Love @ First Site Page 11

  I screw up my face. "It was strapped round my waist and stuffed into my tights. I didn't stop scratching for a bloody week!"

  She smiles again at the memory, and we lapse into silence for a few seconds.

  "And Michael?" I venture. "How's he?" It feels so peculiar asking such formal questions. Normally, our conversation would flow easily, but this time it's as if we both know something big is coming. Something unpleasant.

  She nods slowly. "He's fine. Very busy at work though, so it's hard getting any time alone together at the moment."

  Her remark simply compounds my feeling of unease that she hasn't chosen to accompany him to the ice-skating rink. "You could have spent time with him today," I say gently, anxious not to sound accusatory in any way.

  "True." She takes another tiny sip. "But I told him I wanted to come and see you . . . on my own . . . and today was the ideal time to do it."

  Told him. The words leap out at me. That means they discussed it, undoubtedly making it a much bigger deal than her simply popping in to see Little Sis on the off chance.

  The more I think about it, the more my mind runs away with the theme. They have clearly been struggling to save their marriage for some time, but now they have finally reached the point of no return, and people have to be told. First me, then Mum and Dad over a Sunday lunch, then finally . . . the children. I can't stand it anymore.

  "Olivia, what's going on with you and Michael?" I blurt. "Are you splitting up?" My heart is racing with anguish at the mere thought.

  She stares at me blankly for a few moments, then shakes her head slowly. "No Jess, that's not it at all. Michael and I are absolutely fine."

  I flop back onto the sofa, a wave of relief washing over me. "Thank God for that!" I even laugh a little. "I was convinced you'd come here to tell me you were on the point of getting divorced."

  "Whatever gave you that idea?" She looks puzzled.

  "Oh, I don't know. That day when I came round to look after the kids and you went off to the health farm, you didn't seem yourself. You seemed miserable and distracted."

  I stop speaking and look at her, but she doesn't respond. So I continue.

  I'm smiling now, a mixture of relief and amusement at how I could have misinterpreted her behavior so badly. "And then, when you called this morning and wanted to come over whilst Michael was out with the children . . . well, I assumed the worst."

  "I see." She smiles halfheartedly but still looks sad. "There are other unpleasant events in life you know, other than relationship breakups."

  I wave a hand in her direction. "I know, I know. But most of them pale into insignificance by comparison."

  "Not all of them." She looks deadly serious, her eyes almost brittle with pain.

  My mind's off again, racing at breakneck speed towards every worse-case scenario I can possibly think of. "Has something happened to Mum or Dad?" My voice is breaking and I have turned cold.

  She immediately senses my concern and reaches forward to place a reassuring hand on mine. "No, seriously, nothing like that. They're absolutely fine. Or they were when I spoke to them last night."

  This time, my relief manifests itself in mild annoyance at Olivia's seeming reticence to let me in on whatever's troubling her. If it's not Michael, or the children or Mum and Dad, then what could possibly warrant such a dramatic buildup?

  "Then what is it, Olivia?" My tone is faintly irritable. "Because you're sure as hell not being yourself."

  Her chin starts to dimple, the corners of her mouth twitching with distress. She lets out a small crying noise and her eyes fill with tears. "Jess, I'm so sorry," she sobs.

  "What? What is it?" My heart is thumping against my chest. "Olivia, stop it, you're scaring me."

  "I've got breast cancer."

  Thirteen

  Breast cancer?" I parrot her words, not because I doubt her, but more because I need to hear it for myself--to feel the description on my tongue, to face front on this turn of events that is about to change all our lives.

  "Yes, breast cancer." Her voice is calmer now, but tears are still flowing silently down her face.

  A tight knot has formed in my throat and I want nothing more than to break into self-pitying sobbing, scared witless at what this might mean for the sister who means more to me than even my own life itself. But I know that would be far too selfish.

  "How bad is it?" My voice is barely audible.

  She smiles weakly, a small trace of bitterness there. "Who knows? Only time will tell, I suppose."

