Page 10 of The Love of My Life
‘I want a wicker coffin,’ she whispers back. ‘If I die. And a natural burial.’
I stare at her phone, transfixed. The wicker coffin she’s looking at retails at just under £500 and is pictured in a sunny bluebell wood, with a posy of wildflowers on top.
‘Emma, no!’ I say. ‘Stop it!’
‘It’s lined with organic cotton,’ she says defensively. ‘Anyway, I’m going to be fine. This is merely research.’
‘Emma,’ I whisper, rubbing my forehead. ‘Please, don’t.’
‘We all die eventually. It’s much better to die with your ducks in a row.’
‘I ... OK. Do what you need to do.’
A hot hollow opens in my chest. I really could lose her.
Emma, probably sensing this, puts her phone away and tucks her hand into mine, but I can’t stand it anymore. I march up to reception, ready to explode, just as her name is called.
Chapter Six
EMMA
The problem with lying to your husband is that it changes everything and nothing.
I love Leo. Not in a part-time or conditional way; it’s the real deal, an essential love, as much a part of my biological function as my liver and spleen. I love his Leoisms: the strange snacks he makes for himself, the meticulousness with which he folds clean clothes, the hours he spends trying and failing to play the opening bars of Bruce Hornsby’s ‘The Way It Is’ on my grandmother’s old piano. The way he looks at me across his long nose, in bed, and makes up filthy limericks as if he’s reading the shipping forecast.
I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say he saved my life.
When I was pregnant with Ruby, friends warned that parenthood would erode our grand love affair. I understood what they meant, once our daughter arrived: the chaos and sleep deprivation, the sensation of being on the back foot – always, and with everything – the loss of adult conversation or intimacy; but I came out of that first year more certain than ever that Leo was the best man I’d ever known. We’d survived a cancer diagnosis, a pregnancy, postnatal depression, and yet there we still were, quietly walking in step. When we weren’t razed by exhaustion, we still belly-laughed in bed before going to sleep. We still kissed each other as if we were falling in love.
I was desperate to come clean with him; to tell him about the kind of woman he was married to.
But the reason I couldn’t was the same then as it had always been. Leo would never, could never, come to terms with it. There are a small handful of men who perhaps could, but my husband is not one of them.
And even if he were a different person, with a less complicated past – the sort who might be able to forgive what I’d done – he would never forgive my attempts to conceal it. Leo was lied to from the day he was born, and he can’t tolerate dishonesty in any form now. Last year he fired our nanny because she told us she’d taken Ruby to the park, when in fact they’d gone to her boyfriend’s house. By the time I got back that evening he’d paid an HR consultant to check that the nanny’s deception constituted gross misconduct, and had removed her from our house.
It was the right thing to do: we couldn’t give Ruby to someone we couldn’t trust. But the intensity of his anger extinguished any hope that I could one day tell him the truth.
Dr Moru tells us before we make it through the door.
‘It’s good news!’ he beams, and, without any professional hesitation, hugs me.
‘I’m OK? I’m OK?’
‘You’re OK. For now.’
Leo whispers, ‘Oh thank God,’ and removes Dr Moru, pulling me tightly to him.
‘The PET scan is clear and the restaging biopsy looks good. So do your bloods,’ Dr Moru says, sitting back calmly at his desk, as if he hadn’t just thrown his arms around a patient. He starts talking about the next few months but eventually stops because Leo is pulling tissues from the box on his desk and jamming them into his eyes.
I hold my husband’s hand while he recovers. I know he’s been afraid, of course, but the sheer expanse of his anxiety, revealed now in plain sight, is painful. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, in his normal voice, as if there aren’t tears pouring down his cheeks. ‘Please just ignore me.’
They will continue to monitor me at six-monthly intervals, Dr Moru says, but for now we can allow ourselves to be optimistic about my future.
‘You should write about your experience on your page,’ he says, merrily. He’s openly admitted to having looked me up on Facebook. ‘Those fans of yours would love it!’
I’ve read endless cancer memoirs in the years following my diagnosis; some written from the warm shore of survival, others cut short by an end note from a bereaved relative. Some talk of healing and growth, others of grief and suffering, but every account, every single one, has talked about love. About how, as we approach the end of our life, we find ourselves turning towards the things and people that are most meaningful to us so that we may face death with equanimity and courage.
My cancer journey, by shameful contrast, started four years ago with the rekindling of an obsession that could end my marriage. It’s been about fear of discovery and deep regret. It is something I could never commit to paper, or Facebook, or anywhere else.
