. You must take what she says with a pinch of salt.’
‘She told me he rode in the Grand National. Bless her.’ She clears her throat. ‘How long have you been ill?’ Her voice has dropped.
I rarely discuss my illness, but unexpectedly I find myself opening up to this outsider, despite the lack of trust I have in her. ‘I was diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
I press my chest. ‘These aren’t real. Padded bras do work wonders.’
‘They look real to me.’ Her eyes don’t meet mine. She’s lying. My breasts look as fake as the smile on her face.
‘They removed everything.’ My voice breaks, surprising me. ‘Full mastectomy. Lymph nodes.’ I don’t mention the scars or go into detail about waking up to find parts of me missing that had been there when the anaesthetist held a mask over my nose and told me to count down from ten.
‘My mum’s friend had the same thing done.’ She gives a thin smile. ‘It was hard for her.’
‘It was very traumatic. But not as hard as the second time.’
‘The cancer?’
I nod, remembering when every ache became a question – was it back? – even after they told me I was all clear. ‘I was in remission for nearly five years, and then it came back.’
I recall the afternoon I had to leave work because of the headache that made me throw up. Justin had to cancel his meetings and bring me home from London. Even then, I had a niggling doubt that something wasn’t right. ‘Don’t be paranoid,’ he said. ‘You’ve been overdoing things.’ But the blinding headaches began, accompanied by bouts of confusion and words I couldn’t find mid-sentence. The fatigue became debilitating. It was a struggle to get out of bed on some days. Signals I ignored, because deep down, I knew they were leading to places I feared to go.
Sharing this now sharpens the memories. ‘I went to the GP. He sent an urgent referral to oncology.’ I swallow hard, remembering the four-day wait to get an MRI – the days I spent most of my waking hours on Google, obsessively searching my symptoms. It wasn’t pleasant reading. ‘A week later, the oncologist’s assistant called, summoning me to the hospital the following day.’
‘That must’ve been really scary.’
I nod. ‘That’s when I knew for sure the cancer had returned. Who gets an appointment with a doctor that quickly?’ The fear was unreal the first time around, but the second time, it was insufferable. ‘They found two lesions. Metastatic. Treatable, though, they said.’
‘I’m sorry, Beth.’ If she’s acting, she deserves an Oscar. ‘It sounds like you’ve been through a lot.’
My life has been hell, but I don’t tell her that. And I don’t tell her what came next. It’s painful to put it all into words. The course of steroids, the radiosurgery when they fitted a custom-made mask to my head, laid me on an operating table like a piece of meat and attempted to blast the lesions to oblivion. But that wasn’t the worst part. Chemo came next.
‘Enough about me. Tell me about you.’ Maybe this is why I’ve opened up to her; perhaps now she’ll lay bare what she’s really doing here. ‘Your family must be missing you,’ I say, inviting her to open up.
