Kitabı oku: «After You Fell»

This book is dedicated to an old and deeply missed friend from my school days, Caroline Wentworth; you passed on too soon.

LOUISE

Chapter 1
20 minutes after the fall.

‘Is there a heartbeat?’

Something presses into my neck.

‘Barely and it is weakening.’

A gurgling rumble struggles against the pressure on my throat.

‘Get back. Stay back, please.’ A distant, dominant voice.

There are lots of people here, talking in different tones. Some whispering.

‘Have some respect. The medical team need space. A woman is injured. This is not a circus. Move on.’

‘She’s losing a lot of blood.’

‘I’ll treat her head injury, you find out what else is going on.’

Hands touch my head and leg.

‘This is a nasty break.’

Another breath drags into my lungs. My eyes are open but I can’t see.

‘How bad is it? The woman’s husband is in the car park. He’s asking.’ Another voice.

‘It’s bad. We’ll be lucky if she’s alive when we reach the hospital. Cross your fingers or pray, whichever is your thing.’

‘I’ll keep her breathing.’ A mask presses down and the air is cleaner and colder but the pain of breathing is an excruciating shout.

‘Give her some morphine and get a splint for her leg.’

Where is he?

The air chokes me, as if I am a mile underwater, the weight filling up and crushing my lungs from the inside out.

‘Her airway is constricted. Get me a scalpel. I’ll try a tracheostomy.’

‘She has broken ribs. She may have punctured both lungs.’

I try to speak. My lips will not say a word.

The world is white.

‘Her pulse is fading.’

A siren wails in the distance as the white gradually darkens and becomes black.

Chapter 2
50 minutes before the fall.

‘Don’t touch me!’ An urge for flight darts into my legs and I step back; every muscle in my body is quivering, exhausted by the fight.

I imagine the feel of pavement under my feet. I am running – running and running.

‘You’re upsetting the children. All you think about is yourself. Your baby is crying in there!’ His hand thrusts out, gesturing in a circular motion directing my eyes to the noise coming from the kitchen.

The sound tears at my heart and rips through my head.

‘I can’t cope with her.’ Or you. I don’t want to hear the screams any more. Let me leave.

‘You wanted her.’ His pitch drops, accusing me of betrayal. ‘You promised you would try.’

‘I tried. I can’t do it.’ I can’t cope with the look in your eyes. I failed. But it is not just me. We have failed.

His clenched fist lifts and hovers an inch from my face. One day he’ll break, then he’ll hit me or put his hands around my neck.

‘I can’t help it.’ The words leave my throat in a whisper because he’s too close.

‘You have to help it. I can’t deal with you and if I can’t then the children don’t stand a chance.’ His hand opens.

I think he’s going to slap me.

There’s no loyalty between us any more. No love. No hope. Nothing except anger and arguments.

His hand drops, but he snarls in my face, sounding like an attacking wolf. Then he turns away in a sudden movement, lifting his arm again and striking a fist into the wall.

His mother’s favourite blue and white china vase, an antique on the bookshelf near him, wobbles as if touched by the strength of his anger. Then it falls on the parquet floor, shattering with a sharp sound that breaks our argument. Stop.

His mother found that vase at a car boot sale. She bought it for next to nothing. She was so proud of it. But she is proud of her son too.

He shakes out the hand he’s hurt, ignoring the ruined vase.

‘Mum …’ Our son stands in the centre of the open doorway, his beautiful face distorted in an expression of fear.

‘I’m all right, love. We are both all right. Daddy is just having a tantrum.’

He thrusts a glare over his shoulder with the toss of a dagger, then walks out of the room, herding our son out of the way.

I pull the mobile from the back pocket of my jeans. It drops on the floor with a clatter because my fingers are shaking even harder now the adrenalin is ebbing away.

The phone lies there, looking up at me with a fresh crack across the screen, another testimony of our failure.

Bile rises in my throat, a bitter taste that wants me to be sick. I bend to pick up the phone. I can’t remember when I last ate.

The desire to hear my mother’s voice screams as loudly as my child.

