Page 102 of While I’m Still Here

“Probably.”

“And I'm not helping you pick feathers out of your drains.”

“That's incredibly specific.”

“I'm establishing boundaries early. You can get the ridiculous pyjamas with feathers, but you will live with the consequences.”

She grins and takes the basket from me. It’s been six days since Bea got her surgery date. Six days until her bilateral mastectomy. She asked me to come shopping with her because, in her words, you are the only person I know who has had bits chopped off and might therefore understand why I suddenly don't know how clothes work.

I told her that wasn't technically a qualification. She told me it was more qualification than Colin or Danny had.

I didn't ask who Danny was.

I should have.

Instead, at ten this morning, I met her outside the shopping centre and discovered she had arrived with a handwritten list titled CLOTHES FOR MY NEW TIT-FREE EXISTENCE, which contained sensible items such as oversized T-shirts, button-front shirts and zip-up hoodies alongside something sexy because I refuse to emerge from cancer dressed like somebody's nan.

I didn't correct the terminology. I've learned to choose my battles with her. More importantly, I've learned that Bea doesn't always want me to correct her. Sometimes she wants someone to stand beside her while she says something frightening in the most ridiculous way possible.

So that is what I do.

We buy oversized T-shirts—Far too many— but I make her try lifting her arms in several of them until she points out that I'm essentially conducting a very strange fashion-based field sobriety test. I explain that after surgery she may not want to pull tight clothing over her head. She buys three men's T-shirts instead because they're softer and announces she intends to live in them until somebody forcibly removes her.

She finds two zip-up hoodies, a soft cardigan, some button-front pyjamas without feathers. Then, after making me carry the feathered ones anyway, she finds an enormous dressing gown that makes her look approximately half her height.

She emerges from the changing room wrapped in it. “Well?” she asks, arms held out to the side.

“You look ridiculous.”

“Perfect.”

“You can barely see your hands.”

“I won't need hands. I'll have people.” She smiles at me, and fuck me if I don’t want to keep that smile on her face for the next six days.

For a while, this is easy. Almost ordinary. We argue about whether she needs slippers. She insists her current slippers have “seen too much” and therefore cannot accompany her into her new life. I don't ask what they've seen. She tries on a soft shirt and complains that the buttons make her look like she's going to a parish council meeting.

I tell her parish councils are important. She tells me that's the most Marcus thing I've ever said, then we reach lingerie, and Bea stops.

Her body becomes still beside mine. One moment she's complaining that the shopping bag is trying to sever circulation to her fingers, and the next she's staring across the department at a wall of bras.

Hundreds of them.

Black.

White.

Pink.

Lace.

Cotton.

Padded.

Push-up.

Strapless.