Dear Reader,
When I was thirty-five, and five months pregnant with my second child, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. No one expects to have to face cancer at that age; no one expects their body to turn on them just when they are busy creating new life. I waited, with my heart in my mouth, to be told I was going to have to terminate. Instead, I was told I could be operated on during my pregnancy and start chemotherapy after the birth.
The first question I asked after diagnosis was whether I’d be able to breastfeed my daughter. I didn’t ask whether I was going to die. Perhaps I wasn’t ready to, but I always put it down to the fact that when you’re carrying a child, your instinct is to put that child first. I felt like I had to bring her into the world safely, no matter what. And with the help of the incredible NHS, I did.
When my daughter was seven days old and miles away from home in a special care unit after an incredibly shaky start, I had the first of six rounds of chemo. I’d held her perhaps twice at that point. She hadn’t been home. I wasn’t able to be any sort of a mother. I followed all the instructions I was given. Lie still while we surgically insert this port for administering the chemo drugs. Take this medication. Call us if your symptoms are worrying you. And in the back of my mind, I wondered whether I would survive it. Whether I would get to be her mother at all.
My son was two and a half. We were still counting my daughter’s age in days. If I died, neither of them would remember me. It seems so impossible, that, when you’ve been a mother for more than two years and all those hundreds of days have been spent taking care of your child. When you have fed him from your body and sung him to sleep. When you have held him so often you can feel the warmth and weight of his body even when he isn’t there. But I knew that he would forget me, if I died, and she would never know me. I wondered what I could leave them, what they would need if they didn’t have a mother.
When my treatment was over, I set myself the challenge of writing a 50,000-word first draft of a novel in the month of November. It wasn’t easy. My daughter was home by then and both my children needed me. I was tired from the chemo and I had a small operation during that month and another big one ahead of me. But I’m stubborn, and I don’t always take the easy road, and this was one of those times. Day after day, I added 2,000 words to my document. This book that I was calling I Wanted You To Know. It was written in letters. It was about my fears, and it poured out of me, and every day I felt a little lighter for getting it out of my head and onto the page.
Of that initial draft, not much remains. The title, the characters of Jess, Jake, Gemma, and Edie. The disease that Jess and I share. I’ve rewritten it a couple of times. It was elusive; it was hard. But in the early months of 2019, I rewrote it from scratch and something clicked. It poured out again, and this time it was right.
One of the best things about writing novels is how they can surprise you. I planned this novel out chapter by chapter, and though I didn’t deviate from that plan, it became something I hadn’t expected it to. I thought it was a love story, and it is, in part. But I didn’t know that it would be a love letter to friendship, to women, to life. That it would be a celebration as well as a tale of loss. That it would champion the wisdom of ordinary women; their compassion, their incredible strength in the face of tragedy.
The book you hold in your hands is the story of Jess and the people who matter to her. It’s about fear and virtue and bravery and love. I hope it strikes a chord with you. I hope it makes you want to reach out to those you love and pull them a little closer. Thank you for reading.
Laura