Please note: this piece contains content that some readers may find upsetting.
She always made me laugh, did Sue. She had a such an infectious smile, lighting up her face every time you saw her. She hadn’t had the easiest of times, but remained cheerful throughout.
She was the type of person who had one of those cheesy doormats saying ‘Welcome’. Actually, she did have one of those for a time. The next time I went round to her house the mat declared ‘Not you Again’. Even more cheesy, but I still smiled.
Sue always seemed to be old before her time, with awful taste in flowery wallpaper and clashing patterns of soft furnishings. Perhaps she had run a seaside B&B in a previous life. But in person, she was reserved, wearing jeans and t-shirts and having neatly cut hair. She had much more patience than me with young children and pets.
We acted like a couple of teenagers when we were let out on our own. One time we went to a charity event at a school. We both thought we knew where this was, but it seemed we didn’t after all. It was a few miles from where we lived, in an area I didn’t know well. This was long before the days of sat-nav.
‘I think it’s along here, just on the left somewhere – just past this junction,’ I declared.
But we couldn’t spot it. A little further along was a petrol station. Sue pulled up and got out, smiling sweetly at the man in the shop there. She asked if he knew where this school was, and he just pointed – it was directly opposite us! This was hilarious to us for months afterwards, for some reason.
Years later, she answered the door to me in a bit of a fluster.
‘Thank God it’s only you, I can’t get the wig to go on straight today!’ Sue said.
I smiled and assured her she looked fine, which, unfortunately, was a lie. At this point she’d been having chemo for several months and really did not look well. She'd had a bone marrow transplant too, telling me with an amazed voice that the donor was a young man from Germany. She was so grateful that a stranger could give her a chance.
Very sadly, it was only a temporary solution, and two years later I was attending her funeral with many, many other people. We all remembered her warmth and her smile.
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