Page 87 of While I’m Still Here

Not today.

So I squeeze his hand and stare at the piece of paper that tells me exactly when my body will change forever.

Monday, 9th November.

Twelve days.

Two breasts.

Then none.

Colin drives me home because apparently, he’s now my chauffeur, note taker, boyfriend, and personal assistant. I sit beside him holding the Pink Folder of Doom on my lap and watch ordinary people exist beyond the window. Someone is walking a Labrador. A woman is pushing a pram. Two teenagers are arguing at a bus stop. There is a man carrying a Greggs bag who has absolutely no idea that twelve days from now I won't have tits.

I resent him personally.

Lucky Greggs bastard.

Colin doesn't force conversation. He keeps one hand on the steering wheel and the other near the gearstick, close enough that I know I could reach for it if I wanted to.

I don't.

When we get to mine, he comes inside anyway. He puts the folder and notebook on the kitchen table, fills the kettle and asks what I want to eat.

“Nothing.”

“You haven't eaten since this morning.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“I know.”

I look at him. “Then why ask?”

“Because sometimes you eat anyway.”

There it is again. The terrible competence of somebody who loves me. It’s disgusting. “I don't want anything,” I say because I’m a stubborn bitch.

“Okay.”

No argument, but he makes tea instead.

I sit at the kitchen table while he moves around a room he knows almost as well as his own, and the sight of him nearly breaks something in me again. Colin knows where the mugs are. He knows which tea mine is. He knows I keep the sugar in a ridiculous ceramic chicken because Mum bought it for me and I haven't had the heart to throw it away.

He knows me before cancer.

That's the problem.

When Colin looks at me, he doesn't see a patient. He sees every version of Bea I've ever been, and now he has to watch one of those versions walk into hospital and come back physically changed.

He puts the tea in front of me and sits opposite. “Do you want me to stay tonight?”

My immediate answer should be yes. Instead, I say, “No.” The hurt is tiny, almost invisible, but I see it. “Not because of you.”

“I know.”

“I just need to be alone for a bit.”

Colin nods. “Okay.”