Catriona Olding

In 1984 I was a third-year student nurse. The last secondment before my final exam was gynaecology. The wards were housed several miles away from the friends and familiar faces of the Edwardian general hospital where my training had been based. It was an unfriendly place. The staff had little time for outsiders and none for this skinny, ginger, idealistic student nurse. In those days, before accurate scanning equipment was widely available, the diagnosis of ovarian and uterine cancer was difficult and treatments much less effective than they are now. The outlook for many was bleak. Some of the patients on the ward where I worked were a deep ochre colour from jaundice, and were so emaciated it was a miracle their skeletal legs could carry them.

On a hot afternoon in October, I joined a lunch party. By the time I arrived, the company was on coffee and liqueurs. A pretty woman in her seventies mentioned an academic friend who was downsizing and how the prospect of getting rid of thousands of books had upset him so much he sought help from a counsellor. The counsellor had said: ‘But they’re only books.’ My husband, Jeremy Clarke, wrote the Low Life column in this magazine for 23 years until his death in May. In one of his columns, he wrote about how, after the sale of his mother’s house in Devon (where he’d lived for 30 years), he sent two Mercedes Sprinter van loads of stuff, mostly books, here to Provence. Seventy boxes arrived, containing around 2,500 volumes.

‘Am I gonna die today, Treen?’ I kissed his cheek. ‘Darling, your oxygen, blood pressure and pulse are fine and you’re a good colour. Since you woke up you’ve had a poached egg on toast, plain Greek yoghurt with berries, granola and maple syrup, a Snickers bar, a piece of fruit cake, a baked fresh mackerel with tomatoes and a Mini Magnum. It’s two o’clock – if you do die it’ll be from gluttony.’ Jeremy was modest, kind, passionate and loving. He was a great laugh and a terrific dancer. We had a blast This was early May. Jeremy, paralysed from the chest down, was attached to three syringe drivers for pain control and had a urinary catheter in situ.