The C-Word (19 page)

Something P and I particularly love about them is the fact that they’d got the pair of us sussed from the very beginning. We come as a team, P and I, and Smiley Surgeon and Always-Right Breast Nurse were quick to recognise it. They always ask how
we
are. The
you
in ‘how did you find the last chemo?’ is collective. When there’s a decision to make, they ask what both of us think about it. And how can you not fall in love with people like that?

But there’s a bigger reason for my adulation. These people saved my life! Every time Smiley Surgeon shakes my hand, I want to grab him and hug him instead. With every bit of advice he gives me, I want to reply with an eloquent response that lets him know just how brilliant I think he is. I want to make him dinner and bake him cakes and write him poems and nominate him for awards and commission a statue of him and shout from the rooftops of London about what a bloody marvellous genius of a man he is. But even I know that none of that’s appropriate (well, apart from the cake-baking, perhaps). So until I find a better way to express my gratitude, I’m going to keep acting goofy and sucking up and grinning like an idiot at every appointment. Maybe he’ll even start calling me Smiley Patient. I only hope I’ll come to love my kitten as much as I love my surgeon.

*

‘THIS ONE’S PURRING
like a good’un,’ said Busby, swapping the comatose ball of fluff I was holding with the decidedly lively tortoiseshell kitten she’d picked up.

‘Oh, okay, I see. So that’s purring, is it?’ I queried, puzzled by the vibrating feline.

‘Good Lord, woman, you really don’t know a thing about cats, do you?’

‘Well, I’m about to find out,’ I said. ‘Cos I’m having this one.’

‘Good choice, bird, good choice,’ confirmed Busby.

‘Eh up, toffee-paws,’ I said to the tiny cat, turning and lifting her so that we were looking eye-to-eye. ‘You okay to come home with me, then? I’ve no idea what I’m doing, like, but we’ll figure it out.’

The kitten stared back blankly, still purring like a good’un.

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

‘I still can’t believe you’re really doing this,’ said Busby, eyeing up the other cats yet to be rescued. ‘You’re not the Mac we all knew!’

‘You’ve got that right,’ I confirmed. ‘I just never imagined it would involve becoming a pet owner. I’m as surprised as you are.’

I’d better give you some background here. Among my friends, I’ve always been known as ‘Anti-Animal Mac’. If someone ever showed me a picture of their cat/dog/bunny/whatever, I was physically unable to produce an ‘aah’, instead making some nice-pet-but-I’d-rather-see-it-between-a-burger-bun crack and reiterating to anyone who’d listen that I. Was. Not. An. Animal. Person. Me getting a pet was about as likely as me getting breast cancer. So why the sudden decision to do it?

Frankly, I blame Tills. Which, unfairly, is often my answer
to
those kinds of questions. (‘You’re drunk at two o’clock on a weekday?’ ‘You spent
how
much on a handbag?’ Etc.) But this time, it kind of is. Because, on going round to theirs one weekend for a dinner party with our mates Polly and Martin, we were greeted by the teeny-tiny RSPCA rescue kitten that she and Si had just given a home to. And the damn thing won me over. It was the first animal ever to show a favourable interest in me (and vice versa), and it got me thinking how great it would be to have some company while I was spending so much time in the flat on my own. (And beyond, of course – a cat’s not just for Christmas. Or cancer.)

‘You should totally get one,’ said Tills, as her miniature, picture-perfect kitten curled up in the palm of my hand. ‘Look how much Clarry likes you.’ She nudged P, encouraging him to agree.

‘I’ve got to say, I never thought I’d see the day that you held a cat,’ he said. ‘If only your nan could see you now.’ (Nan was famous for the anti-cat devices in her garden. Barbed wire round the top of the fence, Olbas oil on the path, water-filled milk bottles ready to soak trespassers at a nanosecond’s notice. Even when clearing out the garden after she’d died, Dad narrowly missed impaling himself on a wooden stump that Nan had hammered nails into the side of – a bad-ass weapon she’d doubtless knocked together in Grandad’s shed while a home-made crumble cooked in the oven.)

I fluttered my eyelashes in P’s direction. ‘What do you reckon?’

‘Yes! Do it! Do it! Do it!’ squealed Tills. ‘Our cats can be mates!’

‘You’re not really serious, are you?’ asked Si.

‘I dunno. I think I am.’

‘Ha! Polly! Get in here! Mac’s getting a cat!’ Tills shrieked.

