After You Fell
J. S. LARK

One More Chapter

a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © J. S. Lark 2019

Cover design by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Emoji © Shutterstock.com

J. S. Lark asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008366155

Ebook Edition © December 2019 ISBN: 9780008366148

Version: 2019-11-25

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Louise

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Helen

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Revenge Versus Love

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

The Split

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Counting Down the Days

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

An End or Another Beginning?

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Louise

Chapter 74

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

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.

Chapter 6
3 weeks and 2 days after the fall.

‘Tea.’ The shout comes through the glossy white bedroom door.

‘Come in,’ I shout to Simon as I click to close the laptop’s browser window. The laptop’s lid snaps down like a crocodile’s bite as the door opens. I put the laptop aside on the bed next to me and adjust the pillows I am leaning on, as he puts a mug of tea down on the bedside chest.

The smell of hot tea says good morning and stirs up a déjà vu moment that makes a feeling of safety clasp at my heart.

‘Has Chloe confirmed she’s coming in to make you lunch today?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I know we can make you a sandwich ahead of time, but I’ll worry if you are here all day on your own.’

‘I’m fine. I managed before the operation.’

‘With difficulty.’

‘I know, but I’m getting better every day.’

A smile pulls at his lips and his hand lifts and runs over my hair. It’s a gesture that’s most common when he’s with the boys now. But it’s a gesture I have known for as long as I can remember. I think Simon has always felt like a father to me and I have always looked up to him. We are not a normal brother and sister. But who would be normal after our childhood?

The bed dips as he sits on the edge. He holds my hand. ‘Your eyes have dark circles. Did you sleep?’

‘Not much. I’m too excited.’ I smile. ‘And thank you for pointing out I have bags under my eyes.’

His eyes open wider and his eyebrows lift as he squeezes my hand but he doesn’t answer my comment. ‘Where are your tablets?’

‘Downstairs in the cupboard. But it’s not because of that. Everything has changed – anyone would be excited.’ It is not a bipolar episode.

‘I know. But you can take your tablets with the tea.’ He squeezes my hand again then lets go and stands up. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘Okay.’

I rest back on the pillows, looking at the plain ceiling, remembering the bumpy or swirly Artex ceilings I stared at when I was younger. Patterns on the ceiling or in the curtains became mythical creatures. Fairies. Trolls. Unicorns. Dragons. There is no fictional image in Simon’s smooth replastered ceiling.

‘Pills.’ He walks into the room rattling the bottle like a maraca. His other hand holds out the packets. ‘Here.’

‘Thank you.’

He’s left the door open and the noise of the boys talking to Mim at the breakfast table downstairs flows in.

‘What will you do today?’

A shrug lifts my shoulders.

He sits on the edge of the bed again. Many hours of our relationship have been spent in this position on hospital, hostel, foster or children’s homes’ beds.

‘What were you looking at on the laptop?’

‘Nothing really.’

A smile. He knows me too well. ‘Binge watch a boxset to stop yourself from becoming impatient with the immobility. It will stop you getting obsessed with something unhealthy.’

‘I’ll be mobile soon, so I have a reason to be impatient.’ I lean forward and hold his hand. ‘And as soon as I am mobile I won’t have time to become unhealthily obsessed with anything. I’ll be too busy being healthy.’

A deep-pitched laugh rumbles low in his throat. ‘The boys have some video games you could play?’

‘For four-year-olds. No, thank you.’

His hand slides out of mine. ‘I’d better get off to work.’ He stands.

I reach up, encouraging him to lean down for a hug.

He kisses my cheek as I kiss his. ‘Have a good day.’

‘You too.’

‘Oh, I will.’ I smile.

He strokes my cheek.

When the door shuts behind him, I open the laptop again. All the pages I have been looking at are open browser tabs: obituaries posted by local and national papers.

I click on the picture of a middle-aged, middle-weight man with a receding hairline at his temples.

I am reading the obituaries of the people who died on the day of my operation, or the day before it.

The man lived in a small town in Wales, not far from Cardiff.

How far would they move a heart around the country?

I click the back arrow and return to the column of names and faces, then click on the next picture. It is a younger man with thick short ginger hair and a beard. Rory Smith. He’d died after a motorcycle accident. I click the back arrow.

It is surprising how many people die in one day.

The mug of tea and the tablets are still beside me.

I click on the story of another dead person and read as I pick up the bottle and tip two little white pills onto the plain powder-blue duvet cover. I swap that bottle for a packet and push out a pill from the foil. I keep popping out different tablets until there is a line of pills in front of me.

I take the tablets one by one with my tea and click on another dead face.

Chapter 7
4 weeks and 5 days after the fall.

A tap hits the glass in the back door. It’s Chloe.

‘Come in.’ I touch the screen to close the notes on my phone and minimise the browser on the laptop.

The door is already opening.

I stand, turn and shut the lid of the laptop behind me. ‘Hello.’ I smile; not at Chloe but because I moved quickly.

My movement slipped from first to third gear with ease and everything I notice like that makes me smile. The operation scar doesn’t pull very much any more and I hardly notice my heart beating.

‘I bought us a treat for lunch.’ She raises a thin white plastic carrier bag that is hanging from her right hand. ‘I went to the deli and bought one of their quiches and a selection of salads.’ She places the bag on the table.

‘Thank you. I’m getting a bit bored of soup.’

‘Me too.’

I smile when I sit down but the expression feels awkward. Guilt is a sharp pang in my stomach. It is because I hid the images on my laptop screen. But I have to keep my morbid search secret because no one else will understand. Or believe me. I can’t tell them the spirit of the person my heart came from wants me to find their family.

Chloe delves into the opaque carrier bag and begins unloading it. ‘What have you been up to today?’

‘Not much. I didn’t get out of bed until eleven, then I had a bath. I haven’t been downstairs long.’

‘You sound so much better already.’

‘I feel it, but there is a long way to go.’

‘How many weeks is it before you’ll be able to work?’ She takes the plates out of a cupboard while she talks.

I can probably pick up plates now but the consultant told me not to lift anything for six weeks and I am following every piece of guidance religiously.

‘Three months, if I go back into childcare.’

‘It’s hardly any time, really. New heart. New life. New work opportunities.’ She turns with the plates in her hand. ‘It’s astonishing—’ the plates clunk on the table ‘—what they can do now.’ She smiles before turning away. ‘I’ve been reading stories about people who have connected with their donors.’ She delves into the drawer for knives and forks, rattling the cutlery. ‘Do you want a hot drink? Tea? Coffee?’

‘I’m fine with water.’

The cutlery clatters onto the table, probably scratching the already scarred wood. But it is a young family’s table with rough-and-ready boys. She takes glasses out of the cupboard. ‘So anyway, I was telling you about the stories I’ve read.’

‘Yes.’ Her thoughts have been turning in the same direction as mine.

‘A woman in one of those true-stories-from-the-readers magazines said …’ the water runs, hitting the bottom of the sink and drowning her words; I listen harder ‘… she wrote a thank-you letter.’ The sound of the water changes to a dribble as Chloe tests to see if it is running cold enough to be fresh. ‘She was younger than you.’ The water runs into a glass as Chloe glances over her shoulder. ‘Her kidney had come from an older woman and the family she contacted were the donor’s children.’

The tap turns off, then Chloe turns around with a glass in either hand. ‘The family wrote back to her, a brother and sister. It was the sister who really wanted to make contact. The brother wasn’t very interested.’ Chloe sits at the table, looking me in the eyes as she slides a glass towards me. ‘But the sister gives this woman her contact information and they write back and forth. Then the sister suggests they meet.’

The sip of cold water grasps at my throat and a shiver runs down my spine.

‘She persuaded the brother to go along to keep her company. But when the brother and woman met, they got on really well. To cut a long story short they fell for each other and married. Don’t you think that’s odd?’

‘But it’s the sort of sensational story that sells those magazines, isn’t it?’

Chloe picks up a large knife and pulls the quiche towards her. ‘How much do you want?’

‘Just a small piece.’

‘There’s another story. It was on one of the morning TV programmes. It was a mother who lost her teenage daughter. She had donated lots of different organs.’ Chloe slid a plate over to me.

I reach for the spoon to delve into the tub of coleslaw and green salad.

‘The mother had half a dozen thank-you letters and she replied to them all. Now all those people meet at least once a year. They’re all friends.’

‘Really? I can’t imagine all those people with elements of one person.’ I don’t want to know if other people have a part of the person I received my heart from. Possessiveness pulses into my blood. I am tied to this person. It is a strange connection to have with someone. But the heart was a gift given to me. That is what I feel from the presence of the person I think this heart once belonged to – that they chose me.

‘There’s another story,’ Chloe carries on between mouthfuls of lunch. ‘An older woman had a transplant. The donor’s daughter is a single parent with six children. The older woman had no family and so she became a surrogate mother and grandmother.’ Chloe looks at me with an expression that asks for a reaction.

‘What are you saying? That I should write a thank-you card to the donor’s family solely to acquire a parent or a husband?’ She knows me too well; she knows I’ll be thinking about the owner of this heart’s previous relationships and be jealous of any love, even though she doesn’t know I speak to spirits.

‘You never know.’ She smiles, unreleased laughter dancing in her eyes.

I smile too, but in that moment of shared amusement an immediate decision thrusts its way up my throat and into my mouth. An urge to tell her my secret is so strong my lips can’t close on the words. ‘I have been trying to work out whose heart it is.’ The statement slips out like a slippery fish. But now it is told I can’t pull it back. I fill my mouth with quiche so I will not say more.

‘Pardon?’

‘It’s just something to do.’ It’s an attempt to pull the words back but I can see her mind chewing on them as her gaze reaches beyond me.

I shouldn’t have said anything. She knows I can obsess over things at times. She is thinking about that.

This is nothing to do with bipolar, but I can’t tell her why I know that because she will think that I am crazy anyway if I tell her.

Her eyes refocus on me. On my face. On my eyes. ‘How are you trying to work it out?’ She’s looking at me with the odd expression that Simon’s face twists into when he is asking himself, is she having an episode?

My cutlery clatters onto the plate and I reach for my phone. I touch it so the screen shows and tilt the phone in her direction to show her the list of names and websites. ‘I’m looking at the people who died the day of my operation or the day before. I was bored, and it was something interesting to do. You were the one who raised the subject.’

‘I know I said write to the family, but looking up dead people is a bit odd, Helen.’

‘The family might not write back, and I want to know who owned the heart.’ Who is inside me, whispering and thumping for attention?

She takes the phone and looks. ‘You know we agreed I would warn you if you do anything strange? Well, this is strange.’

I shake my head, certain there are wrinkles on my nose as my face expresses a violent rejection of that idea. ‘No.’ This is not about bipolar. ‘Wouldn’t you want to know?’ I throw across the table as I pick up my cutlery. Surely someone with no sixth sense would want to know too?

‘Now I think about it I might definitely not want to know.’ She laughs as I swallow another mouthful of quiche. Her expression twists from one look to another over the irony of having just talked about people who have done the opposite. ‘But this is too morbid, searching for the person.’ She puts the phone down on the table. ‘You should think about the future, not the past.’

‘I am.’

‘Have you taken your tablets?’

‘You are as bad as Simon. I appreciate you buying me lunch, but you don’t need to mother me. And my tablets are in my room upstairs.’

