When they step back to admire their handiwork I wait, breath held, for the verdict. Together with Mum, Amanda, and Ruth, they huddle around, shoulder to shoulder like a rugby scrum, and look me up and down.

“Well?”

“You look amazing. Like one of those brides in a bridal magazine,” Amanda says.

“Have you ever read a bridal magazine?”

“Hell no. Never. Well, not willingly, anyway. But you were always shoving them in our faces when we were kids. Remember whenever we went to the corner dairy for lollies you’d flick through the pages, drooling over the dresses, until the old man behind the counter yelled at us that it wasn’t a library and if you weren’t going to bloody pay for it, put it back on the shelf?”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that,” I say wistfully. Any reminder of my childhood gives me nostalgia lately. “I don’t think he liked kids very much.”

“Would you, if you had to stand there waiting for them to decide which lollies to spend their ten cents on every day?”

“Good point.”

“You look absolutely stunning.” Mum smiles proudly. Ruth, to all our surprise, starts crying. Silent tears that trickle down her cheeks like raindrops on a window.

“I’m sorry,” she says, wiping them with her sleeve. “It’s just you remind me so much of her.”

“Who?”

“My sister. Connie. She died five years ago but it feels as if it were only yesterday.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mum says.

And just like that, I know what’s coming. I hear the words rushing like waves to the seashore, their thundering crescendo building.

“She had breast cancer too,” Ruth carries on. “Awful death it was. I watched her fade away till her body just couldn’t fight it anymore. That’s why when I saw your story I knew we had to help if we could.”

I look down to where my feet are hidden under the dress. “Well, thank you. I appreciate it.”

Why can I never escape it? Why do there have to be reminders everywhere I go? My diagnosis brought me access to a special club, the Cancer Club. Far more members than you would expect, you realize once you’re in. It’s not the cool kind of club where you sip champagne out of crystal flutes in fancy rooms while deliciously hot young men in black-and-white penguin suits pass around trays of caviar and shrimp as you converse, reveling in the exclusivity of your membership. This is the kind of club that meets in a drafty Boy Scouts hall, where the tea bags are bought in bulk and taste like it, and the biscuits are stale because no one ate them last week so they were tipped back into the Tupperware container because, well, waste not, want not, after all. This is a club that no one wants in on.

There is an awkward silence because no one knows what to say next. Ruth looks ready to crumble under the weight of her memories and grief. I know I should say more, but I can’t. I don’t want to. I want to forget, for however brief a moment. I have only a finite number of moments left, and I have to fill them wisely. Selfish and ungrateful maybe, probably. But I can’t help how I feel. I just don’t have the energy in me to help anyone else cope with their grief.