'So, it was just a "hi, bye" thing?'

Susannah nodded slowly. 'Hi, bye. Pretty much ...'

'But ... ?'

'There's a "but"?'

'Your face says there's a "but" ...'

'My face says, "Aah this mask stings!"'

'It would do it's for my skin type, not yours. You'll probably get a rash. That'll teach you to help yourself. But what about the "but"?'

'But he looked good.'

'He always did.'

1987.

After Bonfire Night, when Rob had held her hand in the darkness, the two of them had become inseparable, almost overnight. It was as if the invisible dam between them had burst, and they really couldn't get enough of each other. His coach always left school first, and he would walk, once he was back in the village, across the common to her stop to wait for her, then walk her home, the two of them dropping Amelia off at the rectory on their way past. Amelia teased them mercilessly, but they didn't care. Sometimes he took her to his house, sometimes they studied together at hers. At the weekends, Mum wouldn't let her go out until she'd finished her homework, so she'd get up at 7 a.m. on Saturday and race through it so that she could escape. Mum and Dad started muttering about 'A' levels and UCCA forms, but she kept her marks up.

After a few weeks of long phone calls, and short lunchtimes holding hands, Susannah was in love. She never said so, not to Amelia, or to Mum, or Alastair. She was afraid they'd laugh, afraid they'd denigrate or belittle what she felt she had so little experience how could she know? But she knew. With all the vehemence and absolute certainty that a sixteen-year-old can feel, she knew.

She just wanted to be with him. She wanted to be with him every minute. When she wasn't with him, it felt like she was just waiting for him. There weren't many places they could be together, and in almost none of them was it possible to be alone. Their respective homes, the lounge at college, with its drinks machine and institutional furniture, the local cinema, parties held at the houses of friends ... there were always throngs of people around them. They went for long walks through the cold, wintry lanes surrounding the village.

They hadn't shared their first kiss until almost three weeks after that first night, Rob confessing himself as inexperienced as her. They'd been in the kitchen at her parents' house, and the air had been heavy with intention all evening. He'd caught her, at last, when she turned to take coffee mugs out of the cupboard behind him, his hands on her waist, his face leaning into hers, the slight shadow of stubble grazing her cheek a little before their lips met.

Practice had made perfect. And they'd had lots of practice. Not going further than kissing, not at first. But the kissing ... By the time the DJ at the Christmas sixth form disco played that year's big hit the Pet Shop Boys' version of 'You Were Always On My Mind' (the one that so offended Mum, a major Elvis aficionado) it felt like they'd been together always. Or maybe it was just that Susannah felt like life hadn't started until he'd held her hand in the firelight.

Present Day.

Susannah was amazed by how vivid the long-buried memories of Rob were. She remembered songs and weather and gifts and moments she hadn't thought about for years. She and Amelia fell easily into a nostalgic mood, as they often did in this venue of their youth, chatting and laughing for a while about the 'old' days. Shared history was a great thing. Smash Hits and Chelsea Girl and Kajagoogoo and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. They'd both had enormous white T-shirts with RELAX in foot-high fluorescent letters stamped across the front. Slow dancing to Kool & The Gang. Two fat old ladies of the kind they treasured most shushed at them from across the room, through the steam, and they giggled, feeling, for a moment, as far from forty as it was possible for them to feel.

But a conversation about their own adolescence led inevitably to one about the teenagers in their lives now. Elizabeth was driving Amelia crazy. She complained that she was monosyllabic, sullen, uncommunicative. Daisy seemed the same way to Susannah. Both girls had boyfriends now, apparently. Amelia's method was to let Nick, as Elizabeth's gangly, spotty youth was called, spend as much time as he wanted at the house 'where I can keep an eye on them'. Susannah acknowledged that she'd never met Seth, so had no idea whether he was gangly or spotty, though it seemed unlikely Daisy was a pretty girl (a lot like her mother, though it pained her slightly to admit it). If Susannah ever demurred after all, Daisy wasn't hers, and she didn't even have her full time Amelia would assert that Susannah's job was even tougher for both of those reasons. 'Unconditional love is sometimes the only thing that stops me from killing her. God knows what holds you back ...'

Victoria was railing against the house rules. Susannah harrumphed. 'No rules in my house, so there's nothing to moan about ...' And the boys were just noise makers and laundry producers. Susannah loved Amelia for letting her pretend it was the same for her.

The kids didn't really know each other. They should do. But they didn't. They'd met a few times, over the years, but they'd never really got past the shy and awkward stage, and Susannah had eventually given up. She knew Amelia didn't really like Douglas. She'd wondered, briefly, when Amelia had said she was going to take the kids on a sailing holiday, whether they'd get them all out on the boat, but she didn't know how that would work, and she suspected that Douglas would be irritable at having so many people to marshal.

