Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [35]
Breast cancer. God – that word. The disease that had killed their grandmother at fifty-four.
It hadn’t been a long wait, from lump to biopsy to result. But it was long enough, because they had all believed it was inevitable that the oncologist would say, yes, he was very sorry but the lump was malignant. Certain. Anna’s mother had had it, hadn’t she? All any of them had thought about, as they waited that day – Nicholas at the hospital, the girls in their respective homes – was the inexorable progression of the disease and Anna’s death. Their father’s loneliness. A funeral. Grandchildren growing up without knowing her. They had been so sure.
And they had been wrong. It wasn’t cancer, just a cyst that could be simply removed, with no side-effects, no radiation, no chemotherapy, no baldness, nausea – no death.
And life could go on.
‘I’m sorry, darling. Don’t cry, please. Come on.’ Anna was Mum again, and Bridget laid her aching head on Anna’s chest, and let herself be patted and soothed.
Natalie
These places – spas, health farms and beauty shops – always smelt so good. Natalie loved them. Not that she got to go very often. And the effect was not quite the same at the local sports centre, which smelt more of soggy nappy and adolescent boy, and had none of the calming balm that pervaded everything. Sometimes Susannah took her, when she was home and flush. Susannah always said, with an absolutely straight face, that maintaining a beautiful self was essential to her work, and that, therefore, spending the rent money on a day at the Sanctuary was more of an investment than a treat. It was a theory that worked well for Natalie, too, although looking good made little difference at the radio station, where she was pretty much invisible to all. She felt a little pang, now, for her extravagant, exuberant, theatrical elder sister. She hadn’t seen nearly as much of her since Casper had been on the scene. And not at all, now, for weeks. Apparently she’d promised Mum she’d be at home for Easter, but that felt like a long way off.
Natalie took a deep cleansing breath of the aromatherapy-ish air and shrugged her shoulders further into the soft, thick towel. Beside her lay the schedule of daily activities available to her, but lying around was lovely enough. She’d swum a lazy ten lengths of the pool, sat until she was pruny in the Jacuzzi, and singed her nostril hairs in the sauna. Now she was wallowing contentedly in what they called the Silent Space. The walls were painted aubergine, and it was lit dimly with uplighters around the floor. The steamer chairs had thick cream cushions, and pointed away from the door to ensure privacy and tranquillity. Bridget had said she should persuade Rose or someone to come along, but Natalie was glad she was alone. She didn’t really feel like speaking. She lay still, with her eyes closed, and let herself wander through her own mind. It didn’t take long for it to settle on Simon. She’d never gone so long without seeing him. She realised she’d stopped thinking that he was on every ringing phone or had mailed every mysterious envelope in the post but she hadn’t entirely accepted it. It felt, to her, unfinished – they would see each other again. She just didn’t know what would happen when they did.
These last few months she’d filed him away. In Silent Space – where no one could hear you scream, as Tom would probably say – she felt strong enough to unlock her memory of him.
She and Simon had met when she was twenty-one. So he’d been around, or at least the idea of him, for the whole of her adult life. He was the brother of a friend of a friend at university. He’d appeared as the friend’s ‘date’ at the ball to celebrate finals, and the first time she’d set eyes on him he’d looked like a young Sean Connery, all dark eyes and dinner suit. The eyes followed her around the crowd – she could remember feeling them on her, like a touch – and performing for him: she was only doing the things she would have done if he hadn’t been there