Marthe almost always has stomach pains, she has Crohn’s disease. They removed a section of her bowel ten years ago, but not so much that she needed a stoma. She went in for surgery on my thirtieth birthday, I’d booked a bistro with two friends also celebrating their birthdays, and when we’d found out the date of Marthe’s operation, Mum wanted me to cancel, surely we could have a party at a later date, what if something were to happen in surgery and I was drunk or they couldn’t get through to me? Could you ever forgive yourself, Mum asked me. It hit home, but I didn’t want to cancel, I didn’t want to shift the party for Marthe’s sake, it wasn’t a risky operation, and I didn’t want to spend 33hours on end in some waiting room leafing through interior design magazines and drinking hot chocolate from a vending machine as I consoled Mum, I wanted to drink wine, I wanted to be in the company of others. Even so, I couldn’t shake what Mum had said about forgiving myself, and even though I’d bought a new dress and had enjoyed so much prosecco that I was drunk by ten o’clock, I checked my phone constantly, I was on it all night long. Not one message came through to tell me how things had gone, the operation should have been over and done with hours earlier. I knew that Mum was punishing me, but still my palms felt clammy, I tried calling her but she wouldn’t pick up, and I felt certain that something had gone wrong after all, that they hadn’t had a chance to call me, that there was no signal wherever they were, I went outside and tried calling from there, stood on the pavement not far from my friends, who were smoking, and felt as if the ground was collapsing beneath my feet, and I stood there, drunk, sobbing, Mum not picking up, until eventually I hung up. I pictured Marthe on the operating table in an oxygen mask, blood and beeping sounds, desperate doctors crowding around her, that this was the operation that would be the anomaly, the one that almost always goes to plan, and that Mum wouldn’t call me because I’d chosen not to be there, I’d chosen to go out drinking instead, to do stupid things. I reached out a hand to hail a taxi, it was a light summer evening and I left the party, not to go to the hospital, I couldn’t go there now, not drunk like this, but home, where I curled up under the covers after throwing up, shaking, black inside. I woke 34the next day to a message from Mum to say everything had gone well, and another from my friend asking why I’d left so early without my jacket.