The Man I Loved Before: A completely gripping and heart-wrenching page turner

by Anna Mansell

  Then the next day, when he called again, and I clicked it silent before messaging that a big project had come in. I scrolled Amazon Music, making the playlist for today’s journey with Mum instead. I then answered his text later that day, because he had directly asked me if I was ignoring him. I said

  No, of course not, why would I ever?

  It was just that I’d been in a meeting with a potential new client (wow, business was really taking off!), then I was having an early night ahead of this morning. Again, I didn’t lie, I was in bed by half past eight. Except that was mainly so I could binge watch Killing Eve. But the truth is I still cringe every time I think of how bloody blatant I was at the park gate.

  Though I miss his voice too.

  ‘Right, come on then? We’re not going to get there hanging around here all morning. There you go.’ Mum passes me a leopard-print scarf, before running an identical one around her neck, then her hair, then her neck again, expertly tucking it in until she looks like a movie star.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m doing what you said. I’m Louise, you’re Thelma.’

  ‘What?’ Mum spins me around, scooping my hair into the scarf, whipping it round the same as hers. ‘Mum?’

  ‘Thelma and Louise. I know this is different. I mean, you’re not exactly meek, and we haven’t killed a man, but to hell with it,’ she says, which is shocking because Mum never swears. ‘Let’s road trip the crap out of this journey. You got the playlist?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘The Wanted?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But Little Mix?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Then come on, get these sunglasses on.’

  ‘But Petula doesn’t have a soft top.’

  ‘Open the sunroof! Let’s cruise to Basingstoke.’

  ‘It’s not quite the Grand Canyon…’

  ‘We’re not quite Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis.’

  She’s right. Nobody has ever mistaken me for either of those two women. I take a look at myself in the mirror, cats-eye glasses were never really my thing.

  Mum climbs into the car. I take my phone out, tapping a message to Mitch, I’ll call you later then join her.

  39

  The road trip was less Thelma and Louise and more silent movie as, by the time we’d got on to the M1, after indulging in a drive-through Starbucks, Mum was silently staring out of the window, hands gripped tightly round her skinny Frappuccino. I told her to go full fat. The nurses at Basingstoke had all said, go full fat the last time we were there. Something about replacing the lost energy with sugars to keep her going. She even turned down a Cherry Bakewell.

  In fact, the first thing to lift her mood was arriving at the hospital to realise that they’d assigned her to one of the rooms normally reserved for private patients and she was delighted at the prospect of an en suite on the NHS.

  I, was, as Sue promised, assigned the same room I’d stayed in before, which I know was supposed to be a gesture of care and familiarity ‘at this difficult time’, but walking over from the hospital to the relative apartments brought back all the sick feeling and darkness from when we were here before. When I’d whiled away her eight-hour operation by shopping for dungarees I’d always wanted and an upgrade to my mobile phone.

  I’d been feeling pretty depressed about it all, treating myself to some retail therapy whilst my heart basically went on pause until I knew she’d made it through. Four and half hours in, I got a phone call from her consultant explaining that they’d done the major part of the op. That they’d not been able to get all the cancer and that they’d had to fit her with a stoma. I joked that she’d be furious and would definitely want her money back, which I mainly said because the relief she was still alive made me want to cry and I was not about to do that in a Basingstoke shopping centre.

  I was optimistic at best. As soon as Mr Faux hung up, I fought through a student invasion of Primark’s casual-wear department so I could at the very least cry on a bench in the mall. And that’s what I did. Slumped in a leatherette sofa by a pop-up donut stand; stunned, exhausted and relieved… until I realised the music tannoy was playing ‘Everybody Hurts’ by R.E.M. and I felt like I was in a Richard Curtis romcom, so laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, then ate five donuts for a pound.

  No time for retail therapy this visit.

