Chapter One

I threw my books into my bag and slipped on my shoes that lay by the door at the end of the row of everyone else's. I checked my hair in the mirror, trying in vain to flatten down the fly-away strands around my ears. My hair was neither naturally curly nor straight and it drove me mad every morning when it refused to do as it was told.

"I'm going!" I called through to my mum, who was pottering about in the kitchen in her blue nurse's uniform. She popped her head around the door, a piece of toast hanging out of her mouth.

"Be back by four thirty, it's Edward's engagement party and we need to be there on time for a change." She rolled her eyes. Edward was my eldest brother. He was twenty five and if he wasn't the image of my mother, I would have sworn he was adopted. He was neat, punctual and sensible, always turned out correctly and the most reckless thing he had done was eat a yoghurt that was two days past its expiry date. The rest of us on the other hand, were the complete opposite.

"Okay, mum. I'll see you later. Love you!" And without a pause to wait for her reply, I slammed the front door behind me and made my way to meet Alistair at the corner. Alistair was my best friend, had been since pre-school. Our parents knew each other so I often joked with him about how we weren't friends by choice but I loved him really. He was like a fourth brother to me. Like I needed any more really.

As I turned the corner, I saw him standing next to the bus stop. Awkward and gangly with his mop of dirty-blonde hair. He noticed me and waved.

"Alright, Hattie?" He smiled as I caught up with him.

"Tired." I managed, rubbing my eyes. I was definitely not a morning person.

"Looking forward to the big bash tonight then? I'm so sorry I couldn't come with you. Honest." He smirked and dug me in the arm with his bony elbow.

"Get lost. You could have come up with a better excuse than 'I'm washing the dog' to get out of coming. Now I'm going to have to sit there and listen to him droning on and on about his trips to Machu Picchu and the Galapagos and pretend I actually care. His fiance is just as dull. She studies plant cells or something. As a JOB. How boring is that?" I groaned at the thought of it all.

"Well at least they can both go off and be boring together and he won't keep bothering you with it. Imagine what their kids will be like. Auntie Hattie. You can babysit them and feed them caviar and elderflower cordial." Alistair bent over to laugh so I kicked him hard in the shin and ran off up the road towards the school gates. I heard him yell after me "I hate you!"

 

I admired myself in the mirror. I was wearing an electric blue dress I'd found in a charity shop. It was clingy in all the right places, which made a change. I was debating whether or not to team it with my neon pink heels I'd bought at the market for a party once but then remembered my dad looking me up and down when I went to leave the house in them that time, giving me that disapproving look that said  "you're sixteen, why are you wearing those ridiculous shoes, Hattie?" I decided to go for my black flats instead.

"You look like a bruise." Jack, my second eldest brother, said as I came downstairs.

"You look like a confused flamingo."

He scowled at me and then checked himself out in the hall mirror. His bright pink shirt with a purple tie was a terrible combination. But my neon heels would have gone perfectly with it.

At that moment, my mum emerged from her bedroom and made her way downstairs. She always looked so effortlessly beautiful. By day she was a paediatric nurse, by night she was this radiantly gorgeous woman. I wish I'd gotten her looks rather than my dad's. Hers were completely wasted on Edward. He can't quite pull off a cocktail dress and pillar-box red lipstick.

As she got closer, I couldn't help but notice her eyes were swollen. I'd only ever seen my mum cry twice; once when her mother died and once when her father died. Other than that, she always had a smile on her face. If she'd been crying now, it must have been something serious.

"Are you okay, mum?" I asked her as she reached the bottom of the stairs, her Kurt Geiger's clattering on the laminate flooring.

"Yes, Hattie." She replied, quite abruptly.

"It looks like you've been crying...." I paused.

"I'm just tired, love. It's nothing."

I wasn't convinced but I figured it wasn't something she wanted to discuss. Instead I fixed up the back of her dress as she walked past and seethed with jealousy at her shoes that were far too small for my canoe feet to ever fit in to.

 

Edward was doing his usual meet and greet that he did for everything, even if it was just dinner at our house. He stood with one hand behind his back, bolt upright, with his other hand out for hand-shaking and back-patting. You'd swear he was a member of the Royal Family or something. Not that he was from an average middle-class family in the not-so-interesting county of Cheshire.

"Hello Edward. How wonderful to see you! You look absolutely spiffing might I say. Pray, could you direct me to the place where they are handing out the vol au vent's?" I mocked him as I shook his hand. He looked at me disapprovingly.

"You know, Hattie, you could learn a thing or two about manners from me." He frowned. I curtsied.

"M'Lord. Apologies." I caught my mother's eye. I could see her stifling a laugh whilst she scolded me for being rude.

Shortly after, we were all treated to a slideshow of photographs of Edward and his new fiance Aubrey. Them on a boat; them on a train; them up a mountain; them on the backs of elephants; them drinking from whole coconuts; them having high tea in some fancy gardens. It was puke-worthy and I busied myself shredding paper napkins under the table. After what seemed like years had passed, food was finally served. Not that that shut Edward up at all.

My other three brothers; Jack, Alex and Ryan and I tapped our cutlery to create an interesting round of sounds which we dubbed "fork music" much to the dismay of Aubrey's straight-laced family who looked at us like we were hoodlums stealing from old ladies on the street. My dad gave us all 'the stare.' My dad does a lot of staring and not a lot of talking. That was when I noticed my mum had left the table. In a bid for freedom, I excused myself to go and find her.