I bring up my recent calls, and touch the icon saying ‘Mum’.

The phone rings twice before she answers. ‘Hello, love.’

‘Mum.’ Help me.

‘Yes, darling.’

I sniff back the tears before they run from my nose as well as my eyes.

‘Are you all right?’

‘No. We argued.’

‘Again.’ A tut echoes from the phone.

We haven’t made it through a single day without arguing this year.

A tear drips from my chin, falling to leave a tiny puddle on the floor that will run into a crack between the blocks of wood. The story of my marriage is shouting, shattered china, cracked glass and puddles of tears.

I swipe other tears away with the heel of a shaking palm. But tears trickle from my nose. I wipe them on the back of my hand. ‘He doesn’t love me. None of them do.’

‘The children do.’

‘No. They hate me. They blame me because he does.’

‘The children love you. Shall we come over to see you? Would that calm the argument?’

‘Do you think he’ll leave? Do you think he’ll take the children?’

‘No.’

‘He can’t stand to be in a room with me.’ Our marriage is cracked down the middle, as if the earth between us has been torn open in an earthquake and his position is on the other side of the ravine, with a glowering expression of judgement. I have tried to reach out. But I can’t reach him. He has other women because I do not want him to touch me like that. But I still want to be hugged sometimes. Those moments never happen. He doesn’t even kiss my cheek.

‘We’ll come and talk to him.’

‘Mum, you can’t. It will cause more trouble.’

‘I can’t leave you this upset. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.’

At least if they came they would be here for the children.

His parents have gone out for the day. They turn their backs on our rows.

‘All right. But I’m going out, Mum. I need to get away from the house. I love you. Look after the children when you get here.’

‘I love you too, darling. We’ll see you soon.’

‘Goodbye, Mum.’

‘Goodbye, dear.’

I step over the broken china, to look for paper and a pen in the drawer of the television stand and write a note telling him where I am going. To stop him being angry when he discovers that I have gone.

The note left beside the television, and the china and my tears left on the floor, I push down the door handle to get out.

The patio door glides open with a whisper, keeping my departure a secret. He will not know I have gone for a while. I’ll use the back gate into the alley beside the house.

The sound of a lawnmower cutting grass in a nearby garden enters the living room. The breeze carries the scent of freshly cut grass and the sweet perfume of the mauve wisteria flowers that dangle from the plant above the door.

The note I left by the TV blows off the side and flutters to the floor.

HELEN

Chapter 3
3 days after the fall.

There’s a rhythmic electronic beeping near my left ear. It echoes back from bare walls.

The thin elastic cord holding the mask over my nose and mouth scratches at the top of my ear. I turn my head, twisting my neck to look at the machines. The air inside the mask is warm and moist with condensation that tells me I have been lying here with this mask on for some time.

A soft whistle plays out from the oxygen cylinder near the bed.

A bank of tubes that are connected to my neck rattle with a plastic pitch as I look over at the open door.

I am alone in the clinically all-white room with the machines.

The urge to touch the wound lifts my hand and drags the black cable hanging from the finger-clip over the greying-white cotton blanket.

The clip is sending messages to one of the machines beside me, measuring the oxygen level in my blood.

It feels as though a weight is hanging from my wrist, the pressure of gravity drains so much energy from me with the tiniest movement – I am used to that feeling. But a pulse thumps through the crook of my elbow – that is a new sensation.

Pump-pump.

Pump-pump.

The rhythm of a drumbeat is everywhere inside me and it is repeating on the monitor.

Bleep-bleep.

Bleep-bleep.

The oxygen travels deep into my lungs, releasing energy that says something is coming.

You are going to be strong.

The feeling speaks.

Nothing else tells me a ghost is here and I do not usually hear them talk, I just know when they’re near.

It might be my belief speaking.

I breathe out, and listen to the throb of sound in my ears. That is the heart calling to me. The rhythm of it tingles all the way down to my fingertips.

