SEPARATED BY A WINDOW AS I SAID GOODBYE

I can’t recall most of what the consultant said, only the howling wind outside, the rain on his window and a few of the phrases: ‘It doesn’t look brilliant… About the size of a lemon…’

It was 19 August 2016. Earlier that day, we’d been for a ‘precautionary’ MRI scan of my wife Helen’s brain to find the cause of the mild numbness in the fingers and toes on her right side that she’d had since June.

Helen was fit, slim, a healthy eater, a lifelong non-smoker. She was 43, with no previous serious illnesses. Now, however, she had a brain tumour.

‘MUM HAS