Gillian Shirreffs

grace

The weight loss was unintentional.

That can happen, her oncologist explained. It’s your body fighting the cancer.

It’s often the first sign, someone else had said.

Then there was her hair. She’d always kept it long and people were forever complimenting her. Ooh-ing and Aah-ing. Saying how thick it was. How shiny. She would tease her hairdresser that she was going to start charging him commission. If I had a pound for every time I’ve given out your number, Frankie Munro, she would say, I’d be rich.

She read on the internet that it wasn’t quite as traumatic if there was less hair to fall out, so she booked an appointment with Frankie for two weeks before treatment was due to start.

Her chemo cut she called it.

People liked the elfin look. Said it showed off her eyes. Those cheek bones of hers.

Thirteen days after the first infusion, it began to happen.

Her hair came out in handfuls.

Once it started, there was something addictive about pulling it out. Only a few strands at a time. At first. She tried to stop herself, but her fingers kept finding their way back to her scalp. Like a ragged tooth your tongue can’t quite leave alone.

She brought the small bin from the bathroom into the kitchen. Sat it next to where her laptop was plugged in. Filled it. Emptied it. Filled it again. Every time she put her hand to her head, another wee fistful.

That only lasted a day and then her scalp got painful. She tried to explain it to Frankie on the phone. Told him it was like when you had a tight ponytail in.

That way, she said, when you take the bobble out and the bit of scalp next to where it’s been is excruciating. Like that. Except all over.

They’d talked about this already. When she was in that last time. She’d told him about her pal whose cousin had been through it. According to the pal, when your scalp starts to hurt, you need to get someone to shave off whatever hair is left, to stop it hurting.

Frankie didn’t miss a beat. Told her to come to the salon just after closing. He’d make sure the others got off sharp.

It was obvious he’d done it before. The way he acted as if it was normal. Chatting away as he changed the attachment on the razor. Removing the remaining hair, one slice at a time. Not everyone could have pulled it off, the nonchalance.

He stood back to admire his handiwork.

Wow, he said. What a beautiful head you’ve got.

She stared at herself in the mirror.

She pointed to a thin indentation that ran the length of her skull. Except for that, she said. I must have been dropped on my head as a baby.

She laughed then. But it was most likely the shock.

People called her a star. Said she fair suited a hat.

Her favourite hat was the one her wee brother bought her. It was the same grey blue as her eyes and was filled with a thick, soft fleece that gave her head some of its old height, its old heft.

Someone said it was good she was going through treatment at this time of year. Wouldn’t it be so much worse, they declared, if it was the height of summer. At least everyone is wearing hats just now.

She smiled and nodded.

Later, when she was in the bath, she replayed the conversation and thought about other ways she could have responded. Maybe mentioning things that were worse. Like sepsis. Or death.

She began to spend hours scouring the internet. Looking at wigs. Imagining herself as a blonde, or a red head. She bought four — in different lengths and colours — but she only ever wore one of them outside. The honey caramel bob with apricot spice highlights. And she didn’t do it often. Feeling like too much of a fraud.

For the most part, the wigs sat untouched in the spare room.

She visited them sometimes, though. Twirled around in each one, going from shortest to longest. Then placed them carefully back on their stands.

Her eyelashes began to fall out almost two months after the first infusion. A few days after that, her eyebrows started to vanish. As though someone was erasing them at night while she slept.

Even though there had been no good reason to think it, the idea she wouldn’t lose them had inched into her head and the notion had taken root: that she might be the exception. Perhaps this false sense of security was because so much time had passed since her hair came out. And they had still been there. Stubborn like her.

After they were away, she mentioned to her big sister that losing them was worse than the hair. Laura explained it was because your eyebrows give shape to your face; your eyelashes frame your eyes.

Maybe so, she said.

But she knew that wasn’t it. There was something else. Something about the waxy uniformity of her face. She would catch it looking at her when she walked by reflective surfaces: a stranger staring out from glass doors and car windows.

She’d heard stories about people whose hair never grew back, and she’d told herself that would be okay. If it happened. That she would cope. But then, a fortnight after pre-surgical chemo was done, a dark bristle began to jut through her scalp, prickly to the touch, and she knew she’d been lying.

After five months there was a mop of it. Only a centimetre or two in length but thick, like before. And curly. She joked that she looked like Laura’s toy poodle, Dougal, after his worst ever haircut.

By this point, the hat had been discarded. It was May, so she knew it would draw more attention than just brazening it out. And she felt much better in herself. The worst of the chemo was behind her as was surgery and the fifteen sessions of radiotherapy. Just nine months of the targeted immunotherapy to go: chemo-lite, as no one called it.

The first time someone didn’t recognise her, she almost said something. Words formed in her mouth. Jean. Hello. But no sound came out. Jean was a neighbour. Not someone close. And she might just have been distracted. Running late for something.

Although, even if Jean had been in a rush, it would only have taken a second to smile back. She wondered if it had been intentional: that she’d somehow offended Jean and had been ignored as a punishment.

But it kept happening.

Alice from the Tuesday night quiz. Paula from the gym. Mr Strachan, her old driving instructor. Her pal Jacqui from that evening class she used to go to.

Jacqui had walked right past her on Great Western Road, without so much as a glimmer of recognition. Then there was Andy from work. He was in the post office in the next queue. She lifted her hand in a half wave. And nothing. Not a flicker. Granted it was busy and she’d been off her work for ten months, but she’d sat in the next cubicle to him for years. They must have eaten lunch together a million times.

It was like a strange new skin had been stretched over her.

If she was honest, by this point it had become a bit of a game.

She would go about her business in broad daylight and count the number of people she knew who didn’t recognise her. She bought a notebook and pencil to keep record. When she’d get home, she would jot down names, dates, and where it happened.

By the end of the summer, she was convinced she had a superpower.

Then one afternoon she ducked into a shop on Queen Margaret Drive. To shelter from the rain. And she heard a voice.

Hello, Grace. It’s lovely to see you.

A Glasgow-based writer with a doctorate in Creative Writing, Gillian uses fiction to explore the world of illness and the essay form to examine medical places and spaces. Her debut novel, Brodie, was published by Into Books in September 2023. Narrated by a copy of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, it tells the story of six women whose lives intertwine over thirty years. Gillian has multiple sclerosis and was treated for breast cancer in 2021/22.

Gillian wrote the following about ‘Grace’:

Writing fiction allows me to both explore and escape the circumstances in which I find myself. ‘Grace’ was written in response to a homework task assigned by Alan McMunnigall in one of his brilliant thi wurd online fiction classes. We were given two words as a prompt: in disguise. It was October 2022. I was in the three-week gap between chemo infusion 18 and 19 (of 22). The words flowed.