‘I’ll fetch them when we finish eating.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Are you going to write a letter and stop searching obituaries?’ Chloe says as she steps out of the front door.

We haven’t talked about the donor for the last half an hour, but the conversational leap backwards doesn’t surprise me. It proves I shouldn’t talk about it. ‘I’ll speak to a nurse when I go in for the next check-up.’

‘Take a thank-you card with you – they can pass it on. But leave it at that.’ Her arms settle on my shoulders and wrap around my neck like the wings of a mother hen. A firm kiss is pressed on my cheek; a kiss that says, promise me. ‘Take care of yourself,’ she says near my ear as she lets me go. ‘Do not obsess over the donor.’

I smile as her hold slips away. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Yes.’ The door bangs. I shut it too hard. I don’t know my own strength now; there is so much energy humming in my limbs. It makes my body want to bounce with the rhythm of life. I am going to start walking at lunchtime next week, with Chloe for a crutch until I build up my stamina and feel confident going outside alone.

Ready. Steady. Go.

A starter gun fires in my head.

I return to my place at the kitchen table, open the laptop and expand the browser. All the recent links I have added to my favourites are open. Each tab tells me something about someone on the list on my phone.

The faces stare at me.

I have been waiting for the spirit to whisper when they see themselves, to draw me to one of these people. I haven’t felt them speak clearly. But I am ignoring the men. The sense I have of someone moving in my body is a sense of someone light, thin, and the whisper is not a deep tone.

I open the fourth tab.

Louise Lovett.

I like her the most.

I like her wide smile. Her eyes glow as she looks directly into the camera expressing the emotions of a life that lacks nothing.

I feel as if she’s looking at me; asking me something with her eyes.

A sensation, like catching the breeze from someone’s outbreath, whispers through me.

She’s very young in the picture. Early twenties … She was thirty-two the day she died. Her obituary doesn’t say much. It was published on a regional press website, written for the benefit of local people.

“Thank you to everyone who joined us in celebrating the life of our beautiful daughter Louise at Christ Church, Old Town in Swindon. We miss her. She has been taken from the world far too soon.”

The obituary stands out because it doesn’t say anything about her life. It seems as if the parent who wrote it could not bring themselves to mention any more, as if they can’t cope with the words.

I open a new tab, click on the search engine and type ‘Louise Lovett’.

The third link down reads ‘Louise Lovett Profiles | Facebook’. I click on the link and then there are more faces to look through. I increase the zoom on the screen so the pictures are clearer and easier to scan for Louise’s face. She’s there, three web pages in. The picture is the one used on the paper’s website. When I go into her profile there’s the picture I know and a solid black header that tells me her profile is private.

All the posts beneath the black header are viral videos that she’s shared.

The last post is months old.

I save the webpage to my favourites and go back to the original search results.

The heart is thumping hard. Bump-bump. Bump-bump. It is so strong it might be someone putting all their strength into thumping their shoulder against a door to break it down.

Is Louise telling me that this is her?

The list continues to lead to social media sites. ‘Louise Lovett Profiles | LinkedIn’. ‘Louise Lovett |Twitter’.

Then, ‘Woman dies in fall from a Swindon car park.’ The words underneath the headline read, ‘The South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust spokesman said: “We were called to the scene of the incident at 13.49 responding to reports that a woman had fallen from the top floor of the car park. We sent one ambulance crew and a duty officer. Sadly, a woman in her 30s was pronounced dead before …’

I open the link and a news screen full of colourful adverts pops up, denying the morbid subject of the article. The article consists of four short paragraphs. It says that there is no known reason for the woman’s fall, talks about the ambulance crew’s attempt to save her and mentions that there is no statement from the woman’s family.

The date the story was posted is the day that Louise Lovett died. She died in Swindon. She died after a horrific fall.

The laptop snaps when I shut it as the heart lurches, as though it skipped a beat.

She is inside me. I know she is.

Chapter 8
5 weeks and 6 days after the fall.

My hands slide into the back-pockets of my jeans in a self-comforting uncertain gesture. This is the first day I have been outdoors on my own and I’ve come a long way from the house.

The sky is a blanket of writhing, murky, grey clouds that promise rain but it’s a warm day.

I haven’t brought a coat with me. I didn’t think to look at the weather forecast. I have spent so many years trapped inside buildings, sick, entirely unaware of what was happening outside, weather is not something I think about.

But I have set up my vigil in the car park of the Baptist Church, and the door into the porch has been left wide open. There are cars parked here. There must be people inside.

A movement catches the edge of my vision. Someone has turned the corner at the end of the street. A woman with a pushchair.

I look back at the house on the opposite side of the road.

I stared at the image of that 1950s house for days online, until I found it.

But it is Louise’s parents I want to see, not their house. Where are they?

The woman with the pushchair walks past the house.

There is a car on the crescent drive, in front of the post-box-red garage doors. I saw that car in a picture. I recognise the registration number.

The red front door is partially obscured by a semi-circular flower bed packed with white roses in full bloom. The scent of the roses, myrrh, is so thick it carries to this side of the street.

My fingers curl into fists in the back pockets of my jeans.

I have been waiting for nearly an hour.

I am sure they’re in the house.

A large, warm drop of rain falls on my forehead, another drop falls on my hair, a third leaves a damp spot on my shoulder in a final warning. Then the rain comes down in a harsh rush, hammering on my head, hitting my shoulders and soaking through my T-shirt in seconds.

I run for the sanctuary of the church entrance.

When I am under cover, I slide the rucksack off my shoulder, let it drop onto the tiled floor and turn to watch the rain.

It is the heaviest rainfall I remember.

I reach out a hand to catch the large, warm drops of water. I have spent years hiding from rain; hiding from life. I do not have to hide any more. I am not weak. I do not need to be afraid of consequences.

My arms open wide, I take another step forward, closing my lips and eyes and tipping back my head so the rain runs over my face. I don’t remember feeling rain before.

I love it.

Why do people complain about rain? It feels beautiful.

The darkness behind my eyelids lets me focus on the sensations of the water soaking through my hair and clothes.

I am alive – living.

‘We need to hurry.’

I open my eyes and look over the road. The front door is open and a man has stepped out.

I take a step, pulled forward by emotions I can only describe as longing. I am not sure if the emotions are mine or Louise’s.

I stand at the edge of the car park, under the trembling green canopy of a large conker tree.

A woman steps out of the front door and hurries to reach the passenger side of the car.

I’m not sure it’s them. I can’t see them properly. The roses are in the way and they’re using an umbrella.

The rain stops as quickly as it started just as the woman pulls the car door open and ducks inside.

Rain is dripping from my fingertips onto the tarmac.

The man walks around the front of the car to the driver’s door, his face covered by the umbrella as he lowers it.

Heavy, colder drops of water drip off the leaves of the tree onto my hair and shoulders.

He opens the car door, his back turned to me, and collapses the umbrella.

Cars travel along the road, passing between us. The cars are noisier now their tyres run over the wet tarmac, the surface water flicking up behind the wheels.

They are both in the car. I see the movement of his arm as he turns the key in the ignition, then he looks at the woman.

It’s them.

I step forward again, trying to see better, to read their lips, to know what they are saying to one another.

Hours of research have brought me here.

It is the half-circle flower bed full of white roses that convinced me this is the house I saw. The roses were in bloom in the picture on Facebook.

There was one clue a long way down in the stream of posts under Louise Lovett’s profile. A public post from someone else. ‘Happy birthday my darling daughter.’ The picture beneath the words contained an older man and woman holding up a glinting happy birthday banner with two grinning, young blond children.

My heart knew the children. Emotion wrapped around the heart and pulled tight, like yellow ribbons tied around the trunk of an old oak tree, with loose ends waving in the breeze – holding onto memories.

The post was published by Robert Dowling. Robert Dowling wrote the word ‘daughter’.

His Facebook account is not private and he posts everything. He checks into coffee shops, cinemas, restaurants and parks.

He lives in Swindon. Louise Lovett died in Swindon. They could have transported her heart to London within two hours of her death. I am sure it’s her heart.

Louise Lovett’s funeral took place in an Anglican church half a mile from here.

There is a picture on Robert’s Facebook page that pointed me to this side of Swindon too. In that picture, he is reaching out, holding the top of a Christmas tree, in a posture that asks questions of the onlookers. Is this the one? Are the branches even? The onlookers in the picture are the two blond children. But the thing that stood out to me in the post was the sign in the background. Waitrose Wichelstowe.

I have become a detective. I’ve spent all my hours, when alone, looking at the places Robert Dowling has been to, working out where he lives. There’s a map of Swindon in a drawer in my bedroom with dots marking in blue Biro the places Robert checks into and posts from. There’s a cluster of blue dots around this church.

There are three parks he visits near here: Queens Park, The Lawns and Coate Water Country Park. When he goes to the cinema, McDonald’s or Frankie & Benny’s it is always in the Greenbridge Retail Park, which is less than ten minutes by car. He uses shops in Old Town, a few minutes in the other direction, and takes the children to the library and the museum there.

It was a guess that he lives somewhere in the middle of these places.

Hours of my time have been consumed dragging a yellow man over street maps on the tip of the cursor, turning the camera from angle to angle, searching for the flower bed his wife stood in front of. Her raised hand was covered by a muddy gardening glove and the smear of mud marking her nose said she was weeding and had wiped her face. It was a moment of very normal life preserved forever.

The car is facing me. The man is looking right and left, waiting for a chance to turn but cars are passing. He looks at me through a brief gap in the passing traffic.

It is Robert Dowling.

My heart bursts, rushing into a rhythm of excitement that does not feel as if it is my emotion.

Is he wondering why I am staring?

My hand lifts unconsciously as if to wave.

She wants me to speak. Louise. She is trying to push words out of my mouth, to form them with my lips and tongue. But I still can’t hear her voice clearly.

He looks left, right and left again then steers the car out into the road.

His aura, and his wife’s, are shades of red from a deep blushing pink on to scarlet and the darkest claret.

Chapter 9
13.21.

The man sitting diagonally across the table from me is playing loud music. It would be better if I could hear the song, but all I hear is the thud of the rhythm. The same rhythm my heart is playing.

I want to forget about the rhythm. Forget that the heart is not really mine. The heart separates itself from me when it does this, as if the rhythm is from a music speaker, not from within me.

The edge of the table rubs my forearms. I am trying to play a game on my phone to distract my mind, but my concentration is constantly broken by that man’s music.

A suited-man in the seat beside me coughs loudly as though the music is annoying him too.

The woman opposite, who has been clicking away on her laptop ever since I boarded the train in Swindon, looks up from the screen and glances at the music player.

A vibration rumbles through my fingers.

My phone. The screen says, ‘Chloe’.

I lean against the window and answer, jamming myself into the corner and pushing the phone hard against my ear so Chloe’s voice will not seep out to others. ‘Hello.’

‘How are you?’

‘Fine.’

‘I’m checking in because you haven’t rung me.’

It’s only been three days. I smile, for her benefit, even though she can’t see. ‘Sorry.’ I have been busy, trying to speak for a ghost.

‘I rang Simon last night when you didn’t answer. He said you had an interview in Swindon today.’

‘I did. It’s just finished. I’m on my way back.’

