Part 2

No one likes revising for exams, but sending daily Emails, texts and making lengthy phone calls made the 1200km we were apart seem much smaller. The weeks crawled by and the number of exams still to take got fewer and fewer as the date of my return flight crept closer and closer. Tennis and cricket occupied games at school but they did not have to same qualities that made rugby stand out as the queen of sports.

Mum seemed to be easily tired as my departure got ever closer but I wasn't aware of the implications of her tiredness until later. I was just so glad to be returning to Sylvie and the Languedoc.

The Gatti's lived closer to the Spanish border than Carcassonne so I flew to Perpignan. I don't think the arrivals hall at that airport had seen many demonstrations of unalloyed joy as happened that afternoon when the Ryanair flight had disgorged its passengers into the searing heat of the Midi. Walking out of the air-conditioned arrivals lounge was like walking into a wall of heat. I knew that my case had far too many clothes in it!

We sat in the back seat together and I could hardly get a word in edgeways as Sylvie talked nineteen to the dozen about her plans for the summer for us. In the end I did what seemed to me to be the most natural thing in the world. I kissed her. Her eyebrows shot up and she stopped talking and smiled demurely!

I put my arm round her. She snuggled up to me and we looked at the mile upon mile of grape vines that slipped past the car as we drove. The silence was punctuated by just an occasional comment or question from Sylvie's mother. If her mother realised what caused such a change in her daughter's behaviour she never let on; but she did have a rather enigmatic smile for several days after whenever she saw us together.

I don't remember much about those first few days except that Sylvie and I went shopping for a few extra bits of more suitable clothing. Young French males had to be seen in the same sorts of chic clothing as their girlfriends. So I was kitted out like everyone else - to see and be seen. I was back in Michelle's room as she was holidaying with friends in Corsica at the time of my arrival.

Sylvie and I seemed to join seamlessly as if we had never been parted. We hung out at the pool hour after hour and drifted from home to home, party to party as teenagers will. It all seemed just so right until the letter arrived from home.

Inside the envelope was another envelope. Written on this envelope were Mum's instructions to read the whole letter several times before doing anything. There was also a separate letter for Sylvie's parents.

I can see the opening of that inner envelope as if time became frozen - what could have caused such atypical behaviour in my mother? She explained fully and simply that she had been feeling very tired in the weeks before I had left, so she had been to her doctor and after examining her she had sent her straight to the hospital for a scan. The results were not long in coming - and the news was the worst. A very aggressive cancer had formed in her abdomen and had already spread throughout her body. All that could be done was to give chemotherapy in the hope of reducing the severity of the symptoms until nature took its course.

In the letter to Sylvie's parents, Mum asked that I stay with Sylvie for the summer as planned as she wouldn't be able to care for me and in any event would have my older sister Tina with her to help when she wasn't having breaks in the hospice. We would write and call as often as we wished, but it would give her the greatest pleasure to know that I was as happy as possible, and well looked after by people who cared for me.

In between the tears and the self-recriminations about my insensitivity and thoughtlessness, I desperately wanted to go home to share the maximum amount of time with my mother; but the Gattis' sat with me until late in the evening holding me close and in the end convinced me that my mother needed time for the palliative treatments to take effect then I could enjoy the remaining time I had with her.

Four weeks later all that could be done for mum had been done. It was now a matter of TLC until the end. So at the end of the second week in August I prepared to fly back to Stansted with a heavy heart. I was leaving a family I had grown to love and was returning to a place full of unknowns... of being an orphan, a new school away from my friends in Norfolk, and the guardianship of my elder sister who lived in a small flat in London and was beginning to cut out a career in retailing. I knew she would 'do her duty' by her younger brother but would find it an extra drain on her slender resources of time.