But that was a subject Cally and Jack didn’t agree on one hundred per cent; that a pet would be good for the boys. Cally thought it was a natural way to teach them responsibility, and gentleness, instead of the rough and tumble that was their normal life, but Jack didn’t agree. He saw pets as tying, and she had to agree that a pet would have given them an extra problem to deal with before they could come away to the seaside.
‘And me!’ Three-year-old Riley always wanted whatever it was his older brother had. Once, he’d had a meltdown because Noah needed medicine for a stomach upset while Riley had nothing wrong with him. It had taken ages to quieten him down.
‘No. Sorry,’ Jack said. ‘Not a cat. I’m allergic to them, I’m afraid.’
Desperate not to risk a meltdown from Riley over having a pet cat – or not in this case – Cally came up with an idea.
‘Shall we go down to the beach? Now? We can come back and make toast in the chalet afterwards.’
‘Yes!’ the boys said in unison.
‘We’ll go along to the little tea station and buy buckets and spades. And maybe some flags for the tops of sandcastles if they have them…’
Cally’s voice trailed away. She remembered, as a child, that when her Aunt Frances took her on holiday with her cousins, they always bought a new bucket and spade each season and had sandcastle-building competitions, and always there would be flags on the top as well as shells and bird feathers. If worst came to worst with the lump Cally had found, she’d be making memories for her boys on this holiday, wouldn’t she? Once they started school proper she wouldn’t be able to take them out of school for holidays. A lump caught in her throat at the thought she might die before they even started school proper at five years old.
‘You okay?’ Jack asked. He put an arm around her shoulder but didn’t pull her close as he usually did. Cally felt herself still under his touch and hated herself for it. But how could she tell Jack about the lump she’d found? Now? Right at this minute? She couldn’t. She’d just promised the boys a trip to the beach, hadn’t she?
To make amends for the chill she knew she was conveying to Jack, she reached up and touched his hand.
‘I’m fine. Why?’
‘Well, I’ve noticed you’ve begun to say something and then you stop. You did it more than a few times at home for a few weeks before we came away. I was going to ask you about it, but then Noah gave us that little panic.’
‘He did, didn’t he? All well again now.’
And I want to be able to say those words about myself soon – all well again. In the middle of the night when Cally woke, her mind racing with thoughts for the future, for all their futures, those were the words she wanted to believe most. Wee-small-hours thinking was so bad for the soul, she knew that, but she couldn’t stop herself.
‘But are you?’ Jack asked. ‘Well, I mean.’
He drew Cally to him then and she so wanted to say that no, she wasn’t well, she’d found a lump and she was too, too scared of what it might mean; she might have cancer, she might have to go through horrid treatments, and she might still die at the end of it. But there were two little boys waiting for her to fulfil a promise she’d just made.
‘I’ve said. I’m fine, Jack.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘Honest’.
‘I hope so,’ Jack said. ‘We’ll talk about it later, eh? Only I’m worried. It’s like you forget what it is you’re going to say sometimes.’
‘Do I? I…’
‘There you go,’ Jack said. ‘You’re doing it again.’
‘Just tired,’ Cally said. ‘It’s been manic at the salon. So many went sick with that norovirus. We were lucky to miss it. I did double shifts, remember?’
Cally loved her work as a hairdresser. She loved cutting best of all. ‘Anyone can gild a lily,’ was what Hannah, her tutor, had told her, ‘but a lily is beautiful without the gilding. You have to have a solid foundation to work on and a good cut is paramount.’ So many clients asked for her now that she rarely did colours or perms these days.
‘Hmm,’ Jack said, as though he didn’t quite believe it was just tiredness and overwork. ‘You would tell me if…?’ It was Jack’s turn for his voice to trail away, as though he couldn’t remember what it was he was going to say, or didn’t want to say what should be coming next. ‘If anything was wrong? Whatever sort of wrong it might be?’
Cally pressed her lips together and nodded. She couldn’t tell Jack what was bothering her, not yet. Not on the first day. They had to have some good and happy days first. She had to make memories on this holiday for Jack as well as the boys. And she and Jack needed to get back to their close and loving relationship, and it was her fault cracks had begun to appear – not because she’d found the lump but the way she was dealing with it. She’d lost count of the times Jack had come up behind her when she’d been online searching for information, and she’d closed down the site with a stab of the exit icon.
‘Cally?’ Jack had said the first time he’d walked into the spare bedroom they’d set up as an office and eventual homework space for the boys. ‘What’s that you don’t want me to see, eh? Shopping channel? Hmm?’
And Cally had lied and said, ‘Something like that,’ because wasn’t she shopping around for information?
But Jack was less jokey about it after the fourth time – the time she’d had an email from someone she’d contacted on a cancer support chat site; someone who was in the same position she was right now. A man. Tony. Up until then it hadn’t really crossed Cally’s mind that men could get breast cancer too. Cally and Tony had exchanged a few emails and she’d been reading the latest from him where he’d said he wished he hadn’t told as many people his fears in the beginning because they’d immediately begun to treat him as though he were made of eggshells and would shatter at any moment. He’d urged Cally to think about when, and who, she told.
‘You’re getting a lot of emails these days,’ Jack had said, coming up behind her. He sounded more concerned than accusatory – as though he suspected something was up but didn’t know what.
But Cally had been more alert by then. She’d heard him coming and exited Tony’s email, and it was one from an old school friend, Ruthie, that filled the screen as he came to stand behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders.
‘Won’t be a moment. Ruthie’s having another crisis. Someone called Mark wants to take her to meet his mother. Well, you know Ruthie, she’s never going to commit!’
‘Spare me!’ Jack had laughed. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, shall I? Tea or coffee?’
‘Hot chocolate,’ Cally said. She needed the comfort of that at the moment. She’d reply to Ruthie’s email tomorrow. And Tony’s. And then, maybe, she’d share her fears with Jack. Maybe.
‘Come on, boys,’ Cally said, struggling to make her voice sound bright and enthusiastic. She’d missed an opportunity to tell Jack before coming away and now she was beginning to regret that. She could have been starting treatment, if treatment was what was needed, couldn’t she? But Jack had sprung the surprise of the holiday and it would have been like throwing his kind gesture back in his face to have told him then. He needed a holiday as much as she did. ‘Last one on the beach gets chucked in the water!’
Cally found she couldn’t tell Jack about the lump on the second or third day either. Every morning when she showered, Cally felt tentatively for the lump, praying it had gone or at the very least reduced in size. It hadn’t. The first few days after she’d discovered it, she’d felt it at least twenty times a day – every time she went to the loo so she’d know, with the door locked, she couldn’t be interrupted, and each night in bed when she was sure Jack had fallen asleep beside her. But now, on holiday, she only felt for it once a day. It was reducing the horror a little not to be constantly