A hum rumbles in my nerves. I saw bees on a honeycomb once, when they had been pulled out of a hive. When my nerves hum like this, I see the shimmering silver wings of the bees as they work and dance to tell the others where to go.

Angels dance, in spheres of light, to tell others which way to go.

I can’t feel the wound, only the soft dressings that cover where the incision was made.

Beneath the sheet and blanket is a rash of sensors, scattered over my chest, their information conducting the rhythms on the machines.

A thin plastic tube shakes as I move my hand down; the tube dangles from the clear bag, dripping fluid into my arm.

A man slid the long needle for the tube under my skin while someone on the other side of me counted down from ten. I can’t remember anything else from then until now.

Voices chatter from somewhere outside the room. Things move and footsteps squeak across the tiled floor. The sound of one set of soft-soled shoes comes closer.

‘Helen?’

The owner of the unknown voice is at the doorway into the room. A nurse with dark hair scraped back into a high ponytail, wearing a pale blue pyjama uniform. She has a bright smile, with white teeth that look chemically treated.

‘Hello.’ The word scrapes my throat as though my voice hasn’t been used for a year.

The nurse’s smile widens as she comes closer and touches my hand.

Her hand is cold.

‘Hello. I am Mandy. I haven’t had the privilege before, but I am glad to meet you at the point you’ll be getting better.’ She turns away, looking at the monitors.

‘What time is it?’

‘Eleven, and it’s Saturday. We kept you unconscious for a while after the operation to give your body chance to rest.’

‘Is everything okay?’

She smiles again, more reassuring than any words could give, before looking at the bag of slowly dripping liquid. ‘Everything is fine and your brother is waiting outside. He’d like to come in and see you if you are up to a visit?’

‘Is he alone?’

‘Yes.’

A ripple of pleasure skims through my body. He chose to stay here with me. ‘Please.’

‘He’s been here a lot.’

A smile pulls at my lips. A smile that has risen all the way up through my body, right from my toes to my lips.

When the nurse leaves, my fingers curl and press into the crisply starched sheet. I check that my toes move, brushing them against the weight of the sheet and blanket.

The machine’s rhythm carries on with its sharp bleep declaring the pace of my heart. My heart now; someone else’s heart before.

But mine now.

The pulse resonates in my fingertips, toes and ears. It is a strange feeling – an extreme, unreal feeling – to have a heart that works.

A sphere of light shimmers at the corner of the room. Near the ceiling.

I look at the open door, waiting for him to come.

Pump-pump. Pump-pump.

The sphere flies in front of my vision, across the open door. But it stays in the room with me.

I am in a hospital. It doesn’t surprise me that there are spirits. But I do not want to engage with them here. They will have experienced pain here. I have known enough of my own pain, I don’t want to know theirs.

Another breath runs out of my lungs, in a smooth, easy, painless motion.

I am used to a lack of energy that doesn’t give me the strength to breathe. A week ago, my heart lurched in a beat when I breathed in but barely moved when I breathed out.

‘Hello, you.’

‘Simon.’ The excitement in my recognition is muffled by the mask but my hand stretches out, in the way I would have reached out and wrapped my arms about his neck if I could.

His footsteps are heavier than the nurses, hard leather soles that I am used to hearing on tiled hospital floors.

‘How are you feeling?’ He lifts the mask off my nose and moves it down to balance on my chin so he can kiss my cheek. Extra pulses shoot from my new heart.

‘Tired. But amazing, and thirsty.’

‘You can give her some water?’ The nurse is standing by the open door.

I nod at Simon, ignoring her. The pillowcase feels coarse and my hair dirty.

He’s all I have. Him and his children.

I want my own children, though, not just to borrow his.

Another ripple of emotion flows through my prone body.

I have the heart I have been waiting for. But I no longer have Dan.

We had talked about adoption.

Now I have a healthy heart, now I can have children, and Dan is not here.

Pump-pump. Pump-pump.

The heart moves in my chest, squeezing out and pulling in the blood – its pulse striking its rhythm in every artery like the tune of a ticking clock in an empty house. It is so strong it feels as if the heart will beat its way out of my body.

