Before She Was Mine (17 page)

It had been worth the effort. Liv’s face, as she came through the door and saw the vacuumed carpet and flowers on the hall table, was such a picture I’d have high-fived Geraint, if
either of us could have borne the physical contact.

Now she’d been home two weeks and I was sitting in the dining room surfing eBay on my laptop, while in the lounge next door Liv attempted to talk to Geraint about what it was like having
cancer.

‘My chest still feels huge,’ she was saying. ‘Though they say the swelling will go down. I hope it does. I hope I’m not lop-sided. Do you think I will be?’

I assumed he was shaking his head.

‘In the end,’ she went on, ‘I was laughing. You know, when the consultant said about using the smallest size implants. Because it was that or cry. There’s no dignity
about any of it. I used to be so shy about my body, but after all this . . . It’s still really tender and bruised, but otherwise not too bad. Not like when they took the drains out. That
hurt.’

Another pause.

‘It looks as though the nipple’s going to be OK, too.’

A grunt.

‘Do you want to see?’

I focused on my laptop screen, scrolled down columns and columns of unwanted Doc Martens, Fly boots, Camper sandals. Searching, searching. Restless shoes crossing the length and breadth of the
land. I heard Geraint clear his throat painfully.

‘So I’m going to try and get hold of some flaxseed oil,’ said Liv. ‘The woman in the next bed mentioned it. Not sure what it’s supposed to do exactly. I might
research it later.’

I can help, I thought. I brought up Google and typed in ‘flaxseed oil cancer’, and within a minute was reading about the controversial Budwig Diet and how some people thought
phytoestrogens might prevent new tumours from developing and shrink existing ones, but others said there wasn’t enough evidence. There were testimonies and blogs and scientific papers and
forum posts, and every site claimed something different, every author seemed convinced they were right. I trawled through eight or nine different reports, and at the end was no wiser.

In all that time, I was aware that Geraint had said nothing at all: made no reassurances, no soothing noises, no meaningful response of any kind. Then, just as I was closing down Windows I heard
him go, ‘Oh, Alan H rang this morning. Apparently the new conservation leaflets have a photograph of hazelnuts nibbled by wood mice instead of dormice, so they’ll have to be
recalled.’

I snapped the laptop shut so hard I nearly broke the catch.

There are times when the only course of action is to run away.

I had somewhere to be anyway. That afternoon Melody had her twenty-week scan appointment.

‘You’re coming with me?’ she’d asked, her tone bright-bright-bright with a hint of desperation.

‘I’m at work that day. I can’t keep taking days off.’

Her brow had come down like a sulky child’s. ‘You went with Liv. You’ve been to hospital with her loads of times.’

Bloody hell, it’s not the same
, I wanted to say. ‘It’s a hellish busy period for the nursery. Ray needs all hands on deck.’

‘So I have to struggle on my own.’

‘Can’t Michael go with you?’

‘. . . have to sit in the waiting room with all the happy couples, big sign over my head saying “Single Mother”. It was bad enough the first time, but at least then I had my
mum with me. I don’t think I can bear to sit there completely alone. I’d rather not go at all.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘I mean it, Frey. I need you, hun.
You
. My flesh and blood. No one else will do.’

So in the end I’d caved in, gone crawling to Ray to beg yet another advance day off. It meant I’d be working twenty-six days solid, without any break at all (and weekends are
frantic; there’s a queue even to get in the car park).

On the way to pick her up I decided to call in at Michael’s garage. I was running early, due to stropping out of the house, and also I just wanted to see him. He has this knack of
straightening out my head just when I need it.

Peacock’s is one of those old-fashioned outfits where their mainstay is still basic mechanical repairs rather than computer diagnostics. Most of their custom is Classic Vehicles, what
I’d call old heaps. These Michael loves, the more distressed the better. Often we’ll be out round town and he’ll start raving about some tatty old Renault Fuego or Alfa Spider or
Reliant Scimitar, and what he could do to it if he had a free hand. The rise of eBay’s been a particular boon, tempting customers to make all kinds of nostalgia-led impulse buys they
haven’t a hope of restoring themselves. Then it’s Peacock’s they come to for help. A lot of modern garages won’t touch upholstery, for instance, but that type of
project’s meat and drink to Michael and his workmates. I’ve seen him restore cars that have no floor under the pedals, whose bonnets are lacy with rust, cars you’d think were only
fit for the crusher.

