–6–

My tenth birthday party — a big one, which was going to be held at an amusement park — had to be cancelled at the last minute because my mother learned she had cancer. She would be dead in four months. The tumour had started in an ovary, and had spread to her intestine, stomach, and lungs. What have I got to say about it? Well, when she explained her illness to me, she didn’t tell me she might die. And, although I watched her waste away, it didn’t seem possible that she was about to disappear. She was hospitalised for the last time one morning after vomiting up a smelly, black soup that doctors refer to as faecal matter — the cancer had grown so big that it was blocking her intestine. When she left home, propped up by my father, she said, ‘Be happy, son.’ And she kissed me on the forehead, a cold kiss. I never saw her alive again.

I was woken in the middle of the night by my aunt, who’d come from abroad to help look after my mother, her younger sister. ‘Darling, I need to tell you something,’ she murmured. ‘What?’ I asked sleepily. ‘Your mother’s gone to heaven,’ she answered, her voice faltering.

At that moment, the words ‘Your mother’s gone to heaven’ made no sense at all to me. That’s why it took me a while to work out what had happened. When she saw my confounded expression (that was how she described it years later), she used the right words: ‘Your mother’s dead.’

I’m tired.