‘How did it go?’

‘Good. I think.’

‘In Swindon, though?’

‘Yes.’

Her breath slips into a sigh. ‘What was the school like?’

‘Nice.’

‘Don’t go on about it, then.’

An amused sound like the start of a giggle escapes from my throat. I close my lips and it becomes a choked cough. ‘I’m on the train,’ I whisper.

Sounds of amusement rumble from her throat. Her dirty laugh, as Dan used to say. ‘Now I have to think of something to make you blush.’

My next amused sound escapes.

The woman on the laptop glances at me.

‘Have you had a letter from the donor’s family yet?’ She’s asked me the question three times before. It makes me smile because she keeps asking, despite denying that she would want to know.

‘No.’ I have seen them.

‘There’s still time.’

Another vibration ripples through my hand. I hold the phone away, looking at the screen. It’s a news headline from the paper that ran Louise’s story and published her obituary. I put the phone back to my ear.

‘… getting together,’ Chloe is saying.

‘Sorry, I didn’t hear.’

‘When are we getting together for our first night out? We can go out for a meal and fatten you up some more.’

It would be the first time we have been out properly in over two years. ‘Okay. When’s good for you?’

‘Next week. Thursday? But shall I come over for lunch tomorrow so you can tell me more about the job you went for?’

‘All right, Thursday. And you are welcome to come for lunch.’ Although I have no idea what I can say about the job.

‘Okay. See you tomorrow, then.’

‘Yes, see you then.’

She ends the call.

I look through the window and smile into the distance.

A crackling announcement from the tannoy system says the train is approaching Didcot.

The man diagonally across from me takes his earphones out. I still can’t work the song out. He stands up and pulls a bag down from the overheard luggage rack, flashing a line of skinny waist and the top of his red designer underwear.

I look down at my phone and touch it to open the news story.

The parents of the woman who fell from a Swindon car park are calling for witnesses.

I touch the link as the train slows.

Louise’s parents have been on a local radio station asking for people to come forward if they saw Louise on the day she died.

The train draws into the station. The music player walks away.

I open Facebook on my phone and look at Robert Dowling’s account. His profile image is a picture of him and his wife. They must have been leaving to do that interview when I saw them. They still care about their daughter. She’s dead and they will not let her go. They’re the parents I dreamed of as a child.

An empty sensation swells inside me, just below my ribs, deep in my stomach. A space for love, that was supposed to have been filled by my parents. It is parent-shaped. Neither Simon nor Dan ever filled that gap. My parents left it empty. Instead of having love to warm me like a radiator, exuding a sense of safety from the inside out, there is a cold vacuum in me. A black hole, pulling at everything, dragging my consciousness back to the things I have missed out on because they went away.

At times in my life that black hole eats me alive.

If I had parents like Louise’s how different would my life have been?

My thumb slides over the screen on my phone, scrolling through happy family pictures.

There are lots of pictures of the blond children.

Why did Louise fall from that car park?

The friend button stares at me in the way Robert Dowling did through the car’s windscreen. I touch it to send a request. I want to help them.

‘How did the interview go?’ Simon hands me a pile of knives and forks.

This time of the evening, when Simon has just walked through the door, the house has the activity of a trout pond at feeding time, there is such a rush to get the tea on the table.

‘I like doing the cutlery.’ Liam grasps the sharp ends and pulls the knives and forks out of my hand.

‘Careful, you’ll cut yourself,’ Mim warns.

‘I can carry the plates.’ Kevin bounces over to take them from Mim. Then braces them on his forearms, to carry them safely.

‘Thank you,’ Mim acknowledges as the pile of china wobbles.

‘The interview, Helen …’ Simon pushes at me.

I glance over with no excuse left to avoid the conversation. ‘It went all right.’

‘I’m not sure you’re ready to go back to work, though. I think you should wait.’ He’s running cold water to fill a plastic jug to put on the table. ‘You don’t need to worry about getting back to work. There’s no hurry.’

I turn to the cupboard to fetch plastic cups for the children. He couldn’t have said anything better. ‘I’m not worried. If I get a job I wouldn’t start until January, for the spring term.’

‘Good. We like you staying here.’

The boys are climbing onto their chairs. They lift their knives and forks upright in an impatient gesture. I reach over and put down their cups. Simon walks around to fill their cups.

‘But I am excited about getting back to work.’ Just busy doing something else. ‘This just wasn’t the right job.’

Simon sits down as I turn to get three glasses.

Mim puts a dish full of steaming cottage pie on the table as I put down our glasses for Simon to fill.

Mim and Simon share a look that communicates something.

The smell of the cheese that has melted into the mashed potato stirs my appetite.

When I sit down, an image of the children from Robert Dowling’s Facebook posts comes into my head. An image of them sitting around a table. It is one of Louise’s memories. She can’t make me hear her words, but she sometimes succeeds in making me see her past.

What’s the conversation at their dinner table tonight? They must all miss Louise, and I know she misses them.

Her sadness pulls at me like the flow of an outgoing tide that drags all the sand out from around my feet, sucking at my legs and trying to pull me out with the tide. I am no-longer hungry.

Emotions and visions are connecting me to Louise with a slowly firming knot – like a lace being pulled as I walk, gradually tightening an accidental knot that’s formed itself in the place where a bow has been. If I want to untie it, I’ll struggle now.

Mim passes Simon the spoon to dish up.

‘Hold up your plate, Helen,’ he says.

I lift the plate so he can fill it. ‘Stop. That’s enough.’

He’s not looking at me but telling Mim about his day at work. I put my plate down. The serving spoon falls against the rim of the pot as she tells him something about her day too. There is nothing to be said about my day. I fill up my fork and blow on the steaming meat and potato to cool it.

I force myself to eat four mouthfuls, then set the knife and fork to rest on the edge of the plate and push the plate away by a couple of centimetres. ‘I’m not hungry tonight. I think I’m going to go to bed.’

Simon looks from Mim to me. ‘Did you do too much today? It was—’

‘I’m fine. I promise. Just tired. Everyone gets tired occasionally.’

A slight frown creases his forehead, making several rows of long thin lines. He looks about ten years younger than he is until the moment he frowns and those wrinkles show.

I take my plate away and scrape the leftovers into the bin. It’s a waste. The lid of the pedal bin falls with a sharp ring. When I turn around Simon is looking at me. I smile, widely, probably overdoing the happy show, walk over, bend down and wrap my arms around his neck. The movement makes the scar on my chest pull but it doesn’t hurt much. ‘I love you,’ I say quietly against his ear; they are words that are just for his ears. He pats my shoulder as I pull away.

‘Goodnight,’ I say to Mim.

I walk around the table and kiss Liam on the top of his head, then Kevin on the top of his head.

My laptop is in the living room. I stop to pick it up so I can take it upstairs. I’m going to bed to look up Robert Dowling’s interview. It will be on the iPlayer Radio.

‘Simon …’ Mim’s voice reaches from the kitchen behind me, with a tone of warning; the tone that comes before the boys get a ‘ten seconds to do something’ countdown.

‘Don’t,’ is his answer; a full stop that ends a conversation that never began, and then there is no sound except the scraping of cutlery on plates.

I listen to the interview in the dark, in bed, with an earphone in my left ear, my head sinking into the pillow. The cotton releases the smell of Mim’s lavender-scented washing conditioner. It is a smell of safety. My whole body calls this bed mine but it is Simon’s and Mim’s spare bed, for guests, not a permanent place for me.

I have no home.

Nowhere that I can call mine. I think it makes it worse that the only place I have ever thought of as mine is now Dan’s and his new woman’s. But I couldn’t be the one who kept the flat because I was too ill to live in it alone.

If I’d had parents, I would have had a home to always go back to. A home like Louise’s, with a flower bed full of scented roses, and parents who loved her. There’s that vacuum again.

The emotion in me is envy. It is my emotion. Louise had what I always wanted.

When the vacuum sucks everything away this is what’s left: darkness. Envy. Anger. Pain. These are the emotions that can take over when bipolar slips into what people call manic depression.

The Dowlings’ radio interview is eleven minutes long. They talk for four minutes then there is a break for a song and another seven minutes.

I want to help. I wish I had something I could say that would help. Their love for Louise flows in the cadence of their voices. There is a moment when Robert says something to his wife, Patricia. ‘I know, Pat, I feel that way too.’ I imagine him holding her hand as she makes a sound, a slight acknowledgement that says she is reassured.

An ache presses through my heart, as it makes itself heard, in a gentle rhythm as I listen to the Dowlings again.

Louise’s sadness becomes a lead weight in my chest and there’s a tension in my throat; she wants to cry.

If I were her, I would be crying.

I want to know love like that.

In Louise’s body, while she was alive, I think this heart would have clasped tight with love when she heard these voices.

The Dowlings mean everything to one another and Louise must have been enveloped in that love too.

When I was young, I imagined myself in a happy sitcom family. But Louise’s family are painting a new mental picture of what life would have been like with parents. What her life was like. What mine could have been like – still might be like.

I look up the one image of Louise that I have access to and play the recording from the beginning, listening for her voice inside me. I can’t hear the words but I hear her: a whisper that’s out of reach.

I want to hear her. I want to understand what she’s saying. I want to understand what she wants me to do.

Chapter 10
6 weeks and 1 day after the fall.

When I leave the railway station, a strong breeze sweeps at me like a broom trying to push me back through the sliding doors.

An answering shiver rattles through my body, up my spine and into my shoulders.

When I dressed this morning, I chose a thin jumper, not thick enough to keep out the cold. I haven’t mastered the forecasting skills required for being outside in the British weather, and the chill in the air is a reminder that in just over two weeks it will officially be autumn.

But perhaps the shiver came from the sense I have that Louise is watching me walking the streets of Swindon – a someone-has-just-walked-over-my-grave sort of shiver.

Her spirit feels more active today. Louder. My heart is pulsing hard and there is a hum of energy in my blood that is making her undeterminable whispers stronger. It is like having someone fidgeting impatiently in my body.

The crossing that is in front of me will take me to the shopping area.

There are tall buildings all around the station but the multi-storey car park is farther away.

Other people who disembarked from the 11.27 train cross the road beside me while the green walking man counts down. The knowing pace of the man in front of me leads me in the right direction, across paved pedestrian areas.

The shopping area is busier than I expected. It will be even busier in fifteen minutes when the office-workers spill out of the high buildings, like ants from an aggravated nest, to buy lunch.

A young boy who is close by complains to his mother. ‘Get in the pushchair!’ she yells, provoking a tirade of screams.

Blustery breezes stir up children. They want to run. Children in a playground are like birds when they play on a strong breeze. There is excitement and expectation in the air of a good breeze.

A young woman sweeps past on a skateboard, putting one foot down to push the skateboard on as she cuts in front of me. She weaves quickly through the people ahead. My gaze follows her until she disappears into the crowd. Then I see it.

The car park is a looming shadow stealing the sunlight from the street farther on; a concrete mass that peers over the top of the shops in the structure of a layer cake.

This is the street that Louise fell into.

At the top of the car park there is a wall. Somehow Louise fell over the top of that wall.

The sky is an innocent, denying blue today. Nothing happened up here, it tries to say.

But something did.

Picture after picture of this street and that car park are in my head. The images I have studied on my laptop in the last two days.

