But things were different now. OK, it wouldn’t be the same as having his own son. That would come later, once they were settled down as a ready-made family. But he could bring Jimmy up properly. Show him what it was to be a man. The kid had been over-indulged from birth. He’d been cuddled and soothed instead of disciplined. And what was the result? He was a spoilt cry-baby. But Pete would soon change that. Teach him to be a little man. Strong and resilient. Stephanie would be proud when she saw how he could take responsibility for giving a boy manly guidance. He could see them in years to come, the boy knowing his place and showing he knew the way to behave.
He’d taken the first step by building a connection with Jimmy that was based on discipline and doing as he was told. Back when the Scarlett Harlot had still been alive, Pete had volunteered at the kid’s nursery school. They’d been delighted by this charming man who turned up once a week with various musicians dedicated to working with the children. The kids made noise on a variety of instruments, which Pete painstakingly recorded then engineered into something approximating music. He posted the end results on YouTube, where adoring parents could indulge in the fantasy that little Orlando and Keira were fast-tracking towards the Young Musician of the Year.
And the teacher’s pet was little Jimmy Higgins. Actually, he did seem to have a bit more of an idea than most of the kids. Probably because he’d been exposed to loud rhythmic music from an early age, thanks to his useless waster father. Pete fed that green shoot and made Jimmy push himself to try harder. It had been gratifying to watch the kid learn about carrot and stick. Maybe, once he’d got Stephanie sorted out, he could make something of the kid as a musician.
His fantasy was shattered by a faint, thin wail from above. Pete slapped his palm hard on the table then took off up the stairs. His hand was itching to deliver a hard slap. The kid had to learn, after all.
32
First there was the surgery. What Simon called ‘a wide local excision’, it was designed to leave Scarlett with as much breast tissue as possible. Because of the early diagnosis, he was confident they could cut away the cancerous tissue and clean margins around it, leaving the disease without a foothold in her body. As well as the cancer, they took the lymph node nearest that part of the breast. ‘We call this a sentinel node biopsy because it’s like an outpost for your immune system. If it’s clear, the chances are the rest of your body’s clear,’ he explained.
Scarlett coped well with the surgery. Her high level of physical fitness helped. Even after Jimmy’s birth, she’d continued to swim every day. She’d bought a cross trainer too, and ran five kilometres three or four times a week. Simon said apart from the cancer she was in great shape and encouraged her to get back on her regime as soon as possible.
But that wasn’t enough to keep the pain and fear at bay. She wasn’t on morphine for long, and I could see she was suffering. ‘You don’t have to put up with the pain,’ I said. ‘They’ll give you something to ease it. There’s no advantage in hurting.’
She grimaced. ‘The painkillers send me sky high. I don’t like drugs. Don’t like the way they make me feel. Never have. It’s bearable, Steph, trust me. Because I know I’m getting better, I can stand it. It won’t last long.’ She puffed out a breath. ‘And Simon says the surgery was successful. Now I just have to go through the chemo and watch my hair fall out.’
Which it did, in handfuls. After the first dose of chemo, a grim day when Scarlett endured an intravenous infusion of toxic drugs and felt increasingly lousy as the hours passed, her hair started to thin. By the time she’d undergone three sessions, there were clumps missing. It looked like she’d been in a particularly aggressive catfight.
Back at the hacienda that evening, she decided to take the bold step of shaving her head. But first she had to find a hat. Nothing in her wardrobe fitted the bill, so she dispatched Leanne down the A13 to the late-night shopping possibilities of Lakeside shopping centre.
By the time Leanne returned with bulging carrier bags, we had trimmed Scarlett’s hair to stubble. She held the heavy swatch in her hand, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘What do you think, Steph? Should I keep it? Tie it up in a ribbon to remind myself what I’ve lost?’
‘It’s up to you. But it’ll grow back, you know. With some people, their hair actually comes back thicker than before.’
She made a face. ‘You’re right.’ She crossed to the kitchen bin but just before she dumped the hair inside, she stopped herself. ‘What am I thinking?’ she said. ‘You need a picture of this. There’s a piece in this for somebody’s women’s page.’ Scarlett shook her head in disbelief. ‘Bloody hell, Steph, we’re losing our touch. Get the camera out.’
And so I did what I was told. I shot her stubbled head from every side, I shot her looking regretfully at the severed tail of hair in her hands, I shot her gleaming head after the electric razor had stripped it bare and finally I shot her trying on the array of hats Leanne had brought back.
‘I like this best,’ Scarlett announced, turning her head this way and that in front of her dressing-room mirror. It was a sage-green cloche with an upturned brim made from a light fleece. It suited her, especially when she smiled.
‘Good pick,’ Leanne said. ‘They do it in three or four different fabrics and about ten colours. I can go back tomorrow and do a total commando raid. You’ll have hats for all weather and all your different outfits.’
Scarlett caught my eye. ‘It’ll be a whole new me,’ she said, not quite managing to hide her sadness. ‘I’ll be like the queen, never seen out of the house without a hat.’
‘You’ll be a style icon,’ I said, trying to reassure her.
‘Maybe. But right now, this style icon needs to go to bed.’ She pulled the hat off, yawning. ‘Poor Jimmy’s going to freak out in the morning when he sees me.’
But he didn’t. He barely registered the change. I was taken aback. Like Scarlett, I’d expected him to be scared or upset or, at the very least, bewildered. I asked Simon about it when I saw him at the next chemo appointment. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘Kids respond to the person, not the appearance. I’ve seen cases where the parents were terrified of letting the child see the patient because they thought it would be a nightmarish experience. But that’s not how it works. Even when the cancer or the treatment causes quite serious disfigurement, the patient’s children seem not to be frightened or revolted. It’s an interesting demonstration of their ability to understand that what makes us who we are is what’s on the inside, not the outside.’ He gave a sad little smile. ‘One of the traits I wish we could hang on to into adulthood.’
Scarlett had clearly taken Simon’s point on board. We were driving back to Essex when she brought the conversation up again. ‘I’m glad Jimmy isn’t scared of my new look,’ she said.
‘He knows who you are. And he knows he loves you.’
‘He’s always known who I am. Not like the punters who’ve been fooled by Leanne all these years.’
‘People see what they expect to see,’ I said. ‘It’s why eyewitness evidence is notoriously unreliable in court. Our eyes see a glimpse of something and our brain fills in the rest of the picture based on what we remember and what we know. Punters in a club or at a fashion show or backstage at a gig expect to see Scarlett, so that’s what their brain tells them. You might have run into trouble if Joshu had started running off at the mouth and people started looking for incongruities. Because then they would have found them. But luckily that never came up.’
‘You wouldn’t need Joshu mouthing off now, though. Look at me. I’ve put weight on, my face looks like the full moon, and I’ve got no hair. I can’t have Leanne walking around looking like the old me, can I?’
I suppose I hadn’t really considered the question till Scarlett brought it up. ‘You mean it’s time for her to go back to being a brunette?’
Scarlett sighed. ‘For starters. Yeah. She needs a different haircut too. Short, something that makes the shape of her face look different. More than that, though. I think it might be time for her to bugger off to Spain.’
I was shocked by her casual delivery. Leanne had lived with her for a couple of years by that point. She’d picked up the pieces when Scarlett’s marriage collapsed. She’d played a crucial role in bringing up Jimmy. She’d supported her through the cancer diagnosis, not to mention the exhaustion and depression that came with the chemo. And now Scarlett was talking about sending her cousin into exile with as much emotion as she’d shown
