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Beauty and the Beast

As my Becky faced her ogre, we prayed for a fairy tale ending


Published by: Jean Jollands and Ryan Pilot
Published on: 17 January 2013

With her sparkly tiara and blue satin Cinderella dress, my daughter Becky looked every inch a princess.
‘Happy birthday!' I smiled, bringing out her pink cake.
‘Thanks, Mum!' she giggled. Becky was princess-mad - if something wasn't pink, then she wasn't interested.
She'd requested a fancy dress theme, so I was Snow White, her dad Mark was a monk, our son Mark Junior was Stig from Top Gear and our eldest daughter Vicky was dressed as
the Gruffalo.
Becky looked like any other happy seven-year-old. But the truth was, we'd brought her party forward by a fortnight.
In just a few day's time, she'd be starting a course of radiotherapy to help fight a rare type of brain cancer. Up until a month before, we'd been a normal, happy family. But then Becky had developed constant headaches, vomiting and even blurred vision. Our GP ordered an MRI scan, but before her appointment she collapsed. That's when doctors dropped a bombshell on us. ‘Becky has a golf ball-sized tumour on her brain stem,' the consultant admitted. I felt like our world had turned to sand and was now slipping through my fingers. Of course I'd cried, but I always kept strong in front of Becky.
Putting her to bed that night after her party, I kissed her forehead goodnight.
‘That was my best party,' she whispered, hugging me.
Afterwards, I rushed back down to Mark. ‘I didn't want to let her go,' I sobbed. As he held me, I remembered back to the moment we'd been told the news.
‘She has a 10 per cent chance of surviving,' the consultant admitted. It was like a knife had been put through us.
‘I can't believe there's anything wrong with her now, though,' I'd croaked. Becky was on medication, which had made the life come flooding back to her.
After the diagnosis, we took her to the hospital cafe for some chocolate cake.
‘The doctors just need to fix something in your head,' we'd told her.
As she started seven gruelling weeks of radiotherapy to shrink the tumour, we decided to give her the nickname Brave Becky.
We couldn't avoid her hearing the word cancer. But, because she was so innocent, the word didn't frighten her.
‘I've got a little bit of cancer in my head,' she told a nurse one day.
Towards the end of her radiotherapy, she started having chemo, too.
Just days later, as I washed her hair, a thick clump of it fell into the bath.
‘Becky,' I said, turning off the shower. ‘Some of your hair's come out.'
She was due to be a bridesmaid for her godfather David soon.
‘Can I wear a special pink wig?' she grinned a week later. She'd lost more of her hair by now.
‘Okay, Princess Becky!' I grinned. So we had a pink bob especially made.
She battled through three months of chemo as everyone rallied round. Friends raised money for Becky to go to Disneyland Paris, while others arranged for her to meet Amanda Holden and see her as Princess Fiona in the stage show Shrek the Musical.
‘We're two princesses together,' Amanda smiled at Becky.
The following day, we went to Disneyland Paris. For five magical, carefree days, my little girl lived her dream.
‘I can't believe it,' she squealed excitedly, as we met the character of Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. One morning, there was a knock on our hotel room.
‘We want you to meet someone special,' an assistant announced leading us to a hall. Becky gasped with delight.
‘Cinderella!' she cried. ‘You're my favourite princess!' I couldn't stop the tears from welling up.
Back at home, just a few weeks later, Becky's latest MRI scan showed that her tumour tumour had shrunk by 80 per cent.
‘It can come back just as fast as it's faded,' the consultant warned.
I barely heard him though.
‘This is brilliant,' I laughed. It seemed my special princess was going to get her fairy tale ending.
‘The cancer in your head has shrunk!' we announced to Becky at her bedside.
‘Wow, I'm going to get better!' she grinned. But too frightened to tempt fate, we didn't plan any big celebrations.
Over the next few weeks, she loved watching Tangled on DVD.
‘Mummy, when my hair grows back, I'm going to have a thick plait like Rapunzel,' she said.
‘I'm sure you will, sweetheart,' I whispered, kissing her head. It was a promise that wasn't mine to keep. But Becky never once lost her bravery.
‘I want to go back to school and see all my friends,' she insisted one day. She'd been too poorly to go for the last couple of months. So we arranged for her to go back for a few hours. That morning, as she waved goodbye to me and joined her classmates, her little woolly hat pulled down, my heart broke.
Becky's face was pale now and her eyes grey. So she only lasted an hour before her teacher called and we had to go and collect her. She was weaker than we thought and my concerns began to grow again.
Even though doctors had to insert a line to administer her medicine, nothing stopped us from spoiling her rotten. With money raised by her school friends, we got her a four-poster Disney bed for her room. We bought her a kid's laptop, too. But all she wanted to do was play noughts and crosses on a simple whiteboard.
‘Fancy another game, Mum?' she said. ‘Bet I win again!' That fighting spirit was still there and I prayed that the New Year would bring us new hope.
But on January 9, there was more bad news, ‘I'm afraid the treatment's no longer working,' a doctor told us. ‘I can't say exactly how long she has, but it's probably less than a month.'
Somehow, we managed to take the long, painful walk to Becky's bedside. She smiled faintly, unaware of the harrowing prognosis we'd just heard.
‘We're taking you home, darling,' I said, gently. It was where she needed to be now.
She was due to meet JLS the following month, thanks to the charity Rays of Sunshine. But when they heard the news, the group brought it forward.
Becky spent most of her days sleeping on the couch now, but when I showed her JLS waiting to talk to her on Skype, she fizzed with energy.
Just two days later, as nurses managed her pain, I could see she was trying to say something and listened closer. ‘I love you,' she whispered to me.
‘I love you with all the world,' I whispered back. Just 10 minutes later, surrounded by her loving family, she passed away. It wasn't just us that were devastated, though.
R.I.P. Becky Bell... you lit up our lives, tweeted JLS.
We sent her out just as she lived - as the perfect Princess. She had a pink Disney coffin pulled along by a carriage of majestic white horses. We asked everyone to wear something pink and then played the Beauty and the Beast theme tune. In just a few weeks, it will be the first anniversary of her death.
My princess didn't get her happy ever after, but I know she'll be living a fairy tale in heaven.
Julie Bell, 41, Hartlepool, County Durham