A Mother’s Last Wish

Chapter 1

LOUISA

I’ve always been sure I’d know if something life changing was about to happen, even before it did.

Last month I watched a documentary about people who claim to have a sixth sense, and one woman described getting an intense pain at the precise moment her son’s car made impact with a tree hundreds of miles away.

When I turned to my husband and said, ‘That’s just like me,’ he laughed so hard he nearly choked on his beer.

It earned me the nickname of Psychic Sue for the rest of the weekend, despite the fact my name’s Louisa.

I suppose Tom might have a point, I’ve never had a premonition of that magnitude, but I can predict the weather.

It started when I was twenty-six and broke my big toe tripping up a kerb after a few too many drinks celebrating a promotion.

I still get a dull ache in it every time it’s going to rain and, if my toe is capable of insight like that, I’d definitely know if the results of the scan I’ve had were going to throw up anything serious.

But there’s nothing warning me of impending bad news, not even a twinge in my little finger.

The other symptoms I reeled off to my GP were all very common too: lack of energy, indigestion and a marked increase to the middle-aged spread I’d been hoping to stave off for a few more years.

I’m just feeling my age, that’s all, with the kind of nana-worthy complaint that a woman in her forties can apparently expect.

I’ll no doubt be given a list of things I can no longer eat.

So I might not mention to the doctor that the only reason Tom is with me is because we’re going straight out to eat after my appointment, to celebrate our anniversary.

It’s a lunch-time date, but that’s how we roll these days.

With two children under seven, we’re both too exhausted for evenings out, and this way we don’t have to worry about getting a babysitter.

It’s not a sacrifice that bothers me in the slightest.

I hate the cliché of what I’m about to say, but my children really are my whole world.

Even now I’m focused on them, rather than the appointment, wondering how much longer it’s going to be.

We should have gone in almost an hour ago, and at this rate I’m going to have to ask Sophie, one of the other mums I befriended on the school and nursery run, to pick them up if we still want to go out to celebrate.

We help each other out whenever the need arises, so I know Sophie won’t mind.

Despite that, I can feel my agitation building as the hands of the clock continue to move round, and Tom isn’t doing much to help.

‘You can go if you want to; we can always take a rain check on lunch.’ I whisper the words as he taps his fingers against his thigh, one by one, for what feels like the millionth time.

We’re sitting in a soulless hospital corridor, facing a row of innocuous-looking consulting room doors, and I’m starting to wish I hadn’t had the bright idea of trying to squeeze lunch in.

Tom doesn’t do well with waiting around.

He’s always been a go-getter, filled with boundless energy and enthusiasm.

It’s how he’s made such a success of his career.

You don’t become a groundbreaking journalist by sitting around contemplating your navel.

He’s willing to take the sort of risks that still make my breath lodge in my throat, even after almost fifteen years together, and he’s travelled to countries most people have never even heard of.

The problem is, somewhere along the line, he’s completely forgotten how to sit still.

When he tries, he’s like a caged animal, and right now it’s driving me mad.

‘You know I don’t like you coming to hospital appointments on your own.

Not after what Holly went through.’ Turning to look at me, Tom cups the side of my face with his hand, and for a moment I forget my irritation.

His eyes were the first thing I noticed all those years ago; they’re the colour of the sky on a summer’s day, and they’re every bit as striking as they were back then.

When he looks at me, he usually makes me feel as if I’m the only person who exists to him, but right now Tom can’t sit still for long enough.

He’s moved on to foot tapping, and I know without having to ask that he’s thinking about all the things he could be doing if he wasn’t here with me.

But he doesn’t want to be one of those men.

He’s thoughtful and kind, and the sort of husband I know for a fact that a lot of my friends wish they had.

He doesn’t need to explain why he feels the need to be here, I understand only too well, but he does it anyway.

‘We both know it’s going to be gallstones, but it still kills me that Holly was on her own when they told her she had breast cancer.’

‘Me too.’ I’ve never shaken off the guilt of that.

Holly’s my twin, and I should have been with her, but her husband was supposed to go, so I didn’t.

I had no idea he’d let her down at the last minute and left her to face the devastating news alone.

‘I know how traumatic that was for you both and how hard it is being back in the hospital where she had her treatment.

So, I’m here to distract you, and who wouldn’t be distracted by a prime hunk of a man like me.’

He’s laughing before the words are even out, and I can’t help joining in.

Tom’s laugh is one of my favourite sounds, and his restlessness is already forgiven.

His complete inability to take himself too seriously is one of the things I love most about him, and he has no idea just how attractive other people find him.

