At eighty my stomach grew so large my family got frightened. The scan found something — and then a twelve-year-old record with my late husband’s name on it, and a folder called PROJECT AGNES.

“And?”

And Dov Vanterpool said: “One of them had your name across the front of it, Mum.”

“What did it say?”

“PROJECT AGNES.”

And nobody in that room said anything for about four seconds.

And then I remembered the envelope.

Rutger gave me a sealed envelope in the October of 2014. Cream, about the size of a card, with nothing written on the front.

He made me promise not to open it unless something happened that I could not explain.

It has been in the drawer of my bedside table for twelve years.

“Dov. I need you to go to the house and bring me something.”

“What is it?”

“A letter your father left me.”

“What letter?”

And I said: “The one I promised not to open unless something happened I couldn’t explain.”
PART 2

The mass is a mucinous cystadenoma.

I had to have that written down for me on a piece of paper before I could say it to anybody.