Going out, trailing back down the misery-colored corridor, she passed Polly. She was sitting on a gurney, chatting to a cleaner who was leaning on a mop, laughing. “Annie!” she cried, jumping down. “We have to stop meeting like this.”
Annie swallowed her tears. “How come you’re here again?”
“Well, basically the MRI machine is massively overstretched, so I sort of hang about most days and wait for a gap so I can have my scan.” Polly must have seen her face. “Oh, Annie! Are you okay? Is it your mum? Come here, sit down.”
Annie collapsed onto a waiting room chair, noticing the rip in the plastic covering. Spilling its guts, just like she felt. “She—she’s having a bad day. Doesn’t know who I am. She got very upset—they had to restrain her.”
“I’m so sorry. That must be awful.”
There was this woman, this virtual stranger with more than enough problems of her own, patting Annie’s arm. As if she really cared. How did she manage that? Annie took in a bubbly breath. There has to be more than this. Something was clearly working for Polly, whatever it was. And she was too tired to fight now, too tired to hold out against the one corner of color and positivity in her life.
“That hundred-days idea?” she heard herself say. “I’ll do it. I mean, if you want me to.”
“Of course I do. We both have to keep coming here...we may as well try to enjoy it.”
Annie couldn’t even begin to imagine how she’d ever enjoy this—how she’d ever not hate every second of it. How she’d find anything at all to be happy about in her life. But as with the drugs trial, when there was no other option, you had to do something rather than nothing. “Okay,” she said. “I’m in. Just as long as I don’t have to swim with dolphins.”
“You don’t want to swim with dolphins?”
Annie shuddered. “I can’t think of anything worse.”
“But dolphins! Everyone loves them.”
“I don’t. They always look like they’re planning something. Nothing that smiles that much can be trusted.”
Polly burst out laughing. “Oh, Annie, you’re hilarious. I promise, not a sea creature in sight. Why don’t you come over to mine on Saturday—we can compare our lists for the week, okay?”
It was years since Annie had been around to someone’s house. Since she’d made a new friend, or socialized at all. The idea was terrifying. But she made herself say, “Okay. I’ll be there.”
DAY 5
Get active Annie stood over her chest of drawers, holding the swimsuit she’d unearthed. Tastefully substantial, in black-and-white stripes, she’d bought it for a holiday in Greece with Mike. It was supposed to be their last just the two of them, and in a way it had been—they’d never gone on holiday together again, and now never would. She held it to her briefly. The smell of salt and sun cream lingered in the fabric, reminding her of when she’d been happy. Turquoise seas and the whisper of the ceiling fan and waking to squares of sunlight on the wooden floor.
It would have been so easy to put it back, give up on the cold public pool with its grubby changing rooms, but she wanted to have something to tell Polly the next day. And so she packed the suit into a bag, along with a towel and an old-lady swim cap covered in plastic flowers. And when she blundered into the pool at lunchtime, she found herself smiling at an over-sixties water aerobics club attired in similar headgear, and they waved at her, and she waved back shyly, wondering if she might be able to take her mother to something like that one day, if the trial worked. Realizing that without her even knowing it, hope had somehow lodged itself in her heart again after years of being AWOL.
DAY 6
Celebrate your body
“Oh, God! Sorry, Annie, I forgot you were coming.”
Annie blinked at Polly, who was standing in the doorway of the beautiful three-story house she’d said to come around to. Her jaw fell open. “Um, should I go?”
“No, no, come on through. I’m really sorry. It’s just Bob, you see. Makes me forgetful.”
Annie stared at the floor, which was tiled in a blue-and-white mosaic. Did Polly realize? Maybe this was a symptom of the cancer. “Um, are your family in?” She knew this was Polly’s parents’ house, though not why Polly was living there.
“No, they’re all out.”
Thank God for that. “Um, Polly...”
“Do you want tea or something?”
“Thanks, but did you—?”
Polly spun, her bare feet padding on the tiles. “Did I what?”
“You’re, uh...” Annie could only gesture.
Polly looked down. “Oh. I totally forgot! Ha-ha. I bet the neighbors got an eyeful.” So even though she realized she was entirely naked, she wasn’t planning to put any clothes on. Annie felt her shoulder blades constrict.
But when they went through into the kitchen, she realized what was going on, as an older woman with glowing white hair was there holding a camera. “I’m having my picture drawn,” explained Polly. “In the buff. Just something I always wanted, and I’m never going to look any better than this.” As it was she was marked all over by her treatment, bruises like inky fingerprints crawling up her legs and arms. She was so thin, too, every vein and bone standing out under skin stretched paper-thin.
Annie had been ushered into a large light-filled room, half conservatory and half kitchen, a glimpse of the Thames visible from the large back garden. An ache began to take hold of her heart. This was her dream kitchen, the one she’d read about in design magazines, where she’d pictured her children running barefoot, stealing fruit from the bowl, bringing her their drawings, their bumps to kiss better. Now she would never have that.
“We’re finished, dear, if you want to put your clothes on,” said the artist, who Polly introduced as Theresa.
“Seems a shame. It’s really quite freeing.” Polly spread her arms, making her breasts jiggle. Annie averted her eyes. “Hey, Annie, you should get one done, too. My treat.”
“What?”
“Get a picture. Since Theresa’s here and all. She works from photographs, see.” Theresa was nodding encouragingly.
“I really don’t think—”
“Come on, Annie! To cross the ocean, you need to lose sight of the shore! Do something every day that scares you!”
Oh, God, these inspirational sayings were going to be the end of her. “No. Sorry. I really can’t.” Annie could hear the anxiety in her own voice, which surely was a bit pathetic when Polly was actually dying? When she’d had needles poked into her spine, cameras peering inside her, a probe in her brain even, how could Annie get upset by the idea of taking her clothes off in front of people?
“Oh, come on,” Polly coaxed. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“I just can’t,” she said again. “I’m sorry.” It was years since she’d undressed in front of anyone. Even at the hospital they were tactful about it, left you behind a screen when you had your examinations, waited for you to cover yourself with a blanket. They were good about discretion there—tissues and slipping away as you wept, inconsolable, in the dingy little rooms where your heart had broken.