Susannah looked at Amelia. She didn't realize how many tests her friend had been through last week. She had watched enough ER and Grey's Anatomy to know what MRI scans were. She wished she'd been here, hospital phobia notwithstanding.

Amelia was nodding slowly. 'I knew it. It's almost a relief, in a funny way, to hear you say it. I knew it was something serious.'

'And it is serious. Of course. I'd never describe it any other way. But I have lots of good news and I'm not just sugar-coating. This is one we're pretty damn good at these days. Caught early, and treated properly, there is a ninety per cent survival rate at five years.'

'Did we catch it early?'

He nodded. 'I think so. You're what we call Stage One. That is really good news what it means at this point is that only a single lymph node region the superclavicular region is affected.' He gestured at Amelia's shoulders. 'The scans and X-rays showed no spread.'

'And can you treat it properly?'

'Absolutely.'

'But it means chemotherapy, right?'

The consultant nodded. 'That's the gold standard for a case like this. We'd put you on a course called ABVD chemotherapy. The name comes from the four drugs in the cocktail, if you like. Full names: adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine and dacarbazine.'

'Can I have an umbrella and a maraschino cherry with that? I bet everyone says that, don't they? Boom, boom.'

'You can have whatever you like, honey.' Susannah watched her friend intently, biting her own bottom lip. She would not cry. She couldn't. Not if Amelia wasn't going to.

'How long will I have to do the chemo?'

'I'd like to do six to eight months. Really make sure. Then, if all has gone well, we'll see you every six months after that.'

That amount of time was a blow, Susannah knew. She saw Amelia look down at her hands for a moment, taking it in.

Amelia blew her cheeks out, and then exhaled slowly, before she looked back up. 'And I'll lose my hair?' She put both hands on her head. 'I can't believe that's the first thing I'm worrying about ...'

He nodded. 'It's the first thing a lot of people think about. And yes, most likely you will. There are certain regimens these days that don't lead to hair loss, but in most cases it does go, and you should obviously be prepared for that. It starts after the first couple of treatments, and we'd want you to expect it. Most women get it cut short first, so the change isn't so dramatic. Mainly you'll feel tired particularly in the first couple of days after each treatment. You'll probably experience some nausea, but that's one thing we are making great headway with we have good anti-emetics to help with that. And you'll be immune suppressed while you're receiving the chemo, so you'll need to be very careful about infections.'

'Better get rid of the kids, then. They're germ magnets.'

Mr Swift smiled. 'That shouldn't be necessary. You'll just need to be more vigilant. And if they had flu, or something, I might consider shipping them out to Granny, or maybe to your friend here ...'

Was it possible he was fishing for information? There was something in the way he said 'friend'. Was he wondering why there was no husband here with Amelia? Susannah wasn't sure where the Hippocratic oath might stand on flirting with a woman you've just diagnosed with cancer. But it was just something men did around Amelia. She'd seen it often enough over the years. Just never in an oncology department ...

'I'll make sure she's careful,' Susannah said.

There was a brief silence. If Amelia had picked up on anything, she wasn't responding.

'Amelia do you have any more questions?'

She shook her head. 'I think it'll just take me a while to get used to this.'

'Of course. You can always ring me. If you think of anything at all. We'll set up the first session before you leave today. Go from there, shall we?'

She nodded. She looked smaller, diminished by all this news.

'And Amelia ... I truly believe we're going to have a positive outcome. You're young, you're strong, and otherwise healthy. The odds are absolutely in your favour.'

Outside, Susannah put her arms around Amelia. 'I'm so sorry, Meels.'

Amelia shook her off, not particularly gently. 'What are you sorry for? You heard him. Ninety per cent after five years. If you believe that statistic that says we're all going to get cancer at some point or another, I've just got a lucky break.'

'That's one way to look at it, I suppose.'

'That's the way, Susannah.'

It was an order, not a request. Amelia was back, for now at least. It never took long.

'Are you going to tell everyone?'

'Not right away.'

'But you've got to tell Jonathan, surely?'

'Yes, of course. I'll tell him, and I'll tell Mum, and Dad, I guess, if I can catch him off the golf course. That's it. For now.'

'What about the kids?' Elizabeth was fifteen, and Victoria thirteen. They'd know something was wrong. Samuel too. Children weren't daft. Or blind.

'Not yet.' Amelia sounded emphatic. 'Not until I have to.'

'Are you sure about that?'

Amelia fixed Susannah with a stare that brooked no argument. 'Yes.'

In the car, driving home, Amelia put the radio on, and sang along, too loud and out of tune. She'd always done that. Susannah had been listening to her for ever.