And if the customer waiting area’s a manky old portacabin with nothing more than three ancient
Autotraders
to read and a busted kettle on a tray, that’s all part of the ethos.
The cars are what matter.

Because I’d dropped in on spec, I knew there was a good chance he’d be up to his elbows in engine, and he was: right in the middle of disembowelling a white, tyreless Ford Capri. I
called across the bay to him and he looked up and shook his head. Then he checked his watch, frowned, glanced at a Triumph Dolomite parked by the door, and flashed his spread palms at me twice
– twenty minutes. Larry came out of the office and waved a mug at me. I gave him the thumbs up and went to wait in the portacabin. After ten minutes I got a hot drink, and after twenty-two,
Michael joined me.

‘Am I a nuisance?’ I said.

‘You are. But everyone’s entitled to a tea break. How’s tricks?’

‘OK, I suppose. Apart from I want to strangle Geraint with his own binoculars.’

‘Tell me something new. How’s Liv doing?’

‘Tired. But now the op’s over, and she seems all right with the Tamoxifen, I think she feels she’s got through the worst. We’ll know more when she goes back for her
review.’

‘You want this second opinion on the cells they took.’

‘Yeah.’

Michael put his mug down on the table. ‘Well done for pushing.’

‘You think?’

‘Of course. Why?’

‘Because—’ I dragged my hands across my face. ‘I wonder if I should’ve interfered. It’s not like it’s
my
cancer, is it? And now it’s
hanging over her, another question mark, extra stress. Which she doesn’t need. Geraint hates me for it.’

‘Geraint can go shag a badger. What matters is they get the diagnosis right.’

‘I suppose. Yeah. It is, isn’t it?’

‘Liv needs someone to look out for her. Don’t feel guilty for that, Frey. If these other tests show up nothing, then that’s all fine, you can forget it. If there is still
something that needs dealing with, then—’

‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘I can’t think about that. Hey, you know Melody sent her a whole folder of stuff on cancer?’

He looked mildly alarmed. ‘No, I didn’t. What kind of stuff are we talking about?’

‘Articles, clippings from about a thousand women’s magazines.’

‘She does like her fashion mags.’

‘It must have taken her ages to go through them. Some of the pages are in those see-through plastic pockets, but I think she must have run out a quarter of the way in.’

‘What was Liv’s reaction?’

‘Not sure.’ I remembered her expression as she leafed through the articles one by one.
Cancer, My Battle
;
The Cancer Diaries
;
Eat Yourself Strong – the role of
nutrition in cancer recovery
. Best was
Leeches Saved my Boobs
; she’d enjoyed that one for the wildlife content. ‘It’s a bit overwhelming,’ she’d said as she
packed the articles away. ‘But thoughtful. Very thoughtful of her. Tell her thank you.’

The windows of the portacabin spotted with rain. Onto the forecourt rolled a smart blue Hillman Avenger, driven by a bald man wearing mesh-backed driving gloves.

‘You’re really busy, aren’t you?’

‘The devil makes work for idle mechanics.’

‘So I shouldn’t keep you.’

I made to rise, but he reached out and pressed my arm to keep me in my chair. ‘Before you go, tell me.’

‘What?’

‘What else is bothering you. I’ve never seen you look so wrecked, Frey.’

‘Silver-tongued charmer.’

‘Seriously, spit it out. You’ll feel better afterwards.’

I wondered whether he ever got the urge to nab one of the cars he was working on and just set off in it, to hell with everyone.

I said, ‘OK, you asked. You know how, when I’m working at the nursery, one of the things I do to stave off the boredom sometimes is run through what action I’d take in the
event of an apocalypse?’

‘I didn’t know that, no. But now you say, it doesn’t surprise me.’

‘So, like, what I’d do if I had a few weeks’ or even months’ warning: I’d stock up on veg seeds, get a coil fitted, and take crossbow lessons.’

‘Crossbow lessons?’

‘Less to go wrong on a crossbow than a gun. Plus they’re silent, and you can retrieve your ammunition more easily. Now, if I only had a matter of days before the apocalypse, then
I’d get myself to Millets and stock up on camping gear. I’d raid Lidl for as many tin openers as I could carry, plus bottled water, food and first-aid equipment.’

‘Right.’

