Still, she was amazed at her own credulity. She who had feared her illness might unsettle things at work, was forced to confront a crueller reality: the firm was doing just fine without her. Her parking space would be reassigned, together with her office. People would fight for it hand over fist. And the thought destroyed her.

Concerned, her doctor had prescribed antidepressants. News-of-a-serious-illness-can-often-spark-depression-in-a-patient, he said. And depression-can-impact-negatively-on-the-evolution-of-a-patient’s-cancer. Idiot, Sarah thought. She wasn’t the only one who was sick. Society as a whole was in need of urgent treatment. The weak, the people that society ought to protect and support, were the very people it turned its back on, like the oldest elephants, left behind by the herd, condemned to a lonely death. She had read something once, in a children’s book about animals: ‘Carnivores are useful in the natural world, because they eat the weakest and sickest animals.’ At this, her daughter had begun to cry. Sarah had consoled her, telling her that humans didn’t live by the same rules. She had thought she was behind the barricade, in the civilized world. But she had been wrong.

They could prescribe as many pills as they liked, it wouldn’t make the slightest difference, or hardly any. There would still be the Johnsons and Cursts of this world to push her back under.

Bastards, the whole lot of them.

The children had left for the day, the house was silent once again. Sarah got out of bed. Walking to the bathroom was all she could manage that morning. In the mirror, her skin was paper-white, and so thin it looked almost translucent. Her ribs jutted out, her legs looked like sticks, ready to snap if she tripped even slightly. Before, her legs had been shapely, her backside had been firm and round, encased in well-cut, slim-fitting suits, her neckline had been an acknowledged weapon of mass seduction. It was a fact: Sarah Cohen was highly attractive. Few men could resist her. She’d had a few flings, a few affairs, and she’d been in love twice – her two husbands, especially the first, the man she had loved so much. Who would find her attractive now, with her pale face and emaciated body, in the tracksuit that hung off her like a ghostly shroud?

The disease was sapping her strength. Soon, she would resort to wearing her daughter’s things. Twelve years of age – that was all she’d be able to wear, children’s sizes. Whose flame would she kindle then? At that moment, Sarah thought she would give anything to have someone take her in their arms. To feel like a woman, for a few more seconds. A woman in a man’s arms. That would be sweet indeed.