‘What?’ said Polly, appearing in a stunned flash from the kitchen. ‘Why?’

‘Well, y’know, I guess I’m just getting a bit lonely in the flat all day on my own,’ I reasoned, apologetically. ‘It’s company, innit.’

‘Well, good on you,’ she agreed. ‘They’re
amazing
company. Calming, too.’

‘It’s
perfect
timing,’ added Tills, still ridiculously overexcited. ‘Because by the time it’s ready to head outside, you will be too.’

‘Ooh and I can fit you a cat-flap,’ said Si, ever keen to tackle some DIY.

‘Shit, are we really doing this?’ asked P. ‘I mean, I’m cool with it – I just can’t believe you are.’

‘Me neither,’ I mumbled, shaking my head. ‘What the hell’s got into me?’

‘Sod all that,’ said Martin. ‘What are you going to call it?’

‘Ooh, now there’s a question,’ I pondered.

Later that night, after an evening of my animated mates listing all the pros and cons of getting a kitten, I actually found myself feeling a bit sad that there wasn’t one waiting for me when we got home. Getting into bed, P made the fatal error of saying he ‘wouldn’t say no’ if I decided to adopt a cat of my own. And so it was kind of his fault, too. But mostly, of course, it was The Bullshit’s doing: all the endless being-ill-at-home lark had become so lonely and boring that even I, Chief Animal Hater, was getting a pet.

My family were as baffled by my decision as my friends. After all, the last they knew of me caring for an animal was Miss Ellie, the goldfish I used to stir around in its bowl with a wooden spoon when I was two. But despite their surprise, they were all on board for one reason: already, even before
bringing
her home, the kitten had made me happy. Planning her arrival was something I cheerfully sank my teeth into – within days, I had the bowls and beds and litter tray and scratching post all in position (and all complementary to the décor – sheesh, I hadn’t changed
that
much), and the weekly Sainsbury’s order had been amended to include all the things a soon-to-be-spoiled kitten might need. It was my new baking substitute – a brand-new tactic to take my mind off The Bullshit in a week when I’d otherwise have been climbing-up-the-walls terrified about my final chemo.

‘Are you sure you’re okay with this?’ I asked P while cheerfully unpacking enough Whiskas to feed all the cats in south-west London.

‘Whatever makes you smile this much can’t be a bad thing,’ he said.

The next few pre-chemo days were spent explaining my kitten-decision to other friends. To them, me becoming a pet owner was such an about-turn that I feared they’d be expecting a totally different girl to walk into the pub the following spring. I could see it now – them asking me pop-quiz questions to confirm my identity and checking my handbag to see whether I still carried around a pen to correct any punctuation, spelling or grammar errors I came across. And so, ensuring my cap was doffed to the Old Me, I predictably chose a Beatles-referencing name for my kitten to make them realise that, pet aside, I was still me. Besides, Sgt Pepper is a far better name than Apostrophe.

CHAPTER 21

One step beyond

November 2008

I do like an excuse for a celebration, and here’s a corker for you: I HAVE FINISHED CHEMO. Feel free to break into applause.

Actually, the celebrations only lasted as long as Friday evening, when P and I counted down the last millilitres of drugs running through my drip, said our emotional goodbyes to the nurses (after plying them with home-made fairy cakes) and bid a final, fond fuck-off to the chemo room. When we got back to the car, we allowed ourselves five minutes of exhausted tears (as opposed to worried tears or downhearted tears or frightened tears – just as Eskimos have their numerous types of snow, cancer patients have their numerous types of crying) before taking a detour on the way home to pick up Sgt Pepper, adding a nice full stop to the end of our chemo nightmare. (Told you I should have named her after a punctuation mark.)

But as celebrations go, that was about it. And I can’t help feeling that it’s all a bit lacking. Granted, I’ve hardly been up to raising my arms in joy since Friday; I have, inevitably, been a bit on the rubbish side (to put it exceptionally mildly) and doing
congas
round the flat isn’t all that simple when you’re out-on-your-arse ill and feeling like you’ve been victim to a gangland kneecapping. I look like it, too. You bruise like a peach when you’re on chemo and, thanks to the addition of an eager-to-clamber-up-for-a-cuddle kitten, the bruises and scratches make it look like I’ve spent the past week self-harming.

