‘Let’s buy a paddling pool for the grandchildren this summer,’ we decide. And this is how it begins. Here, on this thinly populated edge of the west Wales coast, we are fortunate to have a large garden which wraps itself around the house so that even a large paddling pool doesn’t make much of an impact on the lawn. We set it up and rather than wait for the grandchildren, who do arrive, and a summer that lasts one week, we try the pool out just to see how it feels. The water’s unheated so my first few attempts are torture as I ease in millimetre by millimetre whilst Tom - who takes the short sharp plunge approach - shouts, ‘In! In! In!’. I quickly realise that the shock of the cold is almost instantly followed by pure bliss; there’s the silkiness of the water, the novelty of the frog’s eye view of the garden and the sheer silliness of lying in a giant paddling pool which makes us both laugh. I’m not known for my love of the cold - I have Raynaud’s, for a start - so Tom is a bit sur
Bedtime. I turn on my side to switch off my bedside light and the underside of my right forearm presses against something solid, something to do with my left breast. Something odd. I lie back and reluctantly prod at my breast. My fingers immediately find a large, solid mass. I explore the other breast, looking for its twin. Nothing. I return to the lump. Still there. Not true, surely? Tom leans in for a goodnight kiss. Then he sees my face. ‘What’s up?’ ‘Can you just,’ I ask, lightly, ‘see if you can feel a lump here?’ ‘They’re different,’ he confirms. We lie there in shocked silence. In my case, hoping that the next time I put my fingers to my breast, I won’t be able to find anything. Surely I would have noticed a solid lump sooner? Still there. I spend most of the night awake wondering something or nothing? Typically, with Covid regulations beginning to ease, we’ve made arrangements to catch up with family, but my trip to the GP the next day means these plans will now have to be