The Last Piece of My Heart

by Paige Toon

  ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible,’ he says, downing the second half of his drink. ‘I don’t have it any more.’

  ‘What did you do with it?’ I demand to know, going along with him. He’s obviously thought about this.

  ‘I threw it away.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Dillon! How could you?’ I pretend to be angry with him.

  ‘You left me, I was hurt, I thought, Fuck you! So I threw it away,’ he says facetiously, a trace of a smile on his lips.

  ‘Where did you put it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shrugs. ‘Some lake somewhere. It sank straight to the bottom. Hard and heavy as a stone, it was.’

  I’m trying very hard to keep a straight face.

  ‘A heavy heartless heart,’ he adds and I can’t help it, I crack up laughing.

  He does too.

  ‘Oh, Dillon,’ I say, tears of laughter spilling from my eyes. ‘I’ve missed you.’

  He shakes his head, gathering himself together. ‘I’ve missed you, too,’ he replies, sobering. ‘Will you stay to watch the gig?’

  ‘I’d love to. Can I come and say hi to the lads?’

  ‘Come on, then.’

  Later I find him to say goodbye. He’s had a load more drinks by that point, and I stiffen as he takes me in his arms and speaks in a low, gruff voice into my ear.

  ‘If you come to my room with me, I’ll tell you which lake I put it in.’

  I keep my tone light as I withdraw to look at him. ‘I have a boyfriend who I love dearly. You know how I feel about cheating. And, anyway, I think we’ve been there, done that, don’t you?’

  ‘Worth a try,’ he says with a wry grin, letting me go.

  ‘Bye, Dillon.’ I give him a peck on his cheek and turn away, but he grabs my arm and pulls me back.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to know which lake it was?’

  ‘Was it on the N71 just past Muckross?’ I ask hopefully, giving him a winning smile. I try to ignore the intensity in his dark eyes as he stares at me for a long, torturous moment.

  ‘If you’re going to tell me, be kind and do it without strings,’ I plead, my tone growing serious.

  ‘Fine,’ he snaps. ‘Yeah. That’s the lake.’

  I throw my arms around him and give him a quick, hard hug, our hearts beating together for the very last time.

  ‘Take care of yourself.’

  ‘You too.’

  He looks torn as I turn and walk out of the bar.

  I’m not sure that he ever threw his part of me away. I’m not even entirely sure that I wanted him to. But we can carry on pretending.

  The next morning, I drive the fast route back to Cork. When I write up this chapter for my blog, I’ll say I did the journey in reverse, stopping along the way and walking down to the glassy water’s edge. I can imagine I found his piece of my heart there in among the stones.

  As I say, we can carry on pretending.

  Chapter 20

  Before I put my key in the lock on Monday morning, the door swings open and Charlie is standing there, smiling.

  A warmth bubbles up inside me at the sight of his friendly face.

  ‘Hello!’ we both say.

  He holds the door back so I can wheel Nicki’s bike into the hall.

  ‘How was your weekend?’

  ‘How did it go?’

  We speak at the same time.

  ‘You first,’ he commands.

  ‘No, you,’ I reply, unclicking my helmet.

  He shrugs. ‘It was fine. Nothing eventful. Adam and I spent Saturday nursing our hangovers. Took April to the beach yesterday.’

  I follow him into the kitchen. April beams and babbles at the sight of me, so I go over and pick her up. She presses her cheek against the nape of my neck, clutching onto my shoulders with her little fingers. The radio is on, playing ‘Manic Monday’ by The Bangles, and the atmosphere is so bright and cheerful that the bubbly warmth inside me expands further.

  ‘Ooh, you’re so lovely and cuddly,’ I say to April, squeezing her to me.

  Charlie hops up onto the kitchen counter and sits there, his tanned legs dangling over the side.

  He’s in a good mood this morning, as am I. After the upheaval of the weekend, I’m happy to be back into my routine.

  ‘This hug is longer than seven seconds.’ I glance at Charlie with a smirk.

  He shakes his head, amused. ‘That was a good night.’

  ‘Hilarious. I’ve been giggling about you doing DJ Kool all weekend.’

  ‘I seriously don’t know how you got me to do that.’

  ‘A deal’s a deal.’

  He creases his brow at me.

  ‘Don’t you remember?’ I ask. ‘You said you’d do it if I took on Eminem.’

  His face lights up with the memory and he throws his head back and laughs. God, that sound. . .

  ‘That was one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever seen,’ he says. ‘How did you know all the words?’

  ‘Oh, “Lose Yourself” is an old favourite,’ I reply offhandedly.

  After a moment, he jerks his chin up at me. ‘So how did it go?’

