Val McDermid - The Vanishing Point

Scarlett’s job as presenter was to point out that, although the numbers were relatively small, young women were also susceptible to breast cancer. She’d be working with a specialist to demonstrate how to examine her breasts. They’d talk about the signs to look out for – not just a lump, but a change in texture or weight. And then they’d run through the tests that a woman would have to go through if anything anomalous was discovered. Scarlett had been swotting up on the subject, and our dainty sandwiches and scones were accompanied by a detailed description of mammograms, ultrasound and biopsy. As far as she was concerned, she had all the bases covered.

All the bases except the one that mattered, as it turned out. They had barely begun filming at some private clinic when things started to go awry. The specialist nurse who was showing Scarlett how to examine her breasts stopped abruptly in mid-sentence, a stricken look on her face. At first, Scarlett thought it was a wind-up – that the nurse was in cahoots with the crew, who were having a practical joke at her expense. It’s the sort of black humour that happens all the time in factual programming, or so I’ve heard.

Scarlett giggled. Of course she did, it was her default response to things she didn’t quite get. And she did genuinely think this was a joke. But in mid-giggle, it dawned on her that she was the only one laughing. The nurse looked shocked, the crew were simply silent, puzzled. Only the director spoke. ‘What’s the problem?’ he said, pushing past the camera and checking out the scene.

The nurse looked around wildly, as if she didn’t know the protocol for the situation. Then she got a grip and said, ‘Can we clear the room, please?’

The director was slower on the uptake than the rest of the crew who obediently started to shuffle out of the door. ‘We’re in the middle of filming – surely whatever it is can wait till we’ve got these shots?’

The nurse was tougher than him. Which, according to Scarlett, wasn’t hard. ‘You too, please,’ she said firmly, advancing on him.

‘This has all been agreed,’ he protested. ‘We’ve got this room all morning.’ She kept coming at him. He had no choice but to back up to the door. ‘I’m going to speak to the clinic director,’ he blustered on his way out. ‘You’re supposed to be cooperating with us.’

Through all this, Scarlett had been trying not to panic. ‘Soon as I realised it wasn’t a wind-up, I knew it was bad,’ she told me later. ‘The look on that nurse’s face and the way she was hustling the rest of them out of there, it wasn’t so she could get an autograph.’

As soon as the door closed behind the director, the nurse was back by Scarlett’s side, totally focused. ‘I didn’t mean to alarm you,’ she said. ‘But something’s not right here.’ She delicately palpated the underside of Scarlett’s left breast. ‘The skin texture feels wrong, and when I press a bit harder, I’m feeling a series of tiny hard lumps.’

‘Have I got cancer?’ Never one to beat about the bush.

‘I can’t say. But we need to do more investigation.’ The nurse patted Scarlett gently on the shoulder. ‘It’s turned out to be the best thing you could have done, this TV show.’

Since Scarlett was already in the right place, she was instantly subjected to a full battery of tests. Mammogram, ultrasound, MRI, needle biopsy – the works. The worst of it was that she was in such a state of shock that she agreed to have them film the whole bloody lot. They sent her home in a studio car still reeling. The first I knew about it was when Leanne rang me in a state of rage.

Two hours later, I felt like I’d been travelling in a time machine. Just like the worst days of Scarlett’s notoriety, the media pack was baying at the gates. Satellite TV vans, photographers with long lenses, reporters with thrusting mics – they were all there, thronged round the entrance. Nothing travels faster than bad news in the twenty-first century.

I thought I was actually going to have to mow a couple of them down in order to get through the gate, but they backed off at the last minute. Most of them didn’t have a clue who I was but they snapped me and my car and my snarl anyway, on the off-chance I might turn out to be somebody important.

I found the girls in the nursery. Scarlett was playing pirates with Jimmy, steering his pirate ship across the ocean of the carpet to the harbour of the walk-in wardrobe where he was defending his Viking castle against her forces with the full force of his lungs. Leanne was lying face down on the bed, hanging over the edge and lobbing plastic cannonballs at both of them. When I walked in, Scarlett flashed me a look of exquisite pain but managed somehow to continue her assault on the castle. As she crashed the ship into the castle walls, she pretended to run aground and capsize. ‘That’s me done for, Jimmy. You win.’ She crabbed across the floor and scooped him up, covering him in kisses as he wriggled and giggled. ‘Time for your bath now, my sweet poppet.’

‘No,’ he yelled in protest. ‘One more time. I want to be the pirate.’

She tickled his tummy and carried him towards the bathroom. ‘You can be a pirate in the bath, mister.’

He giggled and squirmed, face pink, shouting, ‘Dead man’s chest, dead man’s chest.’

‘I’ll see you downstairs in a bit,’ Scarlett said over her shoulder.

I followed Leanne to the kitchen. This wasn’t a Prosecco night. We went straight for the brandy. ‘What exactly have they said to her?’ I asked.

‘They won’t say for sure till they’ve got the test results back. But from the way they took it all dead serious, it’s not looking great.’

‘You don’t think they might have exaggerated a bit because it was being filmed?’

‘Not from what Scarlett said.’

We went out on to the patio so Leanne could smoke. Scarlett found us there a little later, huddled over our drinks in the twilight. She helped herself to a cigarette and hunkered down with us.

‘You don’t smoke,’ I said mildly.

‘I used to.’

‘Like a chimney,’ Leanne added helpfully.

‘I gave up before I auditioned for Goldfish Bowl . I knew it was going to be hard enough without craving a fag all the time.’ She inhaled with all the panache of a serious smoker who had never been away. ‘If I’ve got cancer already, I might as well have a fucking smoke.’

‘It’s not the recommended method for fighting it,’ I said.

‘I know that,’ she snapped. ‘Have you forgotten I’m not fucking stupid?’ She closed her eyes and breathed heavily through her nose. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not planning on taking it up again.’ She gave me a lopsided smile. ‘Not unless the diagnosis is terminal. Then I’m planning on devoting myself to everything that’s bad for me.’ She took another deep drag. ‘I just want to smoke tonight. Don’t get on my case, Steph. Not tonight.’

She leaned into me, head on my shoulder. I stroked her hair back from her face, feeling the damp of her tears on her cheek. ‘What are we going to do, Scarlett?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know about you, Steph, but I’m going to fucking fight every inch of the way.’

And fight was exactly what she did. The diagnosis was horrible – invasive lobular breast cancer. Something I’d never heard of before. I soon learned more about it than I ever wanted to know about any disease because of course there was going to be a book in Scarlett’s ‘battle for survival’. The presumption was that she would win, of course. But I knew that as far as the publisher was concerned, the outcome wasn’t the important thing. It was the tear-jerking quality of the story. Which of course would be written as a second epistle to Jimmy.