Amber’s words were tumbling out of her mouth before I even had time to say hello.

‘I feel sick . . . sick with disgust at life’s cruel and haphazard nature. I just can’t believe that you’ve been crushed, so indiscriminately, under the black jackboot of fate.’ Amber let out a strangled sob. ‘I know we’ve had our differences, Ruby – well, only when you’ve taken Emerald’s side against mine – but you also know I’d do anything for you. You do know that, right?’

‘Great. What you can do for me is meet me for lunch. One pm. Convict Cafe.’

‘What? Why not meet at the International Space Station? It’s closer.’

‘I don’t want to run into anyone I know.’

‘Yes, well, you have a point. Though – wait. Is Emerald coming?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then no. You know I’m not talking to that bitch ever again.’

‘This is an SOS emergency. This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill . . . Besides, it’s my dying wish.’

A pause. ‘Fudge, fudge and triple fudge with ice cream on fudging top.’

I vowed that, once I’d wrangled both sisters into the same room, I’d tell them right away that the diagnosis had been a mistake but how the shock was a wake-up call for us to bury the hatchet and be friends again, hopefully on the three-week spring cruise I’d drunkenly paid for in the belief that my life was nearly over.

I’d gone to the doctor for a simple blood test to check my hormone levels. When I’d received the consultant’s letter on the afternoon of my birthday and read that I had stage four terminal cancer, straight after discovering my husband’s infidelity, I’d sobbed, drunk the most expensive bottle of claret I had in the house, then searched online for the first available cruise sailing out of Sydney.

At least the sham diagnosis would get all three Ryan sisters sitting at the same table at the same time, which during our adult years had proven about as easy as brokering a peace deal in the Middle East. Driving to the cafe, I told myself I must come clean about the misdiagnosis straight away, without delay, come what may. I was dying to tell them that I wasn’t dying. Hooray!

4

‘I’m dying!’ were the first words past my lips as my estranged sisters arrived at the same time from opposite sides of the cafe. ‘So you cannot stay mad at me!’