  My mind is racing with all the questions I want to ask, but there's only one that stands out as crucial right now. The need to know overwhelms me. "Are you going to die?"

  Her eyes are swimming with tears now, her hands shaking. She clasps her fingers together in a bid to steady them. "The truth, Jess? I really don't know. They seem reluctant to make any predictions at this stage." She shakes her head in a gesture of hopelessness.

  It's so curious, this thing called bad news. Here, sitting opposite me, is the woman I have known since birth, the woman I have shared all my hopes and fears with, the woman I can't contemplate being without. Yet for some reason I feel paralyzed, totally incapable of leaning forward and enveloping her in the kind of hug that usually comes so easily to us.

  It's as if the word "cancer"has built a huge wall between us, as if I fear she might break if I so much as touch her.

  "You must have some idea," I say desperately. "Someone must have had something positive to say."

  She shrugs, wiping her face with her sweat top sleeve. "They can say what they like, but the bottom line is that I've got breast cancer and it's going to depend totally on how I respond to treatment and maybe surgery."

  "Surgery?" I feel a small flutter of panic in my chest.

  "Yep. If it's advanced, then it will mean at least one off, maybe two." She looks down at her breasts and smiles ruefully, the pain in her eyes belying her flip tone.

  This time, I instinctively lean forward without thought and throw my arms around her. "Oh, Olivia, not you. I can't bear it." A howling noise fills the small room, and I realize it's me.

  "There, there, sweetie, don't cry." She strokes my hair and makes small soothing noises. "It's not the end of the world."

  It's one of those phrases people always use when things seem bad, but in this context it seems particularly meaningless. Sitting here now, in my cramped living room, it feels as if the walls have closed in to within an inch of my face. Everything else--work, friends, my paucity of eligible dates--all seems utterly irrelevant. As far as I'm concerned, my world has ended.

  At least five minutes pass of me sobbing sporadically, being comforted by her. The wrong way round, I know, but as ever Olivia indulges me, stroking my hair and reaching into her handbag for a pack of tissues. Just as she always did when we were children.

  After a short while, I calm down sufficiently to get my thought process into some kind of order. "I want to know everything," I sniff through a soaked tissue. "How you found out, what happened next . . ."

  She lets out a small sigh. "Well, you remember when Michael and I took the kids to Legoland over February break, then toured a bit?"

  I nod silently. I'm still fighting to stay calm, greedy to know everything straightaway, but knowing I must give her time to run through the chain of events in her mind.

  "We stayed in a family hotel, and we had this fantastic shower cubicle but no bath. You know how I like a bath . . ." She smiles at me. "Anyway, so I had to have a shower, and there's something more thorough and rigorous about the way you wash under a stream of constant running water . . . you know?"

  She stops for a moment and looks at me for a response. Again, I merely nod silently, not trusting myself to speak.

  "So I was washing under my arms, like this . . ." She raises her right arm in the air to demonstrate. ". . . and the soapy water seemed to make my skin seem so much more smooth and slippery. That's when I noticed the lump."

  Standing up, she
crosses to the mantelpiece and picks up a photograph of me with Matthew and Emily, all smiling broadly during a day out to Madame Tussaud's. There's a blurred image of Tony Blair behind us.

  Olivia gazes at it and smiles, then clutches it to her chest and returns to sit next to me on the sofa.

  "It was about the size of a pea." She uses her thumb and forefinger to show the width. "And it seemed to be moving around a little. To be honest, I thought it was probably a little piece of gristle or something, and didn't think any more about it.

  "Then when we got back to London on the Sunday, Michael and I were reading the papers in bed and there was an interview with the singer Anastacia, talking about her breast cancer. It jogged my memory about the lump, but I didn't mention it to Michael because I didn't want to worry him. He had so much on at work at the time, I didn't want to add to the stress."

  Again, she looks at me, presumably to see if I wish to chip in at any point. But I say nothing and nod slightly towards her, indicating for her to carry on.

