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be afraid of the word, and now I am very straight when I tell people what I have had. I regret now that I did not say, ‘I know you’re dying, tell me what you want to say.’ I am sorry I did not tell him how much I loved him. But back then I was afraid too, and I was used to keeping secrets in my house.
‘I want to walk you up the aisle, so I do,’ my father said to me. ‘Could you wait a little longer until I’m well?’
‘Of course, Dad, we’ll postpone it as long as we need to. You’ll get better,’ I promised.
But he was dead in two months. I could not save him.
The clatter of the dinner trolley brought me back to the present, and I looked up to see Ger rubbing his hands at the thought of the steak and kidney pie he had ordered. I could face nothing more than a cup of tea and slice of bread. We were both trying so hard not to fall to pieces, but the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach refused to ease, even with a little food.
The afternoon ticked on. Shortly after the tea trolley had been round, the oncologist appeared. The moment of truth had arrived, and I splashed my tea on the bed cover in my hurry to stand up. I was surprised and immensely cheered – the man was beaming.
‘Great news!’ he announced. ‘It’s lymphoma. Cancer of the lymph glands.’
‘Um – how is that great news?’ I asked, glancing at Ger who was smiling broadly, if looking a bit confused.
‘It is at a very early stage. You will not need chemotherapy, only steroids. You won’t lose your hair. Nevertheless, you will be in and out of here over the next year or so.’
Suddenly I felt fantastic. I had spent the day believing that it was my fate to end up like the poor woman on the ward, or like my father. Now it appeared I was being given a stay of execution.
‘You’ll have a few more tests over the next few days, and then you’ll need to take this prescription to the dispensary to collect your drugs. Follow the instructions on the packets. I’ll get my secretary to make a follow-up appointment for a few weeks’ time to see how you’re getting on. Goodbye for now.’ He shook our hands.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ I breathed, hugely grateful to this oncologist who, it seemed, had just told me I was not about to die after all. He was a hero, a saviour. A huge sense of relief washed over us both, and after he had gone we just stood there grinning stupidly at each other.
Later that day I had to have a piece of bone marrow taken out of my hip, I imagined so they could check to see whether the cancer had spread to the marrow. The doctor did not use an anaesthetic – I didn’t think to ask why – but plunged the thick needle straight into my hip, twice, leaving it there each time for over a minute. I gasped in shock – I had never felt pain like this, and the only tools I had for dealing with agony like this were the breathing techniques I had learnt when I gave birth to Richard and Sarah. Holding on to a nurse I panted loudly, trying to rise above the pain and think of each breath. I squeezed her arm so tightly I must have hurt her quite badly. Then it was over.
The test results were clear, showing that – thankfully – the cancer had not spread. A few days later we walked through the ward on the way to the dispensary. The bed opposite mine was empty and I looked enquiringly at Ger. He put his arm around my shoulders. ‘She’s not in pain any longer.’
We left the hospital with mountains of drugs. The treatment had begun.

Chapter Six

 
Steroids: the Good …

I t was 2am and I was cleaning the house.
The kitchen was pristine, the bathrooms were shining. I crept into Sarah’s room while she was sleeping, and reached up to the cupboards above her bed. They need to be sorted out, I decided, and I need to do it now. I put Richard’s felt pens back in their boxes in neat