Free A Hundred Pieces of Me by Lucy Dillon

Gina’s childhood, so well, in fact, that she’d only noticed years later when she was old enough to appreciate how hard it was to defuse tension between two very similar women.
    ‘Mum,’ she said carefully, the effort clipping each word into a hard shape, ‘I can’t freeze my eggs because the chemotherapy might have damaged my ovaries. I can ask about tests when I go for my check-up later this year but I wouldn’t hold your breath.’
    ‘You don’t know what medical advances they might make in the next few years,’ said Janet, obstinately. ‘Positive thinking, Georgina!’
    Gina bit her tongue. Janet didn’t know the full extent of her treatment, the scouring, brutal effect it had had on her body while it was killing off the invading cells. She didn’t know, because she hadn’t wanted to know. Hospitals made Janet hysterical – understandably – so Stuart had passed on edited updates, all calm and authoritative, almost as handsome as a doctor himself. Her mother’s distress had made Gina feel even worse so she’d hidden away from it. Only Stuart and Naomi had been allowed to see her while she was at her greyest, her most exhausted.
    The memory of that time dragged at her again, and Gina felt weary. She had work in the morning, and boxes to clear at home. She looked up, ready to tell her mother that she had to get away, but caught an expression of unguarded vulnerability in Janet’s eyes that stopped the words in her throat. Her mother seemed lonely, and older, but at the same time defiant, like a child, not ready to back down.
    Janet caught her looking and raised her chin. ‘I never know what to say to you, Georgina,’ she said, in a wobbly voice. ‘It always seems to come out wrong.’
    What’s the correct response to that, thought Gina. Exhaustion tugged at her bones, and she wished she were back in her flat, sorting, progressing, winnowing her life.
    But this was her mother, half of her reason for being alive in the first place, even if they still couldn’t talk without crashing into conversational sandbanks.
    ‘I just don’t want you to end up lonely,’ said Janet, and Gina heard the silent ‘like me’ beneath it.
    She took a deep breath. Fresh start, she reminded herself. Including with Mum.
    ‘I’m not going to end up lonely. I’ve told Naomi that if Willow plays her cards right she’ll be inheriting my diamond earrings and shoe collection. If that doesn’t keep her popping round in my old age, I don’t know what will. Now, do you want some fresh tea ?’ she said, even though the one she had wasn’t cold.
    ‘That’d be nice, love,’ said Janet, and managed a smile.
     
    Stuart texted Gina while she was waiting at the traffic lights outside Longhampton, the trifle bowl rewrapped in two copies of the Longhampton Gazette on the back seat.
    The message flashed up on the phone:
     
    Mountain bike repair kit? Not in bag. Pls check ur boxes. Also pls send loan details for accountant. S
     
    Gina ground her teeth. That was basically what it came down to. Nine years of trust and laughter and tears and hopes. Reduced to admin.
    She still hadn’t got used to the bluntness of Stuart’s messages, carefully stripped of anything that might read like a change of heart. And even though Gina knew something had shifted, the distant click of a door closing behind her, she still hadn’t completely crushed the traitorous flicker in her heart that maybe the message would read, ‘I screwed up. Please forgive me’. Just so she could ignore it, if she wanted.
    But it was always just about stuff. Who had what. Where was this, who paid for that.
    She stared out at the sky, now leaden with invisible rain. In about fifteen hours, she had to go back to her office and open her files on other people’s homes, set her mind to absorbing the stress and paperwork for them. The last thing Gina needed, with her energy leaking away by the minute, was a reminder that the only thing her husband wanted from the