Searle presented Monica with a 'Mrs Mole' drawing each time she underwent treatment, 'to cheer every dreaded chemotherapy session and evoke the blissful future ahead' Photograph: Harper Collins
Taken together, the drawings became 'a minuscule, romantic saga of Mrs Mole pottering about a dream house in a Provencal village' Photograph: Harper Collins
The house in the paintings was, in fact, a decrepit French farmhouse which the Searles had bought three months before Monica's diagnosis, and which Monica converted over the course of her treatment Photograph: Harper Collins
When Monica was diagnosed with breast cancer on New Year's Eve 1969, she was given six months to live. 'That' says Searle in his introduction, 'was over 40 years ago. She beat the unexpected and the seemingly inevitable and now this, miraculously, is her book' Photograph: Harper Collins
