Page 152 of While I’m Still Here

“I don't dress like a lawyer.”

“You absolutely dress like a lawyer.”

Marcus looks at me as though I might be able to explain what distinction Danny believes he's making. I can't, but the brief glance between us does something warm and strange to my chest anyway, because Danny called him one of my boyfriends and Marcus didn't actually object to that part.

He still hasn't got used to the word.

Neither have I.

Boyfriend has always sounded singular to me. One person. One toothbrush beside mine, one hand to hold in waiting rooms, one name to put beside relationship status if anybody insists on being nosy. Now I apparently have three of them sitting in my flat while my hair falls out from chemotherapy, and somehow the strangest part is that it doesn't feel strange anymore.

“I'm not participating in your relationship law,” Marcus tells Danny.

Danny looks personally offended. “You're one of the boyfriends.”

Marcus's eyes flick towards me again.

There it is.

That tiny hesitation.

Not discomfort exactly. More like he still doesn't entirely trust the word to belong to him, as though somebody is eventually going to realise there's been an administrative error and revoke his membership.

I smile at him and Marcus's expression softens. Before Danny can notice and make it unbearable for everybody, Colin comes back from the kitchen carrying my tea. He puts the mug down in front of me, then sets another beside Marcus before returning for the others. He doesn't look at the clipper case. None of us does… And somehow that's how we end up having tea.

A black case containing the thing that's about to remove what remains of my hair sits less than a metre away, but Colin has made tea because we're British and apparently even chemotherapy-induced hair loss must respect basic cultural procedure.

For a little while, nobody mentions my hair.

I'm grateful.

I curl both hands around my mug and listen while Danny tells Colin something that happened at work yesterday, deliberately leaving out enough information that I repeatedly have to correct him. Marcus drinks his tea and occasionally joins in. Colin sits in the armchair opposite me with one ankle resting over his knee, looking almost relaxed if I don't pay attention to the fact that his eyes keep finding me every few minutes.

It could be any Wednesday afternoon. Except my hair keeps reminding me that it isn't. One strand lands against the sleeve of my jumper. I see it immediately.

My eyes fix on it while Danny is halfway through complaining about Sandra from Accounts, and for several seconds I don't hear a word he's saying. It's a long one. Longer than I realised my hair had become. I pinch it carefully between my fingers and hold it up, watching the end sway slightly.

They all stop talking as I roll the strand around my finger until it disappears against my skin, then brush it onto the coffee table beside my mug. “Fuck's sake.”

Danny's hand settles against my thigh. “You okay?”

“No.”

He nods. “Okay.”

I look at the case again.

This morning I cried because I didn't want to lose my hair. Now I'm sitting here deliberately preparing to remove it before it can finish falling out on its own, and my brain has apparently decided these two things are incompatible, even though they make perfect sense to me. I can't keep waking up and checking the pillow. I can't keep standing in the shower watching strands collect around my fingers. I can't spend the next however-many days touching my head every five minutes to see how much cancer treatment has taken since the last time I checked.

I want to choose the moment.

That doesn't mean I want the moment.

My tea is nearly cold by the time I put it down. Nobody has pushed me and eventually I take a breath and stand. “Right.”

Three heads lift towards me at exactly the same time. My heart starts hammering. That is deeply fucking inconvenient, because I'm the one who stood up. Nobody dragged me off the sofa. Nobody told me it was time. Yet the second I'm on my feet, every part of my body seems to realise what I've just decided and immediately begins campaigning against it.

I reach up and gather my hair behind my head. There isn't as much of it as there was.