  Which is good. I’ve no cash. Not only is business not booming, as Mitch no doubt now mistakenly thinks, business is on its arse since one of my clients has taken her work back because her daughter wants a part-time job and this’ll be perfect. So I’m now down to two clients. One of which being the one with those blessed bank statements that need to be digitised. And the other on shaky ground after the husband of the husband-and-wife business team suggested he and I went out for a drink. Once upon a time, I might have gone because I had no moral compass. But this time I picked my phone up to tell Mitch, before remembering I was avoiding him. Which also reminds me that he texted again.

  Don’t want to call, in case you’re busy with your mum. But just wanted you to know I’m thinking of you. X

  I tap out a thank you and drop my phone in my bag. I need to focus. If only to stop me calling and asking him to come down and stay in the accommodation with me.

  ‘Right, Mum,’ I say, having dropped my bags off in my room and picked up a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich from the café. ‘What’s the plan?’ Mum had unpacked her bag into the patient station beside her bed. Three books sit on a to-be-read pile on the chair beside her. ‘How long are we going to be here for?’ I ask, flicking through them as Mum surveys the hospital TV channels.

  ‘Well, hopefully only tonight but you never know, and I wouldn’t want to get bored.’

  ‘No, well, that’s fair enough.’

  ‘I can leave whatever I don’t read,’ she says, landing on an old episode of Escape to the Country and I know for a fact I’ll be taking these to the communal coffee table cum patient library before we leave tomorrow.

  ‘I’d love to live in the country,’ she says as the presenter guides some house buyers through a Cotswold stone cottage in Castle Combe.

  ‘Bit of a stretch for the bucket list, that one,’ I say, reading the blurb on a Jackie Collins and wondering if Kate’s book group have read it. ‘Mind you, if we win the lottery, we can always do it then.’

  ‘Oh, I must put it on for this week—’ but the door swings open before she can finish her sentence and in walks Mr Faux.

  ‘Mrs Whitfield.’ His coat billows, his entourage hover behind him. ‘I’m sorry we have to see you again so soon.’ He perches on the side of Mum’s bed and she shuffles to one side for him, fixing her hair and smile. The effort, however, sets her cough off, which is probably not the look she was going for. Mr Faux waits patiently, watching her, until she’s popped a Halls Mentho-lyptus lozenge, which somehow, as usual, lets her breathe. She needs to survive just to keep Halls in business.

  ‘That cough’s pretty bad,’ he says, when she’s finished.

  ‘This? Oh, no. It’s fine. I had a cheese sandwich. Cheese always sets me off.’ She waves a tiny hand dismissively. I don’t remember the cheese sandwich.

  ‘She does cough a lot,’ I chip in, because she’s a bugger for playing everything down. ‘It’s definitely got worse.’

  Mr Faux nods, saying something I don’t understand to one of the women stood beside him. She makes a note in Mum’s paperwork.

  ‘So, your doctor thinks the symptoms have returned quite aggressively then.’ Mum nods and I stare at her because she never used the word aggressive with me and what does that even mean? ‘As we said before we did the debulking, your tumour markers are high. We anticipated that, whilst the disease ordinarily tends to be slow growing, it’s possible yours wouldn’t behave that way.’

  ‘What does that actually mean?’ I ask, immediately wishing I hadn’t because what if Mum doesn’t want to know. She’s staring at Mr Faux.

  ‘It m
eans that we need to do various scans and tests to establish what is actually happening before we can determine our next course of action. It means that…’ he takes a breath and I automatically brace myself against the high backed, NHS chair I’m wedged into ‘… it might be that there is no next course of action in terms of treatment or surgery. I am sorry but if the tests tell us what I think they will, then we may need to prepare for the likelihood that we’re looking at a care package for your symptom management.’

  Shit.

  His words hang heavy in the room. His entourage look poker-faced. He focuses wholly and entirely on Mum and I’m not sure if it’s Mr Faux in particular or just consultant surgeons in general, but they’re so perfunctory when delivering facts that take your breath away and I can’t process it. I don’t understand. This isn’t what we came here for. This isn’t the news we were waiting on. She’s going to be okay. I promised her.

  Mum fiddles with a bit of tissue she’s pulled out of her sleeve. Her hands visibly shake.