And then the two of them came back, at last, to each other, and the present. And back, inevitably, to the subject of Rob.

'So, are you going to get in touch with him? Get some answers to those questions?'

'What questions? Who said anything about questions?'

Amelia just looked at her, one eyebrow arched meaningfully. 'Really?'

'Okay. So, maybe I'm curious. I may have a question or two.'

'One or two, yes.' Amelia was smiling now. She looked like she'd got a joke Susannah hadn't understood.

It was vaguely irritating, even from this person she loved so. 'No. I'm not going to get in touch. Why would I do that?'

'You tell me.' Amelia shrugged.

'No.' She shook her head. 'I'm not going to. Absolutely not. It's all ancient history. Water under the bridge.'

'And other cliches.'

'They're called cliches because they're true, you know. Besides, life is quite complicated enough ...'

'And just not quite happy enough either ...' This last line Amelia said so quietly that she wasn't even sure Susannah heard it. If she did, she didn't acknowledge it.

Susannah was absolutely right Amelia didn't love Douglas. Certainly not like Susannah claimed she did. Or used to not so much recently. Not in any way, in fact. She didn't actually like him much either. She couldn't see even looking as objectively as she could what Suze saw in him. He was always grumpy, it seemed to her. Controlling, too. Amelia had nothing against an age difference, but Douglas had seemed middle-aged the first time she'd met him eight years ago. Suze didn't seem to have much fun with him. And Suze could have a lot of fun. It wasn't an obvious characteristic, but Amelia had known her a long time, and she knew she could. If she was with the people who could bring it out of her. That wasn't Douglas. He had been weird, too, about his kids, back in the beginning, when he'd first started seeing her, and Amelia had never really forgotten. Susannah knew, of course. She hadn't tried to hide it much in the early years. But it was easier not to go there these days. She couldn't resist her digs and occasional comments, but she tried not to cross the line too often. She hadn't asked, for years now, about kids, or marriage ... She did love Susannah.

They were dressing now, smoother, softer, and more relaxed than they had been a few hours earlier. The place closed at 10 p.m. they were always the last two out, and Susannah reckoned that if she treated herself and grabbed a taxi home, she could be in bed by 10.45, asleep by 11, before the delicious soporific wooziness wore off.

Standing in just their bras and knickers, Susannah noticed that Amelia looked thinner than normal.

'You lost weight?' Susannah narrowed her eyes and looked Amelia up and down appraisingly.

Amelia shrugged. 'A bit.'

'More than a bit, I think. How much?'

Amelia had the answer at her fingertips. 'About a stone since spring.'

'Wow.' That was a lot. Amelia didn't weigh much more than nine stone in the first place. She never had, apart from when she'd been carrying the babies. Even then she'd carried them like footballs and been back in her normal clothes in time for the christenings.

'How have you done that? You never said you were dieting ...'

Amelia pulled her skinny jeans on. They hung low on her hips, and when she turned round the denim wasn't tight around her bum, like it normally would have been. The jeans were almost saggy. Funny how the weight loss showed much more when she was dressed than when she was naked. She tightened her belt buckle. 'I haven't been trying.'

That made no sense. A stone was a lot. 'Are you okay?'

Amelia stood still, and stopped buttoning her shirt. 'I don't know.'

Susannah felt a stab of panic, and put her hand out to clutch at her friend's arm. 'Meels?'

Amelia shook her off. 'No big deal. Don't get all dramatic on me, Susannah. I've lost some weight, that's all. Without trying.'

It didn't sound like all ...

'And?'

'And I've been having these night sweats. Real wake-up-to-wet-sheets stuff.'

Susannah didn't know what that might mean. 'Do you feel okay?'

'I don't feel ill. I mean, I'm achy. Like when you've got flu, you know across my shoulders. But no. Not ill.'

'And?'

'And what?'

'And your appointment with the doctor is when ... ?'

'See? This is why I don't tell you things.'

'Bollocks. You do tell me things. And this is why you do.'

'So you can nag me?'

'I'm not nagging. When?'

'Next week.'

It alarmed Susannah even more that Amelia had already made an appointment. That meant she thought something was wrong she hated doctors almost as much as Susannah did.

'Is that soon enough?'

'That's the best the NHS can do.'

That much was true. Actually, based on Susannah's experience, that was pretty fast. 'Why are we just having this conversation now? We've been here, talking about me, for hours ... and you've said nothing ...'

'There's nothing to say. I'm going to the doctor.'

'You'll call me. As soon as you've been.'

'I'll call you. If you promise you won't nag. And you'll stay off Wikipedia no Googling symptoms. I know you. I don't want any helpful lay diagnosis, thanks very much.'

'Can't promise that.'