What happened, Louise?

I think she knows I have come here to find out. I think this is what she wants me to do.

The flow of people carries on into the town. A fast-running river of humanity.

I am looking for the narrow alley I have seen on Google Earth images that runs between two of the shops, to a pedestrian entrance at the side of the car park.

Three woman cross the pavement in front of me, from one shop to another. I stop to let them pass.

There is another skateboarder ahead, using a metal bicycle stand as an obstacle to perform tricks. The stand is outside a shop door that I have stared at in news articles.

It is the door.

The shop.

Louise fell onto this pavement, in that place.

I do not walk on. I can’t move. My feet are stone. The ground is thick mud to be waded through and my trainers are stuck in the sludge.

There is no mark, no rusty iron-looking bloodstain to say she was here. Nothing. It is as if the fall that ended her life, and began mine, did not happen. The sky, the car park and pavement all cry out. It was not me! Nothing happened here!

But something very wrong happened here. Women don’t just fall over car-park walls.

This heart must have pumped the blood through her broken body while she lay here.

The alley I have been looking for is on the left: a metre-and-half-wide rabbit-hole.

The block paving carpeting most of the town centre doesn’t reach into the shadowy environment of the alley. This area of Swindon, that’s hiding behind the shops, must have been built in the 1970s concrete explosion.

No one else is walking through here but there’s a man sitting on the floor a few metres ahead, on a filthy sleeping bag, with a dog; both have their legs stretched out. The man’s back rests against the wall, his hand repeatedly stroking the dog that’s lying flat beside him.

The man’s dirt-stained jeans are torn and fraying at the knees.

The dog is a small crossbreed that must include some sort of terrier DNA. Its brown eyes look at me, without any movement of its head.

There’s a presence around the man, more than in his brown-shaded aura, that says he’s given up hope of being anywhere else but on the street.

Three takeaway coffee cups stand beside the dog. I presume they’re empty and probably left there to say he doesn’t want gifts of coffee, just money. But money for what? He needs to feed the dog as well as himself and most hostels will not feed the dog.

I have change in my pocket, left over from buying a coffee at Paddington Station.

The dog’s gaze follows my approach.

I hold out the coins even though the man hasn’t asked for money.

He looks at me; the bit of his face I can see between hair and beard is tanned, leathery skin, tainted by a difficult life spent mostly outdoors.

A shaky hand lifts, palm open, outstretched. ‘Thanks.’ A Special Brew beer can is tucked beside his hip; it is hidden when his arm lowers.

‘You’re welcome. Do you always sit here?’

‘Unless the police move me on.’ His fingers have fisted around the precious coins.

‘Were you here the day a woman fell from the car park a few weeks ago?’

‘No, love. I never saw anythin’. Did you know ’er? Don’t y’u think the police did their job?’

‘I – I just wondered.’

‘Well, I never saw ’er. I wasn’t ’ere at the time.’

‘Okay. Thank you anyway.’ I walk on because there’s nothing else to say.

The air in the side entrance for the car park smells of mildew. I grip the cold metal handrail, which is covered in peeling green paint, and climb the steps. The doors into the parking floors have blue paint that is scarred by numerous initials carved into the wood. Just above the door to the second floor the smell of stale urine taints the air.

The steps are made of bare concrete and the outer wall is constructed with green-painted metal bars that I can see between. The man in the alley is sifting through the coins.

Did Louise climb these steps that day?

The higher I climb, the more I have a sense of her in my chest.

My heart, her heart, is racing with that heavy pulse that I can’t ignore. Listen. Listen. Listen.

I know she wants to tell me something, or persuade me to tell someone else something.

At the top I push the scarred blue door wide and step out on the top floor. I expect to walk into sunshine, but the horizon is grey now.

There are about a dozen cars sprinkled across the space but no one else is up here.

What a place to die. Why was Louise here? Was she alone?

A full rainbow appears, arching over the buildings on the other side of the town.

The side of the car park that hangs over the shops slightly is only a few metres away from the stairwell. The shop Louise fell in front of is under the corner there.

I try to hear Louise’s voice as I walk to the corner where I know she stood. But I can’t make out any words. ‘What happened?’

Beyond the rainbow, the horizon is blurred by the rainstorm.

The wall is bare, rough concrete, like the rest of the car park. I imagined the wall would be waist-high but the top of the wall is chest height.

Louise could not have fallen accidentally; she must have been picked up, or climbed up.

My elbows rest on the wall as I look down. Even on my toes I can only just see the shops on the far side of the pedestrian area.

A breeze tosses the hair away from my face and makes it dance as the air sweeps up from below.

I want to see what Louise would have seen that day. I feel as though I should know why she was here. I’m hoping that being here will increase the connection I have with her. I look for images in my memory, memories that are not mine, but I can’t find them.

My hands press on the wall and I scrape the toes of my trainers as I scramble and pull myself up. The rough concrete catches at strands of the fine wool in my jumper and scuffs my jeans while I manoeuvre my legs so I can sit on the wall with a leg dangling either side.

The area below is flooded with people walking into the town centre.

I have never been afraid of heights. Living with a weak heart that threatened to kill me any day meant nothing else scared me as a child. I was always reckless and careless, rather than cautious. I was either in hospital or pushing the boundaries and packing in as much enjoyment as possible before the next time.

But my periods of enjoyment were manic. Out of control at times, as I tried to fill up the vacuum in me. I was scared and lonely for large parts of my life, even with Simon as a surrogate father, in his school and college days. He was so much older and there were times when I wanted him, and he wasn’t in reach.

What about Louise? Was she scared that day?

Surely someone must have been here with her? The wall is too high for it to have been an accident. Someone must know how she fell.

I look down and see a vivid image of her broken body lying on the pavement. Louise would have realised she was falling and, in the next moment, hit the ground.

I look up at the rainbow and the haze of the rain in the distance.

The only reason Louise would have been here alone was if she had chosen to fall. Which means this heart must have been unbearably sad. But I know sadness can drag people down into the strong undercurrents of a black, thrashing sea.

The rainbow is brighter now, defying the dark grey behind it. I don’t want to think of Louise broken on the floor down there. ‘I will think of the hope you are giving me.’ Even though I can’t hear her, perhaps she can hear me, and she must know how grateful I am.

The wooden skateboard scrapes on the metal of the cycle rack, pulling my gaze down to the youth practising his tricks.

I see a free runner when I look back at the tops of the high buildings; I see bravery and body strength to balance, watching an imaginary me jump along the tops of the buildings. Me. A Marvel superhero making this world mine. If I weren’t ill, I might have become someone with that much freedom. Not a superhero, obviously. But unrestrained. That was the good thing about my bipolar: it made me vibrant at times, capable of anything.

I will not be a free runner now, but Louise’s gift means I will be able to do other things to set this heart on fire with adrenalin.

The colours of the rainbow fade.

A girl’s laugh rises from somewhere in the lower levels of the car park and a mother’s sing-song voice responds.

A child – that is what I want to set this heart on fire. I just want to fill this heart with love. To fill the hole in me.

A sadness that is overwhelming pushes through my chest, forcing its way in. I think it is Louise’s sadness. I don’t feel sad.

Perhaps I have made her think about her children. They’re orphans now. Like me. But not like me, because they have grandparents.

‘Why were you here, Louise?’ The words are swept away on the breeze, without answer. She had parents who loved her, and children.

‘How did you fall? You can’t have wanted to leave your children.’

The long grey smudge of rain is moving past Swindon, along the outskirts, over the distant hills, blown by the wind higher up in the atmosphere.

I swing my leg over and drop down onto the tarmac.

There is somewhere else I want to go before I catch the train back to London.

There’s space on a park bench next to a young woman. I perch on the edge because there’s a missing piece of wood in the seat.

The heels of my shoes tap a quick beat on the pavement. It is a nervous habit that I have had for as long as I remember – ‘You have a twitchy leg,’ Simon used to say when we were sitting in waiting areas for whoever would collect us next.

There is dust from the wall on my jeans. I brush it off.

The woman is looking at two young boys who are feeding the ducks. A swan is hissing at the boys to persuade them to drop their bread. They throw the bread into the lake and run to the woman beside me, shouting at the swan, ‘Go away.’

There’s a picture of the blond children feeding ducks in this park. Perhaps Louise walked along this path to reach the car park?

Perhaps Robert and Pat walk here with the children.

Louise tells me that they do, without words; it is just a knowledge that I seem to have always had. I look along the path as if I’ll see them. She wants me to see them.

The path wraps around one edge of the lake.

They’re not here.

On the other side of the park there’s a grass area where they might be. I can’t leave the park without looking.

I get up and walk around to look.

They’re not there.

On the way to the railway station, thoughts spin in my head. They distort and jump like a vintage LP. Louise could not have fallen accidentally. But why would she have chosen to die when she had children who love her?

Was it murder?

Are the police investigating her death?

I stand on the station platform, looking along the track for the train to appear, with one question in my mind, which escapes my lips. ‘Do I have your heart for a reason?’ I want her to answer. ‘Tell me.’

I won’t know unless she answers.

Was I chosen or found?

Pump-pump.

Pump-pump.

The same banging but no answers.

Why won’t she put the answer in my mind?

‘Did you leave a space for me to take?’ Is that it?

She has nothing to say about her death, so is she looking for me to step in and fill the gap she’s left in the children’s and her parents’ lives?

Chapter 11
21.35.

‘Are you decent?’ Simon’s call resonates through the bedroom door.

‘Yes.’

The door opens in a hesitant way that says he has come to be a father, not a brother.

I smile as I say, ‘Yes,’ again, in a tone that adds, go on, then, speak up. I move my leg so he can sit on the edge of the bed.

He holds out the stack of medicine packets. I left them on the kitchen work surface. I should’ve put them in the cupboard away from the boys.

‘Thanks.’ I take them and put them on the short chest of drawers beside the bed.

‘You okay?’ There’s an undercurrent in the enquiry.

‘Yes.’ Why?

‘You’ve been disappearing a lot lately.’

‘I went to Swindon to find out about another job. I told you.’

‘I know what you told me, after agreeing you weren’t ready to go back to work. But it’s not just that you are disappearing physically, you’re disappearing into yourself a lot. Even when you’re with the boys, you go silent at times when they’re talking to you. And why are you so determined to look for jobs in Swindon?’

‘Because I’m well enough to live alone and I can afford somewhere in Swindon if I find a job. I’ve had a heart transplant, Simon. I have a lot to think about. I can do things I haven’t been able to do for years. I’m thinking about what I want to do with my life.’

A smile touches the corners of his lips before a sigh leaves his throat, then he breathes in. ‘Let me know if I can help.’

‘I am the only one who can decide.’

His lips purse and he leans to one side to reach into his trouser pocket then pulls out a brown plastic bottle. ‘The tablets for your bipolar.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve been counting the pills to see if I’m taking them? You weren’t there to count my tablets when I lived with Dan.’

‘I know.’

I snatch the bottle, rattling the pills. ‘I am taking them.’

‘Good.’

‘And I’m not taking one in front of you because I’ve already taken one.’

‘All right. I believe you. I care about you, that’s the only reason I interfere. The last thing you need is to be sectioned now.’

‘Thank you for reminding me about one of the worst times in my life. That’s the last thing I want to think about now.’

