Unrequited Dream

  Finally, to all Paul’s fans. The support and kindness we received from the moment he was diagnosed was incredible. The thousands of letters, cards and messages that were sent showed what amazing loyalty and love he generated. If there is anyone who didn’t receive a reply, please accept my apologies – and also, at this time, my thanks.

Amongst the hundreds of letters I received after Paul died were some from his sponsors and most told of how they had ended up closer to Paul than they would ever have thought in a ‘professional’ relationship:

I want to thank you for Evie.

For the life you’ve left us with.

For the friends you gave me.

For the memories of the years together.

For the things that are still happening because of you.

I’d still pick you, Paul.

Even if I knew we had to go through it all again, I’d still pick you, babse. I’d still pick you.

  People always ask how I’ve coped. I think it’s just in me to be like this. I suppose I’ve changed a bit over the years – everyone does. Even with little things, practical things. Our Tracy loves to cook but, like my mum, I was never that bothered. However, once I was settled in Batley with Paul, I got better at it, partly because it made him happy if I made him nice meals, but also just as part of growing up.

  In the weeks after the funeral, I kept myself as busy as possible, looking after Evie, going back to work, and dealing with practical matters – anything to distract myself from the reality of what had just happened. Of course, there were moments when I curled up in a ball and cried bitter, painful tears for everything that Evie, Paul and I had lost, for the family we could have been. But it would be an insult to Paul if I dwelled on the negative. I’m alive and he’d not. He’d do anything to be here right now but it just wasn’t possible, so I’ve got to make the best of it for his sake. That’s what he’d tell me to do if he could: ‘Get your arse in gear, Linz,’ he’d say, and quite right too.

  Paul died at five to eight on the evening of Monday 9 October 2006. it was five days before his twenty-eighth birthday.

  I could tell straight away that he’d gone.

  ‘I love you, babes,’ I whispered in his ear.

  Alan was so calm. ‘You’ll be all right, Paul,’ he said. ‘My dad will find you in Heaven – he’ll look after you.’

  No one cried. There was this spooky calm and everyone was talking, saying the most lovely things. I didn’t want to let go of his hand but everyone else wanted to touch him, to kiss him, and there wasn’t enough of him to go round. We all felt filled with the most incredible feeling of love.

  It was then a thought occurred to me. Paul had relied on me so much to tell him what to do since he was first diagnosed, that he wouldn’t do a thing without seeing how I was going to approach it.

  He was waiting.

  He was waiting for me to tell him it was all right to die.

  Reality kicked in when he got his next test results through – things were going downhill, and the decline was much more rapid than any signs of recovery had ever been. Just as Paul had predicted, the next scan showed that his tumour had started to grow. No one could deny it any more. Paul was getting worse, almost by the day.

But Paul felt so good that he started having the odd cigarette again. I think he forgot how bad the cancer was because he was feeling so great. On 24 June, we went to two deddings in the one day: his cousin Craig’s in the afternoon, and then the evening do for his friends Ash and Jodie. It was the last day he felt well – and the last time a lot of friends saw him.

  Because after that there was a setback. A big one. On 27 June, Paul woke in the morning feeling dreadful. He was clutching his side and moaning, ‘Linz, the pain in my side. It’s back. The tumour’s getting bigger. I know it is.’

 ‘Paul, I’m afraid the chemotherapy isn’t working any more. It’s keeping your tumour marker level stable but not reducing it, so I don’t think there’s any point in doing another cycle at the moment.’

  It was all so straightforward but incredible at the same time. Evie Rose had caught me a bit with her little fingernail on the way out but otherwise I didn’t have any cuts or tears. Tracy had told me that you get a cup of tea and a plate of toast afterwards that is just the nicest in the world, and she was right. Evie was placed in a little sort of glass box at the side of us while my sister nipped out to ring our parents. Dad answered and he was just over the moon. Paul then rang his parents’ house and told Leanne – we could hear them all screaming in the background.

  I went to the toilet and could feel all this warm water soaking me. The moment I took my tights down, the pad fell down the loo and straight away the pains started to get stronger. I shouted to Tracy that I needed to go to the hospital without any delay. She was flapping about and her kids were screaming with excitement and Mum was shoving towels at me to put between my legs. ‘Put your drink down, Paul! We’re going!’ I called. ‘No chance,’ he shouted, ‘I need to calm my nerves so I’m having another!’ Tracy got me into their Jeep. “We’re having a baby! My wife’s having a baby!’”like no one’s ever done it before,’ she told me.

  Instead of coming back from our holiday to a period of remission, Paul had to gather his strength to start yet another cycle of chemo that would be administered every three weeks right into January 2006. Darren came back to stay again, which was a huge help, but every treatment seemed to get harder than the ones that went before. Sometimes Paul couldn’t even summon the energy to get dressed when it was time to drive to the hospital. He’d just keep his pyjamas and slippers on and slip a jacket on top.

  The antenatal classes and all the growing excitement about the baby meant that we had a distraction from cancer treatments. It finally seemed as if things were going our way. Paul’s next results were even more reason to celebrate – on 22 June, his tumour markers were down to 114. the doctors said the rate at which they were falling indicated ‘an ongoing excellent response to therapy’ – which was just what Paul needed to hear. He had a low platelet count at that stage but was feeling pretty good.

  I didn't have my first scan till I was 15 weeks pregnant. Generally they do one at 12 weeks, but because I was transferring to another hospital for the delivery my notes had to be sent over and that caused the delay. I asked Paul to come along with me on the day and he agreed, although it meant going back to St James’ on a non-chemo day.

