Scarlett isn't sure her life could fall any further apart. On the morning her husband, Captain James Tamworth admits to cheating on her, she's diagnosed with cancer.
In the midst of caring for their two small children, battling through her health t...
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I shut the house door really hard. The glass almost rattles it's so aggressive and walk to the kitchen. Elsie is sitting at the breakfast bar eating a sandwich and James is stir-frying some vegetables.
"What's with all the slamming?" he grumbles, the sizzling noises overtaking the kitchen.
"Are you for real?" I ask, yanking the zip on my coat down to drag it off and toss it over the back of the chair.
He goes back to stirring the vegetables, ignoring me. Elsie shows me her half-eaten sandwich when I go over to give her a kiss. Then she goes on to tell me about her new friend at play school.
James keeps his back to me. "I'm making stir-fry beef for dinner. Is that okay?"
I go fill Elsie's drink up. "I'm not too hungry yet. It's too early. I'll eat whatever's leftover."
The spoon slaps against the worktop when he puts it down. "I'm going out to watch the new James Bond movie with Max later, so I thought it was best to eat early."
My hand strokes over Elsie's head when I put her drink down and head for the door. "Okay."
"What's wrong with you?" he shouts after me.
I'm still reeling from the doctors appointment is what's wrong with me. They can't be certain they got all the cancer yet. It's all so up in the air. I wanted them to tell me I was cured and that didn't happen.
I thought by operating, it got it all, but there's always a chance some is still remaining within the surrounding tissue. A small chance that's now consuming every part of me. Radiotherapy takes weeks up to months to show results.
For some reason, hearing this puts me back to square one. I came out of the hospital with a new set of anxieties— an appointment I had to face alone.
Lucas is happy to see me when I creep into his room, smelling his nappy as soon as I push the door open. The poor boy is leaking through his trousers. It's quite safe to say my anger is now nuclear.
This isn't okay.
I know James didn't bother to change him before putting him down because his skin has started to go all sore. A telltale sign because his skin is so sensitive.
"James!" I shout as I cross the landing to start running Lucas a bath.
"What?" he shouts back from the bottom of the stairs.
I lay Lucas down on the bath towel and strip him out of his messy nappy, wondering if I should get the worst off him and put him straight into the water to get him clean.
"You forgot to change Lucas and now he's getting a rash."
He's instantly on the defensive. "He was clean when I put him in there!"
That's hard to believe from the amount I'm cleaning off him. "Did you check?"
"Yes," he shouts way too loud. "Don't try make me out to be a bad father."