  "I was convinced it was harmless, but thought I had better get it checked out, just to be sure. So I went to my regular doctor, who said it was probably just a hormonal thing, and that I should wait six weeks to see if it changed in size at all."

  The benefit of hindsight, I know, but instantly I wanted to rush round and berate this doctor for his carefree, laid-back approach. Six weeks of crucial delay, six weeks more of a time bomb ticking away in there, growing larger and more deadly.

  She sighs again. "In the daily melee of making lunchboxes, school runs, and getting myself to work, I forgot all about it again, particularly as the doctor had seemed so unconcerned. When I did check it, it was hard to tell if it had grown at all, and it was about eight weeks before I got round to going back for a follow-up visit. He thought it had grown slightly, so he referred me to a specialist."

  "Did you tell Michael at this point?" My voice sounds cracked from the strain of crying.

  She shakes her head. "No. Again, I was so convinced it would turn out to be nothing, that I didn't want to involve him." She rubs her face with her hands. "To be honest, because he works in a hospital and deals with dying people all the time, I felt my little lump was rather insignificant. It was totally my fault that I felt like that, he's never made me feel I can't mention any illness at home. After all, I always involve him in any cough, cold, or scrape to do with the children."

  That off her chest, I steer her back to her own predicament. "Go on," I say softly.

  "Well, they did a couple of tests, then I was led into this overpoweringly cheerful room, with walls painted in bright yellow and children's drawings everywhere. I just knew it was going to be bad news, then a female doctor came in with one of those patronizingly reassuring smiles that just confirmed it to me." She clutches the photograph a little tighter to her chest.

  "She told me the lump was malignant, but that I may have caught it in the early stages. To find out, they will remove it, then perform a biopsy to see if the cancer has spread."

  She's relaying all this so matter-of-factly that it sounds like she's reading out a menu. Presumably, this is because she has gone through it so many times in her mind that it has almost become routine. However, for me, it's a struggle to keep up with the medical jargon, and her emotionless recital makes it difficult to establish the dramatic facts from the commonplace.

  My brow is deeply furrowed. "She must have said a bit more than that."

  "Not really." She shrugs. "They're always very cagey at that stage, because they don't want to paint too gloomy a picture, but on the other hand they don't want to give you false hope. It's very frustrating when you have so many questions, but I can understand why they remain vague."

  "So what stage are you at now?"

  She purses her lips. "That's it, so far. I'm having the lumpectomy next week. To put it in simple terms, if the cancer is contained within the lump, then it's a good sign that I may be clear elsewhere. If it isn't and the cancer cells reach the edge, then I may need surgery, and radiation or chemotherapy."

  Dear God, I think. I know I haven't been the most faithful, consistent of worshippers, and I know I pray only when I want something . . . but this time I really want something from you. Need something, actually. I will happily attend church every Sunday without fail, and even join a voluntary group that helps the elderly do their shopping. Whatever it takes, as long as my sister Olivia's cancer hasn't spread. Amen.

  "And you've told Michael now?"

  She nods. "Yes. This all happened the Friday before you came round to babysit for me on the Saturday."

  "When you went to The Sanctuary?"

  "Yes. Except that I didn't." She rests the photograph facedown on her lap and stretches her arms out in front of her. "I told Michael when he came home from work on the Friday night, once the children were in bed. He was utterly horrified that I hadn't told him and we had the most monumental row." Her eyes start to moisten at the memory.

  I squeeze her arm. "Oh, Liv, I'm sorry."

  "Don't be. He was absolutely right, I should have told him. We've always shared everything in life and he was so hurt that I had excluded him from something so important . . . something that might have a devastating impact on both our lives, not to mention the children . . ." Her voice trails off and she starts to cry again.

  "And of course, he was as frightened as I was about it all. So his fright and anger all came out and he shouted at me in a way he never has before. It was truly horrible."

  "But understandable," I say gently. "He totally adores you, Liv. I should think even the thought that you might be seriously ill would be enough to send him into a blind panic."

