Shadow in Tiger Country. Louise Arthur

in the waiting room in Carcassonne, I was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness and a feeling of stupidity. OK, Caitlin was all right, but what on earth would we have done if Louise had been taken ill, if something had popped in her head and she’d needed immediate help? I determined that that was it. I just wanted to get my family home as quickly as possible. We stayed in the house one night longer and then started our journey home. We took it nice and slowly, staying in lovely hotels, eating in only the best restaurants and going to see all the castles and beauty spots we wanted to. But it felt good to be heading home. This was a holiday too far and we would never again go away. We popped into Disneyland Paris for Caitlin, and had a miserable and boring time standing in queues for hours, and wondering to ourselves why on earth we were there. Especially because we’d gone there two years before and had an equally miserable time. So we stayed there all of three hours and then headed into Paris, the most wonderful city in the world.

       13 April

      I am writing this from the best hotel I’ve ever been in, or imagined. It is the hotel, in Paris, that Oscar Wilde died in. Of course, it has been done up somewhat, as he died in poverty, and is now the most amazing four-star place. It is the only place I have ever stayed in that combines luxury (I have just been drinking champagne in a lovely old marble bath) with feeling like you’re staying in someone’s house. The someone, mind you, being a good deal richer than anyone you actually know. My state of relaxation tonight has, I think to do with the fact that Caitlin fell asleep an hour ago, so I have a chance to catch up with myself, to think selfishly, to write this. I am used to having a bit of time to myself each day, so this week of keeping the same hours as Caitlin and letting her catch up in the car has been emotionally, as well as physically, exhausting for me.

      Home tomorrow, I think, back to life, back to reality. And the space to be miserable if I feel like it, and to talk to Tim without having to couch it in terms that Caitlin won’t understand.

       15 April

      Home. It’s strange, but I got kind of lured into thinking I was better. Today I was talking to a friend about my whole situation and I got really sad. Tim was there and he said he felt the same way afterwards: as though the crisis had passed and now it’s back. Perhaps the family holiday thing did work. Or perhaps one simply can’t sustain the intense ‘Oh-my-God, I’m dying’ feeling forever and now and again you simply forget about it.

       16 April

      A very ordinary mum kind of day with Caitlin. Tim up in London lunching with his friend Linton, talking about film scripts. Caitlin and I spent the day playing with each other and with my friend Uschi and her son Pete. Caitlin and I were playing doctors and she was pretending to remove her doll Madeline’s appendix and then we had the following conversation:

       Me: ‘Who do you know who’s ill and gets dizzy and has nosebleeds?’

       C: ‘You.’

       Me: ‘Do you know why?’

       C: ‘Your head. What is it?’

       Me: ‘There’s a bit of my head that’s growing in the wrong direction and it’s pressing on things which makes me dizzy.’

       C: ‘Oh.’

      She then carried on playing, but a bit later she did an operation on a clown’s head to ‘take out the bit going in the wrong direction’. I told her my doctor in London had wanted to do that, but couldn’t. When she asked why not I said it was too tricky. She seemed to accept this, although the clown got fixed up because ‘I have tweezers’ (from her plastic doctor’s kit)!

      I felt really good after the conversation, as though I had broached the subject properly for the first time. I am sure now that she knows something is wrong with me. I am torn between feeling that it will be a relief when she knows – for me, in that I won’t need to hide my feelings at all – and a desire to preserve her wonderful, happy, innocent world for as long as possible.

      I love her so much.

      Of all the multitude of things we worried about as a couple over the year, Caitlin was the most common subject of conversation, and one of the only things that always brought both of us to tears. I hated, and still do hate, the idea that this little angel that I live with will grow up not knowing her mother. Lots of people tell me that she’ll remember a lot about her, and that through things like the books and the website and all the people who knew and loved her, Caitlin will always remember her and know her. But that’s just not true, is it? I know that on some level there’s sense in that, but in a very real way Caitlin will never know Weeze. She’ll never know the physicality of Weeze, and that’s gone for ever. However much I hug her and kiss her, which is far more than an independent-minded little four-year-old would like – ‘Dad, get off me, stop kissing me, Dad, I’m trying to watch Dexter’s Laboratory’ – it’s not the same as a hug from your mum. Nothing is. As I was growing up, whenever things were really bad it was my mum that I called for, it was her arms that I wanted to be in, and even in later life when I’m equally as close to my father as I am to my mum, there’s still something special about a cuddle with your mum. They’re just good at it, fact, and Weeze was really good at it.