Her shoulders were bent. It was hard for her to walk.‘Shouldn’t we get you some stronger drugs?’ I said.‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It’s the treatments causing the pain—that’s how I know they’re working. It’s just the toxins coming out.’She chewed a morsel of toast with honey and drank a cup of tea.I took her into the city.This time an unsmiling middle-aged stranger with an Eastern European accent was on duty in the treatment room. His white coat and slow, almost tranquillised movements lent him an air of authority lacking in the endearing but twitty Colette. He did not bother to introduce himself, but told Nicola to lie on her back on the high bed, hooked a bag of clear fluid on to a tall metal stand, and prepared to plug a tube into the portacath on her chest. Nicola held up one hand.‘The last nurse who gave this to me,’ she said, her voice high with tension and posher than usual, ‘did it too fast. It hurt me and I was awfully sick and weak afterwards. Can I ask you, please, to make sure it’s not going to run too fast?’The man in the white coat paused in his manipulation of the equipment.
