The Vanishing Point

30

It’s a terribly irony, but it was thanks to her celebrity that Scarlett’s breast cancer diagnosis was so prompt. One of the daytime lifestyle shows asked her to front a piece about breast cancer awareness for younger women. We’d taken to meeting up for afternoon tea in one of the smart London hotels once a month, and she’d been excited to tell me about the latest assignment. ‘It’s like they’re really starting to take me seriously,’ she’d said. ‘I’m not just doing beauty tips and stuff about how to pull a bloke when you’re a mum. This is proper presenting.’ She was proud of herself and nobody with a heart would have rained on her parade by pointing out that choosing her might have had something to do with her perfectly splendid and completely natural bosom.

Scarlett’s job as presenter was to point out that, although the numbers were relatively small, young women were also susceptible to breast cancer. She’d be working with a specialist to demonstrate how to examine her breasts. They’d talk about the signs to look out for – not just a lump, but a change in texture or weight. And then they’d run through the tests that a woman would have to go through if anything anomalous was discovered. Scarlett had been swotting up on the subject, and our dainty sandwiches and scones were accompanied by a detailed description of mammograms, ultrasound and biopsy. As far as she was concerned, she had all the bases covered.

All the bases except the one that mattered, as it turned out. They had barely begun filming at some private clinic when things started to go awry. The specialist nurse who was showing Scarlett how to examine her breasts stopped abruptly in mid-sentence, a stricken look on her face. At first, Scarlett thought it was a wind-up – that the nurse was in cahoots with the crew, who were having a practical joke at her expense. It’s the sort of black humour that happens all the time in factual programming, or so I’ve heard.

Scarlett giggled. Of course she did, it was her default response to things she didn’t quite get. And she did genuinely think this was a joke. But in mid-giggle, it dawned on her that she was the only one laughing. The nurse looked shocked, the crew were simply silent, puzzled. Only the director spoke. ‘What’s the problem?’ he said, pushing past the camera and checking out the scene.

The nurse looked around wildly, as if she didn’t know the protocol for the situation. Then she got a grip and said, ‘Can we clear the room, please?’

The director was slower on the uptake than the rest of the crew who obediently started to shuffle out of the door. ‘We’re in the middle of filming – surely whatever it is can wait till we’ve got these shots?’

The nurse was tougher than him. Which, according to Scarlett, wasn’t hard. ‘You too, please,’ she said firmly, advancing on him.

‘This has all been agreed,’ he protested. ‘We’ve got this room all morning.’ She kept coming at him. He had no choice but to back up to the door. ‘I’m going to speak to the clinic director,’ he blustered on his way out. ‘You’re supposed to be cooperating with us.’

Through all this, Scarlett had been trying not to panic. ‘Soon as I realised it wasn’t a wind-up, I knew it was bad,’ she told me later. ‘The look on that nurse’s face and the way she was hustling the rest of them out of there, it wasn’t so she could get an autograph.’

As soon as the door closed behind the director, the nurse was back by Scarlett’s side, totally focused. ‘I didn’t mean to alarm you,’ she said. ‘But something’s not right here.’ She delicately palpated the underside of Scarlett’s left breast. ‘The skin texture feels wrong, and when I press a bit harder, I’m feeling a series of tiny hard lumps.’

‘Have I got cancer?’ Never one to beat about the bush.

‘I can’t say. But we need to do more investigation.’ The nurse patted Scarlett gently on the shoulder. ‘It’s turned out to be the best thing you could have done, this TV show.’

Since Scarlett was already in the right place, she was instantly subjected to a full battery of tests. Mammogram, ultrasound, MRI, needle biopsy – the works. The worst of it was that she was in such a state of shock that she agreed to have them film the whole bloody lot. They sent her home in a studio car still reeling. The first I knew about it was when Leanne rang me in a state of rage.

Two hours later, I felt like I’d been travelling in a time machine. Just like the worst days of Scarlett’s notoriety, the media pack was baying at the gates. Satellite TV vans, photographers with long lenses, reporters with thrusting mics – they were all there, thronged round the entrance. Nothing travels faster than bad news in the twenty-first century.

I thought I was actually going to have to mow a couple of them down in order to get through the gate, but they backed off at the last minute. Most of them didn’t have a clue who I was but they snapped me and my car and my snarl anyway, on the off-chance I might turn out to be somebody important.