The party was being held in a local stately home and as I wandered through the hallways, looking at the huge canvas oil paintings of strangely-dressed posh people, I imagined for a minute what it would have been like to live here all those years ago, wearing ball gowns and floating through these very corridors while servants scurried around me bringing food and wine. As I reached the bottom of the grand oak stairs, I noticed a small but familiar figure out on the lawns.

"Mum? What're you doing out here? It's freezing!" It was mid-January and at that moment I regretted not having picked up my jacket from the table.

"I'm just... sitting." She said, vacantly staring into the distance.

"Was all that rambling on about the Inca Trail boring the tits off you as well?" I laughed, sitting myself beside her.

"Yeah..." Her voice trailed off again.

We sat in silence for a minute, the sound of clinking glasses and laughter from the party could be heard faintly, blown towards us on the light, chilly breeze that ruffled the trees that surrounded us.

"Are you sure you're okay? You don't seem like yourself." I put a hand onto her shoulder as she took a sip from the champagne flute she'd brought down with her."

"Honestly, Harriet. I'm fine." She never called me Harriet. Nobody did.

I knew something was wrong. She was being distant and quiet. Being her only daughter, we were very close and I could tell when things weren't right with her, as she could with me. I was being bullied in primary school and I didn't tell anyone. One day, my mum came into my bedroom and asked me if people were picking on me. When I started my period, I was too embarrassed to ask for advice but by the end of the day, she somehow already knew and she slipped me a pack of sanitary towels while my dad and brothers weren't paying attention.

"I'm not stupid, mum. There's something." I replied, finally.

"Hattie, please! I don't want to do this right now, it's your brother's night. I just came out here to sit in the quiet and be alone with my thoughts for a while. Is that so hard to ask?!" I was taken aback by her tone, she never yelled. Even when I broke her expensive necklace using it as a toy dog lead when I was seven or when I snapped her favourite lipstick in half whilst using it as face paint.

I took my hand off her shoulder and stood up, flattening my dress down. I began to walk back towards the doors when I heard a faint sob. I turned back to see my mother's head in her hands, her shoulder's bobbing slightly. I didn't know what to do. She said she wanted to be alone, but did she really? I stood in the same spot for a few seconds before deciding to go back to her. I put my arms around her and let her cry into my hair.

"It's okay. Edward's only the first one, you still have plenty of other kids to marry off. I don't even think it will last. They'll probably both just bore each other to death." Humour was my only ally in times like this.

"Oh, Hattie. It's not Edward. But you're right, they're both dull as sin." She managed a laugh between sniffling.

"So what is it then? Menopause?"

"No, it's not menopause. It's... I'm..."

"You're what?"

"I'm ill, Hattie." She sighed as if this was now a weight lifted.

"Ill? How ill? What's wrong with you?" I started to panic. She can't be ill, she's my mum. I've only got one.

"It's cancer." The word struck me like a knife in my heart. That one word that nobody ever wants to have to hear.

"How do you know? You're going to be okay though, right? They have loads of treatments and stuff for that now."

"I went to the oncology department this afternoon on my lunch break. I made an appointment after I saw the doctor a few weeks ago and they ran some tests. They think they can treat it. I'm not even fifty, I'd never anticipated having to go through something like this until I was sat in my rocking chair at the old folk's home."

"What kind is it?" I ignored her attempt to try and lighten the conversation.

"It's in my lymph nodes. They don't think it's spread anywhere else yet." Her voice began to quiver slightly as she talked about it.

"Does dad know?"

"Yes. But your brothers don't. And I don't want them to know until I've been to my next appointment and I know what the plan of action is, what my prognosis is. Promise me you won't tell them?" She looked at me with those big sapphire-blue eyes I wished I'd inhereted instead of my dad's muddy brown ones. A horrible thought hit me, what if she dies? I'll never see those eyes again.

"I won't tell them." I could feel tears prickling the back of my eyes. Cancer is something that happens to other people, not to us. Not to me. I threw my arms around her and held her tight. I could smell her Chanel No5 as I buried my face into her neck, her heart beating in her chest underneath my ears.

After a few minutes, we let go of one another and sat in silence again. I held her hand as small, warm tears fell down my cheeks. I stared into the clear winter sky. The stars shone down on us like a thousand tiny diamonds, flickering with every blink of my tear-soaked eyes. An owl hooted in the distance. The outdoors comforted me. It made me feel small and insignificant and reminded me that I wasn't alone in this vast Universe. There were people and animals and oceans and planets and stars and I was just me, living my life, unknown but happy. I looked again to the stars and knew that their light had passed through the entirety of space to reach earth in order for me to see it.. And at that moment, I knew I would never give up.

I would help my mother fight this, no matter what. No matter if I felt sad or angry or like this whole thing was completely unfair. No matter how ill she became, I would be there for her like she had been there for me for the last sixteen years of my life. Just as a star's light never gives up on its journey through space and twinkles in the eyes of those who appreciate its beauty, I refused to ever give up on my mother and the journey she now faced, so she too could eventually shine, wherever that may be.

I had to grow up now. No more joking around, no more food fights, no more tantrums. The look in her eyes told me all I needed to know; she needed me. And I needed her. Which is why we had to do this together.