Freia Lockhart's Summer of Awful Read Online Free PDF Page A

early breast cancer, which means that the doctors don’t think it’s spread beyond my breast … and possibly to the lymph nodes in my right armpit.”
    Dad stops clicking his pencil and tilts his head back to look directly at the light above the table. It’s an old trick to stop you from crying. It usually doesn’t work.
    â€œAre you going to have an operation?” I ask.
    â€œTo start with, yes. This afternoon we met with the surgeon Dr Chandarama recommended. I’m booked in for surgery at the Women’s Hospital on the twenty-seventh.”
    â€œYou mean a mastectomy?” Just saying the word makes my stomach tighten.
    â€œThey won’t know for sure until they see what’s happening in there. Dr Bynes is hopeful that I will only need a lumpectomy, but I’ve told her to do whatever she has to.”
    â€œThe important thing is that Mum’s getting the best care available,” says Dad, cleaning his glasses with his hanky. “She has a whole team of specialist doctors and nurses looking after her.”
    I don’t buy it. “It must be bad if they have to operate straightaway.”
    â€œThat’s my choice,” says Mum. “I could’ve waited a few weeks, even a month, but I want to get it over with as soon as possible.”
    Ziggy, who’s been silent until now, mutters “cancer” under his breath. Then, “cancercancercancercancer” as if he’s repeating an incantation over a bubbling cauldron.
    Mum puts her hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Zig, I know this is a shock, but everything’s going to be okay. In a few months my treatment should be finished and everything will be back to normal.”
    â€œBullshit,” says Ziggy, wrenching his body out of her reach and almost knocking over his chair as he stands. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
    Dad moves to follow as Zig runs from the kitchen, but Mum holds him back. “Leave him, love. He just needs some time to make sense of all this.”
    He isn’t the only one, but with Ziggy gone I can ask the question I’ve been holding in since Mum said the C-word. “Do they know … Have they said … what your chances are?”
    Mum glances at Dad, but he’s back to staring at the light. “No, and they won’t until they’ve had a better look at the cancer and whether it has spread, and what sort of treatment it needs. The good news is that they’ve found it early and, statistically, women my age with this kind of cancer have a pretty good survival rate.”
    I don’t think Mum has any idea how unreassuring the phrase “pretty good” is. It’s about as comforting as when I asked Nicky what the chances were of Mum letting me apprentice as a pastry chef instead of going to uni and she said, “Just make sure there are no sharp objects around when you bring it up.” Dad seems to share my doubts because he gets up from the table and mumbles something about making sure Ziggy’s all right.
    â€œIs there anything you want to ask, or to say?” asks Mum, in the same voice she used to give me the when-a-mummy-and-a-daddy-love-each-other-very-much speech when I was seven. I wish she’d stop being so bloody rational and just scream or cry or swear or something, because then I could, too. But she just keeps smiling patiently.
    I shake my head.
    We sit in silence for a few minutes before Mum nudges me. “I bet you never thought I’d have something in common with Kylie Minogue, did you?” She laughs, but her eyes don’t join in.
    When Dad and Ziggy return the first thing I notice is that Ziggy’s eyes are red and puffy. The second is that his hand is wrapped in Dad’s hanky, which is spotted with speckles of blood. Mum’s gaze sweeps from Ziggy’s hand to Dad, silently demanding an explanation.
    â€œZig had a little disagreement with a wall,”