Before She Was Mine (14 page)

‘Give it time.’

Inside the water purification plant, a broken filter hung uselessly from a pipe end.

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘what have
you
got to worry about? Whether your fertiliser’s mixed right, or your seedlings are going to be eaten by pigeons? What precise
shade to dye your hair next?’

As he spoke, an image of Liv broke through as I’d found her the night before, sitting at the computer screen in the near-dark, ostensibly reading a report on buzzard poisoning but with a
shrunk-down tab at the bottom of the screen labelled ‘Survival rates breast’. I know we were both thinking,
Imagine if the lumpec-tomy turned out not to be enough, if they
hadn’t got it all, if she was sitting there waiting for her next appointment with the cancer ticking away inside
. If I allowed myself to contemplate the worst, the terror was
dizzying.

I blinked it away. ‘Yeah,’ I said to Michael. ‘Pigeons and hair dye, you’re right, that is the sum total of my daily grief.’

On screen someone turned a kitchen tap and a glass filled slowly.

From Liv’s diary,
9/05

Trying to get F to focus on uni, reading lists, packing etc. She says she will sort things but then doesn’t. Mind elsewhere. Nicky came round, she’s completely
organised & ready to go, as ever.

Obvious now M using F to create a mini-me. F wandering round in ludicrous braided jacket, not her style at all, plus dreadful purple nails. Then this morning F asked why I never insisted she
wear a ‘decent night cream’. I said I’d always made sure she wore midge repellent when we were by the water. She said it wasn’t the same & anyway I should be using night
cream myself. Told her we were both beautiful enough. She stropped about, wanting to pick argument. Later, out of the blue, said ‘Why can we never just
buy
stuff? Why does it always
have to be
ethical
? Why not, for once, go mad & shop the way every other normal person shops?’ Luckily doorbell rang (Alan R with bag of Longworth traps – must email Gwyn
& let him know need ones with shrew holes. Also order more blow-fly pupae).

F wants an iDog for birthday, tacky plastic dog that sits on desk & moves to music. Claims she is ‘making up for not having had cool toys in the past’. Asked her if she
remembered caterpillar races we used to have, & the wood-mouse obstacle course, but
she was texting & didn’t reply. Seems right now as though past doesn’t count.

G says she’s just ‘flexing her wings’ & I’ve not to take it personally. If she’s happy, I should let her go. Well of course I know that, but is M making her
happy??

I had to bully Geraint into coming to the hospital with us. On the morning of Liv’s appointment he stood there in the kitchen in his stripy blanket-jumper, mumbling about
having hired a digger for the day so they could clear some ditches. ‘We need to get on. The machine’s to go back to the plant hire yard tomorrow.’

I said, ‘Call Alan H. He knows how to drive a digger, he won’t mind taking over.’

‘But then he’ll be out of the office. We can’t leave the office unmanned.’

I’ll bloody un-man you in a minute
, I thought, twirling Liv’s egg whisk between my hands. ‘No, because you’ve got that Field Studies Council trainee with you this
week. He can answer the phones and take messages.’

Geraint’s mobile lay on the worktop between us. Our eyes locked onto it at the same time, but he was too slow. I snatched it up, found the number I needed, pressed call and spoke to Alan
H. In less than two minutes, while Geraint shuffled and hemmed in the corner, I had it sorted.

‘There’s really no need,’ Liv had insisted the evening before when I’d talked about getting him to come along.

See
, his expression had said.
She doesn’t want me.

‘Of course he wants to be there for you, Liv. Why wouldn’t he?’ Geraint had looked about ready to murder me. ‘And afterwards we can pop into that big garden centre on the
roundabout and check they’re stocking sustainable peat.’

That had cheered her up.

Now Geraint gave it one last shot. ‘I was going to start putting together the programme of summer schools events this morning.’

‘You can do it this afternoon instead,’ I told him briskly.

I more or less heaved him down the hall and out the front door. Liv didn’t seem to notice, but then she had a lot on her mind.

