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2gether. Got engaged. Am sorry.
    He didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified when Lucy failed to text her response.
    ‘Come on, you.’ Diana emerged from the bathroom, looking immaculate as ever, and took her future husband by the hand. ‘Mum has brought a cake. We’ve got to cut it together.’
    ‘Shouldn’t we wait until we’re cutting our wedding cake?’ asked Ben.
    ‘You’re such a spoilsport.’ Diana pouted. ‘Don’t ruin my evening. Besides, the sooner we wrap this party up, the sooner we can go to bed.’
    Diana fluffed up her long, glossy hair and smiled seductively.
    Ben followed her downstairs like a puppy.

Chapter Six
    29 October 2010
    Kate’s instinct that all was not well with her mother was right. Though her parents had refused to talk about it on the day they celebrated Kate’s engagement to Ian, the very next time Kate phoned, Elaine admitted that the hospital visit had brought bad news.
    ‘The second mammogram again showed what they thought might be calcifications, but it might be DCIS.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Ductal carcinoma in situ, a beginner’s cancer, if you like.’
    Kate felt the C-word like a blow.
    ‘They want to do a biopsy. It’s the only way to know for sure.’
    ‘How soon can they do it?’ Kate asked.
    ‘End of the week. But I don’t want to go into it now,’ said Elaine. ‘Cheer me up. Talk about the wedding.’
    Carrying on an excited conversation about wedding plans after that revelation was anything but easy. Still Kate tried. She told her mother that she and Ian had decided they wanted to get married as quickly as possible. Kate was about to go on gardening leave for two months as she moved from one law firm to another. Ideally, they would get married before Kate started her new job in February. Maybe as soon as late January if they could get everything sorted out in time. There was no point waiting any longer at their age, and a winter wedding could be so romantic. They liked the idea of the register office in Marylebone, followed by a lunch. Just a few people. Definitely not more than forty. Did her parents think enough water had passed under the bridge to invite both her godmothers, who had fallen out ten years before? Elaine didn’t seem entirely engaged with the conversation, but every time Kate attempted to steer her back to the biopsy, Elaine asked about wedding cakes, invitations and party favours instead.
    ‘Mum,’ said Kate, ‘we’re not having party favours, whatever they are. We’re planning a simple wedding.’
    Kate had a long-awaited day off work later that week. She abandoned her plan to spend the day getting the boiler serviced and doing some early Christmas shopping and instead travelled back down to the south coast to accompany her mother to hospital for the biopsy.
    Kate sat in the waiting room with her father.
    ‘Katie-Jane,’ he said, reverting to the pet name he hadn’t used in years, ‘I can’t tell you how worried we are. If we didn’t have your engagement to celebrate, your mother and I might have reached for the arsenic.’
    ‘Dad,’ Kate pleaded, ‘it could be nothing. Wait for the results.’ But she could imagine what he said was true. Her parents, who had married at the tender age of twenty, had spent less than seven nights apart in their whole almost five-decade-long marriage. Even through her darkest dating disasters, Kate had been sustained by the idea of a marriage like the one her parents had built together. They proved it was possible to find for-ever love. Nothing was too difficult for them to get through together. Except this, perhaps, if it turned out to be breast cancer. That day, privately and separately, each told Kate how much they feared for the other in the face of such a foe.
    The mood remained sombre even when they were back at home and their neighbour ‘Keith Richards’ tripped over their low garden fence as he staggered by en route to the bottle bank.
    ‘Poor man,’ said Elaine.