Susannah hugged her friend tighter than normal as they parted ways on the corner.

Amelia felt suddenly very slight in her arms. 'Get off.'

'Shan't.' One last squeeze, and she released her with a gentle shove. 'And eat a bar of Dairy Milk, for God's sake, will you? I can't get naked with you again if you're going to go all Carol Vorderman on me.'

'Carol Vorderman.' Amelia was walking away now, laughing and shaking her head. 'I can't be Kate Moss. I've got to be Carol Bloody Vorderman ...'

September Three weeks after their evening at the Porchester Spa, Susannah felt her blood pressure going up just walking into the small waiting area in the hospital she and Amelia were directed to. Amelia had asked her to come, and she wouldn't have dreamed of being anywhere else, but she hated it nonetheless. She wasn't good at hospitals. She didn't like the way they smelt. There were several other groups of people in this 'oncology' waiting area, and Susannah tried not to look at them. Some of these people were ill. Some may be dying. It was creepy. This was not a mature word, she realized, but it was exactly the right word for how this felt. And now Amelia, sitting beside her, sipping a latte from a paper cup, might be ill. Might be ... she didn't even want to say the word in her head. She had a bad feeling. Her pulse was racing and she wished she'd eaten breakfast.

She tried to remember the last time she'd been in a hospital. It was a pretty charmed life, she realized. She'd never spent a night in one. She'd broken her collarbone when she was about ten, but that had just been a couple of visits to Outpatients, and her memory of it was vague most prevalent was the recollection of her irritation at not getting a proper plaster to compensate her for the pain of the injury. Alastair had had his tonsils removed the same year, and she remembered sitting on his bed, a happy visitor, sharing the medicinal ice cream, but it was only the memory of the ice cream chocolate and strawberry that she could summon up. Neither Mum nor Dad had ever been admitted for anything serious. They were in their sixties and neither of them took so much as a blood pressure tablet. No one close to her had died in hospital, except her grandparents, and she'd been young if she'd visited them, she certainly didn't recall the experience. It was frightening, when you came to think about it, how little her life had been touched by tragedy. It made you wonder what fate might be storing up for you ... you see ... that was exactly the kind of morbid thought process that dogged her when she had to spend time in a hospital, and precisely why she wished herself anywhere else but here right now. She flicked through the Country Life on her lap it was two years old the best the dog-eared pile of magazines in the corner could offer. She tried wondering who was living in the five-million-quid Cotswold stone pile that had been up for sale in April 2008, but it wasn't easy to distract herself.

She hadn't come with her friend last week. Amelia said she didn't need anyone for the tests, just for the results.

'I'm not sure I'm the right person to be here with you, you know, Meels. I've got chronic white coat syndrome, and it isn't even my appointment.'

Amelia smiled, and didn't look up from her ancient copy of Good Housekeeping. 'You're exactly the right person. I know you're a big baby about this stuff. World's most useless birthing partner. But you're going to have to get over that. Buck up, buttercup. Your job is to cheer me up. Make me laugh.'

This seemed like a tall order. She was tearful already and they hadn't even heard anything bad.

'See the last three times I was in one of these places was also your fault.'

Amelia nudged her. 'You're comparing a labour ward with an oncology department?!'

'Blood, gore, screaming and guys in white coats. Seems pretty similar to me.'

Amelia smacked her arm now. 'There's no blood and gore in here. And I did not scream.'

She hadn't, actually. She'd been almost silent and totally stoic, and although Susannah might not have said so, she had been utterly in awe of her friend. Jonathan, on the other hand ...

A middle-aged nurse with a clipboard appeared and called Amelia's name without looking up.

Susannah squeezed Amelia's hand lightly and stood up. 'Come on. Let's go ... unless you want me to stay here ...'

Amelia glared, then grimaced.

'Guess not.'

Mr Swift was sitting behind his desk looking at some papers when they went in, but he came across the room to shake their hands, and then, when he'd directed them to two chairs, sat on the edge of his desk, only a couple of feet away. He was young, and quite handsome in a clean-cut sort of way, as Amelia had said (implying that clean-cut was not her type at all). No white coat just a check shirt and a pair of chinos.

'How have you been, Amelia?'

She shrugged a little. 'The same as before. Just more scared. Let's get it over with you've got the results, right?'

He seemed to take a deep breath, then he smiled broadly at her. 'Okay. I remember. Straight talking.'

Poor sod goodness knows what Amelia'd said to him last week.

'So, here it is ... with both barrels, as requested. It is cancer.' He allowed no pause.

That was far too straight for Susannah. She felt dizzy.

'You've got Hodgkin's lymphoma. It's a cancer of the lymph nodes. That's what the lumps in your shoulder are. The blood tests and MRI scan and X-rays you had last week have confirmed it.'