‘I know. But you are so physically healthy I want to make sure you are thinking about your mental health, too.’

‘I am. You don’t need to lecture me. I don’t want to be unwell.’ I think this lecture was spurred on by Mim. She’s been watching me with increased intensity.

My bipolar frightens Mim. She’s scared of it – of what the illness might do if it takes control of me. The obsessions, envy and anger.

A deep-pitched laugh ripples from his throat. ‘I know. Sorry. Sometimes I can’t help myself.’

There’s only one thing to do: stick out my tongue, in the childish gesture that was a favourite of mine when I was small and he was overbearing.

He mimics the gesture: a grown man sticking his tongue out in answer.

This is why we are special, because we still connect with one another as a brother and sister as though the years of pain growing up have not occurred. Perhaps because we had already grown up when we were still so young. Perhaps because he shares the same parents-shaped hole. The same journey of pain and isolation.

The moment takes me back through the years to the hours we spent in foster homes when we retired to the shared bedroom he insisted on, to the place where it was just us. The place where I was wholly understood and we clung to each other because there was never anyone else to rely on.

The bipolar medicine bottle is left on the bed as he stands.

I grasp his hand, holding it tight and saying nothing because we do not need to speak to say things.

His fingers squeeze mine, telling me the things I know about what he feels for me.

When his hand slips out of mine it is always a conscious decision on my part to let him go to Mim and the boys. I learned to let go of him a long time ago. But when I want him back, he always comes.

‘Goodnight.’ His baritone rings around the room.

‘Goodnight. I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

Chapter 12
6 weeks and 2 days after the fall.

Chiming bells ring close to my ear. My hand reaches out on autopilot to find my phone on the chest of drawers. My brain is heavy and clogged with the dulling interference of prescription drugs. The sound rings out again. I look at the clock on the bedside chest by my phone. The vivid green numbers tick over to 9:14. Simon and Mim will have left with the children. It will be a message from Chloe.

I pick up the phone, squinting through tired eyes. It’s not a message. It’s a Facebook notification telling me that Robert Dowling has accepted my friend request.

Life rushes into my brain, as though a switch has turned my body on.

I want to post a thank you on his wall, for making friends.

But if I do that I’ll stand out and perhaps he hasn’t realised he doesn’t know me.

I am a similar age to Louise – he might have assumed I was a friend of hers.

It makes more sense to be cautious, stay quiet and remain an observer of his life – of Louise’s old life.

My legs bend under the duvet. My arm embraces my knees as his Facebook page opens on the small screen of my phone. Picture after picture slides past under my thumb. Most of them are of the children, lots more than those on his public posts. The other pictures are dated before Louise’s death, and posted privately by her.

I scroll back through time, just over a year, then stop on something unusual. The children are with a blond man. The girl’s bottom is balancing on his forearm, her fingers clinging to the back of his neck in a way that says she is used to the position. The man’s other hand is on the boy’s head and that too looks like a frequent gesture that is well known by the boy.

I can’t see the man’s face. He’s looking away from the camera at a door that must lead out of the room. Only the girl is looking at the camera, waving with her free hand.

The text above the image says, ‘Louise Lovett, Alex has picked up the children and is on his way.’ The post is marked as just for friends, but it reads as a message that is just for Robert’s daughter.

Alex.

The man’s hair is a riot of messy curls like the boy’s. The same curls are looser in the girl’s longer hair. Louise did not have curly hair.

Was she married when she died?

It is obvious she married at some point because her surname was different from her parents’ but this is the first hint of a partner being involved in her life.

The man’s left hand is hidden. I can’t see if he’s wearing a ring. But even if she was married a year ago she might have been divorced or separated by the time she died.

I want to know more about this. Frustration grips at me, more a feeling in my stomach than my heart, a feeling that is my desire, not Louise’s.

I open Google on my phone and type, ‘Alexander Lovett’. Frustration switches to urgency that might be Louise’s.

The surname is worth a try.

Images of the children flood my head as the heart pulses faster.

The usual social media search links come up. But there’s something different amongst the links; the word photographer appears again and again. I click to the second page of links and ‘Alexander Lovett photographer’ appears in the text under nearly every link.

‘Alexander Lovett on The Perfect Image’, one of the links says in the heading. It is posted on a country-living magazine website. I click on that. The article is full of beautiful images of the city of Bath. The back arrow returns me to the search results. I want to find his business link.

www.AlexanderLovettPhotography.co.uk.

Click.

The website displays a clean-edged contemporary style. The Instagram link takes me to post after post of pictures of beautiful places, people and nature. There are no pictures of him or anything personal.

I go back and click the Facebook link to a business page that I Like before scanning through the same professional images. There’s nothing personal on here either.

I want a picture of him so I can tell if this photographer is the father of Louise’s children.

There is an About us tab on the website. Click.

The Team, it says at the top of the page, and beneath the heading, centre screen, there is a picture of Alex Lovett. He has tight curls in his blond hair.

He’s looking into the camera lens in a way that communicates with the person behind the camera. His eyes, which I imagine are blue in some lights but are pale ice-grey in this image, are bright and full of an expression that tells me a moment after the camera has clicked he’s spoken.

I feel as if Louise is staring at him through my eyes. The energy in my heartbeat has stalled as she stares, the pulse weakening.

He’s remarkable. The sort of man I would look at if I walked past him in the street. The sort of man any woman who liked men would look at if they walked past him in a street.

Very little is written beneath his image, just information about his professional capability and achievements.

Louise lived with this man. If not at the point she died, for years at least, because they had children.

There is a Contact us tab at the bottom of the webpage.

The studio address is in the city of Bath. By train, Bath is about half an hour further on from Swindon.

The business is a limited company; it will be registered with Companies House. The registration might record Alex’s home address.

The site shows a correspondence address in Bath that is different from the studio’s address.

The phone drops out of my hand onto the duvet. Instead I pick up the laptop. This needs a bigger screen and Google Earth. As the lid lifts the screen comes to life. I glance over to get the address and type it in.

It looks like a residential street.

I drag the yellow Plasticine-like man, that reminds me of Morph, over the screen, waving his legs, and put him down in the street then turn the camera to the houses. It is a house. Definitely. Not an office. I move the camera shot looking at the numbers on the doors. When I find number twenty-two, it shows curtains in the windows, a vase and other ornaments on the windowsills. The house looks lived in, not worked in.

Is this where Louise lived with the children? Perhaps she was inside this house when the Google’ street pictures were taken.

The Companies House information on my phone shows Alex Lovett’s age. He is four years older than me. His birthday is the same month as mine, but I am Aquarius and he’s Pisces.

My legs cross underneath the laptop as my heart jumps with excitement. My excitement, at the success.

This is a breakthrough.

Chapter 13
12.53.

The glossy white door with the fox-head knocker and the brass number twenty-two is in front of me, staring at me from across the street.

The only difference in the view I am looking at, compared to the day Google’s street view captured this image, is that there are no flowers planted in the boxes attached to the railings in front of the house. In the Google image, this house has full flowerboxes bursting with scarlet-red pelargoniums, white euphorbia and trailing ivy. But now, they have all gone.

I think this is the door that Louise Lovett walked in and out of day after day. The door to her home.

I feel as though she’s holding her breath, waiting and watching inside me, with fear and hope. I know she wants me to be here, but I do not know what she wants me to do.

I lean back against the cast-iron Georgian railing that edges the park on the opposite side of the street from the house. The action crushes the rucksack hanging from my shoulder. The rucksack contains a raincoat and umbrella. But today the rain has stayed away.

The five-foot-high iron bars of the railings are topped by pointed fleur-de-lys shapes and so my head rests against a sharp cold fleur-de-lys design. One foot lifts to settle on the stone that the ironwork is embedded in.

This is an old street. In the park behind me are half a dozen plane trees with broad shady canopies and thick trunks over a metre in diameter. The trees must have been planted around the time the houses were built. The park was made to be a garden for the rich who lived in these houses in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The people who live here today must appreciate it even more because there’s a road behind them, and a supermarket beyond that.

I glance at the watch on my wrist then look back at the door, breathe in then exhale slowly. I have been standing here for twenty-two minutes and there’s been no movement in the house.

The street has a dead end, so even though on the other side of the park there’s a noisy main road, here there are no people or traffic, just parked cars and closed front doors.

My foot slips off the stone and I walk forward with a sudden urge to respond. It’s not a choice to move, it’s a need. Louise’s impatience, not mine.

I cross the road, mount the pavement, walk up to the door and grip the doorknocker. The brass fox-head drops onto the metal plaque with a heavy clang. I lift and drop it again.

I need to know if there’s life in this house – if the children are here.

Louise wants whatever she has brought me here for to begin.

The button of a modern doorbell is on the doorframe on the left, as though it’s hidden to prevent it spoiling the appearance of the frontage. I press that, holding it down for seconds. The property is five floors tall, including the windows of a cellar in the area behind the railings.

I step back so I can look at the windows, trying to see someone moving in the house.

One thing is obvious about Alex Lovett: he has a good amount of money; he must do otherwise he would not be able to afford to live in this property.

Noisy footsteps echo beyond the door with the hollow sound of wood.

Someone is running down bare wooden stairs.

I step forward as a chain rattles on the inside of the door. There’s a scrape of metal. I imagine a door-chain being slotted into its holder to prevent the door from being pushed fully open.

When the door opens, the face of a young woman peers through the gap. ‘We don’t buy anything at the door …’

There are high-pitched shouts and small feet running in a room upstairs. There are children in the house somewhere.

The sound of them breathes emotion through my heart, as though Louise’s lips have pursed and blown a kiss, as gentle as a blow on the sails of a paper boat.

My children, a voice in my head declares.

I smile in a way that tries to reassure. ‘Is Alexander Lovett in?’ I don’t know what I will say if he is in. But the one thing I do know is that Louise wants me to find a way into this house. This family.

The thought sends a sharp pain through my middle.

My black hole stirs, like a waking dragon. Opportunity and hope are being absorbed. It consumes every thought other than those that focus on the children.

A family here have a space for me, and I have a space for them. It is a jigsaw puzzle left on a table waiting to be completed with the last piece.

The last piece is me.

‘He’s at work. Can I take a message?’

‘No. I’ll contact him at the studio.’ I don’t give her a chance to answer. I don’t want to hear her try to put me off the idea. I know what I need to know from this house. The children are here and I need to find a way into their home.

I walk back to the centre of Bath caught up in a dream, the rhythm of my heart setting the pace as I stride through streets packed with tourists. People bump my shoulder or legs with their shopping bags.

Alex’s studio is on the other side of the city centre, in a side street near the Holburne Museum.

Once I’m on the other side of Pulteney Bridge, the density of tourists dissipates and the road widens into a broad avenue of high, pale-stone terraced houses. There is a fountain in the middle of the road. I turn left there and look at the numbers on the buildings.

My fingers grasp the shoulder strap of my rucksack as I walk to the studio’s front door. My legs and arms are shaky. I’m nervous, but I will not run from this.

There are three polished brass plaques inscribed with the names of different companies that have separate intercom systems.

I press the intercom for Alexander Lovett Photographic Services and Studio Ltd.

‘Hello, can I take your name?’ A female voice crackles through the speaker.

