Walking away from the hospital, I feel calmness within. My cancer has returned and being told I’m riddled with it was exactly what I’d expected. Unless you’ve had the dreaded disease, you wouldn’t know where I was coming from. Tiredness, lack of appetite, an inability to do the simple things that you once found so easy. The signs are plentiful. To put it bluntly, you just know when you’re dying.

As I sit on the bus, I gaze out of the window. Deep in thought, I watch the world go by. As strange as it may seem, I notice silly things. Mothers doing school runs in their luxury four-wheel drives, children as young as ten chatting away happily on mobile phones. Smiley, happy people, who wouldn’t know hardship if it smacked them in the face.

Not wanting to become bitter, I turn away from the window and think about my own life. I take my pad and pen out of my bag and begin to make notes. Unlike most sufferers of cancer, I’m not that bothered about dying. Part of me would even go as far as saying that in some ways leaving this life will be a relief.

Happy people don’t want to die. They are the lucky ones who are blessed with good times. I was happy once, but not now. For people like me, death spells an end to all of the suffering. I don’t mean to sound like a manic depressive, but I’ve had years full of stress and turmoil and I can’t take any more. I’ve had enough with a capital E.

I had a terrible upbringing. I’m an only child, and my father left home when I was three years old. I don’t remember him and have never set eyes on him since. My mother was a dear soul, but died when I was ten, a victim of the same bastard disease that has now got hold of me.

My aunt kindly offered me a home and then gave me a dog’s life. Living with a violent alcoholic, I was regularly beaten senseless. She treated me as her slave and I had to beg for my dinner, like a dog on all fours. At sixteen, desperate to escape her, I married the first bloke I laid eyes on. Tommy Hutton was his name. He was twenty-one, and in my eyes cool, brash and handsome. I thought he was my saviour; how bloody wrong was I?

Approaching my stop, I gingerly get off the bus and start the short walk home. I unlock my front door and put the kettle on. I’m tired, but determined not to sleep. There are questions I need answering, things I need to plan, stuff I need to tell. So many secrets and so many lies. To rest in peace, I need to tell and know the truth. Picking up my pen and paper, I talk out loud as I try to remember the past.

I don’t know how to start. Will I read this to anyone? Or even show them? I choose my first line with care.

My name is Maureen Hutton and this is my story . . .