Never Say Goodbye (11 page)

It had all gone off pretty well, she thought, with everyone on their best behaviour, mainly thanks to Jasper, who both her mother and Jeff’s father seemed to think of as something close to royalty. The fact that he’d brought wine had helped, of course, and the way he’d lavished drinks on them during their hilarious evening at Chanter Lysee hadn’t done him any harm either. What had really impressed everyone, though, was when he’d performed ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ with Lily, which might have won them top prize had Bob not decided to award it to Josie and Jeff for their rendition of ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ (always fraught with more feeling on Josie’s part than on Jeff’s, she thought). So they’d gone home with a lovely box of Lindt chocolates and a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream, which her mother had managed to polish off on Christmas Eve.

‘What are you like?’ Josie had complained, when she’d come back from Aldi to find Eileen slumped in front of the telly with an empty bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. ‘And you know we don’t allow smoking in here, so put that out.’

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Eileen had groaned. ‘You’re always having a go about something. Loosen up a bit, will you?’ Though Eileen was still a reasonably glamorous woman, in a mutton sort of way, with good legs, a generous bust and a beehive-type hairdo that, she claimed, kept her on trend, she rarely looked her best when drunk. In fact, considering how much she boozed and smoked, it was a bit of a miracle she was still alive, never mind able to look halfway decent. As for blokes, Josie didn’t know of one that had lasted more than six months, and given the state of most of them she could only feel glad when they went.

‘This is my house, Mother,’ she’d declared, ‘so if you want to stay here you have to live by my rules. No smoking, and definitely no more drink tonight. Look at you, you’re an embarrassment to yourself. I can’t believe you’ve drunk the lot. That sherry was supposed to be for tomorrow morning. I’ve invited some neighbours round for a glass and now we don’t have anything to give them.’

‘Bullshit,’ Eileen slurred. ‘I saw all the wine your son-in-law-to-be brought in with him.’ After a rowdy hiccup followed by a cough, she wheezed, ‘Can you lend me a tenner, kiddo? Just till I get paid.’

‘No, I can’t, I don’t have it and even if I did you’d only go and spend it up the pub, so forget it. You’ve had enough. I’ll get Jeff to see you home when he comes back.’

Eileen looked mutinous. ‘What’s wrong with me staying here for the night? Ryan’s not going to be using his room, is he? So I can sleep there.’

‘No you can’t,’ Josie shot back, furious that her mother could be so insensitive as to treat the one big heartache for her this Christmas as though it was a happy convenience for Nan.

‘Rose Granger?’ a nurse called out.

Coming back to the present, Josie’s heart gave a jolt as she watched a stout elderly lady, helped by someone who might have been her daughter, heave herself out of a chair and make her way across the waiting area to where the nurse was smiling a greeting.

‘Come on through,’ the nurse said kindly, ushering them both towards a side room. ‘How are you today, Rose?’

Josie didn’t hear the reply, but she wasn’t much of an eavesdropper, or certainly not where people’s health matters were concerned.

She looked around at her companions. There were about ten of them, all told, all in pairs and talking quietly to each other. It had said on the leaflet the doctor gave her that it was a good idea to have someone come with you, but there wasn’t anyone she’d felt right about asking. It was too much to ask of Lily, she had enough to be worrying about with her finals looming. Dawnie would have come if she was still here, but Dawnie was long gone, so she might as well put that out of her mind. She wondered when she might be called through, and though she was dreading it, at the same time she hoped it wouldn’t be too much longer, or she’d be late home and if Jeff was there he’d want to know what had kept her.

Counting up the number of people she was sure had already been here when she’d arrived, she reckoned she should be about third in line now, though that didn’t tell her much since she had no idea how long each appointment took. There might even be more than one specialist, in fact she was pretty sure there must be. There were definitely quite a few nurses because she’d been smiling at them as they came and went, as though being nice to them might give her a better result at the end of the day.

They were lucky to have this unit at Kesterly, the doctor had told her when she’d rung to make sure Josie could keep her appointment. If it had been this time last year she’d have had to go up to Bristol for the One Stop Clinic at Southmead, and for any follow-up treatment, if it proved necessary. Now, however, most of it could be taken care of at the infirmary in town.

