Bernardine Bishop’s new novel follows the journey of Celia diagnosed with colonic cancer, through the emotional rollercoaster of that condition.

The cancer, however, is only a backdrop to the other emotional rollercoasters provided by her son’s unexpected ‘fatherhood’, the abandonment of the baby by its mentally ill mother, a friend’s parallel struggles with cancer, an abduction, an adoption, a marriage, a birth and a death, through to the final, though equivocally happy, ending.

These various plotlines cast light …