  It’s almost ten o’clock by the time I’ve filled him in on Ireland and made it upstairs to Nicki’s office. Soon I’m engrossed in the diary she wrote when she was twenty-four.

  Nicki grew up in Essex, but moved to Cornwall in her second year of secondary school because her dad got a job at a top restaurant. When her parents divorced, Nicki’s mum wanted to return to Essex, but she agreed to let Nicki finish secondary school first. So, when Nicki set off to university, her mum’s new home in Essex became the place she’d return to outside of term time.

  But she missed Cornwall, and, even though she also toyed with the idea of emigrating to Thailand, after university, Cornwall won out.

  Nicki’s diaries became less confessional around this point and more general musings. It was clear she still loved to write, but she didn’t seem to feel the need to catalogue every single feeling. It’s a shame, because I’d love to know what was going through her mind when she reconnected with Charlie. She seemed excited to see him again: ‘JUST BUMPED INTO CHARLIE!’ is written in capital letters and is followed by several other references to their catching up. I don’t get the impression he held a grudge over what had happened when they were teenagers, and clearly their friendship soon developed once again into something more.

  In the next two years Nicki returned to Thailand four times – during the summer and also at Christmas – and she also started to make notes about ideas she had for her novel. There’s no mention of Isak, so I don’t know if Nicki ever saw him again.

  It’s not always easy to follow her jumping thoughts, but I freeze when I turn a page and the words: ‘FEMALE BIGAMIST’ jump out.

  Bigamy. . .

  Dictionary definition: ‘Crime of being simultaneously twice married’.

  Whoa. Does this mean Nicki did intend for Kit to marry both Morris and Timo? Was her initial idea to write a book about a female bigamist?

  I glance up at the books about Thailand. There are dozens of yellow Post-it notes sticking out of the tops of them. I get to my feet and pull one of the more heavily noted books down, glancing back up at the shelf to see that there’s another row of books behind the first.

  Something calls on me to investigate.

  I drag my chair over and climb onto it. An object is poking out from behind the last row of books – out of view from the floor. I reach up and pull it free.

  It’s a wooden heart, made of small fragments of driftwood, twisted and kept in place with thin gold wire. A whole section is missing and some of the bits have come loose and need reworking back into the heart shape. It looks like the seahorse, but this creation is half the size – less than a foot in diameter.

  I wonder if this is the heart Charlie had planned to finish for April.

  I blow on it and a puff of dust fills the air, then I gingerly climb down from my chair, the books on the bookshelf momen
tarily forgotten.

  I feel sick. So sick and sad. I sit there and stare at the heart with its missing piece and suddenly want to cry.

  How did Charlie live through losing her? How did he pick himself up and raise a tiny baby when his heart must’ve been so broken he surely found it hard even to breathe?

  The thought of him creating something this beautiful and then hiding it away so he wouldn’t have to look at it. . . Does he even remember that he put it there? Didn’t he say that he wanted to find it?

  My eyes are drawn to the window. Charlie is outside sawing a piece of wood in half, Nicki’s mustard-yellow bandana keeping his hair out of his eyes. My music is still on – I didn’t realise it was time for April’s nap. I go to turn it down, but then hesitate, looking out of the window again at Charlie. He’s totally engrossed in his work.

  I get up and quietly walk out of the office, pausing by April’s open door to check for any sound before venturing forward.

  She’s fast asleep, sprawled out on her back. It’s warm in her bedroom and she’s kicked off her covers, her sturdy baby legs sticking out of the short-sleeved, pink-and-white babygrow she’s wearing. Her rosebud mouth is slightly open and her blonde hair is all mussed up and curly. She twitches and I flinch, but her breathing is steady, her little ribcage rising and falling with perfect rhythm.

  I glance at her side table, at the white, driftwood picture frames that I now recognise as Charlie’s handiwork. There are photographs of April’s extended family – I spy Adam and Pat standing with whom I presume is Charlie’s dad, and I’m guessing the other people are Nicki’s mum, her sister and family, and her dad – but the other pictures are of Nicki. Nicki laughing and dressed up to the nines at some restaurant with the sun setting behind her, and Nicki with her face bare of make-up, smiling down at the newborn baby in her arms.

  Something inside me splinters.

  The light on April’s monitor is glowing green, so I’m careful to make no sound as I place the driftwood heart down beside the photo frames before returning to my office.

  Chapter 21

  If I didn’t know better, I’d say I had my period coming on. I’m trying to understand why I’m feeling so emotional as I walk into Padstow. April was still asleep when I left, but I wasn’t sure how Charlie would react when he found the heart in her room, so I thought it might be best for me to be out of the way.