It can’t. It is trapped inside me now. Attached, so its movement keeps me alive.

There is someone here, though.

Someone with me.

Someone who is no longer alive.

The weight and density of their spirit is filling the space in the small room, making the atmosphere close. As if I am standing in a large crowd and too many people are breathing the same air.

The owner of the heart?

The straw Simon holds to my mouth scrapes my lip.

I have been breathing slowly for months, sitting in a bed or a chair, doing nothing, trying not to tire out my heart; preserving my life second by second and hoping that a heart would be found. The longing for children kept me going even when my old heart cracked open and oozed pain like the leaking yolk of a soft-boiled egg.

I can have the children I want now.

Thank you. I say the words to the soul that’s hovering around me. If it is you: thank you.

This operation is a beginning. Today is the start of a new life for me. But it was the end of theirs.

The water is deliciously cool. It tastes far too nice to be water. I can feel it inside my throat as I swallow almost as much as I can feel the beat of the heart in my chest.

Simon is the one that kept me alive when I was young. He gave me reason after reason to fight on with unconditional love as wide as an ocean. I want to give all the love that he’s taught me to my children.

He takes the cup away and puts it down.

I lift a hand, asking him to hold it.

His hand strokes over my hair, the touch stirring strands that are matted. His hand falls, wraps around mine and holds tight. ‘You’re going to be okay.’

I nod. I know.

A cartoon-like sparkle catches in his right eye, the white light in the room reflecting on the sheen of tears. The aura around him is sunshine, orange and yellow, and the orb is hovering behind him.

But the orb is not the owner of the heart.

The weight of exhaustion suddenly presses like large hands on my chest, pushing me down and submerging me in a swamp of fatigue. I can’t stay awake any more.

A memory of Simon and me curled up tight together as children hovers.

The bleep echoing my heartbeat slows.

Chapter 4
2 weeks and 3 days after the fall.

‘Come on, then. Hurry up. There are people waiting to greet you,’ Simon shouts over his shoulder as he walks ahead with the small suitcase I have brought back from the hospital.

I am walking much quicker than I had on the way out to his car after we had the call saying a heart was available. But there is a sharp pulling in my chest that means I do not rush. It is from the surgery, though, not weakness. I still have that celebrating hard pump of blood, like the vibration of a chiming bell ringing in every artery and vein, yelling out that one day soon I am going to be entirely better. Hear ye. Hear ye. Helen Matthews is well.

My brain is diagnosing the level of my health like a Fitbit measuring every sensation – each out breath and every moment a muscle or tendon moves. I do not want to reject this heart.

The front door opens.

‘Hello.’ Miriam, Mim, waves as she steps out. ‘It is good to see you with colour in your cheeks.’ The colours around her are muddy browns and greens. It is a spiteful aura.

‘Auntie Helen!’ Kevin and Liam squeeze past their mother’s legs and run to me.

‘Remember what I said,’ Simon calls. ‘Be careful with your aunt, she’s recovering.’

I lift my hands, encouraging the twins to grasp one each. ‘As long as you don’t pull I’ll be fine.’ They are used to Auntie Helen’s frailty.

A picture runs through my mind, a memory that doesn’t belong to me. I am running along a beach, holding the hand of a small girl and jumping the shallow waves that roll onto the sand. I know the girl is my daughter, but I do not know how I know.

I want a daughter first. If I can pick.

‘Welcome home.’ Mim’s arms wrap around my neck and she kisses my cheek. I do not mirror the embrace; the boys have possession of my hands. ‘We have a celebration tea planned—’

‘With fizzy orange!’

‘And ice cream!’ the boys add as their hands slip out of mine in unison. They run into the house bursting with the constant excitement of four-year-olds.

‘And pizza. Sorry, it’s more their party than yours,’ Mim whispers.

I don’t mind. If the boys are happy, I’m happy.

I have been guilty of spoiling Simon’s boys as if they are mine since they were born. They are a relief for the craving in my womb.

