‘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.
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