One night just after Jonathan had moved out, three glasses of red wine later, Amelia had waved her glass in Susannah's face, trying to explain why she'd asked him to leave. 'He used to love it when I sang along to the radio. You know love it. Now he shushes me, the minute I start. It really bugs him.'

It had seemed a fatuous reason at first, to Susannah. But she'd come to understand it. Susannah still loved it, that Amelia sang. Maybe today more than any other day she remembered. Amelia didn't want to talk about it any more now that much was clear. Susannah knew it wasn't so much denial as just a stubborn refusal to entertain despair or fear. She was as brave as hell. She always had been.

'Did you think he was flirting with me back there Swift?!' Amelia fired the question sideways at her between choruses, with a wink.

'Of course he was.' Susannah winked back. 'Poor devil doesn't know he's not your type.'

'My type could change, I suppose. I could develop a Dr Kildare kind of a thing ...'

Susannah listened to her friend murder a Christina Aguilera ballad and remembered her labouring with Elizabeth, fifteen years ago. Amelia had decreed that Susannah be there. She didn't want her mum she said she'd make too much fuss but she needed a woman there, she claimed. She thought there was a good chance that Jonathan would fall to pieces when the going got tough, and she wanted someone she knew wouldn't. Then she'd winked and said that she wasn't actually one hundred per cent sure about Susannah, but that Susannah was the only woman she could possibly imagine seeing her legs akimbo with no knickers on, so Susannah it must be. Susannah had agreed, on the strict understanding that she'd be nowhere near what she euphemistically referred to as the 'business end'. But when it came down to it, of course, watching had been irresistible. It had been as amazing as everyone always said it was. Gross. But amazing. And the most staggering thing had been Amelia herself. She was right when she claimed she hadn't screamed. She'd made everyone in the room laugh. Almost to the end.

Susannah was grateful for the dark emptiness of the house when she got home, having dropped Amelia off with a last hug, and a promise to call her tomorrow. She kicked her shoes off by the front door and went to the sideboard in the living room, pouring herself a glass of cognac the first bottle at hand that didn't require the complication of a mixer or an ice cube. She slumped into the deep sofa without putting on the light, and then began to cry. This was frightening, and the strain of being okay all day for Amelia had been more exhausting than she'd realized. It was a relief to stop pretending.

Death and tragedy had stayed far away from Susannah and, somewhere at the back of her mind, she'd always wondered where it would rear its head. Maybe it was here, and now. God Amelia would be furious if she could hear what she was thinking. As she sat in the dark, taking gulps of the alcohol, she played scenarios through her mind her and the kids all in black in a graveyard; Amelia, pale and wan on her deathbed; having conversations like the ones Debra Winger has in Terms of Endearment. All the while, she sobbed softly and hiccuped, self-indulgently wallowing in the possibilities the future held.

The last time she'd been this frightened ... it was over Rob. In 1990, when he'd been in the Gulf. She'd lain in bed so many nights wondering where he was, what was happening to him, gripped with a self-perpetuating terror, playing out disastrous scenarios in her sleepless mind.

And here he was again, insinuating himself, almost by stealth, into her present life. She'd gone years without thinking about him, and now here he was, a starring role in all her silent thoughts.

That's where she was when Douglas came home. With the lights in the front room out, he went through first to the kitchen, and she heard him open cupboard doors and uncork a bottle of wine. He wandered leisurely back along the corridor, and flicked on the overhead light, reaching at the same time for the remote control on top of the television. She squinted against the sudden light.

'Christ you scared me to death.'

'Sorry.' She put her hand across her eyes to shield them.

'What are you doing, sitting here in the dark?' He sat down beside her, leaning in to kiss her cheek, then stopped. 'Have you been crying?'

She nodded and sniffed.

Douglas put his arm around her shoulder. 'What's wrong?'

For a moment she couldn't speak.

He leant back. 'Please, Susannah what's wrong? You're scaring me ...'

'It's Amelia.' She saw something of relief in him, just for a second, that the cause was not closer to home, before he rearranged his features carefully, and listened to her as she spilt out the events of her day. For her, this was as close to home as it came. Amelia was one of the people she'd loved longest and best in her life. Amelia was her family.

He made all the right noises, speaking in the platitudes and cliches people use about illness. Then he made dinner.

It wasn't his fault, she told herself, that he couldn't quite get it right these days.

Just before Susannah went to bed, at 11 p.m., Amelia called her mobile phone. As usual, she didn't introduce herself she went straight to the heart of the matter.

'You've got to call Jonathan.'