Dan hated me talking about children. He always said he wanted children, but then changed his mind two years ago.

‘Don’t go on about children, you can’t have them, you are too ill, stop talking about babies, even if we adopt how are you going to look after a child?’

Every time he said words like that there was another sharp pin stabbing into the voodoo effigy of me, the effigy it felt as if he held in his hand.

Then he told me, ‘I don’t love you any more. You have to go,’ driving a kitchen knife into my sick heart and making it shatter.

He moved his pregnant mistress in a week after Simon had loaded up the car with the boxes, bags and cases packed full of my half of our life together.

Every day, since the day I moved out of the flat, was a day to endure – surviving long enough to get this heart.

That was the end.

Now I have the heart.

This is the beginning.

It whispers to me all the time. The heart.

A coverall smile gathers up my expression as I walk into the house behind Mim; the smile I have given everyone who has asked how I feel over the years.

Simon’s hand touches my waist as he leans to put the case on the floor near the stairs in the hall. ‘Welcome home. I’ll take your case up after we’ve eaten.’

‘Thank you.’ The children and Mim are in the kitchen already. I turn, stretching up to wrap my arms around his neck. It pulls my chest. I hold on tight and pull him down a little.

He is six years older and six inches taller. I have stretched up to hold him for as long as I can remember.

His arms slide around my middle to return the hug. I kiss his cheek. He kisses mine. The world is perfect for a moment.

‘You’ll be all right.’

I nod as I let go, my cheek pricked by the hairs of his short beard. ‘I know I will. I’m excited.’

Excited because I know that one day soon I am going to start my own family.

Colour creeps up from his neck into his cheeks. The pink tint in Simon’s skin when he or I mention anything that might refer to Dan keeps telling me Simon feels guilty. Dan was, is, his friend.

Simon introduced Dan to me in my first year at college. Dan asked me out that day. But how we ended is not Simon’s fault and Simon took me in, looking after me for the last few months. Just as he did when we were children.

This man, my brother, is the perfect man. Mim is lucky.

‘Daddy. Auntie Helen. Hurry up. We’re hungry!’ The children shout from the kitchen as the mouth-watering smell of melted cheese and pepperoni wafts into the hall.

Simon smiles. There is a look in his eyes that I have seen for as long as I can remember. I see this look in my mind’s eye every night before I go to sleep. The expression says ‘I love you’ with no need for words.

I see that look from a young boy, and I am standing in another hall, in another house, and the boy … I don’t know him.

Will he be my child?

Am I connecting with spirits from the future now as well as the past?

‘You first.’ Simon’s hand lifts. ‘It’s your coming-home party. But go on up to bed if you start feeling too ill.’

‘Yes, Dad.’

A low laugh follows my movement.

A muffled ringtone vibrates through the fabric of my suitcase behind us. I turn back, pointing. ‘My phone.’

‘I’ll get it.’ Simon turns, bends to release the zip on the suitcase, takes out the phone and looks at the caller ID. ‘It’s Chloe.’ He puts the phone in my outstretched palm just as the ringing stops. ‘I’ll call her back after we’ve eaten.’ I slip the phone into the back pocket of my jeans.

‘She can come over if you want her to.’

‘Tomorrow. I’m too tired tonight.’

‘Whenever suits the two of you.’

Chapter 5
3 weeks and 1 day after the fall.

The radio plays from its position at the end of the kitchen work surface; talking and singing to me as I skim through the internet pages, sliding the stories up on the small screen of my phone.

Even little things like this, like being able to concentrate on anything in the world outside my head, was hard in the years that illness stole my life. In the end, all I had the energy to do was sit in a chair and watch television and it was hard to even concentrate on that.

It is impossible for other people to imagine what it’s like to be trapped in a body that can’t do anything. My thoughts were busy controlling my breaths and cluttered with weakness, while pain constantly screamed, even through the fog of painkillers.

I thought about suicide when Dan and I split up. But whilst there was still a chance of being able to live properly with someone else’s heart, I held onto that cliff edge of hope for months. Living for when the time came.

