Max asked lots of questions and got very cross if I couldn’t give definitive and positive answers. Like Adam, he wanted me to answer the question of whether his mother would die from her cancer with an unequivocal no. He wanted to know exactly how long his mother would be ill. He wanted to know why I wasn’t treating her and making her better. He wanted to know why she wasn’t coming home and having me as her doctor. These and other questions were asked several times over and on different occasions. They’d be reworded and reframed, as if, by reshaping them, he would get a different and more acceptable answer. I didn’t want to mislead him or give him false hope, but I also wanted to give him something to hold onto. I don’t think I made a good job of it. One evening, about two weeks after Rosie told the children she was ill, and just after he’d returned from staying with Rosie for several days, Max came through to the den. I was busy doing some paperwork.