I found the girls in the nursery. Scarlett was playing pirates with Jimmy, steering his pirate ship across the ocean of the carpet to the harbour of the walk-in wardrobe where he was defending his Viking castle against her forces with the full force of his lungs. Leanne was lying face down on the bed, hanging over the edge and lobbing plastic cannonballs at both of them. When I walked in, Scarlett flashed me a look of exquisite pain but managed somehow to continue her assault on the castle. As she crashed the ship into the castle walls, she pretended to run aground and capsize. ‘That’s me done for, Jimmy. You win.’ She crabbed across the floor and scooped him up, covering him in kisses as he wriggled and giggled. ‘Time for your bath now, my sweet poppet.’

‘No,’ he yelled in protest. ‘One more time. I want to be the pirate.’

She tickled his tummy and carried him towards the bathroom. ‘You can be a pirate in the bath, mister.’

He giggled and squirmed, face pink, shouting, ‘Dead man’s chest, dead man’s chest.’

‘I’ll see you downstairs in a bit,’ Scarlett said over her shoulder.

I followed Leanne to the kitchen. This wasn’t a Prosecco night. We went straight for the brandy. ‘What exactly have they said to her?’ I asked.

‘They won’t say for sure till they’ve got the test results back. But from the way they took it all dead serious, it’s not looking great.’

‘You don’t think they might have exaggerated a bit because it was being filmed?’

‘Not from what Scarlett said.’

We went out on to the patio so Leanne could smoke. Scarlett found us there a little later, huddled over our drinks in the twilight. She helped herself to a cigarette and hunkered down with us.

‘You don’t smoke,’ I said mildly.

‘I used to.’

‘Like a chimney,’ Leanne added helpfully.

‘I gave up before I auditioned for Goldfish Bowl. I knew it was going to be hard enough without craving a fag all the time.’ She inhaled with all the panache of a serious smoker who had never been away. ‘If I’ve got cancer already, I might as well have a fucking smoke.’

‘It’s not the recommended method for fighting it,’ I said.

‘I know that,’ she snapped. ‘Have you forgotten I’m not fucking stupid?’ She closed her eyes and breathed heavily through her nose. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not planning on taking it up again.’ She gave me a lopsided smile. ‘Not unless the diagnosis is terminal. Then I’m planning on devoting myself to everything that’s bad for me.’ She took another deep drag. ‘I just want to smoke tonight. Don’t get on my case, Steph. Not tonight.’

She leaned into me, head on my shoulder. I stroked her hair back from her face, feeling the damp of her tears on her cheek. ‘What are we going to do, Scarlett?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know about you, Steph, but I’m going to fucking fight every inch of the way.’

And fight was exactly what she did. The diagnosis was horrible – invasive lobular breast cancer. Something I’d never heard of before. I soon learned more about it than I ever wanted to know about any disease because of course there was going to be a book in Scarlett’s ‘battle for survival’. The presumption was that she would win, of course. But I knew that as far as the publisher was concerned, the outcome wasn’t the important thing. It was the tear-jerking quality of the story. Which of course would be written as a second epistle to Jimmy.

Naturally I had to be by her side every step of the way. I like to think she’d have wanted me there anyway, but I’m not sure I would have chosen such an intimate relationship with the process of her treatment.

My journey started at her first appointment with the specialist who would accompany her every step of the way. Simon Graham was the antithesis of the stereotypical consultant. No Savile Row suits, no expensive cologne, no golf bag in the boot. That day, he wore black jeans with a pink-and-white striped shirt, no tie. On his feet, beautifully tooled black leather cowboy boots. You could always hear Simon coming from a long way off.

He didn’t look old enough to be a consultant either. He had those perennially boyish looks that leave some men apparently stranded in their twenties for decades. Men like Alan Bennett, who look like overgrown children into their sixties and seventies. Men you have to get close to before you can see the fine lines and the silvering at the temples that reveal they’re not quite what they seem. Simon had thick dark hair whose style was apparently modelled on the early Beatles, when it was still reasonably short and mildly unruly. He had serious blue eyes behind the kind of steel-rimmed glasses that science teachers wear in 1950s American films. His mouth seemed always to be on the verge of a smile. When he gave in, he revealed a single dimple in his left cheek. He was a doctor made for reality TV. I wondered if he’d been chosen to supervise Scarlett’s case when a TV documentary had still been on the cards.