  She wipes her nose with a tissue and nods. "Yes, I know. Anyway, it all calmed down eventually and we went to bed friends again, just holding each other with an urgency we haven't shared since the early days of our relationship . . . although for entirely different reasons, of course." She smiles ruefully.

  "The next morning, he went into practical mode and started making calls to his colleagues for a second opinion. When you thought I was at The Sanctuary, I was actually visiting a specialist friend of his at home."

  I sit up a little to straighten my aching back. "And what did he or she say?"

  "He. Well, we talked it all through, and I told him what had happened so far and who'd I'd seen at the hospital. He said the woman consultant I'd seen had a very good reputation and that it sounded like I was in capable hands."

  "Is that it?"

  "Pretty much. Although, being a friend of a friend of Michael's, he was a little more forthcoming about the prognosis options. He seemed rather doubtful that the lump would simply be removed and that everything would be fine. He thought it more likely that I would need surgery followed by several courses of chemo. But he did say that he thought it highly unlikely I would die."

  My hand shoots up to my chest, the palm slapping against it. "Thank God!" I've never met this man, but I love him already.

  She smiles at me, but her brow is still slightly furrowed. "It's going to be tough though, Jess," she says quietly. "That's why I had to tell you, because you of all people will notice if I'm distracted or under the weather."

  I grab hold of her hand. "As I said, I noticed it last Saturday, but I just thought you and Michael were having problems."

  I must confess that right now, I feel the same emotions as Michael first felt, angry and hurt that Olivia didn't share her problems or concerns with me from the moment she first discovered the lump. But I know that now is not the time to bring it up, if ever.

  What she needs is objective, practical support from someone close to her, not bitter recriminations.

  "Are you going to tell Mum and Dad?" I ask, silently wondering how they'd cope with it. Mum, I suspect, would fall to pieces, whilst Dad would outwardly remain calm, but be panicking internally.

  Olivia shakes her head. "No. I really don't see the point of worrying them at this stage. If, after the lumpectomy, things look
really grim, I'll tell them then."

  "And what about Matthew and Emily?" Just when I have managed to compose myself, the mere thought of the repercussions all this may have on their life sets me off again, although thankfully less noisily this time. I wipe my eyes with the back of my sleeve.

  Again, she shakes her head firmly, her expression determined. "Absolutely not. The day I'm told I have six months to live is the day I will say something to start preparing them for life without me. Until then, they'll know absolutely nothing. You only get one childhood; it shouldn't be weighed down with the pressures of what might be."

  "But, darling," I say gently. "If you have to have surgery or chemotherapy . . ." I have to stop a moment as the tight knot in my throat is constricting my voice ". . . . then they're bound to notice something."

  "True, but I've thought of that already. If they ask, I'm just going to say that Mummy has an arm problem that needs sorting out, but that it's absolutely nothing to worry about." She gives a little laugh. "Emily gets very anxious when I'm ill. I had a cold recently and she said 'You're not going to die, are you, Mummy?'"

  That's it. I'm off again, the dull ache in my chest rising to a crescendo and bursting from my mouth in a strangled sob.

  "Don't cry, Jess." Olivia shuffles towards me on the sofa and wraps me in a tight hug. Her body feels soft and warm against mine, immensely comforting. "I need you to be strong for me."

  "I know," I wail, kicking myself for being so pathetically weak and self-centered. "I'm so sorry. It's just such a shock, that's all."

  "It is. But we'll beat it together," she murmurs.

  We will. The alternative is just too hideous to even contemplate.

  Fourteen

  It's the mother of all Monday mornings. Granted, not a great day at the best of times, but this one is particularly grim.

  As usual, I wake up and enjoy that blissful two-second hiatus where my brain hasn't quite kicked in and, with touching naivete, I think there's lots to look forward to in life. Then a gloom descends as I realize it's the dawn of yet another week toiling away at the shit face of Good Morning Britain.