This appointment was make or break. If the doctors thought they’d got all the cancer out we were OK, maybe it was over, finished. If not, then God knows what lay in store. I’d lain
on my own bed the night before, squeezing my own breasts for lumps, wondering what on earth it was like to have them cut open, or off. Unimaginable. I remembered when I was too young to have
breasts, the secret worry that they might never grow. How in Year 6 I’d become obsessed, continually sneaking anxious glances at other girls’ chests and comparing them to my own flat
front. I remembered buying my first bra and how excited I’d been, even though it was hideously embarrassing to go behind the shop curtain and be measured by an old woman who smelt of nicotine
and mints. I thought about Nicky trying out a gel-filled booster bra, how we’d prodded it about and even weighed it on her mother’s kitchen scales. I remembered Oggy peering down my
cleavage and sighing; even Christian staring once, admiringly, when I was bending to shift a planter from outside the nursery shop. His faint blush when I lifted my head and caught him, the secret
prickle of acknowledgement that passed between us.

I just couldn’t fathom what it must be like to lose your breasts, or to live in fear of them because they might be quietly killing you.

Even if I’d been allowed to speak any of this outside my own head, confide it to the world, I don’t know whether I’d have dared.

The clinic was pretty full. Even though it was one big room, in my mind it felt like two waiting areas in one: the women who were destined to go in to see the consultant and
get the all-clear mixed in with those about to be told they needed more treatment. This second group would be made to wait again to visit the Breast Care Room and discuss ‘options’. I
glanced fearfully at that door.
Engaged
, said the sign outside.

Every so often a patient would emerge from the consultant’s, dazed and shaky, a loved one hugging them tightly. For a while I watched those exits, tried to guess each time whether it was
good or bad news. But soon that felt intrusive, so I fixed my gaze on the wall-mounted television instead. The volume was too low to hear but I couldn’t have taken much in anyway.

After forty-five minutes Liv was called. I got up to go with her. Geraint stayed where he was, so, against all my physical instincts, I bent and took him by the arm and dragged him off his seat.
His face reminded me of the Cowardly Lion from
The Wizard of Oz
. Liv’s expression was poker-straight. ‘Let’s get it over with,’ she said.

I knew, I think, as soon as the consultant stood up to greet us. From then on the morning became a bit of a blur.

Liv wasn’t in the clear. She would need a mastectomy and possibly a course of Tamoxifen afterwards. ‘This cancer’s oestrogen-positive,’ he said, as if we knew what that
meant. There was to be no chemotherapy.

‘How long before the operation?’ Liv managed to ask.

‘Two weeks or so.’

He gave some statistics, some prognoses I couldn’t take in. There was this, which might result in that, though no one could be sure; another drug that worked, or didn’t work,
depending on your genes or menopausal status or just plain luck. I know I lost track so I’m sure Liv was in a total whirl. It seemed as though every opinion had to be qualified, when all we
wanted to hear was firm fact.

Then we were outside the door, and other patients were watching me hugging my mother, Geraint laying his palm against her shoulder blade.

Inside the Breast Care Room the nurse talked options.

‘There
are
no options. I need a mastectomy, Mr Harlow’s just told me,’ said Liv.

‘Yes, but there are different types,’ said the nurse, producing a kind of catalogue and laying it on the desk between us. She flipped it open and showed us a series of photographs,
women’s chests post-surgery. ‘This is what we’re here to chat about. You can have the full breast taken away completely, leaving a flat surface, like this one. Everything’s
removed, see?’

We saw.

‘Or you can have reconstruction. We might pump the breast back up with expanders, like balloons, till it’s stretched enough. That’s a several-stage process, you’d have to
keep coming back in for that. Or we can look at using muscle and fat from elsewhere on your body, implants—’

‘What are you asking
me
for?’ said Liv. ‘
I
don’t know what’s best. You’re the one with the medical training. You tell
me
!’

The nurse laid down the folder and waited.

Liv waved her hands in frustration. ‘Why is it so complicated? Just
tell
me what I need.’ She turned to me. ‘What should I do?’

Geraint sat mute and useless.

‘I’m just showing you what’s available,’ said the nurse.

Out of God knows where I heard myself say, ‘Look, whatever my mum chooses, there’s been enough messing around. This is serious now. We want a second opinion.’

‘On what?’

