The Alexander McQueen exhibition is just as stunning as I expected, but it’s also the worst possible place for me to be at the moment, all death and wings and departures and terrible beauty. I have just been taken to lunch and told, “This is a lovely day, isn’t it? FYI, just need to drop this in: in a couple of months I’m going to be sawing your arm off, ok? But don’t let this ruin your day! I just didn’t want it to be hanging over us, and for you to look back and be upset that I hadn’t told you about the arm surgery thing!” 

Arm, hand, leg, whatever, family, whatever, it’s white noise once I realise what her face is about to say. 

I think, We haven’t even got our cocktails yet. 

Then I think, Seriously? You had to tell me, right now? You might have had to tell me, but I certainly didn’t need to hear it right now. I’ve had boys in our teens do this dick move, the I-thought-you’d-want-me-to-be-honest tap dance up on the moral podium, but never my own sister. 

My skin is vibrating with distress. I can’t name the myriad ways my misery blooms. My fingers are tap tap tapping to match my pulse, because I have to stay calm; if my seizure last month was caused in any way by stress, my only priority is staying low-stress, for the rest of my life, and my fizzing cortex is cooperating by shutting down my systems, one by one. The waiter keeps coming to watch us. Neither of us are eating, or saying anything. I’ve spent the last thirty-three years trying to learn that no one ever regretted not saying something in anger, no matter how true that thing might be. 

They box up my lunch, and we walk to the tube in silence, then ride to South Kensington in silence, then walk the underpass in silence, then walk around the exhibition apart. 

All I can think about is how soon I’ll be home.