Lucky, that, Josie supposed, if there could be anything at all lucky about having to be here.

Glancing up as a young woman came in wearing an expensive-looking camel coat and cream-coloured scarf, she watched her stop in front of a noticeboard next to the reception. On it was all sorts of info about fund-raisers, support groups, home care and even bereavement counselling, which Josie had found a bit startling. Actually, she hadn’t given any of it much of a lookover, preferring to study the fish flicking about the aquarium, or to try to make out the titles of the second-hand books for sale on a shelf by the water cooler.

This woman seemed pretty engrossed in it, though. Perhaps it was her way of distracting herself before admitting to the receptionist she was actually here. It seemed a funny way of taking your mind off things, but each to their own, Josie always said, and anyway, she might not have been here for an appointment. She could have come to collect someone, or to assess the unit in some official capacity. Actually, she didn’t seem like an NHS busybody, or a medical rep, or even a local-government type. She struck Josie more as someone who threw fancy dinner parties and drove about in a convertible Merc. An executive wife sort of person. She was quite tall, probably about five nine, and her short blonde hair made Josie wonder if it had just grown back after treatment. Whatever, it looked lovely.

‘Bel,’ someone said, and as the young woman turned to see who it was she broke into a smile.

Josie couldn’t hear what she said, but she knew the man looking pleased to see her was one of the consultants, because the receptionist called him by name as she passed him a file.

‘Mr Beck, can I give you this?’

Josie didn’t listen to any more, merely watched as the doctor ushered the young woman into the Visitors’ Information Room and closed the door. He was who Josie was here to see. Mr Harry Beck. She couldn’t remember how she knew they stopped using the title of doctor when they became surgeons, probably from
Casualty
or
Holby City
. Given his name she hadn’t expected him to be Indian, or Asian anyway. Not that she minded, it just hadn’t occurred to her, that was all. She hadn’t imagined him to be about her age either, more in his late fifties or sixties, and the last thing she’d given any thought to was how good-looking he might be. Very, was what that quick glimpse of him had told her.

She didn’t think any of it was making a difference, in fact she knew it wasn’t, she was simply having to readjust her way of thinking, which might have been easier if she’d even known what it was.

Feeling her mobile vibrating, she pulled it out of her pocket and found a text from Lily.
Had letter from Ryan today, did you? He got his presents and says thanks. Wants to know when we’re going to see him again. XXX PS Saw great hat in John Lewis for you yesterday.

It pleased Josie to think there might be a letter from Ryan waiting when she got home. If Jeff saw it first he’d put it in front of the clock over the mantelpiece and probably not mention it, even when she sat reading it. He never asked what Ryan had to say, claimed he wasn’t interested, but she knew he was really, which was why she usually left the letter hanging about so he could have a crafty look when she wasn’t around.

Luckily her last visiting order was going to be honoured for her next visit, but she’d been too late to get in this coming Saturday, so she was aiming to go up there again the Saturday after. Apparently a couple of inmates had managed to escape when she and Lily were there before Christmas, but had been hauled back before they’d gone very far. It was a relief to know that Ryan hadn’t been one of them.

‘Mrs Josie Clark?’

Josie’s heart somersaulted as she looked up to see Mr Beck smiling at her from reception, his white shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, his blue tie slightly askew. He was wearing glasses now, which she wasn’t sure she’d noticed before. There was no sign of the young blonde woman he’d taken into the Visitors’ Information Room.

For a fleeting moment Josie wondered if she was still here somewhere, but then everything went out of her mind as she began following Mr Beck down the corridor that had various doors either side of it, some with names on, others with signs such as Radiology or Quiet Room or Ladies, and others with nothing at all.

‘Here we are,’ Mr Beck declared, stopping at the fourth one down on the left (why was she counting?).

Following him into the room, she tried not to look around. If she didn’t it might be like she wasn’t really there.

Pull yourself together.

‘Take a seat, Mrs Clark,’ he said, waving her to one next to the desk. ‘May I call you Josie?’

