The dog, who followed me out, looks at Leo, then me, as if to say, but he doesn’t even smoke. ‘But you don’t even smoke,’ I say.
‘I know.’ He picks up the stove lighter and presses the ignition button. A blue-orange flame illuminates his face, tired and frightened, and even though this breaks my heart, I find myself laughing. My husband is in his shed having an emergency cigarette, lit by what amounts to a domestic blow torch.
‘Don’t laugh at me,’ he says, laughing a little himself. ‘I’m scared.’
I stop laughing. I have thought about this often, during my illness, the possibility of dying on a man whose entire emotional landscape has been shaped by loss. I’ve been afraid for myself, of course, and the imagined grief for Ruby has been unbearable, but in many ways it’s Leo I worry about most. I think most people see in my husband a quietly confident man, a man with a quick wit and a big brain, but that’s only the top layer.
Our little family is the first place he’s truly felt he belongs.
‘Oh, Leo . . .’ I say. ‘My darling, couldn’t you have had a whiskey?’
He shakes his head. ‘I promised you I’d give up alcohol. I’m a man of my word.’
I sit next to him on his sofa, from which a small cloud of dust plumes, and hold his hand while he admits to having taken John Keats down to the late shop for cigarettes. He also bought some dairy-free chocolate.
‘It was disgusting,’ he says, miserably.
I loop an arm through his. His poor body is braced, as if ready for attack. ‘You don’t have to give up alcohol yet,’ I tell him. ‘Or meat, or dairy.’ His hair has gone quite mad. There are deep creases under his eyes, and he needs a shave, but, God, he’s beautiful.
I watch him, wishing I could somehow convey how deeply, how completely I love him. How I want to protect him from what might happen to me.
John Keats settles at Leo’s feet, muttering.
‘I’m going to be fine,’ I say. ‘We’re going to walk into that appointment and Dr Moru is going to give me the all-clear, and you’re going to sit there, silently accusing him of being in love with me –’
‘Because he is.’
‘He is not. The point is, he’s going to tell me the cancer has gone, and that we can get back on with our lives. And we’ll go and collect Ruby from nursery and take her to the swings and then come home and get her to bed and then have dinner and wine and maybe sex. There are only good things ahead.’
Silence. ‘I might even clear up the house,’ I add. ‘Although it would be sensible not to get too excited.’
He reignites the stove lighter to look at my face. I stroke a finger down his cheek, and he pulls me in to him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I was feeling quite confident about tomorrow, but then you went off to bed and I just . . .’ His voice peels away.
‘It would have been wrong to turn to ham, or whiskey,’ he says, eventually. ‘I made you a promise.’
‘Vegan chocolate and nicotine all the way,’ I agree. ‘Although you promised you’d swear off only if it was bad news tomorrow. Does this mean you know something I don’t?’
He smiles briefly. ‘No, Emma, it does not. It means I just wanted to . . . I don’t know. Honour you.’
He studies me for a while, then kisses me. He has horrible smoker’s breath, but here, in this cold shed, our future encrypted in NHS files, I don’t mind at all. My husband is a master kisser. Ten years in and I still get tingles.
‘I love you,’ he says. ‘And I’m sorry I panicked. Not helpful.’
I rest my head on his shoulder, noticing only now how tired I am. Deeply, fatally tired; the sort of tiredness I felt when I was eight weeks pregnant and could have slept on a cheese grater.