Tess passed away on 1st April last year. April Fools Day. Cancer had taken over. The long fight had ended, if it could be called a fight. She hated when people referred to it as that. She didn’t want to fight. She wanted to live in peace until an old age, drinking tea and pottering in her garden. A romantic notion that most of us hold but ultimately discover is out of our hands. Cancer was just something she was forced to live with and she succumbed to the reality. Well, mostly. She would say she was OK with dying. Her achievements, her career, friends, family and her own sense of self were all things she was proud of. But to leave me, Freddie and Ben Ben. That was too much. That was the unnatural thing. She was a mother. A lover. That had to be the hardest thing to let go of.