I don’t have a lucky bra, but I do have a lot of very pretty ones, and I’m wearing one of my favourites today.

The knickers that go with them are definitely some of my bravest knickers.

I’m not wearing a dress: today it’s jeans, along with a top that I love and that comes off in a flash.

Yes, friends, I have a hot date…. with a breast specialist. Today is the day for my annual look-you-over-just-to-be-on-the-safe-side visit.

The mammogram results were clear, the oncologist I saw earlier in the year was happy. and – apart from the cold, which has now got to the super-snuffly phase – I feel well. Very well. Actively well, as opposed to not-actively-ill.

So, I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. I’m not worried. I’m measuring the distance between here and remission date (sixteen months to go), and looking forward to getting home from the hospital and getting on with some writing.

And yet. And yet. I haven’t put a book in my bag because I know I won’t be able to concentrate. The gnawing in my stomach isn’t hunger because I’ve just had breakfast. Alan saw through my assertion that I was quite happy to go on my own and is driving me. I will knit obsessively and chatter incessantly in the car and in the waiting room.

And then I will be coming home, with the ‘watchful waiting continues’ box on my form duly ticked, feeling a bit silly for treating this appointment as anything more serious than a scale-and-polish at the dentist’s or a blood pressure check.

And realising that, every day that I walk in the world with no cancer in my breast, I am already wearing my lucky bra.