  ‘If you can’t do anything, how long have I got?’ she asks eventually, sitting up tall like she did the other day, and I now realise that’s her brave position. The one she adopts when she’s fixing her face to give or receive information that she or someone else isn’t going to like.

  He pauses. For a discouraging length of time. ‘We can’t say. Yours looks to be a particularly special case.’

  ‘You mean she’s being awkward?’ I laugh, trying to keep things light, which under the circumstances is messed up and I can’t believe I’m making jokes.

  Mr Faux smiles. ‘Humour is good. You need to keep your sense of humour.’

  ‘Oh’ – Mum looks from him to tissue to me – ‘we can manage that, can’t we, love?’ And I can tell by the pitch of her voice that she’s not as calm as she wants me to believe. I want to tell her she doesn’t have to be calm, or brave, or any of the other things she’s digging deep for, and yet I don’t want her to be anything else because if she loses it, I’m going to, too.

  ‘We can always manage humour. It’s our default. If you can’t laugh you’ve got…’ I can’t finish the sentence because nothing is what I’ll have when she’s gone.

  ‘So.’ She shoves the tissue back up her sleeve and clasps her hands. ‘Is it years? Months?’ She swallows. ‘Less?’

  Mr Faux moves up the bed slightly. He takes Mum’s hand. ‘At this point, it’s incredibly difficult to be accurate, Mrs Whitfield.’

  ‘Oh, come on now, please, call me Val.’

  He pats her hand. ‘Let’s do some tests, let’s try and mark the regrowth, let’s talk after that.’ Then he stands with a sharp intake of breath that puts an underline on the prognosis chat. ‘Okay, let me have a quick look at your belly, then Dr Wilkinson here will start the tests and by tomorrow morning we should have a better sense of where we’re at. We appreciate you coming in. Each time this disease acts differently, we can better understand it. You’re really helping our research.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it, Jem? We might as well be useful as we’re here. What with this en suite room and all you people’s time. Got to pay our way, eh, love?’ She shuffles down the bed so Mr Faux can do what he needs to and I get up, staring out of the window into a courtyard below because I can’t quite get my head around what just happened and I don’t want her to see the fight I’ve got going on with my tear ducts, and I suppose I want her to retain whatever modesty she has left.

  A pigeon pecks at crumbs it’s found beside a bench. I focus on its efforts, allowing my life to momentarily become nothing but me, the pigeon and somebody’s leftover lunch crumbs. I wonder if a house in the country comes with the care package?

  40

  Ten long minutes later the room falls quiet as Mr Faux shuts the door behind him. I lean against the wall, staring at the ground as Mum reaches for her Jackie Collins. She looks up and down the page as if trying to focus on where she’d got up to until she gives up, slamming it shut and says, ‘Bollocks.’

  Now, under any other circumstances I’d probably point out that she isn’t a swearer but as it is, and because I’ve lost words and sense and control, I simply nod.

  ‘In fact, Jem, I’d go as far as to say, fuckety bollocks.’

  We sit for what must only be a second but feels like forever because my head is full of questions and fears. What if this? How come that? I don’t know what to say, or where to start. I want to be sad, and angry, and shouty but it’s so surreal it doesn’t feel sad, or angry, or shouty, it feels… numb, strange, detached from reality, it feels unreal. I pick up the book that now rests in her lap. ‘You know, you’d better get on with some of that reading or you’ll die before you find out what happens.’

  Mum looks at me, her eyes fill with tears and I briefly wonder if that was a step too far, until she fights the emotion and puts on a mischievous grin. She slaps me, playfully. ‘They’ll have libraries in heaven,’ she says, sniffing everything back.

  I sniff too. ‘Assuming that’s where you end up.’

  ‘Where else? I am the very model of a heavenly woman. Besides, I reckon I could get Peter on my side dead easy.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Yeah! He’s a bloke.’ She wipes her eyes, shakes her head a little. ‘I’ll just flash my cleavage and stroll straight in.’

  I let out an involuntary cry laugh. ‘You do realise you’ve put women’s lib back a few hundred years.’

  ‘I’m dead. Don’t judge me.’