Josie nodded as she did as she was told, pulling the strap of her bag from her shoulder, and clutching it on her knees. She liked the sound of his voice, it was soft, but strong, if that made sense, and a little bit posh, but not to a point that made her feel lowly. She just felt very vulnerable in his hands, which was all right, since he was the one who knew all about everything while she knew nothing at all.

She waited quietly as he read the file he’d brought in with him, and let her eyes wander cautiously to the examination couch, half hidden by a modesty screen, and on to a couple of windows masked by white blinds. Next to the couch was a machine of some sort, a worktop with tidy piles of boxes and other equipment and a sink with a tap. There were lightboxes on the walls for him to hang up X-rays, and various charts that obviously meant something to him, but were a total mystery to her. She found herself thinking of the dozens, maybe hundreds of women who’d been in this room before her, and wondered how many of them had ended up hearing the news they most dreaded.

She was so tense now she was starting to hurt.

‘OK,’ he said, turning to look at her with a smile that she might have warmed to if she’d felt capable of warming to anything. She liked him though, he had kind eyes and a way of looking at her that was making her feel safe, even though she wasn’t – yet! ‘So you have a problem with your right breast,’ he said, his tone not seeming to make it much of a big deal. ‘Can you tell me how long you’ve had it, and whether it’s causing you any discomfort?’

‘Um, well,’ she began, and had to clear her throat. ‘I first noticed it about a month ago.’ Would he be able to tell when he saw it that she wasn’t being completely truthful? The trouble was, if she confessed she’d been aware of the swelling and redness since before last summer he might get impatient with her and call her a fool for not coming sooner.

‘Does it hurt?’ he prompted.

She shook her head. ‘Not really. I mean, it feels a bit sore sometimes, and my skin goes a bit red,’ but that was probably because she kept prodding the lump to try and make it go down.

‘Do you know if there’s a history of breast cancer in your family?’ he asked.

Flinching at the dreaded word, she replied, ‘I don’t think so. My mum’s never had it, and my gran didn’t either. She died of a heart attack. My gran, I mean, not my mum. My mum’s still alive, and smokes like a chimney, which I keep telling her she shouldn’t.’
Stop talking, Josie. He doesn’t want to know all this and you’re making yourself look stupid.

‘OK, shall we have a little look?’ he suggested. ‘If you take off your coat and top, and make yourself comfortable on the couch, I’ll be right back.’

As the door closed behind him Josie put her bag on the floor and walked over to the couch. It made her feel queasy to look at it, so turning around she unzipped her parka, hung it on a hook next to the screen, then pulled her red polo neck over her head. It seemed daft not to take off her bra when she was here to have her boobs examined, so she unfastened the back and drew the straps down over her arms. There was a mirror on the wall behind the couch, but she didn’t want to look at her reflection. She knew she had quite nice boobs for a woman her age, a normal 36B, not too big, or droopy, just a few stretch marks left over from feeding, and dark rosy nipples puckered now from sudden exposure to the air.

And a lump you couldn’t really see that was probably a cyst.

Hearing Mr Beck’s voice outside, she crossed her arms over her breasts and watched him come in. A nurse was with him, a woman in her thirties, by the look of her, with a luscious sort of face and twinkly eyes. ‘This is Yvonne Hubert,’ he told her. ‘She’s our senior breast-care nurse, so you’re in very good hands today.’

Josie whispered a hello, as Yvonne smiled and stood to one side while Mr Beck gently lowered Josie’s arms to begin his examination. First he explored the lump itself, which Josie felt sure had suddenly swollen to twice the size it had been before. Then he had a good feel around the rest of the breast before doing the same to the other. None of it hurt until he began prodding under her arms, but even that wasn’t too bad.

‘Mm,’ he said in a way that seemed to threaten the bottom of her world. He brightened again as he asked, ‘Have you ever had an ultrasound, Josie?’

She shook her head. ‘I mean, yes, when I was pregnant.’

‘Then you know they’re wonderfully pain-free. We’re going to do one now. Don’t worry, it’s all part of the procedure. You just have to lie back on the couch here while Yvonne squeezes some jelly on to your breasts. It’ll feel quite cold at first, but that’s normal. Then I’m going to run this little probe over the surface of your skin, which’ll enable me to have a better look at what’s going on here.’