Ann

Ok - So I met Ann at university in 1993. We were married on 8th July 1995.

It was in September 2004 that we noticed a lump in her right breast. We weren't particularly worried. She had had a couple of lumps checked out before and had been told that she was 'prone to cysts'. In fact, a day or two later, when she went to the doctor's (just to be on the safe side), I didn't go with her. I went to work.

She got home shortly after me - about 4.30pm. I knew immediately by the look on her face that something was terribly wrong. She hadn't wanted to 'phone me because she knew that I had a difficult speech to deliver in court.

The lump was a cancerous tumour. The hospital were making arrangements to take her in the following week so that it could be removed. That evening, I think we sat in almost total silence, side by side on the sofa.

The lump was removed, along with her lymph gland. A week later we were told the news. It was a Grade 4 cancer. They didn't tell us what that meant and we didn't ask. I looked it up on the internet; and then kept the results of my research to myself. The lump had been very close to the nipple and they couldn't be sure that they had removed it all. Ann would have to have a mastectomy, they said.

Before the operation, we went to a Greek island for a few days. We swam, Ann sunbathed topless.


The chemotherapy began just before Christmas. In February, when she started to lose her beautiful hair, Ann went to my barber and had her head shaved.

After each chemotherapy session, Ann would be ill for days. By the time the course was only half over, she was suffering from almost permanent, violent nausea and profound, impenetrable lethargy. I stopped going to work completely. We would watch DVDs together: 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', 'Overboard', 'Housesitter', 'Grosse Pointe Blank', 'Independence Day'.

Radiotherapy followed. Unpleasant, but an enormous relief after the dreaded, horrific chemotherapy.

We spent most of the summer at our house in France: gardening, sunbathing, recovering. We had previously hired a builder to make the house bigger by knocking through into the barn, but we didn't mind him being there during the week. Secretly though, I was worrying about money. We didn't have any.