‘On the tissue samples. How do we know she definitely doesn’t need chemo, for instance? Because the labs didn’t pick anything up first time. Did you know that? Have you read
the notes?’

It wasn’t her fault, of course, it’s just that we needed to be angry with someone. She closed her folder quietly. ‘OK.’

‘If we have to pay, we’ll pay.’

‘You’ll need to speak to the consultant about it. I’ll give you his secretary’s number.’

I hadn’t the slightest idea whether Liv could afford to go even temporarily private, or if she’d countenance it on political grounds.

‘Meanwhile, take this literature,’ said the nurse. ‘Read it at home. You see us again next week and we can talk more then, or there’s a contact number here, call me any
day.’

It was me who moved towards the desk and gathered up the pamphlets. Liv’s earlier outburst seemed to have drained her. She rose from her chair like an automaton, her arms hanging limply by
her sides. Already she looked like a sick woman.

A glimpse of what’s to come
, I thought miserably as I guided her towards the exit, Geraint trailing behind.

I dropped them at home, but remained in the car as I was supposed to be going on to Melody’s.

Just days after Joe dumped her she’d been struck with an idea for a kind of party where, in return for help decorating the nursery, she’d supply a running buffet and drinks into the
evening. ‘That way people can duck in and out all day. Why should I have to struggle on my own?’ she’d said. ‘There’s more than one way to curry a goose.’
Michael and I had been amazed by the way she’d rallied. We’d signed up to help at once.

Right now, though, Melody’s was the last place I wanted to be.

I thought I might take a short diversion to get my head together – drive out on the heath road, maybe, park on the cinder path and go for a half-hour walk across the common. I needed to
think about how I was going to tell the world my mother had cancer.

The main street out of town’s one-way, narrow, and easily blocked by delivery lorries. Although I wasn’t exactly in a hurry, my temper still flared when I found myself stuck behind a
van unloading stationery. I sat behind the wheel cursing and hating everyone. A parked car beside me indicated to pull out, but I only edged closer to the van to close up his escape route,
pointlessly mean. A middle-aged pedestrian squeezed in front of my bonnet on her way to the opposite pavement, and I glared at her, thinking the next person who did that would get a faceful of
windscreen wash. No swerving for rabbits out on the bypass today, either. If they were stupid enough to sit in the road, they deserved flattening. Why should I care when the universe so patently
didn’t care for me?

At last the van doors closed and the driver hauled himself into his cab. Even then he didn’t set off immediately but sat there with his engine idling and a great line of cars stretching
out behind. I bibbed my horn and saw an irritated movement in his wing mirror. Finally we rolled forward, me over-revving in a way that would have made Michael wince.

The van crawled up the High Street, pausing for incompetent parkers, elderly shoppers, dithering stray dogs, till we got to the mini roundabout at the top. ‘For fuck’s sake!’ I
shouted at the dashboard, because I could see the way was perfectly clear and there’d been no need for him to pull up. With grinding slowness he allowed himself to cross the Give Way line,
till he was far enough forward for me to barge past him. Thank God he was turning left (though with no indication or anything helpful like that). I swung the car round and to the right and plunged
down a rat run I knew would take me straight onto the bypass. I’d be on the heath road within two minutes.

Except I’d reckoned without them digging up the road behind the civic centre. Too late I registered the yellow digger, the temporary traffic lights and warning triangle, and at the same
moment I was distracted by the figure of Oggy emerging from the walkway by the library with a cat basket – cat basket? – in his arms. I knew enough to slam on my brakes, but not hard
enough. It would have been OK if there hadn’t been a flatbed truck in front of me.

I didn’t set my airbag off, that was something. In the seconds that followed, I stayed where I was, still clutching the steering wheel, and waited for trouble to come to me.

And here it was now: a pot-bellied, crop-haired thirty-something climbing out of his driver’s seat to inspect the mess I’d made. He walked slowly round, pulling all manner of
discouraging faces, then brought out his camera phone to record the detail. I rolled the car back a foot or two and shut off my engine.

Crop-head knocked on my window. ‘Dear, dear,’ he said when I wound the glass down. ‘In a hurry to get to the beauty parlour, were we?’ Beyond him, two workmen grinned and
exchanged winks. I suppose it was big entertainment for them.