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it hurt. Our Saturday-morning routine normally involves the kind of duvet-based fun that my nineteen-year-old self would have rolled her eyes at: tea and toast in bed, newspapers,
Saturday Kitchen
on the telly and a cheeky bit of T-Rex before going shopping for that night’s dinner ingredients. It’s a lovely little custom – morning glory at its finest – and P and I are unapologetic about it being our favourite moment of the week. This Saturday, however, was different. Just as you wake up the first time after learning of a loved one’s death, the devastating reminder of my invasive tumour shook us awake, trespassing on our marital bed, not even allowing us that blissful split-second of ignorance before the horrible weight of reality crushes you beneath its iron duvet. It was as though cancer was punishing us for not appreciating its gravity the night before.
    I cried immediately after waking. ‘I don’t want to do this,’ I whimpered into P’s naked shoulder. ‘I don’t think I can.’ I looked up to see his beautiful face wet with tears.
    ‘But you must,’ he croaked. ‘You must. You must. You must. You must …’ He wept more with every command and I realised for the first time that it wasn’t just me who’d had this diagnosis – it was
us
: Me
and
P. Team Lynch. We were always ready to catch whatever was thrown our way. But this? This wasn’t a gas bill or a gazumped flat or even another miscarriage. This had the potential to ruin it all. To put an end to me and P. To cut short our flawless marriage to a mere eighteen months. We howled loudly and messily into one another’s pillows, grasping onto each other’s bare skin as though letting go would mean admitting defeat so soon.
    I threw back the sheets and staggered into the living room, hanging my head out of the window for air as though suffocated by the grief that was swallowing up our bedroom. Early-morning June sun peeped cheerily around the clouds, seemingly sticking its middle finger up at me and my life-endangering problems. The curtain rail wobbled precariously as I angrily swept the drapes back shut, furiously declaring to the world outside, ‘This is the worst moment of my life.’
    Look what it had done to us. Look what it was doing to our Saturday-morning routine. How fucking dare it. And look what it was yet to do – bursting our newlywed bubble, stealing a necessary part of my body then ruining what was left, forcing awful memories upon us, robbing us of our optimism. But most of all, this was supposed to be
our
time. How dare this thing encroach on our perfect, perfect time?
    The fumes of our shattered morning left us unable to breathe. We had to get out. Throwing what we could into a holdall, we joined the travelling weekenders on the M40, tearing up the motorway to a place where, at least, there’d be someone to make us tea and run us a bath – the simple tasks we were suddenly incapable of doing. Mum and Dad were at the door to meet us, with Jamie and his fiancée Leanne two sheepish steps behind; all four of them doing what they could to disguise red eyes.
    ‘I’m doing dinner tonight,’ said Jamie.
    ‘As if you hadn’t suffered enough,’ added Dad, his characteristic teasing concealing a broken heart. Jamie and Leanne pushed everyone aside to envelop me with hugs; the kind of hugs that last a few seconds too long; the kind of hugs that suggest they’re worried they might lose you.
    ‘Meh,’ I said, rubbing each of them on a shoulder by way of both comforting them and playing down the situation’s seriousness. ‘This is all going to be fine. Now, who’s making me a brew?’
    In another conversation I hadn’t been party to, a plan of attack had clearly been agreed to keep this night as jovial as possible. Jamie was his usual hilarious self, turning Jamie Oliver to make chicken skewers and batting away Mum’s interferences with a sarcasm that suggested she never used her kitchen herself. Leanne talked about her