‘Helen Jones,’ I lie.

‘Are we expecting you? You’re not on the list.’

‘No, I’d like to make an appointment.’

‘People usually ring to make an appointment.’

‘I want to see Alex Lovett. Is he there?’

‘No. Alex is working in London today, but I can help. Come in.’ There’s a buzz, then a click.

I push the heavy door. It opens.

The doors on the first and second floor are for the other businesses. On the third-floor there is another brass plaque for Alexander Lovett’s studio.

The door opens into a reception area, with brown leather seating and photography lining the burgundy walls.

A woman, who I presume is the person I spoke to through the intercom, is sitting behind a curved dark wood desk. ‘How can I help you?’ She is tapping the end of her pen on the desk.

The strap of the rucksack cuts into my palm as I grip it tighter. ‘I’d like to talk to Alex about photography for a wedding.’ The second lie slips out easily, although I might be blushing.

She’s his gatekeeper.

The pen is raised like a spear as she stands on guard. She’ll send me away if she doesn’t think I have a good reason to meet him.

He is the gatekeeper for the children.

She smiles; a customer-service smile. ‘Alex rarely gets involved with weddings. I can put you down to talk to one of the others? They’re all very good. I can show you their portfolios if you would like to choose someone?’

‘It’s not my wedding.’ I sit down in the chair on the opposite side of her desk, my jeans sliding on the leather seat. I am under-dressed, in jeans and canvas daps. ‘I’m a wedding planner and I have a large society wedding scheduled for next year. I want the best photographer. These shots will be on the mantelpieces of stately homes for generations.’

A dubious gleam twinkles in her eyes. She judged my clothes when I was standing and now she’s judging my scarce make-up and un-kempt hair and she knows I’ve lied. I don’t look wealthy enough to be a society wedding planner. I would be dressed in a figure embracing, tailored, deisgner suit and I would not have even come in person, I would have rung first.

Anger overrides the nervousness. I square my shoulders and the lies become even easier to say. ‘No one else will do. That is why I have come in person, to express how important this event is. The bride’s family won’t accept one of his assistants.’

She stares at my face while she decides what to do. ‘Okay, I can book you in for a quick chat with him, say an initial quarter-hour, and he can make a decision if he wants to do it or not. But I’m not promising. Alex is in demand.’

‘Yes, I’m aware.’

She flicks through pages in a paper diary, the sweeping sound of the paper stirring the air in the small waiting room. ‘His diary is full for weeks,’ she adds as she continues looking. ‘Ah. Here’s a small slot. Four weeks’ time. He won’t charge you for a first appointment.’ Her gaze drops down as she reaches for a card and writes the time and date on it. Then she looks at me. ‘Here.’ She holds out the card.

‘Thank you.’ I stand again, re-exposing my jeans that are faded from over-washing, not fashionably bleached, and the jumper that has pulls in the threads where it caught on the wall in the car park in Swindon.

‘Goodbye,’ I say to fill an awkward moment.

I am given another bland customer-service smile. ‘Good—’

I shut the door on her last syllable.

Chapter 14
6 weeks and 5 days after the fall.

The lies I have been telling Chloe over lunch are becoming as thick as pea soup; if I’m not careful they will become so thick and deep the pea soup will drop on my head in a smothering, embarrassing slime. But she keeps asking questions, wanting me to expand on the details I’m making up.

Louise’s urgency is in me; it has been racing through my blood for hours. Her energy pushes the lies from my mouth. I feel like the friend of a bully. I can’t hear her words, but I feel her pressuring me. Rushing me. She doesn’t want me to be here with Chloe. She thinks this is wasting time. But even though I have her heart, she doesn’t own my mind and body.

Whereabouts was the job in Bath? Chloe’s questions go on and on. How big is the school? What are the staff like? What are the class sizes? Have I looked at places to live near there? Can I really afford a place on my own?

I won’t remember what I’ve said if she asks me to repeat anything later. I’ll tell her I didn’t get the job as soon as I can.

I want to change the subject but it’s hard to find a moment in the rush of her incessant questioning.

‘I can’t imagine you leaving London,’ she says eventually, ‘or living alone.’ She doesn’t want me to get the made-up job anyway.

Chloe and Simon are too used to my dependency on them. I must break that. I want the freedom I have access to. ‘I’m well now. I don’t need people to be there for me all the time. I know how to wash myself,’ I joke.

She smirks.

‘I can even wash my clothes now; I can pick up the washing basket and fill the machine. I can polish my shoes too and, guess what, I can lift a spoon to my mouth.’ I laugh.

She shakes her head. ‘You’re not funny. I can’t help being nervous for you.’

‘If I decide to move to somewhere in that direction it’s only a short train journey away, and I’m not nervous.’ I am eager and excited – but those emotions are merged with Louise’s impatience.

Chloe’s lips twist and her nose twitches. She’s worried because ever since I’ve known her I have been ill to some degree.

I can feel the difference Louise’s heart pulses into every cell in my body. Chloe can’t. It will take her and Simon longer to know how different my life is now.

‘What if I promise you will be the first to know if I feel unwell? And if I do feel ill I’ll hand in my notice and move back to London.’

Chloe gives me one of her broad smiles that throws good cheer out. ‘I’ll take that promise and I’ll hold you to it.’

I hold out a hand to shake on it. ‘Deal.’

‘Deal.’ Her hand takes mine, warming it as her fingers wrap around and hold on securely.

We hug each other in the entrance hall of the underground station, then say goodbye, before I descend on one set of escalators and she disappears into the tiled tunnel leading to another Tube line.

It’s 5.45 and busy; teeming with commuters who rush and push past me with no courtesy, just a need to carry on with the next part of their getting-home journey.

I shuffle along in the herd of people navigating the London rush hour, manoeuvring down the narrow escalator and then finding a carriage to squeeze into, like cattle packed into a pen. I stare out of the windows that show me nothing but the black tunnel we are speeding through. But that’s better than looking at the armpit of the man who’s hanging onto a ceiling bar an inch away.

There’s something strange in the reflections formed on the windows, with the blackened tunnel wall beyond them – a blurred figure. A woman who seems to be looking at me.

I look over my shoulder; the woman isn’t there. It is just the man’s arm and chest.

When I look back at the window, the woman has gone.

I want to get home. I love seeing Chloe, but today feels like a wasted day. I’ve been trying to find out the name of the young woman I met at the house yesterday. I think she’s the children’s nanny, but Alex doesn’t have any personal social media accounts and as far as I can tell the nanny hasn’t liked or followed his business accounts.

When I walk through the back door into the kitchen, Mim is straining the water from a saucepan of peas.

She glances over her shoulder. ‘Hello.’

‘Hello.’

‘Did you have a good afternoon?’ She puts the saucepan down, but there’s an odd stiffness in the movement that hints at the fact she feels uncomfortable.

I smile, slightly. ‘Yes. Thank you. Can I do anything?’ Maybe it’s because I could do more to help, and she’s fed up of me being as much work as a child. I should help with the cooking and looking after the boys now that I can. I’ve taken more than my share of Simon’s concern and money over the years. The boys are in a play club all day at the moment until the school holidays end but perhaps I could entertain them in the evening and put them to bed. It would be nice to join in with the children’s bedtime routine – be the one to read their goodnight story.

‘Everything’s done, I’m just dishing up. But you can call the boys and Simon and tell the boys to wash their hands.’

‘Kevin. Liam. Simon,’ I shout as I walk across the room, directing my voice through the door on the far side.

Simon leans his head around the door frame within a second, holding onto the frame on the far side. ‘No need to shout, we’re here.’ His words are punctuated with a grin.

‘The boys need to wash their hands.’

‘They’ve already gone to do it. They smelled the sausages.’

An emotional urge that’s not a thought-out decision makes me walk towards him. He knows why without me speaking. He lifts his arms, waiting for me to wrap my arms around his middle and hold on. This is the black hole speaking.

His arms fall onto my shoulders to embrace me and he presses a kiss on my temple. Then he lets go and moves on, talking to Mim as he walks around me.

This is his life. His family. I want my own. That’s all I want to do with this new heart. I don’t want a job. I want a family.

A cry, or something more like a wail, a scream of longing, rips through my head. It is the loudest sound that I have heard in Louise’s voice.

The anger in her impatience is making her spirit stronger.

My hands slide into the back pockets of my jeans, restraining the thoughts in my head, to stop them from slipping out of my mouth. I see Louise’s children in my mind, not her memories, but images of them from the pictures on Robert Dowling’s Facebook page.

Simon would call my thoughts abnormal. He would say I shouldn’t let myself become emotionally attached to the children of the woman I think donated my heart. But I can’t help myself. I already am.

It feels right.

That I have her heart.

That I know where her children are.

That I know where her parents are.

But without being able to understand what it feels like to have a sixth sense, to feel Louise’s emotions, Simon, like Chloe, will think I am going mad.

Since I was sectioned and diagnosed at fourteen, Simon’s favourite phrase has been, ‘You do not have a sixth sense, you have bipolar.’ He’s never believed.

It’s better that I don’t tell him or Chloe anything.

It’s better to lie.

I won’t be able to get closer to Louise’s family if I tell the truth.

‘Have you heard about that job today, Helen?’ Simon asks when we are sitting around the dinner table.

‘I didn’t get it.’ I accept a plate of sausages, mashed potatoes, peas and dark thick gravy from Mim.

‘Why?’ Simon says. ‘Not that I’m complaining about that.’ He takes his plate.

‘I didn’t ask why, but I think working with a class of primary school children might be too much for a little while anyway. I’m well enough to look after a couple of children so I think I’m going to look for a nanny job instead.’

Simon’s lips purse as he picks up his knife and fork, his eyebrows quirking in that paternal expression.

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Simon,’ Mim protests, on my behalf. Or perhaps hers, if she wants me out of their house.

‘Nothing. Not really. I agree it’s a better idea to take that step first. I just don’t like the thought of you living with strangers …’

‘I didn’t say I would live in. Although it would be good if I could.’ My heart claps its hands and taps its heels at the idea of living in. Because I do not want to be anybody’s nanny, I want to be Alex Lovett’s nanny. I want to look after Louise’s children, and if I can live in the house …

My heartbeat skips.

Chapter 15
7 weeks and 3 days after the fall.

The coffee inside the takeaway cup resting on my knee is cold. I’ve been sitting on this old iron park bench for nearly two hours.

I’ll have to go soon. Simon and Mim will be back from her parents’ in three hours. Simon will question me if I get home too long after them. He expects me to be there when they walk through the door.

The only movement in the house on the far side of the park has been a single view of the nanny; she walked past a window on the right-hand side on the first floor. I haven’t seen anyone else. Sitting here has shown me nothing. But I’m closer to the children and my heart feels happier.

I think there’s an entrance to the cellar of Alex Lovett’s house on the other side of the park. A door cuts through the wall beneath the iron railing that’s topped by the Fleur de Lys. The ground of the park drops into a ditch that is more than a metre below the street level, and there’s a row of short doors in the wall supporting the street; one for each house. Those doors were probably used for deliveries for things like coal, blocks of ice or bags of flour years ago. Today, though, they must still provide access, through a tunnel under the road, to the basement floor of the houses.

I stand, only because my bottom and legs are numb from sitting here so long. I walk to the left, because when I turn at the corner I’ll be able to look at the house for the longest period of time.

