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for a bit, fall off again, wake up for the loo, then wake more fully between 5 and 6, dropping off again around 6.30, just as Tatty wakes up and the day begins. ‘I’m awake if you want to talk,’ she says into the darkness, waking me properly.
    A rawness in the wind today, a day for hat
and
gloves, in spite of the feeble sun. Get used to this? I don’t want to.
21 February
    What does cancer do? It takes away your children’s hobbies. Shimi had already had a row with Tats about going swimming with a cold, about how Daddy’s white blood cells are going to come down and that I was going to need to stay healthy. Having had no success, he tried me, in the middle of trying to clear my desk of the last pressing work emails. I turned to him and said firmly that he would receive absolutely no sympathy, should his cough get worse. The same look of panic welled up in his eyes once again. Then I turned back to my emails, withdrawing eye contact completely, and he telephoned Sam to say when should they meet up at the pool.
    Part of me really admires his obstinacy, I have to admit it.
     
    This is not the worst moment so far. For that we thank church.
    Two minutes before the service I was asked if they could pray for me. Out of politeness and surprise I said that would be fine. But I forgot to tell Tatty and the children. I do not think I can forgive myself the look of wild panic in Shimi’s eyes when he realised it would happen and there was no turning back. Merenna said later the worst bit was the line about ‘the family facing this terrible time’. ‘They couldn’t even be bothered to use our real names,’ she said.
     
    Vicky has arrived to look after us on my first chemo daytomorrow. She bore flowers from Non, who apologises they are all white, which in Austria would be unforgivable, because white is for death.
    ‘I would never have noticed,’ I said.
     
    A fragment from supper with the gang on Saturday: Robyn holding forth entertainingly about research into chemotherapy starting after the First World War, when they noticed that gassing troops in the trenches actually alleviated certain symptoms or illnesses some of them had. I had no idea of this little-known tale. ‘They basically realised that poisoning people could have beneficial effects. That’s where the drugs found in much chemotherapy first got used,’ she said.
    The other little-known fact of the evening, from her knowledge of National Trust properties, is that, because they are looked after so well, they use NT yew trees in many of the drugs that make up chemo-type cocktails. ‘So you’ll be poisoned by high-quality yew clippings from Devon,’ she giggled.

Chemotherapy

     

     
22 February
    First day of chemo.
    We got to the hospital early and waited, looking at but not really seeing the magazines, including the ironically titled
Devon Life
.
    In the way that the world divides into people who instinctively save or kill spiders, ignore or make tea for their builder, and support either the red or the blue team on the pitch, I now know of a less spoken of club: those who have had, or have not had, chemotherapy.
    My image of it until today was that a doctor wired you up to a vat of chemicals, walked away and left you to it. It’s much more intimate than that. And, being my first time, slower, too.
    First there is the wait to check that the ‘script’ (hospital jargon for internal prescription) is both present and correct. Mine was neither. First Nadine, politely, and then Karl, with a flourish of Anglo-Saxon, phoned up the pharmacy. Karl winked at us with a grin while he swore at them. Putting the phone down he said ‘The trouble with the NHS is that all the wankers in it work in pharmacy. Right then, Anthony. I think you’re ready to start being poisoned.’
    Everyone in the room laughed.
    He gets away with it because he has been through it himself.
    In the shorter wait that remained, Nadine clothed herself in her ‘blues’, protective clothing