She wished she had BREAST CANCER

It was a campaign that came with a controversial message. Here, Eileen Harvey shares her brave daughter’s story.

Doubled over, tears rolling down her cheeks, and her bright red wig in danger of falling off, my daughter, Kerry, 23, howled with laughter. I was standing outside a cubicle in the ladies’ changing room, with my hands on my hips, in a hideous snake print mini-skirt, a bright pink top and a bowler hat, trying – and failing – to hold back my own laughter. It was June 2013 and Kerry was halfway through a gruelling six-month course of chemotherapy after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, but today she’d suggested a mum-and-daughter day in town. She’d dared me to find the worst possible outfit I could and try it on. And said she’d do it, as well – on the proviso that the loser had to buy lunch.

Only now, as she composed herself and scanned my outfit again, her smile turned into a frown as she accepted that my ensemble most definitely beat her mini-skirt and crop top. There was no doubt about it, Kerry was a bad loser – whether it had been musical chairs at birthday parties, school sports days or making Easter decorations with her younger sister, Amy, Kerry just had to win everything.

She was confident, strong and resolutely stubborn. And she knew how to annoy me like no one else – such as when she finished her degree in German and Latin but decided she now wanted to be a vet, then it was a teacher, then a paramedic. I could hardly keep up with her. In the end, though, she settled on a demanding but rewarding administration job on a cancer ward at a hospital near her old university, but 170 miles away from me and her dad Alan, in Birmingham.

We both missed her terribly, but we looked forward to her impromptu visits, where she’d burst through our front door, her curly brown hair all over the place, adorned in her trademark bright lipstick and pretty 1950s-style dresses.