There’s so little activity in the house, I think Alex has taken the children out.

It is Saturday.

I throw the cup of cold coffee in a rubbish bin.

Frustration grips as a pain in my stomach again – right in the middle of me. I want to see the children. The frustration starts to bubble, like fizz rising in lemonade, but it feels as if in a moment it is going to boil like water that tries to jump out of a saucepan.

They are my children, a voice says – a voice that might be Louise’s.

She’s frustrated too.

I walk across the park in the direction of the house, listening again for Louise’s voice, but nothing else is said.

A knocker rattles, announcing that a door is opening. Conversation tumbles into the street.

It is Alex Lovett’s front door. Children’s voices carry on the air and they come out into the street.

I walk down the slope, into the valley at the edge of the park, towards the wall, towards the house.

‘Granny,’ the boy says, looking at a woman I do not know. She’s past middle age. There’s an older man with the children too. I haven’t seen either adult in Facebook posts.

I guess they’re Alex’s parents.

The door closes without an appearance from Alex.

It is less than two months since Louise died.

They need their father.

Their mother.

He should be with the children.

I walk up to the railing, and hold the bottom of the metal rails, watching from my rat’s-eye-view, as they walk off along the street.

Chapter 16
7 weeks and 6 days after the fall.

The edge of the plastic lid scratches my lip, then the coffee burns the roof of my mouth. I move the cup away, flinching.

I am trying to look like a casual occupant of the park bench.

Day by day I am claiming this bench as mine.

It is the perfect place to watch Alex’s house from.

He usually leaves the house at 8.20 to walk the boy to a holiday club. I followed them the first day I’d come here early, but I can’t follow them every day because it will be too obvious. He holds the girl’s hand but the boy keeps a little distant and tucks his thumbs inside the shoulder straps of his backpack denying any chance of contact with his father.

Alex returns at 8.50, with his daughter. They go back inside the house and then at 9.00 the door opens again, and he comes out with keys rattling in his hand as he either walks off down the street or goes to a large Range Rover.

I do not know what time he comes home after work. It is too late for me to stay and watch.

The door opens now, following the same routine.

I put the cup up against my lip and hold up my phone as though I am looking at the screen and look beyond it.

The curls in Alex’s hair are disordered, untidy in a way that suggests his hair has not seen a comb or had a cut for weeks. He’s not shaven either and the growth of blond hair on his chin denies any thought of grooming. The shirt he’s wearing is rumpled.

Watching him is fascinating, like studying an animal. I hear David Attenborough narrating the family’s movements in my head.

I need to understand Alex’s life if I’m going to work out a way to become a part of the children’s lives. I need to spot a weakness – a door that’s been accidentally left open, that I’ll be able to push my way through.

The girl holds onto his hand, which hangs loose. Alex looks back into the house and calls for the boy, who squeezes past his dad and sister and runs ahead.

Louise’s heart pulses with a rush of emotion every day when I see them come out through the door.

‘Wait for us!’ Alex’s call stretches across the park that contains me and two people with their dogs.

His aura’s strange. I have never seen anything so dark before; it is greys, black in places, like a terrible storm wrapping about him.

Alex and the children disappear around a corner.

I drink the cooling coffee and look through Robert Dowling’s pictures on Facebook while I wait.

My life is now paused and played on Alex’s command.

It’s cold today; my free hand slides into the pocket of my coat. There are several used train tickets and the one I need to get home in my pocket. The price of a ticket is extortionate at this time of day.

I have savings: a lump sum put away when Dan told me to get out of the flat; a pay-off for all the jointly purchased white goods and furniture I left behind, and the half of the deposit I lost. But I can’t afford to travel backwards and forwards to Bath every day for long.

You are getting obsessed, Simon’s voice whispers through my head.

I can become an addict of anything, because of bipolar. It is like a gambling addiction, or drug abuse – I can’t stop once I have started believing something. My mind becomes fixated.

This is strange, Chloe’s voice tells me.

It is strange. I know it is. But being given someone else’s heart is strange, especially when that woman steps into your body and tells you to find her family. But this is real. And the house is the jigsaw puzzle that’s waiting for me to step into place and complete it.

I owe this to Louise and I want it for me.

The distant sound of conversation pulls my attention back to the corner that Alex and his daughter appear from. She is half running, taking four or five steps with her short legs compared to his two strides. He’s rushing today.

He opens the front door of his house with the key, but doesn’t close the door after he’s taken the girl inside. Then after a moment of some sort of exchange behind the half-closed door he reappears.

When he walks away from the door the headlights of the Range Rover flash as the car doors unlock.

I wait until he’s in the car and pulling away from the kerb, then stand.

Once he’s gone I usually go somewhere to eat breakfast. Then I come back.

There’s the rattle of a doorknocker that has a looser sound than anyone else’s. I look back to see the front wheels of a pushchair appear from Alex’s house.

The third child will be in that pushchair.

I have only seen the youngest child in a few of Robert Dowling’s pictures.

The nanny steers the pushchair over the threshold, then looks back and says something to the girl who follows.

I think the girl is three years old. She captures my attention more than the others. She’s so small and pretty. I have always wanted a girl and she’s my dream child. My hands want to reach out for her every time I see her. That’s Louise’s desire too, but I know my own feelings are the same, not just hers.

I feel as if Louise would simply pick the children up and run.

I can’t do that; I would not be able to keep them. And I want to keep them. I want to make them mine.

The girl holds onto the pushchair as the nanny locks the door.

The nanny turns the pushchair in my direction, to cross the street.

For the second time, someone is looking at me looking at them.

Perhaps she’s come out of the house to investigate me – the strange woman who has started sitting in the park every day, staring at their windows.

The little girl speaks and the nanny looks down.

A dummy rolls across the tarmac. The little girl picks it up and holds it out. They are in the middle of the street. The noise of the traffic on the busy road behind me feels like a threat but they are in a street with a dead end; the traffic is not near her.

The nanny takes the dummy, wipes it on her top then gives the dummy back to the child.

I am not OCD about cleanliness but I am qualified to look after children and the five-second rule doesn’t apply to children who have barely started developing their immunity.

I start walking as the nanny tips the buggy back so it can get over the kerb on this side of the street. Called into action by her ineptitude.

Louise and I are on the same page. I may not want to take the children, but I want to get rid of that nanny. The children need me; Louise and I know that.

People who do not look after children properly do not deserve to have them.

They walk along the path on the other side of the park’s railing.

I walk in the same direction, towards the park’s exit.

The woman looks to be in her late teens or early twenties. Too young.

The small girl is on the far side of the pushchair so I can’t see her.

I want to see her.

I walk quicker to get ahead of them. I can see the girl’s expression is compliant as she looks at the pavement, silent.

The colours in her aura have faded, as sadness dances around her. Children often have splashes of colour, not layers. She has a cloud that is blended to a point it is hard to pick out the different shades.

The girl’s sadness lances through me, cutting into the flesh of my heart with a quick thrust. Things are not right in that house.

I want to help the children. I know what it is like to grow up without a mother. They must be feeling broken. Black holes will be forming, stealing all their happiness.

They need me.

I am so glad you brought me here, Louise. Thank you. I know you are right.

The park’s exit is at the tip of its triangle shape. The path I am walking on and the path they are walking on brings us closer.

The nanny looks at the main road.

I pretend to look at my phone as I walk, and laugh, as though I have seen something funny, then lift the phone to aim the camera. Tap. Tap. Tap. It will not be the best picture, the nanny is side on, but it is something for me to use to help me find her on social media.

The distance between us becomes a few paces.

I grip one of the fleur-de-lys at the corner of the iron railing for a second as I walk out while she takes the last few steps. I think she’s going to walk on along the pavement, so I wait, to let her pass, but she turns the pushchair into the park.

An intense urge begs me to bend down and touch the little girl’s head. To run my fingers through her curls. To touch her shoulder, reach for her hand and help her run. But all I do is smile at the woman I hate and step out of the way.

She walks past me with no acknowledgement as though I am nothing.

I think she’s going to the playground in the farthest corner of the park.

I want to walk along the path by the railing, so I can keep watching them. But that would be too obvious.

I press the button for the pedestrian crossing, stop the traffic and walk away.

I turn the key and open Simon and Mim’s door long before they will be home. Simon will not know I have been out today.

When Simon comes in the back door, I am lifting a fish pie with a golden, crispy mashed-potato top out of the oven. A steamy smoked-cod smell fills the room. I made the pie before Mim got home with the boys and I’m proud of it. No one would call me a cook. Dan and I lived on ready meals, but that was out of necessity in the last years of my incapability. This pie is a triumph over a fate that tried to kill me.

Louise changed that fate.

Perhaps she was a good cook?

I know that today has spurred me into wanting to play happy families with her children. All I can think about is looking after them. My head is running through the images of my life with them. They are not Louise’s memories, they’re my hopes.

Simon smiles at me as I straighten up, put the hot dish on top of the oven and push the oven door shut with my toes.

His gaze moves to Mim and the boys, who are sitting around the table. ‘Hello,’ he says as the boys scramble to say good evening, their chairs scraping on the floor.

Their arms wrap around his legs.

I see Louise’s children greeting me like that.

He slides the rucksack he uses for work off his shoulder and unzips it, looking at me again and deploying the grin the boys have inherited from him.

He pulls a magazine out of his bag and holds it out. ‘For you.’

A copy of The Lady hovers in front of me.

I pull off the blue striped oven mitts and drop them down beside the pie dish.

‘I agree.’ His voice lifts with conviction. ‘You should find a nanny job, but you don’t have to take one that will be too much hard work. If you are going to get a job go for the best position, somewhere they will not expect you to do the cleaning and the cooking too.’

I take the magazine.

But I do not want to be anyone’s nanny. I want to be Alex Lovett’s nanny.

I just need to get rid of the useless girl he has now.

Chapter 17
9 weeks and 4 days after the fall.

My hand is in my jeans pocket gripping the key for the front door of the house I rent a room in.

The church bells are ringing from two different directions but otherwise the streets are quiet.

There’s something unique about the city of Bath. Perhaps it’s because the city centre is so much smaller than London and the size develops a sense of intimacy.

I run slightly, in a jog, along the pavement of the last street until the point it meets the main road, then I slow to a walk.

The excitement is buzzing in my ears. Fizzing words and thoughts through my head. I can’t believe I am here. Out in the world on my own and focusing on a future that I can see clearly. I just need to work out how to get from this to that. I have spent all night trying to think of a plan.

But with Louise’s help, I will come up with a way. I’ll get into the house somehow.

It is the first time I have come here on a Sunday. Only a couple of cars pass by on the main road.

Most people are still in bed, eating breakfast, drinking coffee and reading papers.

Jive music tumbles out from the old railway station near the crossing that is now used as an antique market. The music calls to the few of us who have risen early, pulling passers-by inside. I am not drawn.

The railing-imprisoned park is opposite.

I ought to have a reason to sit in there, though. I haven’t bought a coffee yet. I rushed, because I was so glad to be able to walk out of a door and come straight here.

I turn back towards the music and the open door. There will be somewhere inside that sells takeaway coffee.

The small door leading into the under-cover market is deceptive; inside it is a huge space with a towering vaulted glass ceiling, held in place by a backbone of wrought-iron arches.

