Staying Alive. Matt Beaumont

how I’m going to pay for it. I’ve started buying lottery tickets—£20 blown on them today—because odds of fourteen million to one must be better than no chance at all.

      Can’t think about all that now. I return to the newspaper. With eyes closed I flick past the cancer drug story. When I open them again I’m staring at RADICAL QC CAMPAIGNS FOR REFUGE and a picture of Sandy Morrison. Well, who the hell else? He’s standing outside an asylum centre in Highbury that’s facing closure. The neighbours can’t stand the place, apparently. Sandy is one of them, but he’s swimming against the NIMBY tide and is all for it. Normally I’d be sympathetic to his argument, but seeing his handsome face makes me want to round up every last refugee, load them into containers and truck them out of the country. And if a certain radical lawyer gets caught up in the mêlée and ends up being shipped to a crime-ridden tenement in Tirana…Acceptable collateral damage, if you ask me.

      My mobile beeps. The receptionist glares at me and points at the MOBILE PHONES MUST BE SWITCHED OFF sign, which is competing for attention with NO SMOKING. I don’t care though—being in possession of an active mobile could be an imprisonable offence, but at least mine is dragging me from the excruciating thoughts swimming about my head. I turn away so she can’t see me lift the phone to my ear. I listen to the message. It’s Jakki: ‘Niall wants to know where you put the Schenker job-start file. Call me when you can.’

      Haye was miffed when I didn’t reschedule my appointment—which guarantees me a column of fat zeros on my assessment, as well as about a dozen pesky messages on my mobile. Well, sod him. I’m having some quality me time.

      In a hospital.

      With some sick people.

      I switch off my phone with a decisive flourish just in time to hear the receptionist call out, ‘Mr Collins?’ She’s squinting at a folder with—I presume—my name on it. ‘It’s Colin. No S,’ I say on autopilot, though I don’t know why I bother.

      ‘Doctor Morrissey will see you now,’ she says. ‘Third door on the left.’

      Just what I need—a doctor whose namesake is pop music’s singing suicide note.

      10.29 a.m.

      Doctor Morrissey doesn’t have a bunch of gladioli sticking out of his trousers and a comedy quiff. In fact she has very short hair indeed. She’s young as well. Which is reassuring, actually—if I were on some critical, tumours-sprouting-out-of-his-ears list, surely I’d be seeing a battle-scarred senior consultant. With her Peter Pan haircut and pert features she’s quite elfin. No way would an elf pull the literal graveyard shift.

      ‘Take a seat,’ she says pleasantly with a hint of a West Country accent—not one of the Manchester Morrisseys, then. ‘Why don’t you tell me why you’re here.’ She must know why I’m here. Hasn’t she got some notes, a letter or something? Do I really have to explain? She seems to sense my discomfort and says, ‘I know you’ve found a lump…On one of your testicles. I just need to know how long you’ve been aware of it.’

      ‘A couple of weeks. Maybe three,’ I say.

      ‘That’s good. Our biggest headache is when men find something and then ignore it for months. Why don’t you let me take a look?’

      I knew she was going to ask me that. In fact, I showered twice this morning because I knew someone was going to ask me precisely that question. So much for all the preparation because I feel extremely uncomfortable now. I hated it enough when sixty-something Stump had me drop my trousers and felt me up. Twenty-something, not unattractive Doctor Morrissey is an entirely different proposition and I imagine a lot of blokes would be thrilled at the thought of her small and fragile hands down there. Not me, though. I suppose I’m shy. Or uptight and repressed. Whatever, I’m someone who needs to be on very familiar terms with delicate feminine hands before I’m comfortable with them touching me below the waist. Again she senses my awkwardness and says, ‘I have done this before, you know. That’s why I keep my nails short. You can take your trousers off behind the curtain if you like.’

      11.17 a.m.

      I’m sitting on the edge of an examination couch, a needle in my arm, and under the circumstances I feel remarkably relaxed. Doctor Morrissey is taking blood. ‘We’ll do some tests for tumour markers,’ she explains matter-of-factly. ‘They indicate the possible presence of cancer cells.’ I flinch at the mention of the T-followed closely by the C-word. ‘Of course, you most likely don’t have cancer,’ she goes on, and I relax again because I believe it from her. ‘It’s much less common than you might imagine. It looks like you have some sort of growth down there though and we need to get to the bottom of it.’

      She knows that I have some sort of growth because she sent me to a room along the corridor where a technician gave me an ultrasound scan. This, bizarrely, is what sparked my sense of calm. Ultrasounds—to me, anyway—are Good Things. My only experience of them was when Liz Napier, a senior account director at work, brought the print-out from hers into the office. A small, fuzzy black and white image that drew a gaggle of cooing onlookers. I peered at it too. I looked at the snap of the perfectly formed foetus that everyone agreed was sucking its thumb, though all I could see was something that resembled a photo of Greenland taken on a particularly cloudy day by a satellite equipped only with a disposable Kodak. But of course Liz didn’t give birth to Greenland. She had a perfectly formed, thumb-sucking baby girl called Carmen. That’s why ultrasound scans equal nice, warm and pleasant, even when they’re looking for cancer. So what if this has no basis in reason? It’s a sturdy-looking straw and just try and stop me clutching it.

      Doctor Morrissey has helped to ease my stress as well. She has told me several times that I most likely don’t have testicular cancer and that even if I do, the cure rate is up in the very high nineties when it’s caught early enough. I’m choosing to go with her because she’s pleasant and competent and seems to know what she’s talking about. She takes the needle from my arm—very competently, I might add—and says, ‘OK, we’re done.’

      I stand up, roll down my shirtsleeve and pull on my jacket. I bend down to pick up my briefcase and my Lotto tickets tumble out of my pocket and onto the floor. She picks them up and hands them back to me. ‘You’re the optimistic type, then,’ she says.

      ‘More like desperate, actually.’

      ‘Well, if it’s any consolation, the odds of there being something seriously wrong with you are almost as long.’

      Almost? Only bloody almost?

      Bloody Morrisseys. Why do they always have to drag things down?

       eight: absolutely dandy

      thursday 20 november / 9.21 p.m.

      I pick up the tray of drinks from the bar and fight my way across the room to Brett, Vince and Kenny. Kenny is Production Geezer. The man without whom the glittering mirror ball we fondly call advertising would come crashing to the dance floor. He’s the man responsible for seeing to it that Brett and Vince’s lovingly crafted adverts make it into print. Always just in the nick of time. And usually, to his immense credit, the right way up.

      As I sit down it only takes a moment to figure that the conversation hasn’t moved on from ten minutes ago. The question: How would you spend a Lotto win? It was sparked by my fumbling for a twenty to cover the round and pulling this week’s hopeless punt from my pocket.

      ‘You’re mad, Vin,’ Kenny pronounces. ‘Why would you risk blowing it when you’ve just won at fourteen million to one?’

      ‘Egg-fucking-zactly, you tubby twonk,’ Vince says. ‘If I’ve just won at fourteen mill, I’m gonna fancy my chances at twos, ain’t I?’

      Vince’s Lottery Dream: ‘ Hit the casino and put the fucking lot on red.’ Which, naturally, struck me as deeply insane, though I didn’t say so. Partly