Tom’s mind is always on other stuff.

For him there are only really three things that matter: work, the children, and me.

I try not to think about what order he’d place those things in, because it doesn’t really matter.

I’m just forever grateful to be in his top three.

‘Just try not to distract the doctor too much with your overwhelming good looks.’ Shaking my head, I laugh again, but there’s a hollowness to the sound this time.

Ever since Holly’s diagnosis I’ve found it difficult to spend time in a hospital environment without dread creeping in.

It’s as though it’s an echo of the terror that I might lose my sister.

I was there with her for every treatment and I’m so grateful that it was a success, but I can still picture the fear and sadness etched on her face as she went through each stage.

I don’t want to think about that, so I focus on the children again instead.

Just picturing their faces lifts my mood.

‘What do you think the chances are of the kids eating anything if I have to ask Sophie to pick them up and give them some dinner?’

‘Not good.’ Tom shakes his head, and I know he’s right.

Stan, who’s four, is going through a phase of refusing to eat any food that isn’t beige, and for Flo, who is two years older, it’s all about texture.

If something hits her tongue that doesn’t feel right, she’s capable of projecting the offending item across the room in a way that would give that girl from The Exorcist a run for her money.

Tom says I spoil them, and I know he’s right, but I want them to be able to look back on the happiest childhood possible.

If that means cooking three different dinners every evening, that’s what I’m going to do.

I don’t think Tom always understands and I’m not sure a person like him, whose childhood was so opposite to mine, ever really could.

He was the centre of his parents’ existence, a late baby born after they’d given up hope of it ever happening.

His argument that he always ate the same thing as his parents might be more persuasive if I didn’t know that they chose to eat the things their son enjoyed.

He didn’t have to slot into their lives, or way of doing things, because they built their world around him.

Of course I’ve told him about my childhood, and the fact that more often than not Holly and I would cook for ourselves.

On the occasions when one of our parents did cook, we had to eat what we were given, or there’d be trouble.

Even now I can’t look at a plate of spaghetti without picturing it being hurled against the wall, the sound of the plate shattering almost ringing in my ears at the memory, just because I’d prodded at the sauce with my fork and asked if there were mushrooms in it.

I’d been almost certain that my mum, Mandy, was going to hit me at the time.

She had a vicious temper when she was drinking and her eyes had blazed as she looked at me, her hand drawing back in readiness to slap me.

‘Look what you made me do, you little?—’

‘It’s okay Mum, I’ll clear it up.’ Holly had stepped in between us.

We couldn’t have been more than about ten, because we were still at primary school, but she put herself in the line of fire to save me.

She risked getting hit and while it had happened to us both before, this time her quiet calm seemed to quell Mum’s temper, rather than inflame it further.

Mum had just scowled at me instead.

‘Don’t think I’m making you anything else, you ungrateful little shit.’ She’d turned then and slammed out.

I’d known where she was going, straight downstairs to the pub she ran with my father.

An environment that created the perfect storm for two functioning alcoholics, or at least they gave a good impression of functioning for their customers.

Propping up the bar and acting the jovial hosts was the easy part for them, it was dealing with their twin daughters that seemed to push them over the edge.

Dad had always been a drinker and, although that resulted in some less-than-textbook parenting from him too, he was more predictable.

Alcohol didn’t give him the kind of temper it gave my mother, so he was neglectful but never abusive.

Sadly, they did a good enough job of functioning to fly under the radar, which meant Holly and I were left in their care when we’d have been much safer with my father’s parents, our beloved Nan and Gramps.

Looking back, the strangest part is that Holly and I were protective of Mum and Dad, helping them cover up their shortcomings and wanting to stay with them, despite their behaviour.

I think we always hoped they’d change one day, but they never did.

I know my grandparents were riddled with guilt when they finally discovered the full extent of what we’d been through.

Nan told me before she died that she’d been certain Mum was going to be good for Dad.

They’d been worried about his drinking for a couple of years before he met her, and they’d tried to help him, but he’d always insisted he was in control of the alcohol, rather than the other way around.

Mum had confided in Nan, when she and Dad first got together, that she was sure she could change him.

Instead, she was the one who had changed and started matching my father drink for drink.

Nan said she thought Mum probably had postnatal depression when her drinking first started and that it wasn’t picked up back then the way it would be now.

Giving birth had brought the demons of her own difficult childhood to the fore.

She’d lost her parents, who’d had problems with alcohol too, without ever having resolved the issues between them.

I wonder now if that’s why she was attracted to Dad in the first place, seeing him as her second chance to save someone after being unable to save her parents.