The time is now, and ever since I have come back to Simon’s I’ve been feeling like a sprinter in the starting blocks waiting for the gun to go off. And when it does, I am going to run so hard and fast, just because I can.

Pump-pump. Pump-pump.

The sound of my heart continually talks to me. The blood thrusting through my body, making all my senses alert.

I can read today, I can read and soak up information like a sponge dropped into water, and at the same time I am listening to music.

The pulse of my heartbeat follows the baseline of the song on the radio – expressing its power.

If I could see my own aura, would it have changed? Would I now have some of the aura of the person whose body is muddled up with mine?

I still feel them. If it is them. I feel someone here. Someone who came back from the hospital with me. I think they’re trying to press their emotions into my heart, but it is just a pressure in my bloodstream that I do not understand.

A repeated knock rattles the thin glass in the back door; double glazing is still on Simon and Mim’s to do list in their 1920s terrace.

Before I respond the door handle twists. ‘Hello.’

‘Chloe.’ I stand up. ‘You made me jump.’ But I knew she was coming to make me lunch.

She smiles with the captivating look that made me fall for her friendship when I was sixteen. Before then my friendships had been brief play-dates and playground-mates. The foster homes and hospitals Simon and I had travelled around on a never-ending roller coaster meant I didn’t attach myself to people because in days or weeks we would move on.

I had not let proper friendships form until I had obtained control over my own life. Dan and Chloe came along at the same time; friends arriving like red London buses. They had become as important to me as extra limbs after only a few weeks.

Dan told me I was needy, that I had desperately been waiting for friends, and when I had found them I clung on.

I told him that if he’d had a childhood like mine and Simon’s he would know the value of loyalty and people who care about you.

Dan had not valued me.

Chloe’s dark hair tickles my ear as she holds me and I hold her. She values my friendship as much as I value hers. I have Chloe as well as Simon and the boys.

The scent of the perfume she always wears calms me immediately.

‘You look so well.’ Chloe’s voice is deep, sexy; it draws attention to everything she says. It made me gravitate towards her. It makes men gravitate towards her. When we were younger and I was well enough to go out there was always a pack of men around her by the end of the night.

Chloe’s aura is golden; it is shades of yellow, orange and amber.

Her hands stay on my shoulders. ‘Your skin is a decent colour for the first time in years.’

‘Thank you. I think.’

She laughs as her hands fall away. ‘Tea?’

‘Yes, please.’

A smile tumbles over her shoulder in my direction. ‘I am going to put sugar in it; you need to put some weight on now you’re well.’

‘I hate sugar in tea.’

‘I don’t care what you want. You’re doing what is good for you. What do you want to eat?’

‘There’s a tin of soup in the top of that cupboard.’ I point at the cupboard then grip the table so I can ease into the chair and avoid pulling the stitches in my chest.

‘Are you in pain?’

I didn’t notice her looking at me. ‘A little.’

‘Is it time to take your tablets?’

‘Probably.’ I move to get up but she lifts a hand.

‘Stay seated, I’ll get them, and I’ll heat up the soup after we have drunk the tea.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No need for thanks. I want you better.’ Her voice bounces off the blue tiles behind the sink in the moment before the tap turns on. ‘People say the world can be put right with a cup of tea but I think a new heart wins. What does it feel like?’ The pitch of her voice rises so I can hear her over the water running into the kettle.

‘Life-saving.’ A laugh stutters from my throat. Then I add, ‘Strange. I’m certain no one else is as conscious of their heart beating. It’s as if someone is making a heartbeat sound in my ear all the time, and it feels like it’s jolting me.’

Chloe faces me and leans back against the wooden work surface while the kettle heats. ‘I can’t imagine having a piece of someone else inside me. It must be weird. Especially when you know how quickly that heart moved from beating inside someone else to you.’

I glance down at my phone; the screen is black. ‘Yes.’ The rhythm beats harder, and so constantly it is like someone relentlessly banging on a door to obtain my attention.