Me, Tills, Busby, Weeza and the boys let off a few fireworks in the back garden the night before Chemo 6, which I think was a fitting ceremony. Or at least it was until a normally-volume-challenged neighbour (who thought it acceptable to sit in her garden all summer long holding court about her post-breastfeeding chafing nipples) cut the festivities short by pulling out the sleeping-baby excuse. I wish I’d have been quick enough to retaliate because I’m pretty certain that, in Excuses Top Trumps, cancer beats baby.

*

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE
to know how best to mark the end of chemo. Plant a tree? Unveil a plaque? Throw a party? Run naked down Oxford Street? There’s always the Louboutins, mind you, but right now I fear they’d buckle under the bulk of my bloated frame. But with radiotherapy just around the corner, I questioned whether or not it was even appropriate to mark the end of a shitty few months when there were numerous other struggles to contend with. And so, short of setting fire to the fence with a Catherine wheel and renting a motorhome for next year’s Glastonbury (or Middle-class-tonbury, as we soon renamed it), P and I bowed out of any commemorations and concentrated our efforts on the newest member of our family instead.

With hindsight, picking up Sgt Pepper on the way home from chemo might not have been the smartest idea we’ve
ever
had. Add a terrified kitten to a woozy cancer patient and a husband who doesn’t know which of the two to look after, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a rather bizarre evening. As soon as we got her home, we limited Sgt Pepper to the kitchen, figuring that it was best for her to get used to her new home room by room rather than all at once. And so we set ourselves the same boundaries for a few hours, sitting on the kitchen floor and watching baffled as a black-and-gold fuzzball ricocheted from one skirting board to another.

‘Is Lisa all right?’ Mum asked P in a phone call that night.

‘She’s on the kitchen floor.’

‘Oh my God, has she collapsed? Do you need us there?’

‘Oh nonono, she’s on the floor with the cat. It’s a bloody nightmare.’

‘Um, didn’t she ought to be in bed instead of the kitchen floor?’ enquired Mum.

‘Honestly, she’s okay at the moment. She can’t walk around much. But she wants to make sure Sgt Pepper settles in okay.’

‘And has she?’

‘Well, she pissed up the skirting board as soon we got her here and she’s been going pretty mental since.’

‘Riiight.’

‘We don’t know what we’re doing, Jane. I think we’ve made a terrible mistake.’

P and I wondered whether you could equate adopting a kitten with bringing home a new-born baby from hospital – the excitement of having her quickly turned to flat panic when we realised that neither of us knew what the hell to do with our new arrival. And, with the knowledge that Chemo 6’s ‘buggery bit’ would hit within the next twenty-four hours, we were desperate to make Sgt Pepper feel
comfortable
before I felt the opposite. In the end, we went against the keep-her-to-one room advice, and were pleased we did. Because the moment she caught sight of the living room, and the linen-lined basket we’d prepared for her, she immediately mellowed, melting into her pink blanket like a marshmallow in a chocolate fondue, after which I took my cue to do the same in my own bed.

And that, in a nutshell, was as much of a hooray as I enjoyed once the final dribble of chemo had dripped its way into my veins. I had half expected there to be an emancipatory Nicole Kidman moment when I walked out of the hospital that day; throwing my arms out wide and raising myself up on my tiptoes in release from the shackles of my ordeal (though I reckon even chemo has the torture-edge on being married to Tom Cruise). But, with a meagre few hours of smugness before my body was turned to bilge and my mind was turned to mud for the final time, P and I were reluctant to revel for long.

In all truth, though, there were more reasons than the chemo-ills for my lack of enthusiasm in terms of moving on. Because, in my final consultation with Glamorous Assistant before my treatment began that day, I shamed myself by asking her for a referral to a therapist – yet another thing that had featured on my list of Things I Said I’d Never Do.

‘I don’t like asking this,’ I told her, ‘but I think it’s necessary …’

‘Go on,’ she said, clasping her hands together and swivelling her chair a little more in my direction.

‘Well, a while back you mentioned that there was a therapist at the hospital, and I think—’

‘Not a problem,’ she interrupted, saving me the indignity of having to admit to anything other than complete mental
strength
. ‘I’ll refer you today, and I’m sure you’ll hear from them next week.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘It’s not that I’m depressed or anything, right? I just think I need some help to make sense of all of this.’

‘It’s perfectly normal, Lisa,’ she assured me. ‘Many patients do the same – there’s an awful lot to take in.’