I am going to put the whole of it here because the family have discussed it and because there is nothing in it that is anybody’s business but ours, and I would rather set it out than have it summarised by somebody else.
Aggie.
If you’re reading this then something has happened that you can’t explain, which is what I said, so I’ll take it that you’ve kept your word.
The clinic you’ve been going to every year since Noemi — the one you think is through my work — isn’t through my work.
It’s a study. Dr. Evanthia Kastellis runs it out of Marren. You’re a participant. You have been since the March of 2002.
I signed you onto it. I did it without telling you and I’ve had eleven years to feel about it however I was going to feel about it.
The reason is Noemi. You know the reason.
It’s paid for to 2034. All of it, up front, in 2013. You don’t owe anybody anything and nobody is going to send you a bill.
They will write to you every year. The letter comes in February. It looks like nothing. Don’t put it in the bin.
Go to the appointment, Aggie. Every year. That’s the whole of what I’m asking.
R.
My sister Noemi died in the February of 2001.
She was fifty-eight years old.
It was ovarian, and by the time anybody knew anything about it there was not a great deal that could be done for her, and it took eleven weeks from the first scan to the funeral.
I was fifty-five.
I did not cope with it well and I am not going to write about 2001 on this page. Rutger was the one who got me through it and he never once mentioned that afterward.
And then in March of 2002 — thirteen months after we buried my sister — my husband came in from work on an ordinary Tuesday and told me that his firm had put an annual health check into the benefits package.
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