Good Husband Material by Trisha Ashley Page A

craggy good looks under a blur of padding and saggy eye pouches. He always looks worse when he’s spent the night at Howard’s, so he’d be much better off coming home and getting a good night’s sleep when he works late.
    He was a bit miffed when I asked him if he’d weighed himself lately, and muttered that at least he wasn’t a hollow-eyed drug addict like my former boyfriend, which I ignored as beneath contempt. (I mean, have you
seen
Fergal Rocco? You don’t acquire a body like that through a syringe!)
    With all this to occupy my mind it was some time before I began to resurface and take stock of my fellow sufferers in the waiting room – and a highly unsavoury lot they appeared to be, too, though it could have been the lighting that made everyone look terminally consumptive.
    Some were talking quietly, but no one tried to exchange even a nervous smile with me, and eventually I realised that there was something that made me conspicuous from the other women – the brightness of my clothes.
    I was the only one wearing anything brighter than beige, and in fact most of them looked as if they’d gone into mourning for themselves already.
    James would like me to wear smart Country Casuals-type stuff and little suits, and he often says I should go and have my hair styled.
    What does he mean
, styled
? It is deep gold, naturally curling, and hasn’t been cut since I was old enough to resist Mother, although the curls ravel it up like knitting. Isn’t
that
a style?
    By the time I was summoned an hour later I looked more Edith Cavell than the nurse, since I’d been too afraid of missing my turn to go to the ladies.
    She marched me past two men in white coats with their heads together in earnest discussion and threw open the door of a little cell.
    ‘In here,’ she ordered bossily. ‘Undress. Top half only.’
    With the closing of the door the distant rattle of the hospital was abruptly silenced, and I turned to face the narrow room with its couch, washbasin and sliver of frosted window.
    I unfastened the straps of my dungarees, took off my shirt with fingers made clumsy from cold and fear, and laid it on the end of the couch.
    There was a white cellular hospital blanket folded there, clean, but marked with old stains, and I felt so cold that I draped it round my shoulders and huddled on the couch. My legs dangled, and one shoe fell off on to the chewing-gum-coloured lino. I let the other one drop too, realised my hand was pressed firmly to my Lump, and snatched it away.
    After ten interminable minutes a spotty youth in a white coat breezed in. ‘Good morning! I’m a student doctor and, if you don’t mind, I’m going to examine you first,’ he said cheerfully, without looking up from the grubby clipboard he carried, and the nurse materialised from behind him and deftly removed the blanket without waiting for my reply.
    He probed long and deep at both breasts like a child searching for the free plastic toy in a box of cereal. Then he straightened and let his breath go in a long sigh.
    I looked fearfully at him.
    ‘Yes, there does seem to be the hint of a lump there, doesn’t there? I’ll just fetch Mr Thomas, the consultant, now – won’t be a tick.’
    Five minutes later, while I was still visualising my deathbed scene, a small, rotund, elderly doctor with a polka-dot bow tie and an entourage of obsequious nurses swept in.
    He wasted no time on polite preliminaries.
    ‘Lift your arm. Left arm. Higher. So?’ He probed once, fingers flat and unpleasantly warm. ‘Nothing there. You can go.’
    And out he marched again.
    Blankly I stared at the student doctor hovering in his wake: ‘Does that mean – does it mean I’m all right?’
    ‘Yes, if Mr Thomas says so. You can go.’
    I exhaled deeply, and colour, warmth and movement flooded back into the world. ‘My God! I thought he was about to say I had six months to live, or something.’
    ‘Not this time!’ He hurried off after the