There was a moment where she felt him inhale deeply. Then she felt the soft breeze on her shoulder as he blew the breath out and he pulled away. Definitely not like him. Ben was a man who liked to finish what he started.
‘Ben?’ She peered at him, holding his face in her palms. ‘You okay?’
He had a small, uncertain smile on that gorgeous face. The kind of smile he’d had when she’d told him about her father dying. And about the confusion and pain she’d felt when her parents had told her she was adopted – and how them telling her she’d been chosen was supposed to somehow help her get over discovering she’d been rejected by her birth mother. It hadn’t.
And like the time he’d told her he’d tried to save a jumper’s life on the Tube… and failed. It was a brave smile. He was being brave.
What the hell?
‘What’s the matter?’ Her heart started to thump hard and fast against her ribcage. Why would he do the whole smexy thing and then stop midway? So many things ran through her head, but none of them made sense. ‘Ben. What’s the matter? You’re scaring me.’
‘It’s okay. I mean…’ He took both of her hands in his and a sudden cool wind came from nowhere, lifting goosebumps onto her flesh, stripping the heat she’d felt inside and out. ‘Baby, it’s probably nothing, but…’
‘But, what?’ The thumping in her heart doubled and there was white noise in her head.
He let one of her hands drop and his fingers found their way to her left breast. The white noise stopped, time stopped, and his words seemed to echo through the silence. ‘Here. Here, baby. I’m sorry. I don’t know…’ She’d never seen her confident, decisive, soon-to-be husband so stuck for words, and that made her fear escalate a thousand times more. ‘There’s a lump.’
‘What do you mean? A lump? No. Don’t be silly. I know what my breasts are like.’ Small. Barely there. Just enough, Ben always said. More than a handful and all that…
But Charlotte could tell by the way he was looking, by the way he was pressing on her breast, that he was being far from silly.
She followed his fingers with her own. Eyes closed. Heart now completely stalled as her stomach rolled and rolled. She pressed the soft skin of her breast. At the edge of her fingertip she felt something. Maybe.
Something. She moved a half inch over.
There.
There, above her nipple. Towards the left. A hard, round lump.
He was staring at her as if she’d broken his heart… as if his heart was breaking. ‘Can you feel it?’
‘Yes.’ Yes. She crawled away from him, but fought the urge to fold herself into a fetal ball. ‘It’s probably nothing, right?’
‘Yeah.’ He didn’t look convinced. ‘It’s probably nothing. Just a…’ His shoulders heaved up and down and he curled his fingers and stroked them down her cheek. ‘Something and nothing. It’s probably just the way you’re made and we haven’t noticed it before.’
Because, it wasn’t there before. ‘Maybe it’s… I don’t know. I’m too young for it to be anything serious, right?’ Her fingers jabbed against the hard ridge on her breast again. Found the lump. It was something. Not nothing.
‘Sure thing. We’ll sort it. You’ll be fine.’ He pulled her towards him and wrapped her tight into his embrace. Hauled her against his chest and she let him stroke her back and rock her a little.
A lump. That could be… she couldn’t bring herself to think the word, never mind say it out loud. Scenarios ran through her head – images she’d seen on social media, shaved heads, pink ribbons.
Twenty-five is too young for all that. She wasn’t going to panic. She wasn’t going to be dramatic.
She felt the lump again.
No. She wasn’t going to be dramatic. She was going to suck it up and be brave and adult and sensible. ‘So, should we get on and do some painting?’
‘What? Now? After this?’ Ben’s eyes burned with compassion. And something else. Pity?
Please don’t look at me like that. Like I’m suddenly something less. ‘Yes, we were going to do some painting, right? So let’s do it. Life has to go on.’ She hauled herself from the bed, dragged her bra back on – taking one more moment to check. Yes. It was something. Something she didn’t want to think about or talk about or acknowledge, like her fear. Another hard lump, this time in her gut. She clenched her fists tight, squeezed her fingernails into her palms until the pain overrode her panic. Then she took three deep breaths, the way she did when she was just about to go onstage – harnessing the fear and the rapid beat of her heart. Breathing it out.
She was too young. It was nothing serious. I’ll be okay. I’ll be okay. I’ll be okay.
And then she went to put the kettle on, stepping over her paint-stained teaching top on the stairs, which had the handprint that seemed to mock her.
She could hear him on the phone, his voice starting out all authoritarian and police-procedure and then rapidly going downhill. ‘What do you mean, there’s nothing available until Tuesday? She’s going to have to wait over the weekend? Yes, she can see the trainee. Any bloody doctor – they’re all medically trained, right? Yes. She needs a check-up and a referral. Any bloody one will do just to write the damned form out.’
‘Ben!’ Charlotte ran through to the lounge and hissed at him, gestured at him to calm down.
He threw the phone onto the plastic-covered sofa, clearly harnessing his fear into anger and action. ‘I don’t believe this. They can’t see you until Tuesday. Three-forty.’
The panic gave over to numbness. She had a lump and she was going to have to wait to find out what it was. Her stomach contracted, twisted, and she had to be honest: she was scared. It might be serious. ‘But I can’t do three-forty. I have a class starting then and more all afternoon.’
‘Not now you don’t. Lissa can take them. Or phone Shelley. You’re going to see the doctor on Tuesday.’ He rifled through a pile of things on the floor and picked out his black work notebook, scribbled something onto it, then tore off a sheet and handed it to her. ‘Here, so we don’t forget. Dr Montford or something. Tuesday. We’ll get it sorted, love. It’ll be nothing. And if you don’t phone Shelley, I will.’
‘I will. I will.’ Her mind was racing, chasing words, images, feelings and grasping none of them.
‘Come and sit down, you look very pale.’ He took her by the shoulders and sat her down on the plastic-covered sofa. ‘Do you want to call your mum? Talk it through?’
Charlotte imagined her mum’s reaction; the fallen face, the probability of tears and pain, and her stomach recoiled in panic. The usual instinctive response of making sure she never did anything to upset her mother.
Anyway, there was no point bothering her when all they had was a possibility and a hunch. Nothing concrete. ‘No. No, let’s keep it between us two, shall we? No point in jumping the gun. It’ll be nothing, and then we’ll have upset her for no reason.’
Keeping secrets from her mum had never been easy – although she’d perfected it eventually. But now, two days later, Eileen was watching her with a concerned expression and a question in her eyes. Charlotte looked across her mother’s lovely, familiar, comfortable lounge and met her gaze, gave her a, hopefully, reassuring smile and tried to focus over the noisy chatter and giggling.
Planning