Chapter One: Phiney Wistman
14 June 2017
The day after the reunion
The row of letterboxes ran in a neat line from the entrance door into the dusty lobby. My landlord had chosen a set in red with a white flap and they gleamed in the light from the grubby window like bared teeth. A smile or a grimace? Who knew?
One of the morons who lived in my building had dropped a heap of fliers and adverts on the floor. I picked them up and gave in to the urge to check my box, newly and clearly relabelled,Flat 3 Josephine Wistman, to avoid any errors. Maybe the post had come early for once.
The test centre had said it would take up to eight weeks for the letter to arrive. Seven of them had passed with me managing to focus on other things, but since the eighth week began, the test results had started to nibble away at my thoughts. I unlocked my box. Was now, in the middle of this utterly routine day, the moment when I’d know if my mother had passed more on to me than her coffee-coloured hair, her caramel eyes and her sensitivity to smell? Had she also bequeathed me the gene that would give me breast cancer?
But my box was empty.
The tight muscles in my chest relaxed and the breath slipped out of my lungs in a long sigh. Another day of normality was beginning. I set off for Coventry City Hospital, where I worked.
I always walked, even when I was on nights. It was my way of ensuring I took some exercise because, believe me, after a gruelling shift on the children’s oncology ward, you don’t feel like doing anything except curling up with the latest Maeve Binchy. Or having a good weep. And weeping didn’t help.
No, I thought, as I sped down the familiar streets, past my old school and through the hospital car park, weeping was a waste of time; my grandad had taught me that. It was better to fight. And, with that in mind, I strode through the entrance doors and ran up the stairs to the ward and into its familiar chaos.
The door to the office was open. Meghan, at her desk, looked with disgust at a computer printout. I nipped in and put an eco-container on her desk.
‘Banana bread! Homemade. Catch you later.’
She started to say something but I shook my head and sped away.
My first patient was Marnie (seven years old, early-stage lympho-blastic leukaemia, prognosis good but not reacting well to chemo), who was sitting in bed in one of the wards painted with Disney characters to encourage the kids into thinking they might be somewhere fun. Her mother stood by her with that half-bent stance all the parents had, wanting to shield her daughter from any more suffering yet knowing she couldn’t.
‘Good news,’ I said. ‘Marnie’s bloods are back and they’re fine, so we’ll be able to treat her.’
Marnie wore a new knitted hat. A pink bonnet with pointy ears and a mane of multi-coloured wool to disguise the absence of her own hair. It framed her face and gave a warm tint to her ash-white skin.
‘A pony?’ I asked. ‘Is it a pony hat?’
Silence from Marnie. The noise of children playing or grizzling while nurses and parents murmured to each other penetrated the curtains round our cubicle. The normal buzz of the ward.
‘A unicorn.’ Her mother’s voice filled the gap. ‘Tell Nurse Josephine, Marnie. You’re a unicorn.’
Of course she was. A white knitted horn stuck out between the ears.
‘Granny knitted it for you, didn’t she, Marnie?’ Her mother’s voice cracked. She smelled of exhaustion. Of clothes worn once too often and hair not washed enough.
‘You’re a beautiful unicorn, Marnie,’ I said in my best cheerful voice as I rubbed cleansing gel into my hands. Sharp and acid, it brightened the thick air for a few seconds before vanishing. I snapped on gloves. Marnie started to whimper. She knew what was coming. She’d been here too many times before.
The noise of vomiting reached us, followed swiftly by the comforting words of one of the other nurses. It sounded like Christine, her voice warmed by the lilt of a Scottish accent.
I leaned forward to give Marnie the reassurance she needed too, expecting the words to arrive automatically but nothing came.
What was happening to me?
I ransacked my suddenly empty brain for something to say.
It won’t hurt. True enough but she’d feel it nevertheless.
It’ll be over in a flash. Sort of true. But there’d be another procedure and then another, all adding up to hours of misery.
There’s nothing to be frightened of. The big lie. There was everything to be frightened of. Beware the cancer eating away at your body. Beware the treatment. It might cure the cancer. In Marnie’s case, it more than likely would. But it’d make her feel sick and weak as it rampaged through her body, killing everything in its path as well as the cancer cells. Its lethal effects would linger in her blood for years.
A feeling of utter blackness caught me by surprise. I needed to snap out of this.
The little girl looked at me as though sensing something was different.
