‘Following some thorough and most unpleasant investigations into my bowels, some doctor with sweaty hands and a twitchy face has decided I’ve got cancer. I don’t know why. I feel fine. Or as fine as I can hope to feel sixteen years shy of a century. Now, please don’t interrupt with your murmurs of condolence and sobs and sniffles. It’s hardly big news to be told I’m going to die in a year or so.’
‘Can they do anything?’ Kiko asked, face ashen.
‘They offered me chemo, commencing next week.’
‘Well, we’ll help with that, of course,’ Kiko said. ‘Drive you to the hospital, and make sure you have whatever you need.’
‘That’s awfully kind of you, but won’t be necessary.’ Frances pounded her stick on the floor a couple of times. Florence chuffed in response. ‘I do not intend to waste precious weeks being carted back and forth to hospital, vomiting into a cardboard basin and trembling with exhaustion, full of drips and wires and unnatural holes.
‘I’m not afraid of going to heaven. Big Mike has been waiting for me long enough, and quite frankly I’m getting tired of it down here. Why would I pump myself full of poison to try and delay that by a few months? I don’t have children to miss me. No chemotherapy. I will accept medication to ease unpleasant symptoms if and when it becomes necessary.’
‘But…’
‘For goodness’ sake!’ Frances barked. ‘No buts! I’ve made my decision.’
‘You think you’re immortal!’ Ashley wailed.
‘I am!’ Frances said. ‘But this body isn’t. And I’m more than ready for the new body that the Good Lord promised in the next life.’
What could we say? Frances had nursed her husband, Big Mike, through lung cancer. She knew what saying yes – or no – to treatment might mean.
‘I wish I’d not found out so I could avoid the sympathy and the appointments and the whispering. But there’s no point trying to keep a secret round here. And I might be needing a few favours later on, depending on how things pan out.
‘In the meantime, I plan to wear this body out completely before I go. To squeeze what life out of it I can. So, that is my challenge. Wearing it out before the cancer does. Next week I’ve signed up to go open-water swimming for starters.’
‘You could climb Mount Everest with me!’ Kiko blurted.
The rest of us nodded our agreement. Nobody in that room believed for one second that Kiko was going to climb Mount Everest.
‘Well, whatever you need. Just ask,’ Sarah said, tipping her head back in a pointless attempt to stop the tears spilling out. ‘And we’re really sorry, Frances. What shitty news.’
‘Yes.’ Frances nodded briskly. ‘Shitty. Literally and metaphorically, as Lucille would say.’
Lucille said nothing. Like the rest of us, any words were blocked by the lump of sadness and frustration and love clogging up her throat.
That was not the last time we would cry with Frances. But, boy, in the weeks to come we would laugh with her a whole lot more.
16
‘Stop it!’ I hummed with irritation, anger, humiliation and a smidgen of joy.
‘Excuse me?’ Mack’s face appeared, dark and foreboding in the forest shadows.
‘How many times do I have to tell you to stop this?’ I was flapping my arms around like a crazy woman. The kind of person who named the mice infesting her home.
‘I don’t particularly appreciate people hammering on my door in the evening and yelling at me.’ Mack looked past me into the night beyond and huffed out a long sigh. ‘I don’t like being ordered about, and I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. So… bye.’ He started to shut the door.
‘The fridge!’ I squawked. ‘I’ve seen your house now so you can’t pretend you have random spare household items lying around. I insist you take it back.’
Mack opened the door again, his brow wrinkled. I pointed at the tiny fridge, which I’d dragged over balanced on one of those ancient shopping trolleys on wheels.
‘Youinsist?’ he asked.
‘Yes! I’m not going to listen to your explanation about how this is somehow doing you a favour, blah blah blah. So, don’t even go there.’
‘Okay.’
‘I’m earning now. I can pay for the things I need myself. In my own good time. Perhaps I want to choose my own fridge.’