‘It has someone else’s DNA.’ There’s a teasing note in Chloe’s voice. ‘I wonder if it’s changed your DNA. Then if you did that Ancestry DNA thing they might connect you.’

She doesn’t know I can feel spirits.

I never talk about my sixth sense.

The doctors in the hospital taught me, with electrical shocks to the brain, that people do not believe in a sixth sense. Everyone else thinks it is a symptom of bipolar. Imagined. Not Real.

It is real.

Those of us who have a sixth sense know it is real.

But I have never met anyone who can see and feel the things that I do, because I never tell.

A shiver runs through my spine, a ghost passing through me. The owner of my new heart passing through me?

No. I am sure their spirit is in the heart, inside me.

Steam erupts from the kettle behind Chloe as it clicks off.

She turns and pours the water into the mugs, then fetches the milk from the fridge. ‘I think a heart being transplanted is stranger than a lung or a liver because, okay, everyone knows that there aren’t any thoughts or knowledge in the heart—’ the spoon clinks against the edge of the china cup as she stirs in sugar, moving the spoon round and round ‘—but you feel emotion in your heart, don’t you?’ She looks over her shoulder at me.

I nod. Because of course it’s true. My last year has made that very clear – the pain in my emotionally broken heart has been worse than the pain of illness at times.

I was isolated as a child. Cut off from others by illness and homelessness. Isolated by a mind that did not function like other people’s. Dan isolated me again. He kept our friends, home and possessions.

I arrived at Simon’s with only a few boxes of personal things and my clothes. I have been shut away in a room here ever since, too ill to go out, waiting for another chance to live.

The soul that has given me this heart has given me that chance.

Chloe throws a teabag into the pedal bin; the lid chimes as it drops. ‘My heart feels tighter when I’m angry.’ She returns to fish the teabag out from the other cup and keeps talking as she takes that over to toss it in the bin. ‘And soft and squidgy, like marshmallow, when I’m falling for a man.’

The teaspoon drops in the sink. She picks up the mugs and turns with a handle held in either hand. ‘I wonder what your heart felt before it came to you?’ The mugs clunk down on the wooden table and the tea spills slightly.

The paper towel is in my reach. I pull some off and wipe up the spill as she fetches the bottle and packets of my pills and a small glass of water to wash them down.

‘Thank you.’

She chooses the chair opposite me, sits, and pulls her mug close, embracing it with both hands. Her eyes are glossy with an expression of excitement. She loves a good gossip. ‘What do you think?’

‘I hope it suffered a lot less pain than mine.’ The conversation is sparking more shivers up and down my spine.

I reach for the bottle. The pills rattle. The lid is stiff but after a second it opens and I tip out two small white pills. With those pills cradled in my palm, I pick up one of the packets.

I always lay pills out in a row before I take them.

I have more medication to take than I did before the operation. What does this heart make of all this prescribed poison? Drugs that make the natural defences of my body impotent, drugs that silence the cry of pain, antibiotics that fight the bad bugs and emotion-controlling pills.

‘Hearts spend most of their time in pain in my experience, and I’m not talking about malfunctioning hearts. Although perhaps I am because my pain was mostly caused by Mum’s and Dad’s malfunctioning hearts.’

‘The inability to put you and Simon first was in their heads.’

Simon thinks our mum had bipolar too. ‘Wherever their motivation came from it permanently hurts my heart to remember how they deserted us. A sick child didn’t fit in with their hippy lifestyle. They couldn’t be tied to the proximity of hospitals.’ I pick up a pill and sip the water to wash it down.

The feelings of loss and loneliness are in me again, and, as Chloe said, they grasp the heart and squeeze it until it hurts.

The need for love in humans is a terrible thing. It destroys people. It has tried to destroy me lots of times. I need others. I need to belong. I need to be wanted. I need to be needed.

Chloe’s hand reaches out and brushes the back of mine as I take the next pill. Then there’s a smile that sweeps everything away. ‘And then Dan the bastard …’ she says in a low voice.

We laugh, but my new heart clenches again in response to the memory of the brutal way he betrayed me.