  We laugh, then fall back into a sudden heavy silence and once again I don’t think either of us know what to say.

  * * *

  The rest of the afternoon was a circus of nurses and tests. Mum was prodded and poked. She told everyone that she’d named her stoma Percy. She complained that she hadn’t had a decent curry since they’d lumbered her with him. She proudly showed off how well her nails were doing despite how poorly they kept telling her she was. She had bloods taken, the bit I really hate because I can’t stand needles and blood and so made my excuses to grab a peppermint tea at that point. When I got back, she was chatting up the cleaner. A northern bloke who laughed with her as he ran one of those dust-buster cloths around the electric cable casing that was supposed to look like a dado. ‘Your mum’s brilliant,’ he said to me as he left and she beamed, proudly. The tea trolley came round and Mum was delighted to learn she could eat, though a little less chuffed when she realised it was jacket potato and cheese but the jacket had been microwaved not baked, even though she can’t eat potato skin any more. She was, however, thrilled to learn they were still dishing out the jellies that she’d basically lived on when she was here the last time, and savoured every last mouthful like a kid enjoying a lolly.

  She booted me out at 6 p.m. because someone else had come in to palpate her belly and after that she wanted to settle down and watch the soaps. ‘Go on, love. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  So here I am. Sat in the hollow room that is tonight’s accommodation. It’s like the worst kind of student digs you can imagine. A cheap wardrobe and desk along one wall. A mirror above the desk that catches my reflection when I really don’t want it to. There’s a tiny bathroom to one corner and in the other, a single bed that has one of those plastic hospital mattresses, two flat pillows and a sheet. A sheet! If I’d remembered this fact, I’d have brought my duvet. What I wouldn’t give for some Forever Friends comfort right now.

  As if on cue, my phone rings out and I leap on it because talking to someone is preferable to falling into the kind of pit of despair the room invokes. ‘Hello?’ I drop to lie down on the bed, eyes closed off from the room.

  ‘Hey, it’s me.’

  The sound of Mitch’s voice doesn’t make me as nervous as the idea of it had become over these last few days. ‘Hey you.’

  ‘Are you okay? How’s your mum?’

  The question makes my heart lurch. ‘Causing mayhem. Chatting up cleaners. Enjoying the luxury of an en suite room.’

  ‘Wow, they p
ulled out all the stops for her.’

  ‘She’s very special, don’t you know?’

  ‘I do know.’

  I keep my eyes closed and imagine myself in my bedroom, chatting to him as I have done many times.

  ‘And you? How are you? Are you okay?’

  His question brings me brutally back to the room. ‘Am I okay?’ I sigh, shifting myself up on the bed. I see my reflection, all dark circles beneath the eyes, hollowed out cheeks that once were full and bright. I don’t know if I remember the last time they looked full and bright. A year ago? Two? Maybe a bit more. ‘I’m standing,’ I say because it’s about as much as I can manage. I pause, he doesn’t try to fill the space. ‘I hate it here,’ I whisper. ‘Like, I don’t want to seem ungrateful, I know it’s free and all that, but…’ A shadow appears as sun briefly lights up the room before presumably a cloud pitches it into early-evening grey. ‘If rooms were Harry Potter characters, this would be a Dementor. It literally sucks all life out of you, leaving the really bad bits stuck to the wall for the next guest to absorb. I feel like I’m carrying one hundred people’s fear and, frankly, I’ve enough of my own.’

  ‘What have they said?’

  ‘It’s not good.’

  ‘Oh, Jem.’

  I think back to our chat in her room. ‘She may not get to finish her latest Jackie Collins.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Never mind. It’s shit really. It’s all shit. But you know that.’

  ‘It is. And I do.’

  ‘Where are you?’ I ask, because I want to imagine it.

  ‘I’m at home. Just finished my tea.’

  ‘What did you have?’

  The phone rustles as, I guess, he’s moving about. ‘Pasta and pesto because I couldn’t decide what to have and, apparently, I cook like a student now.’

  My belly rumbles. ‘I’d love some pasta and pesto right now.’