  From the minute I found out that I was having a baby, Paul was so excited. It was like all this Christmases had come early. I think he thought he’d done all his hard work, so he could just bask in the glory of being a daddy-in-waiting. He had that cock-of-the-walk look about him – I could see what he was thinking: ‘I’ve made her pregnant! My sperm works!’

  It was just another bit of evidence. Confirmation. When someone you love gets cancer, there’s a bit of you thinks it’ll be different to anyone else’s experience. Chemotherapy will be a walk in the park. They won’t be sick. They won’t lose their hair.

  It was still positive! I went straight to hospital after I’d done the pregnancy test – my sixth. Paul was in quite good spirits that day, but it was starting to get to other people. His cousin Nicky had been on the phone in floods of tears worried that ‘little’ Paul looked all helpless. She said that she couldn’t stop thinking of him when he was a little kid and she’d looked after him; she wanted to be able to do something now; she wished she could fix it for him. As I comforted her, I was dying to wait until I was three months gone in case it went wrong. I didn’t want to be responsible for giving people any more sorrow at this time.

  Two days after I found out I was pregnant, Paul was due to start his chemotherapy. We spent the day before buying food that would be easy for him to eat and easy for me to take into hospital to try and stimulate his appetite.

  I didn’t heed my own warning about too much drink bringing out the tears. Two days after the clinic visit, Paul went on a boy’s night out ( it actually started in the afternoon), that he referred to as ‘The Last Supper’. The girls went out for a meal and then we all met up around half past then. Everyone was completely smashed and, after two hours, when people were starting to drift home, the mood changed. To start with in had been noisy and fun, but then friends started to be too nice and gave us ‘that look’, which showed how sorry they were feeling for us. Paul wanted to go once that happened but people were holding onto him, crying. Those who weren’t sobbing their hearts out were too stand, or stuck in the loo being ill.

  We woke up on Tuesday 19 April to a beautiful sunny day. Things didn’t seem too bad as we drove to Cookridge Hospital for Paul to have a brain and body scan. His sipped an aniseed drink for 45 minutes and then off he went. I sat there trying to find hospitals less threatening than I used to. I was thinking that the weather was beautiful, the people at hospital were friendly, but really I was hanging on by a thread.

  Paul played more exhibition matches over the weekend and did well, with two excellent breaks of 136 and 135. Professionally, he seemed to be able to remain totally focused despite what was going on in his personal life. As Monday came, he was still joking about the visit to the sperm bank and saying this was one appointment at Jimmy’s that he was looking forward to. I wasn’t looking forward to Monday, though; I was feeling sick at the thought of Paul’s HIV and STD tests coming back. I knew he hadn’t always been an angel before we settled down, but I didn’t think I could cope with some piece of paper pointing it out to me. And chances are if he had something, I would have it as well. We needed to be strong together for what was ahead, not split by angry memories of things in the past.

  ‘Lindsey, I think I’m going to die,’ he cried. ‘I’m so, so scared. I don’t know what to do. God, I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Help me, Lindsey, help me, please. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.’ It went on for a while, but it cleared the tension a bit by the time he got himself under control.

  He kept pushing me to say, ‘My husband has cancer.’ He was screaming at me: ‘Say it! Fucking say it!’ I wouldn’t, so he got angrier and angrier, more and more names were hurled at me, and he kept shouting, ‘Your husband’s got cancer! Fucking say it, Lindsey! Your husband’s got cancer!’ Eventually he wore himself out and the calls stopped – his heart was breaking. I could tell that, no matter how far away we were from each other.

  I told myself: we’ll get through this, it’s just a big stepping stone. Love and strength = positivity. Insaide, I started one of my lists:

  Words to hate            TUMOUR!!!!!!!!!

                                 CANCER!!!!!!!!

                                 MALIGNANT!!!!!!!!

                                 CHEMOTHERAPY!!!!!!!!

 The relief was overwhelming – but there was a pause between the specialist saying these words and the next sentence. ‘But the scan has shown up six cysts in Paul’s abdomen and we’d like to do a biopsy to see what’s going on.’

  Paul had six cysts and the doctors wanted to do a biopsy.

  Paul was crying.

  By the time I got to him, he was shaking like a leaf, ‘You all right, babes?’ I whispered. He nodded to me. ‘Yeah. I just can’t believe it. Look at you, look at you!’ he whispered back.

  He managed to get through the vows without crying too much and by the time the ceremony was over, he had pulled himself together – certainly enough to give me more than the regulation ‘you may kiss the bride’ smooch. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’s the soppiness gone, let’s have a great time.’

  Every time I went, I asked them to make the skirt shorter and tighter because I was thinking about what Paul would like. He only had one way of judging how I dressed: was there a lot of flesh on display? I applied his rule every time I visited the shop. Shorter! Tighter! Sexier! That would make me the bride he wanted to see on 19 May. Eventually, at the last fitting, I said, ‘Just an inch shorter and a little bit tighter and it’ll be perfect.’ That woman was so patient, so talented, that she did it – she made the most gorgeous dress in the world for my wedding to the most wonderful man in the world.

 ‘Here, Lindsey,’ he said one day from his sun lounger, ‘I think we sould do it.’

  ‘What’s that, babes?’ I asked lazily.

  ‘Get married.’

 ‘No, you can’t, Paul, I don’t want you to even try, because how could I believe a word of it?’ I slammed the phone down and unplugged it from the wall socket, and turned my mobile off too. I was completely determined that day – as determined as any of the hundred other times I’d sworn Paul would never get back into my life after cheating. But he was determined too. There were flowers. There were messages. There were letters. Brandon phonedme. Nicky phoned me. Leanne phoned me. Paul’s mum Phoned me. All of them said the same thing – that I was the one for him and he would be mad to let me go.

  I gave in.