But it wasn’t to be, and Mum developed a habit of self-medicating.

The two of them enabling one another, whitewashing over the resulting behaviour as if it was nothing.

Unlike Dad, who to this day still doesn’t think he’s got a problem, Mum has made several attempts to quit drinking in the past, but they never last.

The day after an outburst, like the one with the spaghetti, she would always apologise, promising it would never happen again.

Until the next time.

It was the narrative of mine and Holly’s childhood, and I thank God every day that we had one another.

It saved us both.

It’s made us incredibly close too, and she understands my parenting decisions way more than Tom ever really will.

He knows all the stories, but he didn’t live them, so he could never hope to fully comprehend what that felt like, and I don’t try to make him.

I just put up with an occasional eyeroll or comment about over-indulgent parents not always being the best thing for kids instead.

It might be true that there’s a line you can cross where you do too much for your children, but if there’s such a thing as making them too great a priority, I know which side of that line I’d rather be on.

All I want to do is be there for them when they need me, including when they finish school today.

Come on, just call my name already.

Looking around I realise how selfish I am for being impatient.

There are four consultants seeing patients for different clinics, all using the same waiting area.

And it’s obvious some of the other people waiting would give anything to have problems as minor as mine.

There’s a man in a wheelchair at the far end of the corridor, with the kind of hollowed-out cheeks and sunken features that tell their own story.

He’s wearing a bright yellow jumper, which only emphasises the greyness of his skin and guilt washes over me.

I’m wasting the consultant’s time.

Someone could email me a list of the foods I need to avoid or let me know if my name is going on a waiting list for gallbladder surgery.

There are so many patients who need the doctor’s time far more than I do.

I’m fidgeting almost as much as Tom now, barely fighting the urge to forgo my appointment altogether if it helps someone else get seen sooner.

Someone who’s actually ill.

It’s only the thought of Tom’s reaction that’s stopping me.

What happened with Holly seems to have given him a bit of health anxiety and my attempts to put off the scan did not go down well, so I went ahead with it.

When I got a call saying one of the consultants, Mr Whitelaw, wanted to see me about the results, my heart sank. I haven’t got time to be laid up after surgery, even for a few days. Tom’s job takes him away a lot of the time, and there are big changes ahead for the children’s schooling. So if this can be managed with diet, I’ll give that a go first, even if it means giving up all my favourite food.

Looking up, I catch the eye of the woman who’s sitting next to the man in the yellow jumper and another wave of guilt prickles my skin.

She looks exhausted, and incredibly sad.

Without knowing anything about him, it’s obvious the man in the yellow jumper has had to face unimaginable things, and that the people who love him have too.

I don’t know if the woman is his partner, a relative, or a friend.

But it’s clear from the way she adjusts his position in the wheelchair to make him more comfortable and helps him take small sips of water from a paper cup, that she cares for him very much.

Everyone needs someone like that, but when I catch the woman’s eye again, it hits me how hard it must be to face losing the person you love, and I remind myself of just how much I have to be grateful for.

Although it’s not something I’ve ever taken for granted, especially after Holly’s diagnosis.

Ever since Stan and Flo came along, the idea of mine and Tom’s mortality has been something I’ve tried not to think about too much, but his job doesn’t make that easy.

The thought of what it might do to my babies not to have their dad around has stopped me sleeping far more times than I can count, especially when he’s doing an investigative piece on people known for employing extremely violent tactics.

I can’t imagine a life without Tom, and I don’t want to, but in the run up to our wedding he forced me to talk about it and to make the promise that if his job ever ended up making him pay the ultimate price, I’d allow myself to eventually move on and meet someone else.

My attempts to write it off as something that would never happen just seemed to upset him and he even said he didn’t know if we could get married if I couldn’t promise him that.

The idea of me and any kids we might have being on our own forever, was just too much for him.

In the end, I agreed just to give him the peace of mind it was obvious he needed.

The irony is, when I asked him to make me the same promise, he shook his head.

‘You’re not going anywhere; I couldn’t be me without you.’ He kissed me then, and I knew he meant it.

Tom’s a brilliant man, but I’ve always been the glue that holds everything together while he’s away, and I’m the one who organises whatever he needs for his latest adventure.

Everything from visas to blister plasters, his head is always too caught up with the chase for the story.

He adores the children, but he wouldn’t have the first clue where to start if it was all suddenly to fall to him.

We’re a team, but I need to be on top form to keep family life running the way it’s supposed to.

There are probably lots of people who think our set-up is old fashioned, but it works for us, and it makes us both happy, which in my book must mean it’s the best thing for the kids too.

