Blue Door Press

1.

Evening light spills through the south-facing bay window, beyond which my neighbour’s wild garden sprawls, in its May exuberance. In front of the bay, and in what will become my living space, sits a lone toilet, surrounded by piles of rubble, ripped-out bits of plasterboard and studwork.

‘Goodness,’ says my friend, surveying the building site. She wanted to see my new flat  before we went out to dinner. And the look on her face says, you must be mad to do this.

But I am not mad. I am an architect, used to refurbishing old buildings. Who knows demolition must precede reconstruction; that it has to get worse before it gets better.

I wanted this flat as soon as I spotted its photos and floorplan on the estate agent’s blurb, which arrived while I was on holiday. By the time I returned, someone had already made an offer. Week after week, I called the agent to check progress on the sale. ‘Going great’ he always said. Until one week, it no longer was.

I was the first one in when it was put back on the market. A diagonal partition wall divided its 4-metre high south-facing room into two awkward bedrooms. In one, a used condom lay discarded on the floor. A couple of young DJs were living there, the agent told me.

I made an offer within minutes. It would be perfect for my new life; a freelance one where I worked from home. The tiny kitchen off the hallway could become my office. A cancer diagnosis, three springs ago, had put an abrupt end to my forty-five minute commute to an architect’s practice in Clerkenwell for twelve-hour days. Life was too short for that. Ever since, I’d been living with and working from my parents’. Now it was time to recreate my own home. And, hopefully, one day, find someone to share it with.   

2.

The news arrives by telephone on a Wednesday morning in late winter, eight years after I have moved into my flat. It’s not exactly unexpected. Still, I have to sit down to digest it.

A woman from the genetics team at The Royal Marsden Hospital informs me I have tested positive for the BRCA1 gene. A genetic mutation that has, in recent years, killed two of my first cousins, only in their forties. And puts me at an up to 80% lifetime risk of a new breast cancer, not to mention a 40% one of ovarian cancer.

I sit on the sofa shivering, unsure whether it’s from the news or from the chill of the March day. The heating is on, but the single-glazed, tall bay window is a poor buffer against the weather. To my husband-to-be’s horror, I refuse to put up curtains. I don’t want to conceal the window’s panelled surrounds.     

The hospital recommend a risk-reducing double mastectomy with optional reconstruction. Alternatively, I can continue with annual MRI screening, until I’m ready for surgery. I am not ready. Even though I ought to be. I am also busy planning my September wedding and trying to conceive a child. Plus, I’ve remained cancer-free for over a decade, so surely I can risk postponing surgery for a bit? 

3.

‘You could go on the beach today in a tiny bikini, and no-one would guess a thing, says Ana, a Spanish doctor at The Royal Marsden, when I see my reconstructed breasts for the first time, on a December morning, two years after my wedding. It is ten days since the four-hour operation in which my breast tissue was cut away and silicon implants inserted.

I was scared I might hate these new breasts of mine. Even though my skin is still bruised yellow from surgery, I have to admit they look good. A little bigger. More uplift. And perfectly symmetrical.

My body recovers fast. But by spring, I am crumbling. I should be happy, I reason. My lifetime risk of breast cancer has been slashed to less than 5%. But inside there’s disquiet. Is it from four years trying and failing to conceive? From having had part of my body chopped off? A part from which I’d hoped to feed the child I am increasingly uncertain I will ever have.

I can’t be sure. But what I do know is I’ve lost my ability to take pleasure in life’s small delights: a movie and sushi with my husband; brunch with my girlfriends; a good novel. Even a holiday to Venice and Croatia doesn’t quite hit the spot.

Anxiety pulses through me. Soon, I’m barely sleeping. An hour here, an hour there. Similar to the new mother I may never become. I try everything. Meditation. Medication. More yoga. Less yoga. More greens and fish. Cake. Even jogging. None of it makes much difference.

I get to the point where I think, thank God I’ll probably never become a mother. What kind of a mother would I be in this state?

4.

Everyone tells me it gets easier after the first year. And what a year: my sister’s sudden death nine days before my son arrived; my ovaries ripped out six months after his birth (another risk-reducing surgery) and the ensuing plunge into surgical menopause.

And it does get easier. For a while. I adapt to a life in which my sister no longer exists and my son does. He starts sleeping through the night. I start HRT and the hot flashes melt away.

Then come the stories: a strange virus from China, whole cities there being locked down. Never in London, I reassure myself.

A few weeks later, I walk through Regent’s Park to Marylebone High Street. On this mid-week morning, it is deserted, most of its shops closed. A premonition of what is to come.

The following Monday, we go into lockdown. Building work is, however, allowed to continue. And our downstairs neighbours have just started a six-month refurbishment of their flat.

Clank, clank, clank all day long. Three of us marooned at home, my husband attempting to work from a makeshift desk in our bedroom. My son failing to nap in the tiny room that was once my office, as drills grate and angle grinders shriek.

I ask the builders if they’ll consider timing their lunchbreak with his nap, a blessed pause in the day for me, too. Or at least only do quiet work then. A resolute no comes back. Very busy. Must get on. Many jobs lined up.

So I take the pram out and walk and walk, mostly through the local parks, which smell so fragrant this spring. In the distance, I see City towers and picture its ghost town, buildings and streets emptied out. What will become of us all? Will London ever return to her former self?

5.

I wake early and walk through the cool of the elderflower-scented park to Marylebone High Street. I arrive at the café in time to avoid the queue, which builds even on a weekday.

No traces of Patisserie Valerie’s chandeliers, green walls and gilt-framed mirrors remain. It closed a couple of years ago, sometime during 2021, and the new café, with its terrazzo floor, giant skylight, and Aussie-inspired menu is more to my architectural and culinary tastes.

Still, I miss the Continental comfort of the old place, its glass display case filled with eclairs, strawberry tarts and mille-feuille. It was where I came, twenty-one years ago today, on the day my life as I knew it was bulldozed by three simple words: you have cancer. My best friends and I drank Earl Grey and ate scones with clotted cream and jam. In my shock, I thought it was quite nice to be spending a Monday afternoon in a café with them, rather than at the office, drafting construction details.  

Today, I’m alone. I sit near the window and look out over the high street. The sun is starting to come out, the shops are unlocking their doors. Just a few units remain boarded up.

I drink a flat white and eat toasted coconut bread and contemplate what I’ll do with myself today. A rare Saturday to myself, as my husband and son are away. I want to do it all. The movies. An exhibition. A spa. Go shopping. Lie in the park and read. Go to yoga. See friends.

In the end, I decide to walk back through the park and savour the rare peace of my home, without a four-year-old running around and strewing the floor with toy trains, diggers and cars.

I sit at the smooth white desk in the living room, from which I can see my neighbour’s lush May garden. I bought the desk when I was seven months pregnant and had transformed my office into a white-painted nursery. In this reconstructed life, which I could never have dared dream of twenty-one years ago, I now use my desk to construct stories, not buildings.

Annabel Chown, June 2023

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