Oh yes. George had indeed tried to talk Scarlett into having a camera crew do a fly-on-the-wall film of her treatment. Now, you might say I didn’t have a moral leg to stand on, given how much money I stood to make out of telling Scar lett’s story, but even I baulked at that. The difference, as I pointed out to Scarlett, was that she’d have control over what appeared in the book. Whereas she’d be entirely at the mercy of the TV company when it came to what appeared on the screen.

I was far too tactful to point out that, if she didn’t make it, what went into the book would be up to me, not her. But she was smart enough to work that out for herself if she stopped to think about it.

George tried to persuade Scarlett that doing the documentary could be another way to raise funds for TOmorrow, but she wasn’t having it. ‘I don’t want to go through this treatment wondering about what people will think of me. If I need to cry or swear or howl like a fucking werewolf, I want to be able to let rip. I’m not having some poor sod break bad news to me three different ways because the crew missed it the first time. No way. I want to be in control of what happens and how it happens. Not the director, with his mind on the ratings rather than my health.’

I really hoped they hadn’t chosen Simon because he was photogenic. I hoped they’d picked him because he was the very best in his field. It was what Scarlett deserved.

That morning, he sat us down in his minimalist consulting room and introduced himself. ‘The first thing I want to do today is to explain the diagnosis we’ve arrived at and what that means for you. None of this will be easy, and I want you to know that my team are committed to helping you make a full recovery. Anything you want from us, any time of the day or night, you can speak to one of us.’ He pushed a card across the low coffee table. ‘There’s a dedicated mobile number there. There is always one of the team on the end of that phone. And my personal direct number is there too.’

Scarlett picked it up and tucked it in her pocket without glancing at it. ‘That’s what we’re paying for, right? Five-star treatment?’

Simon’s eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, as if he was squinting into the sun. ‘I promise. Whatever we can do for you, we will do for you.’

He was very good. I certainly felt reassured. But I wasn’t the one in the hard place.

‘Fine,’ Scarlett said. ‘Taken as read. So what actually is wrong with me?’

‘I won’t beat about the bush, Scarlett. Our tests indicate that you’ve got invasive lobular breast cancer.’

‘And what’s that when it’s at home?’ Scarlett crossed her legs and folded her hands over the upper knee. It was as if she was folding herself tightly together, physically preventing herself from coming apart.

‘You’ve got glands in your breasts that produce milk.’ He smiled. ‘You probably remember after you had your son, when your breasts were full of milk they felt quite lumpy?’

She nodded. ‘I used to think they felt like bags of pasta salad.’

‘That’s actually a very good way to put it,’ Simon said, managing to stay on the right side of patronising. ‘This cancer forms in those glands and it makes the structure of the breast swell up in patches. It can make the skin texture seem a bit peculiar as well. What you said about pasta? Most breast cancer takes the form of lump. It’s like a meatball in among the pasta, you can feel it quite easily. But this kind of cancer, it’s like a spoonful of bolognaise sauce stirred in. The lumps are small, they’re hard to pin down. Scarlett, if you hadn’t come in here to do the breast exam feature, you might not have discovered there was a problem until it had grown much more serious.’ He leaned forward earnestly, elbows on knees, hands clasped. ‘This is an unusual cancer, particularly in someone as young as you. It only accounts for about five per cent of all breast cancers. I’ve only seen it a few times, and in all of those cases, it was much more advanced. It’s my opinion that because we’ve made this diagnosis early, you have an excellent chance of a full recovery.’

‘What does that mean? “An excellent chance of a full recovery”?’ She sounded belligerent but I knew it was because she was afraid. I hoped he was experienced enough to understand that too.

‘OK. I’ll lay out the numbers for you. Five years after diagnosis, eighty-five per cent of women with this form of cancer are still alive.’ He paused, waiting for her response.

Scarlett didn’t look particularly delighted by the news. ‘That means fifteen per cent of them are dead,’ she said.

‘True. But you’ve got what’s classified as a Stage Two cancer. That puts you somewhere in the middle of the spectrum when we’re talking about seriousness.’

‘What are you going to do to me?’

Simon reached across the table and covered her clasped hands with his. ‘We’re going to work out a course of treatment that will give you the best possible chance to see your son grow up.’

That was when we both cried, me and Scarlett.