‘Obviously I’d be filling my petrol tank and spare containers to the brim, packing my solar chargers and driving over to Hack Green bunker—’

‘You realise you’re sounding mad?’

‘But if we only had a few minutes before the bomb went up or whatever, I’d dash over to Nicky’s because she has that fresh-water spring in her cellar, plus she lives next door
to the pub.’

‘What, and you could nip in for a swift half as the sirens sound?’

‘Alcohol’s very useful in an emergency situation, actually.’

He was laughing. ‘What can I say? You’ll survive the end of the world and I won’t.’

‘No, you will, ’cause I’ll come and rescue you.’

‘I’m touched.’

‘Just being practical. We’ll need mechanics.’

‘So, to rewind, the reason you’ve been fretting is you think an atomic bomb’s about to drop on Whixall Moss?’

‘No. I’m using it as an
example
.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of a situation that would be overwhelmingly hideous but where I’d still feel like I was in some control.’

‘Sorry, you’ve completely lost me, Freya.’

‘The point I’m trying to make is that ordinary, day-to-day life’s worse. Because now I’m faced with a nightmare situation that’s really happening, and I don’t
have any answers. I keep waking in the night and thinking about dying. I think about Liv dying, what if they haven’t caught it, what if it comes back. I think about me dying, all of us. I lie
there in bed and it’s like I can feel the cells in my body ticking away, dividing and moving round my body to do their different jobs, and the idea gets into my head that maybe some of them
are turning rogue and making tumours and I wouldn’t know because they’re silent and secret. I’m so scared, Michael. My boobs are black and blue from checking myself.’

Another man might have sniggered at that, but he only smiled gently.

‘And then I start thinking about growing older, and Liv, even if she survives the cancer, being an old woman and infirm and needing help, going doolally maybe, and it’s not that
I’d mind caring for her, it’s that I’d be the one who was in charge, like a role swap, and I can’t imagine that. I’d be all exposed and freaking out. Like the
mice.’

‘The mice?’

‘When I was about seven, right, we had these wood mice that someone brought in, a little nest of babies from inside a timber pile. They’d been handled so the mother wouldn’t
have come back to them. Liv put them in one of my kiddy-size shoe boxes, nest and all, cut a little doorway so they could come and go, and stuck the box inside a plastic tank. And they did OK, they
were furred and Liv fed them every few hours and they didn’t even seem too stressed out considering they were in our front room. Only, a couple of weeks in, I went to check how they were
doing and they were all huddled up inside the box and wouldn’t come out. I lifted the lid to get a better view, and they went completely mental. You’ve never seen anything like it.
Treading on each other, pushing in all directions. They were panicking because they had no cover.’

I could see those little brown bodies squirm in utter mindless panic. I remember I’d dropped the lid back on and scarpered, never mentioned it to Liv.

‘And you feel as though someone’s lifted the lid off your box?’ asked Michael.

‘I know. It’s pathetic. I don’t know how you coped when your mum walked out.’

‘I don’t remember it, do I? Like you don’t remember Colin. Far as I was concerned, it was always just me and my dad. The family you grow up with is what’s normal. Then
Dad moved in with Abby, and she was like a mum, but so was Mel in a way.’ He grinned. ‘She used to check my dinner money, stick the tops back on my felt tips. Sometimes she picked me up
from school. And Saturdays she’d take me into town and buy me a Slush Puppy.’

I was trying to listen but all I could see was Liv flicking through her cancer articles, turning them over from time to time to read about the new handbag shape, the ankle-strap shoe revival,
the summer-fresh foundation.

‘You’ll be all right, Frey,’ Michael said. ‘Whatever happens. Think of it this way: get through this, and you’ll be a much stronger mouse.’

‘You don’t think I’m being pathetic, then?’

‘Nope. You’re just reacting to a tough situation. If you get the 3 a.m. terrors again, stick the TV on, or put some comedy on your iPod, then at least you’re not lying in the
dark worrying.’

‘I will, yeah.’

‘What you’re frightened of will happen one day, but not for ages and then you’ll deal with it. You’ll be ready.’

‘Huh.’

‘At least you’re managing to put a brave face on for her. You wouldn’t have been able to do that when I first met you.’ He nudged my foot with his. ‘And we all have
to hop out of the box eventually. In the case of your mouse, that would be so it can run across the carpet while I’m watching CSI and nearly give me a fucking heart attack.’