ONE
‘Not bad for a drunken eBay purchase, Ellie McTavish.’ Fiona rested one hand lightly on the black leather-covered steering wheel of the silver Airstream motorhome as they cruised along a deserted Cornish road, adjusting the ancient radio with the other. ‘Will you see ifyoucan get it to pick up an FM station. If it even does that.’
‘Not sure if Cornwall has FM radio,’ Ellie muttered, frowning as she twisted the radio dial. All she could find apart from static was some local news station talking about farming, or an oldies station somewhere which seemed to be playing a Dolly Parton medley. ‘Or phone signal, come to that.’
‘I know. Brilliant, isn’t it? A proper break. Just what you need.’ Fiona – though Ellie had only ever called her Fee in all the years they’d been friends – whistled happily to the faint strains of ‘I Will Always Love You’, returning both hands to the wheel.
‘Maybe.’ Ellie stared out of the window at the miles and miles of fields around them, populated with the occasional distant hamlet. Three or four houses at best, and that was it – you’d passed through before you knew it; occasionally there was a pub or a post office-cum-corner shop.
And the further they drove into Cornwall, the stranger the place names got. Her favourites so far had been the village of Jolly Bottom and a hill tor signposted off the main road as Brown Willy. Fee’s favourite was Compton Pauncefoot – a perfect name for a cat so she said – but that was much earlier in their drive down from London: around Somerset, in fact, which seemed like a world away, even though it was itself pretty far into the West Country.
In fact, Ellie had never been further south-west than Bristol before. She’d been born and raised in a featureless town in the middle of England, and gone to university in Oxford before heading to London in her early twenties to begin her high-flying legal career with one of the top firms there.
She hadn’t had time for leisurely drives down to the seaside on the weekends: she was always working. And if she wasn’t, there was always something: skiing with her colleagues at the law firm in France or Switzerland, weddings, expensive girls’ weekends in Dubai or New York or Paris, parties at her friends’ houses in Kensington or Holland Park, where the champagne flowed and if you didn’t stay up drinking until the early hours you were considered some kind of social deviant. Not just that: you were expected to be in the office by seven in the morning the next day and finish at ten at night.
It wasn’t that Ellie hadn’t enjoyed that life, but she was ready to admit now, at the tender age of thirty-seven, that she was exhausted, and her body had finally saidnoto it all in a way that was difficult to ignore.
They’d stopped in a nice inn the night before and enjoyed a pretty pleasant meal in the pub, though Fee wouldn’t let her have a glass of wine.Not in your condition, she’d admonished Ellie.Healthy fruit juices only for you, my girl. Ellie had protested: it wasn’t like she was pregnant. But Fee was taking her job as Road Trip Manager and General Carer very seriously.
The shiny silver Airstream motorhome had attracted a fair bit of attention so far, she had to admit. At the inn – named The Fair Thee Well, somewhere in Devon – the manager had asked her about it, but she hadn’t felt like talking much, leaving it to Fee to explain that they had decided on a road trip down to Cornwall for a while, though she’d avoided explaining why. They’d agreed that Ellie could tell people if she wanted to, but otherwise Fee wouldn’t mention it.
Since she’d found the lump in her breast, she’d spent every night staring up at the dark ceiling of her flat, with the worst-case scenarios running through her mind.
I might have only months to live.
I’ll die in terrible pain.
I’m only thirty-seven. There’s still so much I want to do.
It’s so unfair. Why me? Why now? What’s wrong with me? What did I do to cause all this?
It had only taken a few weeks from diagnosis to surgery: apparently, her cancer was reasonably aggressive, and her doctor wasn’t taking any chances that it wouldn’t grow any more than it had. When he’d operated, it was the size of a tangerine.
She was grateful that it had been taken care of so fast. She knew that was what you were supposed to say, and what you were supposed to think. When people asked her about it, when she had to talk to the HR officer at her firm on the phone, she’d said all the things you were supposed to say to make other people feel better about cancer.
They found it really early.
The doctors were marvellous.
Everything happened really quickly.
I’m staying positive.
Three of those four statements were true.
The breast was taken away, and she’d been sent home with instructions on how to look after the wound, as well as some pretty heavy-duty painkillers and a course of a hormonal therapy drug intended to stop any new cancer growing.
However, she didn’t feel positive. In fact, after the surgery, Ellie felt numb inside. She knew that the surgery had had to be done, and she understood that the doctors were acting in her best interest. But it was all so sudden.
It was only now, that she’d had it, that she realised how much of the experience of cancer was looking after other people’s feelings. Ellie didn’t have many people close to her, but even the incidental people in her life wanted the reassurance. The postman. The lady that delivered her supermarket order. The community nurse that came to change her dressings and check how she was doing. All of them wanted to hear how positive she felt, so she told them. She plastered on a smile and assuaged their worry, because she understood that what they were really saying was,Tell me it’s okay, because I’m afraid that I’ll get this, and I want to know it’s going to be okay if I do. That it’s not a big deal.
She gave them what they wanted. She made out that she was the hotshot professional woman that was so positive and fit and successful that she’d be back in the office in a week in a new Versace outfit and that you could totally get the better of cancer. It was all just Positive Mental Attitude.
And every time she did it, it made Ellie more tired. It took something away from her.
Ellie wasn’t great at processing her emotions at the best of times. Emotions, she had realised, over the years, were best ignored. She was a lawyer. She was good at concentrating on the facts.
She’d decided long ago to create a life where she had to feel as little as humanly possible, and she’d pretty much succeeded. Ellie was single and had one close friend. Her mum had died when she was at university, and her parents were divorced: her dad had moved to Spain with his new wife when she was ten. She had no children and that was all totally fine with her.
