Page 4 of The Love of Our Lives
‘At the same agency too,’ Mum quips, and my eyes start to burn.
Nick nods, as if he’s not remotely surprised. ‘Well, if you’re ever in the Alps . . .’ He trails off, something like regret crossing his features. ‘Anyway, it’s been great seeing you again.’
‘You too,’ I reply, and a second later they wander away across the lawn.
Once they’re gone, Mum turns to me, a slightly sad expression on her face. ‘Well, that must have been a little painful. He was quite a catch, that one . . . though I’m not sure it would have ever worked out.’
‘Mum,’ I say, throwing my hands up to my face in frustration, and I wish in that moment that I was anywhere but here.
‘What? What is it?’ she says, but I can’t even answer.
A moment later, Jess appears beside us. ‘Just in time for the champagne, I see,’ she says, then looks between us. ‘What happened?’
There’s a strangled pause, as Mum goes to get a glass of bubbles for Jess. Before I can say anything, Hunter and Sebs rush over, no doubt to argue over who gets the blue cup. Two peas in a pod. Just like Cat and I were. She would have made this whole situation lighter somehow; a story to laugh about during the continuing celebrations later.
God, I miss her.
As my heart rate finally starts to slow again, we all settle down with a glass of something, at long last – Mum and I with our Pellegrino, the boys with lemonade and the others with their contraband bubbles. Awful moment with my ex forgotten, for everyone else at least.
‘Well,’ Dad says eventually, ‘I think it’s about time we toasted our darling Maggie. And what a perfect place we’ve picked for it. I can still remember when the three of you were just little things pelting around here,’ he says, looking at me with watery eyes. ‘Happy one-year heart anniversary, Maggie.’
Jess gives my hand a squeeze, and I take a breath in.
‘Happy heart anniversary,’ Graham chimes in from his lounging position on the blanket. He raises his glass.
‘Happy heart anniversary,’ they all say.
Jess smiles down at me, mouth trembling, as if to say,you made it.
Yet all I can think is:but Cat didn’t.
Because of me.
CHAPTER THREE
Later, once everyone else is happily fed, I move to a bench across the lawn to keep an eye on the boys playing. But I’ve been distracted, scrolling through my phone since I saw Nick, finally allowing myself to look at his page again – at all his travel pictures after we broke up, then ones of meeting Sophie: the two of them trekking in jungles and hanging out on beaches, their glorious wedding in what looks like Bali – and I wish in that moment that I hadn’t banned myself from looking at his account a few years back. If I’d just been a bit more prepared, then I wouldn’t have been caught out like that. But I did it out of self-preservation.
I had to.
Seeing Nick has also made me think about when I still used to go into the office. I wouldn’t now, of course – too much risk of infection, too much strain going in and out every day – but I work all the hours I can at home. And I like working as a tour organiser well enough; at least in one way I’ve already explored the grand hallways of the Rijksmuseum and wandered down the glittering canals of Amsterdam. I’ve jumped out of planes and swung across canyons in New Zealand; I’ve looked out across Mont Blanc and scaled the Dawn Wall. The people are nice too, albeit transient in the travel industry – everyone leaves except me. And the money’s decent, not that I go out much anyway, so there’s nothing to complain about. Not really.
But still, what might it be like to be one of my clients? To decide to go somewhere and then actually go; to surf a turquoise wave or jump into a crystal-clear lake; to climb a sun-soakedmountain or float up and away in a hot-air balloon. To do all these things in real life and not just on a screen.
Right now, I wonder what it might be like to be the one in Geneva with Nick.
I think about the letter again too; pat my pocket down for it before remembering I moved it to my bag for safekeeping earlier. It’s not like I didn’t know it was coming of course – the Donor Family Care Service team told me after all. It was all anonymous at this stage, and I had no obligation to read it, they said. The truth is, I’ve read it so many times this morning already, I could probably recite it off by heart.
Dear Recipient, it starts.
I’d considered writing first, of course; started a hundred letters and emails to them to say thank you. They’ve given the most amazing gift a person could possibly give, and gone through their own incredible hurt, just like ours.
It’s just—
I have no idea what to say, no idea what they could possibly want to hear from the person who took their loved one’s heart. I just feel so guilty about benefiting from someone else’s death, aboutwantingthem to die. Because that’s effectively what happened, isn’t it? When I dreamt about getting a new heart, I was dreaming about someone else’s life ending. But when I spoke to the doctors about it, they told me that I shouldn’t think of it like that; that the person whose heart I have was going to die anyway, and there was nothing I could do about it.
The best I can do, apparently, is make the most of the gift – keep her alive, like Stella’s mum has asked me to do.
And I am, I think, by staying healthy, by looking after this heart in the best way I can.