The truth is, it’s never just down to me, even when Tom’s away.

With Holly taking such an active role in our lives, we’ve always been a team of three.

Thankfully he’s never seemed to resent the fact that Holly and I come as a pair, perhaps because it takes the burden of guilt off him when he’s away so much, but they’ve always got on incredibly well too.

Today, though, it’s just the two of us.

‘Louisa, do come in.

I’m very sorry to have kept you waiting for so long.’ Mr Whitelaw is staring at me as I look up, and I can’t help wondering why he’s only using my first name, as if we’re old friends.

We’ve never met before, yet he sounds almost avuncular, and the expression on his face is sympathetic.

It’s only as I walk towards him that I see the details written on the name plate on the outside of his door.

Mr Whitelaw, Hepatobiliary Surgeon

I glance at Tom, wanting to ask him what hepatobiliary means, but he doesn’t seem to have seen the sign.

When I got the call asking me to come in to see Mr Whitelaw, I didn’t think to ask what his specialism was.

The woman on the phone didn’t seem to know much.

The information that had come with the invitation to attend the scan mentioned something to do with checking liver function.

Hepatobiliary sounds a bit like hepatitis, which I know has something to do with the liver and that at least one form of the disease can be pretty serious.

The thought makes goosepimples break out all over my skin and it’s as if the atmosphere has completely changed, the way it does when the sun goes behind the clouds and there’s a sudden drastic drop in temperature.

When I turn to look at Tom to see whether he’s realised this might be more serious than we thought, he’s smiling.

As I look at Mr Whitelaw again, my breath catches in my throat.

I still have no idea what hepatobiliary means, but I’ve just seen a word I understand only too well.

The woman standing next to Mr Whitelaw is wearing a dark blue uniform, and the sight of her name badge makes nausea swirl in my stomach.

The words ‘Macmillan Cancer Support’ are written in green above her name, spelling out her role and why she’s here.

I’ve had regular mammograms ever since Holly was diagnosed with breast cancer and I’ve always been clear.

Surely the kind of scan I had couldn’t pick that up anyway.

There must be some kind of mistake.

I can’t need a cancer support nurse, I’ve got two young children.

Inside I’m screaming at her to go away, but the scream never leaves my head and Tom’s still smiling.

He has no idea what’s coming and, if I just turn around, I can break into a run and get back to the car where the words I know Mr Whitelaw is about to say can’t reach me.

If I don’t hear them, they can’t be true.

Yet, somehow, when Tom takes my hand, I find myself following him further into the room.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Nothing life changing can happen here, it looks so ordinary.

There are photographs of Mr Whitelaw’s family in a heavy wooden frame on his desk; three children, two parents, and a black Labrador.

It’s just the sort of dog Flo would go crazy over.

She’s been begging us to get one almost from the moment she could talk, and I’ve always said we’ll do it one day, when the time is right.

I make myself a promise as I hold my breath, waiting for Mr Whitelaw to speak.

If he says I’m okay, or that this is all just a blip, something that can be easily sorted, then we’ll get a dog.

If this moment has to be life changing, I’m going to make sure it’s for all the right reasons.

There’ll be no more putting things off until ‘one day’ any more.

All I want him to say is that whatever is wrong is an easy fix, but it feels like my heart might stop as Mr Whitelaw gestures towards the seats opposite his desk.

‘Please sit down, Louisa.

Is this your husband?’ When I nod in response, some of the tightness in Mr Whitelaw’s expression relaxes, but it has the opposite effect on the muscles in my jaw, which suddenly feel as if they might snap.

‘It’s good you’ve got someone with you.

This is Mira, one of the nurses from the Macmillan team.’

I don’t even turn my head as he indicates the nurse now sitting to his left.

I haven’t gripped Tom’s hand this hard since I gave birth to Stan.

‘Has the scan shown something serious?’ Even as I say the words, I’m willing Mr Whitelaw to shake his head.

All it would take is a very slight movement from the left to the right and back again, but instead he draws in a breath so deep it makes it feel as though he’s stolen every bit of oxygen in the room.

‘I’m so sorry.

It’s cancer.’

The scream that’s been trapped inside my head from the moment I spotted the nurse comes out as a shout, a single word ‘No!’ bouncing off the walls with the force of the denial.

Except it’s not coming from me, it’s Tom who’s shouting and, when I turn to look at him, I know what he’s thinking, because I’m thinking it too.

This is the worst possible thing Mr Whitelaw could have said.

Except when my eyes meet the doctor’s again, I realise he’s nowhere near finished yet.