'It's ... What time is it ... ? It's late, Meels.'

'So, call him in the morning.'

'Why am I calling him in the first place?'

'Because he's gone nuts.'

'You told him?'

'Yeah. I called him this afternoon, after you dropped me off. I told him what Mr Swift told us, told him it wasn't a big deal, just that I might need him to take the kids a bit more, you know, once the treatment starts ...'

'And ...' Susannah could easily imagine Amelia blindsiding Jonathan with this information. Her delivery would have seemed bizarrely matter-of-fact, she presumed. She felt sorry for him, poor sod. Not for the first time, actually.

'And he freaked out. I think he was actually crying. He went very quiet for a minute, and then there was this snuffling going on in the background. And then he started talking nonsense.'

'What do you mean, nonsense?'

'He wants to move back in.'

'What?!'

'Exactly. That's what he says. Straight away. Where did that come from?'

Susannah suspected she knew exactly where that came from, but she didn't dare say so. 'What did you say?'

'I asked him what Jess would think of that.'

Susannah knew Jess was the woman Jonathan had been seeing for the last few months. Ouch.

'And then he went off into this ridiculous monologue. Said Jess wasn't as important. That I was the mother of his kids ... blah, blah, blah ... And then he started saying how sorry he was that things had gone wrong.'

'Poor bugger.'

'Why poor bugger?'

'Come on, Amelia, you just ring him up, announce you have cancer, and expect him to have a coherent, measured response on the tip of his tongue?'

'I didn't expect this.'

'More fool you, then. Look, I hate to be the voice of reason here, but you're asking for it. I've been drinking, and it's late, and you're making me be a part of this. You're so much into the straight talking, I'm going to talk straight to you.' She'd known this point would come. It was the cognac that made it come this soon. 'This is a big deal. You're going to carry on pretending it's not, that's fine. But you can't expect all of us who love you to agree. And he's one of the people who love you, however inconvenient it is for you to acknowledge that. So am I, for the record. We care, and we're scared and, frankly, we're the normal ones in this little scenario you've got going here ...'

Amelia was silent. For a second, Susannah thought she might have hung up.

But then she spoke. 'Tell me how you really feel, why don't you?'

They both laughed. That was classic Amelia. It didn't mean she had taken on board what Susannah said, but it didn't mean she hadn't either.

'So? Do you want him to move back in?'

'I can't believe you're even asking me that.'

Amelia had asked Jonathan to move out three years ago. He'd been renting a flat in Chiswick, a few miles from their home, ever since. Their divorce had been final for about a year. He'd been seeing Jess for maybe six months.

Susannah sighed. She knew she'd relent eventually and agree to ring Jonathan, and she was tired. 'What exactly do you want me to say to him?'

'I want you to make him understand that I can't have him acting like that. I don't need it. Don't want it. Won't have it. So, will you talk to him?'

'If you think it would help, of course I will.'

'I know it will help. He loves you and he'll listen to you.'

'What about you?'

'I just love you. I don't listen to anyone. You know that.'

Susannah had always loved Jonathan, too. They'd been friends for a long, long time. She'd known him longer than he'd known Amelia, in fact. She was there the first time the two of them met, part of a big gang in a crowded, smoky pub on Clapham Common. You could see the sparks flying, even through the smoke and the haze of drunkenness.

Jonathan was always the quieter, more shy one. Amelia, when she'd had a couple of drinks, could best be described as predatory. Susannah used to tell her she behaved like a man. She wasn't exactly a slut at least, her best friend would never have described her that way. There wasn't a very long list of conquests (although it was always much, much longer than Susannah's). It was just that she went after what she wanted. With gusto, appetite and enthusiasm. And without a great deal of considered thought, usually. What was unusual about that night, Susannah remembered, was that Jonathan didn't get dragged back to her flat after the pub. They exchanged numbers: they 'dated'. It was a couple of weeks three or four, maybe before Susannah woke up and found his coat on the banister. That was the giveaway.

When she and Amelia had shared their second home together, the flat on Latchmere Road, she'd called Jonathan 'the squatter'. He was always there, sprawled on the sofa on Sunday morning, using the hot water and dry towels on a Monday morning. If he hadn't been Jonathan, she might have resented him. But he was always the most charming man she'd ever known, and she'd found it almost impossible to be cross with him. He had always accepted the totality of their friendship he sometimes called them his 'wifelets', even though doing so inevitably ended up in him getting pummelled with a sofa cushion. Besides, it hadn't been very long before he'd been joined by Sean, and the foursome that had been so much fun, back in those days, had been born.