Kate Gross - Late Fragments - Everything I Want to Tell You

Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction 1 The Plastic Bag and the Red Coat 2 The Terracotta Army 3 The Landscape of Your Mind 4 A Pile of Golden Treasure 5 The Original Four-Square 6 The Woman in the Arena 7 Earthquakes, and the Light They Let In 8 Cantus Firmus 9 What’s Love Got to Do With It? 10 Sing, Everyone Acknowledgements Bibliography Postscript Credits About the Author About the Publisher

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com

First published in Great Britain by William Collins 2015

Text © Kate Gross 2015

Kate Gross asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is

available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Cover handwriting by www.ruthrowland.co.uk

Source ISBN: 9780008103453

Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780008103460

Version: 2015-07-23

There are two copies of this book that matter. There are two pairs of eyes I imagine reading every word. There are two adult hands which I hope will hold a battered paperback when others have long forgotten me and what I have to say. I write this for Oscar and Isaac, my little Knights, my joy and my wonder.

Cover

Title Page Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction 1 The Plastic Bag and the Red Coat 2 The Terracotta Army 3 The Landscape of Your Mind 4 A Pile of Golden Treasure 5 The Original Four-Square 6 The Woman in the Arena 7 Earthquakes, and the Light They Let In 8 Cantus Firmus 9 What’s Love Got to Do With It? 10 Sing, Everyone Acknowledgements Bibliography Postscript Credits About the Author About the Publisher

Copyright Copyright Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction 1 The Plastic Bag and the Red Coat 2 The Terracotta Army 3 The Landscape of Your Mind 4 A Pile of Golden Treasure 5 The Original Four-Square 6 The Woman in the Arena 7 Earthquakes, and the Light They Let In 8 Cantus Firmus 9 What’s Love Got to Do With It? 10 Sing, Everyone Acknowledgements Bibliography Postscript Credits About the Author About the Publisher William Collins An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com First published in Great Britain by William Collins 2015 Text © Kate Gross 2015 Kate Gross asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Cover handwriting by www.ruthrowland.co.uk Source ISBN: 9780008103453 Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780008103460 Version: 2015-07-23

Dedication Dedication Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction 1 The Plastic Bag and the Red Coat 2 The Terracotta Army 3 The Landscape of Your Mind 4 A Pile of Golden Treasure 5 The Original Four-Square 6 The Woman in the Arena 7 Earthquakes, and the Light They Let In 8 Cantus Firmus 9 What’s Love Got to Do With It? 10 Sing, Everyone Acknowledgements Bibliography Postscript Credits About the Author About the Publisher There are two copies of this book that matter. There are two pairs of eyes I imagine reading every word. There are two adult hands which I hope will hold a battered paperback when others have long forgotten me and what I have to say. I write this for Oscar and Isaac, my little Knights, my joy and my wonder.

Introduction

1 The Plastic Bag and the Red Coat

2 The Terracotta Army

3 The Landscape of Your Mind

4 A Pile of Golden Treasure

5 The Original Four-Square

6 The Woman in the Arena

7 Earthquakes, and the Light They Let In

8 Cantus Firmus

9 What’s Love Got to Do With It?

10 Sing, Everyone

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Postscript

Credits

About the Author

About the Publisher

When I was three, I told my mum that I kept my words in my head, in a clear plastic bag. Now it is time for me to take them out, to arrange them into this story. The thing is, I don’t know how it ends. I don’t know if I will die before I finish writing it. But if I do, I know someone else will write the ending for me. My mum will step in to close off my story, just as she used to step in to help with my homework. So I can begin.

We will start on 11 October 2012. I am running along the beach in Southern California. It is dusk, and as the waves break on the shore, surfers head out to sea. My legs feel strong, my lungs full of salty air. I’m here to raise money for the charity I run, which works in post-conflict Africa. I’m a successful thirty-something woman with an amazing job through which I travel the world and converse with presidents and prime ministers. My adorable twins are three, and their father, Billy, is my soulmate, as well as being the best-looking man I’ve ever kissed. But inside me a lump of cells has broken free of the rules and spawned a tumour which has blocked my colon, crept through my lymph nodes and colonised my liver. Cancer is halfway to killing me, and I am completely oblivious to its presence.

The next day I am at the airport, my week-long trip over, and finally on my way home to Cambridge. As I arrive at check-in, I am hit by a wave of nausea. I throw up for fifteen hours – through security, in the lounge, and all the way back home. I feel feverish, exhausted. Now, at last, I know something is seriously wrong. I crawl into a taxi at Heathrow and ask the driver to drop me off at the emergency department at Addenbrooke’s, our local hospital. A CT scan follows, and twelve hours after landing in the UK I am in emergency surgery. The blockage in my colon is a tumour, and the dark spots the doctors saw on my liver a series of secondary lesions – metastases, to use the proper term. I have stage four cancer. All this cancer-speak is new to me, but I do know there isn’t a stage five. What I didn’t realise then – though of course the ever internet-enabled Billy did, right from the start – was that I had only a 6 per cent chance of surviving the next five years.