The Vanishing Point

32

First there was the surgery. What Simon called ‘a wide local excision’, it was designed to leave Scarlett with as much breast tissue as possible. Because of the early diagnosis, he was confident they could cut away the cancerous tissue and clean margins around it, leaving the disease without a foothold in her body. As well as the cancer, they took the lymph node nearest that part of the breast. ‘We call this a sentinel node biopsy because it’s like an outpost for your immune system. If it’s clear, the chances are the rest of your body’s clear,’ he explained.

Scarlett coped well with the surgery. Her high level of physical fitness helped. Even after Jimmy’s birth, she’d continued to swim every day. She’d bought a cross trainer too, and ran five kilometres three or four times a week. Simon said apart from the cancer she was in great shape and encouraged her to get back on her regime as soon as possible.

But that wasn’t enough to keep the pain and fear at bay. She wasn’t on morphine for long, and I could see she was suffering. ‘You don’t have to put up with the pain,’ I said. ‘They’ll give you something to ease it. There’s no advantage in hurting.’

She grimaced. ‘The painkillers send me sky high. I don’t like drugs. Don’t like the way they make me feel. Never have. It’s bearable, Steph, trust me. Because I know I’m getting better, I can stand it. It won’t last long.’ She puffed out a breath. ‘And Simon says the surgery was successful. Now I just have to go through the chemo and watch my hair fall out.’

Which it did, in handfuls. After the first dose of chemo, a grim day when Scarlett endured an intravenous infusion of toxic drugs and felt increasingly lousy as the hours passed, her hair started to thin. By the time she’d undergone three sessions, there were clumps missing. It looked like she’d been in a particularly aggressive catfight.

Back at the hacienda that evening, she decided to take the bold step of shaving her head. But first she had to find a hat. Nothing in her wardrobe fitted the bill, so she dispatched Leanne down the A13 to the late-night shopping possibilities of Lakeside shopping centre.

By the time Leanne returned with bulging carrier bags, we had trimmed Scarlett’s hair to stubble. She held the heavy swatch in her hand, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘What do you think, Steph? Should I keep it? Tie it up in a ribbon to remind myself what I’ve lost?’

‘It’s up to you. But it’ll grow back, you know. With some people, their hair actually comes back thicker than before.’

She made a face. ‘You’re right.’ She crossed to the kitchen bin but just before she dumped the hair inside, she stopped herself. ‘What am I thinking?’ she said. ‘You need a picture of this. There’s a piece in this for somebody’s women’s page.’ Scarlett shook her head in disbelief. ‘Bloody hell, Steph, we’re losing our touch. Get the camera out.’

And so I did what I was told. I shot her stubbled head from every side, I shot her looking regretfully at the severed tail of hair in her hands, I shot her gleaming head after the electric razor had stripped it bare and finally I shot her trying on the array of hats Leanne had brought back.

‘I like this best,’ Scarlett announced, turning her head this way and that in front of her dressing-room mirror. It was a sage-green cloche with an upturned brim made from a light fleece. It suited her, especially when she smiled.

‘Good pick,’ Leanne said. ‘They do it in three or four different fabrics and about ten colours. I can go back tomorrow and do a total commando raid. You’ll have hats for all weather and all your different outfits.’

Scarlett caught my eye. ‘It’ll be a whole new me,’ she said, not quite managing to hide her sadness. ‘I’ll be like the queen, never seen out of the house without a hat.’

‘You’ll be a style icon,’ I said, trying to reassure her.

‘Maybe. But right now, this style icon needs to go to bed.’ She pulled the hat off, yawning. ‘Poor Jimmy’s going to freak out in the morning when he sees me.’

But he didn’t. He barely registered the change. I was taken aback. Like Scarlett, I’d expected him to be scared or upset or, at the very least, bewildered. I asked Simon about it when I saw him at the next chemo appointment. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘Kids respond to the person, not the appearance. I’ve seen cases where the parents were terrified of letting the child see the patient because they thought it would be a nightmarish experience. But that’s not how it works. Even when the cancer or the treatment causes quite serious disfigurement, the patient’s children seem not to be frightened or revolted. It’s an interesting demonstration of their ability to understand that what makes us who we are is what’s on the inside, not the outside.’ He gave a sad little smile. ‘One of the traits I wish we could hang on to into adulthood.’

