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‘You don’t have to decide that now.’
‘I have something growing in my head,’ she says, as though she’s explaining this to Dr Bennett. ‘If you’re going to drill a hole, just cut the damn thing out, or zap it with radiation.’
‘That’s not how it works,’ I say. ‘We should think about this.’
‘There is no we,’ Evie snaps. ‘My head. My tumour. My decision.’
I turn to Dr Bennett. ‘What are the dangers of surgery?’
She steeples her fingers. ‘Well, we can’t remove all risk. The temporal lobe controls personality and intellect. Some patients experience changes to their personality or their moods after surgery.’
‘I want it gone,’ says Evie.
‘It could change who you are,’ I say.
‘I don’t like who I am.’
‘Yes, but I do.’
We both realise that our voices are raised. I apologise to Dr Bennett.
‘It’s my decision,’ Evie reiterates.
‘Of course,’ says the doctor. ‘That’s all ahead of you. We’ll talk next week.’
Evie studies her face, as though looking for the lie, but is unable to find one.
Nobody speaks on the walk back to the car. Instead of silence, I hear a deafening static that fills my head with white noise. I have the sharpest almost visceral sense that Evie is going to die and I won’t be able to save her. Not this time. She will disappear piece by piece, in a series of doctor’s appointments, scans, lab reports, operations, anxieties, tiny struggles, small victories, gloomy setbacks, reprieves and failures.
My lips unglue, peeling apart and leaving a sticky white residue. ‘Are you hungry?’ I ask.
‘No.’
‘Thirsty?’
She shakes her head.
‘I could murder an iced coffee,’ I say.
We drive to a Starbucks on the outskirts of town. Evie follows me across the car park, walking slowly in the murmuring heat. A blast of frigid air washes over us as the door opens. We queue. Evie chooses a green-coloured juice from the cold cabinet and takes a table in the corner. She stirs her drink with the straw and toys with her phone. A millennial silence.
‘We could get a second opinion,’ I say.
‘No.’
‘There might be other tests.’
‘They will tell us the same thing.’
The gold flecks in her eyes seem to swim, or maybe they’re floating in mine. I want to put my arms around her. I want to tell her I’m sorry and that I would change things if I could, but they’re just words and everybody says them, and they mean fuck all. Up until now, Evie and I have had a cosy system worked out – sharing a house and a dog. There have been laughs and irritations and sometimes, just occasionally, the past has reached out to drag us back to less certain times, but fundamentally we have been good for each other.
Yes, she’s damaged and self-destructive and a pathological liar, but she is also funny and feisty and intelligent and empathetic. I don’t want her to change. Let someone else have a tumour. Someone cruel, or abusive, or ancient, or who’s sick of living. Someone who deserves a shitty diagnosis. This isn’t fair. Why should we just accept the world as it is? Sometimes we have to scream from a rooftop and foam at the mouth and say, ‘Fuck you, fuckers! You fucking fuckwits.’
My phone is ringing. I ignore it. Almost immediately, it rings again. I look at the screen. Carlson’s name.
I answer.
‘A barge driver spotted a trawler being towed by a runabout on the east side of the Humber Bridge.’