The scattering of antiques stalls is belittled by the architecture and there are scarce customers; it is mainly the stallholders talking to each other as they eat rolls bursting with bacon.

A freshly ground coffee aroma wafts from the far end where the stallholders must have bought their rolls.

When I leave the market the coffee in the cup is so hot it burns my hand through the insulated cardboard. I cross the road, hurry into the park and rush for my bench, then put the cup down on the seat beside me, claiming the bench.

All the pressure and excitement of the last few days slips away on my outbreath.

I have lied so many times to Simon and Chloe my mythical life is a tangled ball of yarn that could unravel at any moment. They think I start a job here on Monday, but I have been vague about the family and the address so they can never try to find where they think I work.

I don’t like having so many secrets between me and them, but Louise and her family come first now. They must come first. This is a place that’s been prepared for me. She’s chosen me to fill the gap in her family, to love her children.

This is my job.

I am starting to feel as if the reason for my life since birth was to be ready to fill her space. Left alone by my parents so that I would want hers. Born with a faulty heart so that I would need hers. Prevented from having children so that I can love hers.

But I know that can’t be true.

I am renting a room in a woman’s house. I spotted it for rent only a few streets away on SpareRoom and rushed to move because I didn’t want to lose the chance.

I have moved to Bath, and I am going to sit here and live on the last of my savings until I find a way to be with the children.

I am due to meet Alex in just over a week, for the fake appointment. I’ll need to create more lies then. But I am becoming a very good liar, with Louise as my cheerleader, pushing all these shameless tall tales out of my lips. But if lying means I can have what I want, I am happy to lie.

The rungs of the chilly metal seat press into the backs of my thighs. The cold creeping through my jeans.

I take my phone out of my back pocket but I don’t look at it, I look in through the first-floor windows of Alex’s house. Into his living room.

I came last night and saw Alex walk across the room when there was a light on. I couldn’t see very much, but I saw enough to know it’s the living room.

If Alex or the nanny see me, I imagine they barely notice me. I am probably just the woman who sits in the park.

The phone shivers in my hand. The single vibration of a message from Chloe.

‘Good morning. What’s life like in Bath?’

‘Nice. Laid-back.’ I reply via WhatsApp.

‘At least you’re only a short train journey away. If you’d moved farther away I would have hated you.’

‘I promise we’ll see each other—’ my thumb stops, hesitating over the letters when I hear the familiar rattle of a doorknocker ‘—often,’ I type and send without looking back down.

I leave the phone resting in my lap and take a sip of coffee that scalds my tongue.

A woman with long pitch-black hair has stepped out of the house and turned back to face Alex, who is standing in the doorway.

She’s wearing a sequin-covered black mini dress and high heels – nothing else. No jumper. No coat.

The sequins catch the sunlight. She wobbles slightly, balancing on killer thin black patent stilettos. She’s gripping a small evening bag with both hands.

I get up and start walking over the grassy mound that dominates the middle of the park, sliding my phone into my back pocket and gripping the coffee cup tightly in the other hand, walking across the grass towards the house.

I want to hear what they’re saying.

The chaotic curls that define the children’s hair suggest Alex has just got out of bed.

‘That’s okay. But call me. If you want to,’ the woman says in a high flirting tone that belongs in a bar, not on the doorstep of a posh street.

‘I did say it was a one-off …’

One hand brushes her hair back. ‘Yes.’

If Alex looks across her shoulder he will look at me.

‘But thank you for last night.’ His hand is holding the door, telling her without words he wants to close it.

He’s wearing the same loose grey jeans I saw him wearing through the living-room window last night, and they look like the ones he wore to work on Friday. His T-shirt is creased – as if it has just been picked up off a bedroom floor, but his clothes are always creased. Today, though, his feet are bare as if he’s dressed quickly, solely to say goodbye to this woman; as if they have got up together and he’s only dressed to walk her downstairs.

I doubt there was even a stop for breakfast, his body language is so keen to dispose of her.

The woman takes a single step back. ‘It was my pleasure.’ The clutch bag is moved awkwardly from one hand to the other as she turns away and the door bangs shut, rattling the doorknocker again.

She walks a few paces then stops, fumbling with the catch on her bag. She takes out a cigarette and a lighter, lights it, before carrying on with her walk of shame.

It is obvious what went on in that house last night.

Louise’s spirit lurches, with the leap of a panther racing into my heart. If she had the ability to control my body she would make me run, and make me scratch out that woman’s eyes.

Vengeance becomes a pressing emotion on the back of my tongue, as Louise tries to shout abusive words through my lips.

I don’t care about the woman. He can sleep with whoever he wants to.

But it’s a quick bounce-back for a man whose wife has only recently died.

Louise screams in my ears, trying to focus my attention on her anger. She wants me to feel it.

Did he love Louise?

It’s less than three months since she died in a horrific way. And that was clearly a one-night stand.

A tremor of disgust twists in my stomach. What if the woman is a dangerous bunny-boiler?

Are the children in there? I don’t care about Alex or that woman, but the children …

From the level of anger welling up inside me, I know Louise cared about Alex, though.

Dan let me down.

What about Alex? Has he done this before?

Are most men unable to keep their dicks in their trousers?

Is this why Louise jumped from the car park? Because he’s a cheating bastard.

Now I am angry. I’d like to see revenge dished out on every man who is like Dan. Telling shallow lies about love. Setting up a false shop window about what life would be like with them – from happy ever after to The Little Shop of Horrors.

What if Alex created a family with her and then betrayed her?

Bastard.

I need to get inside that house and save the children from him, not just his nanny.

I walk forward and stand on the edge of the mound, the steep slope dropping away in front of me, down to the wall with the doors for the passages that run under the road.

It is like an ancient moat, a boundary defending the houses on the far side.

Louise is willing me into that house. She’s working in my mind as well as my heart, trying to help me think of a plan. I listen, waiting for the words and ideas she is trying to put there, but I can’t hear them.

‘Is this why you gave me your heart? Because you know I’ll rescue the children, and get them away from him?’

REVENGE VERSUS LOVE

Chapter 18
9 weeks and 5 days after the fall. Day 1, after I saw that woman.

I thrust my fist into the pillow again and lie back down. The pillow feels like a lump of cement tonight even though it is stuffed full of soft downy feathers and releases the aroma of lavender.

I can’t stop thinking. I can’t stop seeing that fucking woman.

Slut.

Louise is so angry her thoughts fizz amongst mine, spitting out from a shaken champagne bottle, and she keeps shaking the bottle; she will not let the anger die.

I thought Louise had a perfect life. Perfect parents. Perfect children. A handsome, wealthy husband. A perfect family.

That was the façade. Behind the scenes Alex was a bastard; that’s what she’s been trying to tell me.

Just like Dan pretending for months with me, while he made another woman pregnant.

Louise and Alex’s marriage produced three beautiful children, but at some point it became loveless. Heartless.

I can feel the embarrassment, pain and loss of Alex’s betrayal oozing like a picked scab – as deeply as I feel my own because of Dan’s. The pain is gathering up in me, in an increasing avalanche, tumbling through my thoughts. Every time I try to sleep, my mind returns me to children’s homes, and hospitals, or sitting in restaurants listening to Dan gush about a love that in the end had no roots.

Alex’s affections are not only as shallow as Dan’s, they are as shallow as my father’s and mother’s.

I think Louise is telling me there were other women before she died, but even if I am wrong and he didn’t have sex with other women, he can’t have loved Louise properly. People who love you do not have sex with a stranger three months after you’ve died.

Louise is loved by her parents, and her children must miss her. But their father …

I am scared now. If his love is that shallow, what might happen to the children?

They need a nanny to look after them and love them as strongly as Louise loved them.

I will love them that much. I will be their mother – if I can get into the house.

I roll over and look at the clock. 3:04. I might as well give up trying to sleep. Maybe if I do something for a while Louise will press an idea into my mind.

I touch the light stand to turn the bedside light on, sit up, pulling the cushion that was on the side of the bed behind me and reach for my laptop.

Robert Dowling’s Facebook page appears as I open the laptop; the last thing that I looked at.

Is Robert Dowling friends with Alex’s nanny? I have glanced through his friends’ faces before, but now I have the picture on my phone to compare with.

Forty minutes later, I can say for certain that she’s not among his Facebook friends.

It was always an unlikely hope. A nanny who shares her social life with her employer’s father-in-law would be rare.

The Facebook pages that Robert Dowling likes include Alex’s business page. I click through to it because I’m still not tired.

If I were working for someone I would take an interest in their business.

About the thirtieth post down, a familiar face appears in a small icon in the comments.

The date of the post is five months ago. Before Louise died.

I click on the image to enlarge it. It is her. The nanny.

She posted a thumbs-up emoji in the comment stream under a picture.

Her name is Susie Brooke.

One click from the tip of my forefinger and I can see Susie Brooke’s Facebook page. It’s private. There is just one profile picture of her, a black screen header and a few shared posts from a music band.

I do not send her a friend request. There’s no point. Younger people are generally more savvy and judgemental about who they befriend online. She would see that she doesn’t know me and wonder why the woman who sits in the park has sent her a friend request in the middle of the night. Then she’d wonder how I know her name.

One thing the page does show me, that I didn’t know, is that she isn’t employed directly by Alex. Her employer is listed as an agency.

I open another search engine tab and type in Shearing and Smith Recruitment Agency. The company specialises in childcare and other household staff.

The name Susan Brooke goes into another search tab. It is a common name. I open Twitter and trawl through accounts with her picture on my phone to compare. Not one Susie Brooke looks like her.

I open Instagram to search there, scanning through face after face. I want to find images that will not be blocked. Images that will tell me how to get rid of her.

There. I see her.

My fingertip taps the screen by her image as I look from that to my phone. It is her. It’s a different picture from the one she used on Facebook but it’s her and the account isn’t private.

The posts open a door into her life. Places she goes to most, where she drinks, where she eats; and her friends are there, in pictures and comments. Patterns emerge as I scroll through the months. A pub, in Bath, where they all meet up. A nightclub in Bristol that she visits at least once a month. A park she takes the children to more than anywhere else.

The music band that was in her Facebook posts appears several times, and lots of those pictures are group selfies, including Susie. She is either a fan or a friend.

Another internet tab and another search takes me to the band’s Facebook page. They’re a local, unsigned band made up of young men – they have 4328 likes on the page and Susie is one of their followers.

They play a lot of gigs in and around Bath. Susie’s profile image appears in nearly all the comment streams and she hearts everything they post.

When I compare Susie’s Instagram posts with the dates and venues the band have performed at, every date aligns with a picture on Susie’s stream.

The floorboards on the landing creak, with the sound of soft, careful steps. Click. Electric light fills the thin gap around the bedroom door. A different sort of light is seeping through the blind covering the window.

I look at the clock. 5:19.

The floorboards continue creaking and I hear a door. The bathroom door.

I close the lid of the laptop, leaving all the tabs open, put it down and turn off the bedside light.

The toilet flushes, the bathroom door opens again and then there are more creaks as my landlady, Pippa, walks back along the landing.

I try to sleep but my mind will not stop spinning with ideas and plans.

Louise is excited. My heart is kicking. She thinks we have taken another step.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.