It’s breakfast, a day or two later. We haven’t discussed our plan to change the course of modern pharmaceutical retail again. To be honest, thinking about it further, it seems ambitious… based on a single unreliable thermometer, as it is.
I’ll probably just end up taking the thermometer back to the shop.
Lizzie is looking at her phone, while she eats (in general we’re like one of those families you see in a ‘dangers of social media’ campaign… all looking at their phones, at mealtimes, rather than making any attempt to actually speak to each other).
She’s received a text from an old university friend. Saying how sorry they are and if there’s anything they can do to help and how hard it must be etc. etc. Exactly the kind of well-meaning text Lizzie finds it hard to keep on replying to.
‘I got this one about a week ago and I still haven’t responded,’ says Lizzie guiltily. ‘What am I going to say?’
‘Why don’t you say,’ I suggest, ‘sorry to take so long to reply. It’s because I’m ill. With cancer.’
This idea seems to tickle Lizzie.
The idea turns to a broader conversation… about other useful ways Lizzie can usefully play the ‘cancer card’ to get out of potentially awkward or unwanted situations.
‘I mean… I could never see your family again!’ says Lizzie excitedly.
‘We hardly ever see them anyway,’ I reply, ‘apart from my Mum. And you don’t seem to mind that too much.’
Lizzie nods vaguely. She’s actually very nice about my Mum (who’s an excellent Mum after all. So why wouldn’t Lizzie be nice about her?).
‘Think of all the friends you could prune from your friend tree though,’ I offer. ‘Saying you feel too ill to see them.’
Lizzie nods again. The subject broadens out to other uses of Lizzie’s cancer. Might it potentially mean we could get a mortgage holiday, for example, if we explain our situation to the mortgage company? That would be useful.
Lizzie now begins riffing on the subject of people who REALLY exploit their cancer, for nefarious purposes. Has there ever been a black comedy made on the subject? It could kind of be bleak… but funny.
I try and remember what Nighty Night was about. Was it something like that?
‘You should write it!’ Lizzie suddenly says. ‘Into a film script!’
‘Er…’ I reply, ‘I’m currently kind of writing about this…’ I gesture at the two of us, sitting at the kitchen table.
Lizzie looks surprised.
‘This… you mean, you’re writing about US?’ she asks, wide-eyed.
‘Yes!’ I say. ‘Don’t you remember? I told you!’
‘When you said you were writing again,’ says Lizzie, ‘I just thought you were rehashing some of your old crap. I mean, like your children’s books.’
Clearly Lizzie wasn’t listening at all, when I asked her permission to write this story.
Lizzie starts to mumble something about the unflattering portrait she might (literally) paint of me in response to this blog I’m writing.
But before I can even say that I don’t think my portrayal of her is remotely unflattering, she’s moved on… the subject of my writing having been pushed out of her brain, by Lizzie’s vast indifference to the subject, as instantly as it first appeared there.
‘Who’s going to cook supper tonight?’ she says. ‘Me, I presume,’ she adds, crossly.
P. D. Clifton 
Leave a comment