When I was nearly 16, my Dad was posted to Woolwich. As far as I could make out, this was the coolest posting ever. Not only would it mean I could leave the boarding school I hated, and do my A Levels as day girl; it also meant I'd be living in London. The hub of the known universe. I'd spend all my spare time being impossibly cool on the King's Road, and falling in love with beautiful people who'd invite me to wild parties. I'd have several improbable adventures every week, and I'd be happy and gorgeous and rich and famous. Because that's what Living In London was like.
Our house was a terraced town house; part of a walled estate of officers' quarters at the top edge of Woolwich Common, with the General's house in a fenced semi-barracks over the road and then another estate of officer's quarters beyond that, edging onto Shooters Hill Road, and beyond that the common itself, a vast(ish) rambling sprawl of unkempt, untended land with the Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital (now shut, I think) beyond it.
To begin with, I was too overwhelmed by Living In London to do many of the enticing and exciting things I'd imagined. Besides, my father had rather more conservative ideas of teenage London life and made it apparent that the King's Road would be an infrequent destination and parties would be strictly limited to local friends with similarly minded parents keeping a watchful eye and imposing a strict curfew. Dad had also picked me out a friend.
Dad had a habit of picking out friends for the teenage me. They usually reflected the Silver he wanted to mould. An alien creature, to whom I bore little or no relation beyond our sharing of a common name. There was a boy he introduced me to at a mess disco once. The unfortunate chap had dreadful acne, which might have been improved had he ever washed his hair. But he hadn't, so it contributed to the general greasiness. He didn't redeem himself by wearing a donkey brown zip up, suede fronted cardigan with his blue corduroys and brown lace up shoes. But he was studying Physics, Maths and Further Maths at A level, and that was what Dad thought made him a Suitable Prospect. Sadly, in those days I had no grace, and tipped a glass of coke over him to make him go away, all more subtle attempts having been robustly ignored. Dad's other speciality was lame ducks. Friends of friends who he'd heard about through the grapevine and taken under his wing. We were all supposed to join in.
When he told me about the girl up the road, I thought she was going to fall into the lame duck category. She and her mother had been shipped home from Germany in a hurry because they'd discovered a shadow on her lung and she wasn't expected to live long. Her father would be following in a week or two, but in the meantime a mutual friend had asked dad if we would look after them. She was more or less exactly my age, and he thought it would be nice for her to make some friends in Woolwich.
I can remember going to meet them with a sinking sense of duty. Her mother answered the door, and was a reassuringly, refreshingly normal woman with an air of calm which only slightly belied the tension on her face. There were a pair of dachsunds who bounded up to meet us, and who broke the ice. And there was the girl. She had the same name as me, too, but abbreviated it slightly differently, so I'll call her Sil.
She'd been at QEMH having further diagnoses, and it turned out the shadow on her lung wasn't an advanced cancer as they'd thought in Germany. She did, however, have Hodgkins' disease, and was about to begin chemotherapy.
She wasn't a lame duck. She was a remarkable girl - gentle, cheerful, funny, and ferociously clever. She had a wide circle of friends and I was quickly accepted as one of them, and never ceased to be amazed, because Dad was right on one count; Sil was more like the Silver he'd like me to have been than the Silver I ever have been. Nonetheless, Sil and I became firm friends.
She enrolled in the 6th form college down the road, who were extremely good. Her chemo was every other week, and in the inbetween weeks she'd go to college and study for her A Levels. I'd go round after school most days and we'd read magazines, gossip about new people we'd met at school, bitch about our subjects, puzzle over our homework.
The chemo lasted a while, and Sil lost her hair. She and her mum bought a wig. It was a lovely thing, with hair just her shade of red, and it looked incredibly natural. But it was hot and uncomfortable and she preferred to wear scarves at home. A friend painted her a beautiful picture, which hung in her room. She and her mother went to the Bristol cancer centre, and began to eat their specialised cancer diet (it was quite unusual at the beginning of the 80s - I think most hospitals have adopted it, now). They both looked better and felt more energised as a result of it. It was a vegetarian diet, high in nuts and seeds. I began to seriously consider becoming a veggie.
It came round to filling UCCA forms. We sat in Sil's bedroom and pored over prospectuses. We both applied to Manchester, and to a couple of other places together. We were both offered places at Manchester, and spent more hours poring over accommodation catalogues, and deciding what we would do when we got there - which societies would we join? Who would we meet? Where would we go? Who would we be when we got there? Sil told me that she would really believe she was better when she moved into that hall of residence, and sat in her first lecture. She would really know she had beaten it.
