‘Ada sent them for me,’ Mum said. ‘I had to cancel. I wasn’t able to go and I didn’t want to worry you.’
‘You weren’t able to go because . . . ?’ I asked.
‘I was in Broomfield Hospital,’ Mum said. ‘I had to go in for some tests.’
From that point on, I don’t remember much. I suspect that our minds protect us from reliving the pain of such moments by erasing, or at least blurring, our memories. Suffice to say that lots of tears were shed and many hours were spent having heart-to-hearts while holding hands.
Kerry smoked even more than usual and much of the time she was only half there. I envied her emotional opt-out, but it struck me that at least one of us needed to be fully present to share Mum’s pain.
‘I’m so happy you’ve found yourself a lovely man,’ Mum told me on the doorstep as we were leaving on Sunday afternoon, and I wondered where she’d magicked that titbit up from. With hindsight, I think that, what with everything else she was facing, it was just something she needed to believe and so she’d decided that it was true. ‘And if you’re going to have a baby, then that’s the best news you could possibly have given me,’ she said. ‘It’ll give me an extra reason to stick around.’
No pressure, then! I remember thinking.
I didn’t bother repeating that I might not be having a baby at all. Because the subject had suddenly become so vast and complex and loaded, involving as it did not only myself and Ant but my mother as well, that I no longer seemed to have space in my brain to sort through it all.
Instead, all I could think as I trundled homeward, blinking back tears, was, She’s got cancer. She’s got cancer. She’s got cancer. My wonderful mother has got cancer.
Ant called in to see me on the Monday. When I opened the door to greet him, he looked as grave as I was feeling. Was he preparing to leave me? I still wonder to this day.
‘We need to talk,’ he said, once he’d sat on the couch.
‘I know,’ I said, trying to think about all the things we indeed needed to talk about: about the fact that I might, or might not, be pregnant. About the fact that if I was pregnant I might, or might not, decide to keep the baby, and that if I were to decide to keep it, then I might, or might not, decide to stay with Ant. But there were too many conditionals in there for me to even begin to know where to start untangling them, let alone explain the whole process to Ant. Plus, in truth, the only subject I could really concentrate on was my poor mother. So instead I began to cry.
Ant held me in his arms as I wept, and that was the start of what I think of as his ‘nice’ period. In the end it was Mum’s illness, not the baby, that changed him, albeit temporarily. Being so close to his mother, it was maybe something he could relate to. Then again, another part of me has always suspected him of being a scheming monster, so perhaps he simply saw a door opening as I collapsed, heartbroken and needy, into his arms.
Whatever the reason, he was lovely for the duration of Mum’s illness, far nicer than he ever was before or afterwards, driving me back and forth to Oxen End, and then, later, to the hospital in Braintree; cooking meals for me when I got home exhausted from a stint at Mum’s, and even taking in Dandy – who he hated – when I had to stay over towards the end. OK, Ant didn’t hate Dandy, but he did get very upset when he sharpened his claws on Ant’s Italian furniture, and the cat hair that clung to his suits could send him into such a tizzy that it would have been funny to watch had his raging not been so scary.
Mum kept things quiet for a month or so by telling us she was having tests or waiting for appointments, and as this was perfectly possible, we believed her. In truth, she’d known from the start that the cancer had metastasised all over, and she had already decided not to bother with chemo – it could only give her a few extra weeks anyway. She was simply sparing us the pain of it all for as long as she possibly could.
I could fill a book with details of Mum’s illness, but it would be a miserable book that no one would want to read, and it’s a story that was horrific to live through once, without having to go through it all again. Plus, if I’m honest, a lot of my memories are blurred, recorded, as they were, through tears.
I coped better with it all than Kerry, and though this was a surprise, because I’d always thought of Kerry as the tough one, it shouldn’t have been, I suppose. Though nothing can truly prepare you for that kind of thing – not when it’s your own mother – as a nurse, unlike Kerry, at least I’d seen it all before. I knew how fast these things could move, whereas Kerry was totally blindsided.
Mum never did get to meet her first grandchild, and that’s a fact that brings tears to my eyes even now. But she did at least get to break the news to Anthony.
I’d been struggling to breathe at her hospital bedside, on the verge of emotional collapse, I feared. And I’d thought that some fresh air might help me be brave again, so had gone for a walk around Braintree. It was sunny, I remember, but cold.
Mum called for me while I was out, and it was Anthony who sat and took her frail hand in his own. I like to imagine that Mum knew what she was doing, that she was enjoying fiddling around with
