Page 53 of While I’m Still Here

“If anyone brings a guitar, I'm leaving.”

“There are no guitars.”

“What about group hugs, because the idea of a bunch of strangers smothering me is not my idea of a good time?”

“Not unless you want one.”

“I don't.”

“Then nobody will hug you,” she reassures me.

“Affirmations?”

“No.”

“Trust falls?”

Colin finally puts a hand on my shoulder. “Bea.”

“What? I need to know the conditions before agreeing.”

Claire stands, still smiling. “One session. If you hate it, you never have to go back.”

“Excellent. Because I will.”

* * *

Three days later, I walk into the support group and immediately discover that while Claire did not technically lie to me, she withheld critical information.

There is pink fucking everywhere.

Not enough to qualify as interior decoration, but enough that somebody has clearly made decisions. Pink lilies sit on a table near the entrance, pink ribbons pinned to a noticeboard, and pink information leaflets spread beside the kettle and cupcakes, with tiny pink sugar ribbons stuck into the icing.

I stand in the doorway wondering whether breast cancer would lose some of its power if we stopped giving it such aggressive branding.

Colin drove me here, but I made him leave.

He offered to wait outside. I told him no. He offered to sit in the car. I told him absolutely not because the idea of him sitting alone in a car park for an hour made me feel strangely guilty. Eventually, I sent him to find coffee with strict instructions to return in sixty minutes, by which point I will either have discovered the transformative power of peer support or escaped through a toilet window.

About a dozen people are scattered through the room, most already talking in small groups. I recognise nobody, and I immediately regret every decision that led me here.

Then I notice the man. He's sitting slightly away from everyone else near the window, a ceramic mug held between both hands. Late thirties, maybe. Dark blond hair cut neatly, charcoal jumper over a white shirt, dark trousers, expensive-looking watch. He looks less like somebody attending a cancer support group and more like somebody who accidentally walked into the wrong meeting on his way to discuss mortgage rates.

He's also handsome.

Annoyingly so.

Not Danny handsome. Danny knows precisely what his face does to women and has spent his adult life weaponising it. This man looks like he'd respond to being called handsome by asking why you were making irrelevant observations.

Obviously, he's someone's husband.

Maybe someone's brother.

He has the unmistakable air of a supportive male relative who has been brought along because the woman in his life didn't want to come alone. I stop looking before he catches me doing it and take the nearest empty chair.

A woman called Janet introduces herself almost immediately. She's in her fifties, I think, with a patterned scarf tied around her head and bright red lipstick. She asks whether it's my first time, and when I reluctantly admit it is, she tells me she spent twenty minutes crying in her car before her first meeting.

“I threatened my lift with bodily harm.”