I swallow another pill, sensing the irony of the bitter pills of fate that I have swallowed in my life. I was even too sick to cry over Dan’s disloyalty. If I had cried it would have exhausted my heart and so I had to control my heartbreak to stay alive. Isolated in a room, living from breath to breath, not day to day.

‘Have you heard from him?’ Chloe’s voice has a cautious cadence because she knows I have no desire to hear anything about him. But maybe she thinks he will send some good wishes.

I take more pills without answering for a moment. Then look into her eyes. ‘No.’ My answer is in the flattest tone. I take the last pill and drink the last of the water.

‘Does he know about your operation?’

I wrap my hands around the warm mug, lacing my fingers together on the far side. ‘I should think so. Simon must have mentioned it or, if not him, then someone else.’

Dan and I were us for so long all his friends were mine too. But I haven’t spoken to any of them since we split. It was too embarrassing to face the truth and the truth was being flaunted in front of their faces by Dan. They know the other woman, when the baby is due and how happy the two of them are. I do not want to know any of that. I let him have our mutual friends as part of the separation.

‘How are you going to spend your time while you are recovering? You need to do something different.’

‘I might order a jigsaw puzzle.’

‘You party animal.’

‘Maybe I’ll take up Tai Chi. There are YouTube videos.’

She nods, smiling, because she knows I am not considering anything.

My thoughts spin. I see Dan in the days I was convinced I was loved by him. So many moments when I believed we were happy. Those days have all been burned to a pile of ashes.

This heart felt the same before it was put inside me. I can sense it. As if the previous owner is sitting where I am. Sitting inside me.

I hear children laughing, then children crying. My future children or this soul’s?

‘We can go for a short walk every day next week. Then the week after we can walk farther and so on, until you are well on the mend. It won’t be long …’

‘I know it won’t.’ Before I can be me.

I push the ghost aside and smile.

Chloe reaches out. I reach out too and we clasp hands.

Her hand is warm from the heat of the hot tea in her mug.

‘The NHS will send letters for people who have received donated organs, so you can say thank you to the family. Did you know that?’

‘No.’

‘The nurses will probably tell you. But I looked it up.’ She lets go of my hand and twists to take the phone out from the back pocket of her jeans, then concentrates on that as I sip my tea.

Every sensation seems to be more intense; even drinking tea is improved by a healthy heart.

She looks up. ‘Here.’ She holds out her phone, tilting it to show me the screen. I take the phone and look at the NHS leaflet. It says what she has just told me – I can write to the person’s family and say thank you. It encourages me to do that. But I can’t tell them my name.

‘Do you think you’ll do that?’ Chloe asks.

I hand back the phone and sense someone else reaching out with me. I can’t explain the feeling. If I could describe it better perhaps others might believe in a sixth sense. ‘Probably. I would like to say thank you.’

If I write, I will tell the family that I can have children now. The soul inside my heart has given me that chance.

When I hold the front door open just under an hour later, standing on the doorstep and waving to Chloe, before she turns the corner at the end of the street, the spirit is whispering. I can’t understand the words but the sound surrounds me.

Perhaps the spirit wants me to contact their family before they pass on?

I shut the door. The silence in the house is deafening – as though silence is the loudest noise.

Chloe turned the radio off when we were talking. I like sound.

I smile as I turn the radio on, because I recognise how quickly I walked along the hall.

A dance song is playing, the bass beat stirs my shoulders into a little shake. The zip of stitches in my chest shoots a sharp pain through my torso that makes me wince. But I smile at the same time. ‘Enough of that for now, but soon I’ll be able to do everything.’ That is what I’ll write about in my thank you card, about the chance of children and dancing.

A buzz hums in my blood, drowning out the beat of the heart. Excitement is a dance rhythm of its own.

I sit at the kitchen table and pull over my laptop. Then open my phone and look at the list of links in my search of obituaries.

Who did this heart come from?

What has it felt before?

What life has it known?

The whispering intensifies, but it is still too muffled to work out any words.

The soul wants me to know who it is. I know that.