Things I Want My Daughters to Know by Elizabeth Noble Read Free Book Online Page A

war-mongering words, and I’m not afraid to use them. Fight. Battle. Overcome. Determination.
    Courage. Win. I want to do all of those things. I’m ready to do all those things. I want to live. Simple as that. We all do, don’t we? It’s instinctive. Besides, it’s 2006. They cure cancer these days.
    They catch it early, they treat it “aggressively” (that expression makes me think all the oncologists will charge around the ward looking like Mel Gibson in Braveheart , but I don’t suppose that’s what they mean. I’d settle for oncologists who look like Mel Gibson, though. Good-looking obstetricians I can live without, but oncologists aren’t excavating around downstairs, as my mother would put it): they cure cancer. Success rates are higher than ever.

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    The disease has bad PR, that’s for sure. It makes people make the face. But they cure it. And they will cure me.
    If I wrote a book (ha, ha), I know what picture I would put on the front cover. I have this fridge magnet—you bought it for me, Lisa, a long time ago. I can’t remember exactly what it says and I can’t be bothered to go downstairs and see, but it’s this black-and-white photo of some Edwardian-type women sitting at a table, and it says something about the ladies on the Titanic who waved away the dessert cart. Makes me laugh every time I remember to notice it. I’d call my book something like Life’s Short: Eat Pudding First.
    Could be a Christmas bestseller, that could.
    You can’t just do that when you get ill, girls. (Maternal lesson alert!) You have to do it all the time. Do it always. Life is short. Even if you don’t get cancer. Even if you die an old lady in your bed. It’s still a blink-and-you-miss-it, ever-increasing-speed, white-knuckle ride.
    I’ve been pretty good at that. Not always. I’m not perfect. But not bad. I’ve lived a life. Even had a Shirley Valentine moment, but if you think reading on will reveal the secrets of that to you, you’re much mistaken—you don’t need to know everything . . . ! (That’s called a teaser.) If this goes the way I want it to, I will have died an old lady in my bed. I’m just covering myself. In case.
    But if you think I’m going to start drinking wheatgrass, you’re very much mistaken. Make mine a G&T, ice, and a slice. . . .

    �
    October

    “Happy Birthday, Hannah!” They were celebrating in a restaurant. Everyone was here, except Stephen, who was working. They’d always done family birthdays at home, but this year the local bistro seemed safer. This was the first birthday. In her head, Hannah called it BD and AD. Before death and after. This was her first birthday AD. So far so okay. She’d woken up, been to school, come home, and changed to come here, and she still hadn’t cried today.
    “Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.”
    “What do you know about it?”
    “I know the look. And I’m not seeing it.”
    Hannah pressed her lips into a Marilynesque pout, blew a kiss at Lisa, and grabbed her last unopened present. She knew it was Amanda’s not so much by process of elimination, but because it wasn’t actually wrapped, just shoved in a bag. An ethnic shop type of bag that smelled of sandalwood and still contained a receipt. No card. Occasionally, while she was traveling, Amanda would send a card in lieu of a present—always in a foreign language, always containing some joke no one understood, since it was in Croatian, or Malaysian. In attendance this year, she saw no need for a card to say in writing what she could very well say in person. Mum would have been terribly disapproving. Jennifer’s gift had been a big bottle of Stella McCartney, wrapped in thick lilac paper that T h i n g s I W a n t M y D a u g h t e r s t o K n o w 39
    matched the perfume bottle and tied with a silver chiffon ribbon. Lisa had given her a Whistles voucher, with a card attached saying the condition was that she be present when