She spent one Christmas in reverse barrier nursing. We had to gown up and wear masks to see her, and anything we brought had to go through a special microwaving process to make sure it was sterile - her white blood count was dangerously low and, even though the chemo was beating the cancer she was in severe danger from more mundane bugs - everyday viruses could have killed her at that point.
At the time she was in and out of QEMH, Simon Weston was there too - I remember hearing him screaming once, and he was often to be seen wondering around the grounds in the later stages of his stay - hideously scarred and frankly quite scary.
She beat the cancer. She got her A Levels. We took a year out. I went to Live In London properly - Fulham first, then later on Knightsbridge. I had a wild year, many adventures. Worked in all sorts of environments I will never find myself in again.
At some point during that year, Sil came to a ball with me and my set of friends. I have a photo of her looking assured and happy in a black, sequinned gown.
And we went to Manchester. We went our separate ways at that point, pretty much. We'd meet up a couple of times a year and have lunch and a gossip, but I got into student politics and being in the bar, whereas Sil was in the University Women's rowing 8, and a valued member of the athletic community. She had a proper boyfriend - Richard - clean cut and attractive and grown up, whereas I went through a serious of shambling, rambling freaks and dropouts.
About a year before Moo was born, a mutual friend sent me a message that Sil needed to see me. She'd found a lump in her groin and was going down to QEMH to get it checked out. It was quite big, and she was very concerned. She just wanted me to know. I offered to go with her, but Rich was going and she was ok.
QEMH ran tests, and said the lump was fine. She'd been in remission for 3 years, and they were still being very careful. But the lump was simply a blocked gland, and nothing to worry about.
Sil graduated a year before me, and got a place on Arthur Anderson's graduate training scheme. She and Rich took some time out over the summer and cycled around France before they started working.
When I was pregnant, Sil was delighted for me. She fussed and clucked
and came round regularly to make sure I was OK. Her mum was a regular
supporter, too, making baby clothes and taking me out for meals on her
occasional visits to Manchester. When Moo was born, Sil came to the hospital to take me and the baby home. She looked tired and pale. The matron took an impossibly long time to discharge me, while Rich was left waiting for us in the car park. Sil was patient and gentle, and sat and cuddled the baby. We went back to my house, and they stayed for a cup of tea before heading for home again.
A few weeks later, I had a phone call from Sil's father. The cancer was back. The lump had been malignant after all. A routine check had picked up a tumour. They'd operated immediately, and taken cancer out of her abdomen from the top of her groin to her solar plexus. They'd not got it all, but decided she couldn't take any more in one operation. There were secondaries. It wasn't a good prognosis, but she was making a good recovery from the operation and would be starting chemo again very soon. Arthur Anderson had said she should take as much time off as necessary, on full pay. She'd gone home to be with her parents for a bit, but would be back in Manchester as soon as she could be. I wanted to go and see her, but we decided she wasn't up to small babies at the moment.
I rang every week, and we chatted. She sounded flat and tired. She was hit hard by her failure to keep the cancer at bay; and by the hospital's failure to spot it quicker. But her spirit shone through and she remained positive. She'd beaten it once, she'd beat it again. We all believed that.
Of course, she didn't. The last time I saw her was in Rich's house in Manchester. She cuddled my baby. She was painfully thin and very, very pale. She talked of how she could feel it growing inside her, feel it getting bigger day by day. She also talked of how she felt lucky, in many ways. Lucky to have so many true friends, lucky to be so loved. But most of all, lucky that she knew her destiny. She watched us, struggling and stressing and wondering how our lives were going to be. She admired us for taking difficult paths, for choosing the tough option. And she felt blessed that all it was required for her to do was relax, rest, and die.
She died on a Tuesday morning, when we were 22. She was at home in her bedroom. The window was open and it was a sunny day. Her mum, dad, brother and a carer of whom they'd all become very fond were with her. She died in huge pain and even more enormous dignity. I have a letter from her, written the week before, saying goodbye. She also arranged her own funeral, and for the treasures she'd accumulated in her short life to be distributed to the people she loved.
Her funeral was held in the local church. Dad and I went together to say goodbye to the beautiful friend he'd chosen for me. He rarely got it right in such style, my dad. Watching her lowered into the ground was hard to bear.
Over the years, she's often been in my mind. I often see people who remind me of Sil. Their teeth are crooked just so; or they make a particular gesture; hold their head in a certain way; or laugh up the scale in the same key. She seems to have distributed her physical characteristics generously amongst the people who casually brush past me in my daily life. She has never been far away, and I've often thought of her, so she has never really become unfamiliar to me.
But yesterday I was really blown away, walking through the campus on my way back to the office from a degree congregation. A car was driving along the road towards me. The man driving it looked, for a brief second, just like my stepfather.
I wasn't expecting that.