Scarlett had clearly taken Simon’s point on board. We were driving back to Essex when she brought the conversation up again. ‘I’m glad Jimmy isn’t scared of my new look,’ she said.

‘He knows who you are. And he knows he loves you.’

‘He’s always known who I am. Not like the punters who’ve been fooled by Leanne all these years.’

‘People see what they expect to see,’ I said. ‘It’s why eyewitness evidence is notoriously unreliable in court. Our eyes see a glimpse of something and our brain fills in the rest of the picture based on what we remember and what we know. Punters in a club or at a fashion show or backstage at a gig expect to see Scarlett, so that’s what their brain tells them. You might have run into trouble if Joshu had started running off at the mouth and people started looking for incongruities. Because then they would have found them. But luckily that never came up.’

‘You wouldn’t need Joshu mouthing off now, though. Look at me. I’ve put weight on, my face looks like the full moon, and I’ve got no hair. I can’t have Leanne walking around looking like the old me, can I?’

I suppose I hadn’t really considered the question till Scarlett brought it up. ‘You mean it’s time for her to go back to being a brunette?’

Scarlett sighed. ‘For starters. Yeah. She needs a different haircut too. Short, something that makes the shape of her face look different. More than that, though. I think it might be time for her to bugger off to Spain.’

I was shocked by her casual delivery. Leanne had lived with her for a couple of years by that point. She’d picked up the pieces when Scarlett’s marriage collapsed. She’d played a crucial role in bringing up Jimmy. She’d supported her through the cancer diagnosis, not to mention the exhaustion and depression that came with the chemo. And now Scarlett was talking about sending her cousin into exile with as much emotion as she’d shown when she’d changed window cleaners the year before.

‘You don’t think you’re going to need her help getting through the rest of the treatment? She’s been a real rock.’

Scarlett reached into her bag and pulled out her water bottle. She took a long drink, then smacked her lips in satisfaction. ‘It’s not been as bad as I thought it was going to be,’ she said. ‘Yeah, I feel like shit after I’ve had a session, but I can cope with it. I’ve got Marina looking after the cooking and taking care of Jimmy and running the cleaners.’ She reached over and patted my thigh. ‘And you’ve been fantastic. I couldn’t have got through this without you, Steph. But the last thing I need at the moment is for somebody to see Leanne out and about in Tesco looking like a healthy version of me. All it takes is one happy snapper to post a pic on Twitter or a few seconds of video on YouTube and suddenly the red-tops’ll be asking all the wrong questions.’ She pulled her hat off and scratched her head. ‘I’m not up to handling that,’ she said. ‘No way.’

She had a point. And it wasn’t as if Leanne had any grounds for complaint. She’d done what was asked of her, no question about it. Even when she’d had a drink, even in the small hours when the freelances were pretending to be her friend, even in the ladies’ rooms in the VIP areas when the Colombian marching powder was on offer, she’d kept her mouth shut and never so much as hinted that there was a dark secret lurking in the closet.

But on the other side of the equation, she’d lived a life she could only have dreamed of when she was scraping along the bottom on a scummy Dublin satellite housing estate. She’d been housed and fed, she had money in her pocket for clothes and make-up and spa treatments. She’d been to every cool party and hip club that she fancied and, unlike most of the bimbos on the circuit, she hadn’t had to shag anyone to earn that access. The upside of the childcare she’d provided had been the chance to spend time with Jimmy, a kid who was generally more rewarding to be with than most toddlers.

And it wasn’t as if Scarlett was planning to cast her adrift without a bean. Leanne had already visited the villa in the Spanish hills that Scarlett had bought for her. Scarlett had organised the conversion of the pool house into a nail bar where she could do manicures, pedicures and reflexology. Leanne would walk into a home of her own with a readymade business literally at her fingertips. Really, she could have no grounds for complaint.

And yet. And yet . . . I couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t going to be smooth sailing. But Scarlett clearly shared none of my misgivings.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll give it a couple of weeks then tell her it’s time to start making plans.’

A lot can happen in a couple of weeks. By the time Scarlett’s notional deadline rolled around, getting rid of Leanne was the last thing on her mind.