  As I sit in a cafe, barely touching my sandwich, my uneasiness grows. Why did I do that? I don’t even know. It just seemed like the right thing to do. It was as though I was on autopilot or something.

  But how could I think he’d be okay with my sneaking into his daughter’s room and leaving behind something that belonged to his wife – something that had been put well out of the way for a reason?

  I hurry back to Charlie’s as quickly as I can, full of ready apologies. I listen outside the front door, not sure what I’m expecting to hear. When I hear nothing, I put my key in the lock and step over the threshold.

  The hallway leads to a corridor that spills straight onto the kitchen, so I can see right down to the very back of the house from where I’m standing. My gut freefalls at the sight of Charlie sitting at the kitchen table with his back to me. He looks like he has his head in his hands.

  I quietly close the door behind me and make my way into the kitchen. April is nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Charlie?’ I ask with building nausea.

  He jolts at the sound of my voice, but he doesn’t reply.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  That’s when I hear him sniff. Please don’t tell me I’ve made him cry!

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ I feel absolutely horrified as I approach him. He’s staring at the incomplete driftwood heart on the table in front of him, his tears falling in a steady stream, even as he continually brushes them away.

  Oh, God!

  ‘Where’s April?’ I ask softly, placing my hand on his back.

  He shudders. ‘Living room,’ he replies in a choked voice. ‘Can you check on her?’

  ‘Of course,’ I say quickly, leaving the room.

  Bridget, you are such a fucking arse! What the hell were you thinking? He was in the best mood earlier. I can’t believe I’ve shattered his happiness today.

  I’m furious with myself as I leave the kitchen, but as soon as I set eyes on April, my anger dissolves.

  ‘Hello, lovely girl,’ I murmur.

  She’s strapped into her Jumperoo – a brightly coloured contraption that allows her to bounce up and down and spin around while playing with the various toys, rattles and lights affixed to the surrounding tray.

  She grins up at me and bounces on her feet, then reaches for one of the squashy flowers dangling from the top frame and places it in her mouth, munching up and down. She stops and takes the flower out of her mouth to stare at it, then she looks up at me and lets out a cry of complaint.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ I ask. ‘I’ll get you some lunch. We’ll just give Daddy a minute.’

  I kneel on the floor next to her and press one of the musical buttons, singing along in a silly voice as the lights flash. It distracts her for a while, but then Charlie walks suddenly into the room, making us both jump. She holds up her arms to him, wanting to be lifted out.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he mumbles, complying.

  He takes her back into the kitchen while I stay on the floor, feeling utterly wretched.

  After a while I head back upstairs to the office, avoiding looking in the direction of the kitchen. I flick through one of Nicki’s Thailand books, trying to focus on the pages she’d Post-it-noted, but I can’t take anything in, so the exercise proves futile.

  I eventually decide I may as well write up my Dillon encounter, but I soon find my heart’s not in it. I’m very well aware of the irony of that sentence.

  When Charlie knocks on the door, my insides twang with nerves.

  ‘Come in,’ I call.

  I find it very hard to meet his eyes as he enters the room.

  ‘April’s down for her nap,’ he says heavily.

  ‘Is it that time already?’ I ask.

  He nods.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whisper, my eyes beginning to sting.

  ‘Stop,’ he says quietly, leaning against one of the filing cabinets and folding his arms protectively across his chest. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  ‘I said I wanted to finish it.’

  ‘Is it the same heart?’ I check.

  He nods and looks up at the shelves. ‘I’d forgotten she threw it up there.’

  ‘She put it up there?’ I ask with surprise.

  ‘Yeah.’ He smiles a small, ironic smile and shifts on his feet. ‘Threw it. We were in the middle of an argument.’

  Oh.

  ‘It was a week or so before she died,’ he reveals.

  This is probably another one of those moments when I should shut the hell up, but instead I ask, ‘What were you arguing about?’ and prepare for him to tell me to shut the hell up.

  He slides down the length of the filing cabinet until he’s sitting on the floor, his elbows resting on his bent knees in front of him.

  ‘It was just a stupid argument.’ He stares ahead in a daze. ‘We were both absolutely knackered. I had a big job I was trying to finish, April had colic and wouldn’t stop crying, Nicki wanted peace and quiet to do some writing and I told her she’d have to wait until April was asleep because I needed to crack on. She got so angry at me that she picked up the heart and hurled it at the wall. It landed up there.’ He nods at the bookshelves. ‘I told her it could stay the fuck up there for all I cared, because I was never going to finish it if she didn’t stop being such a bitch, then I walked out and slammed the door and had to listen to April screaming blue murder all afternoon.’ He shakes his head and a single tear rolls down his cheek. He brushes it away.

  ‘It does sound like a stupid argument,’ I say.

  ‘We used to have them all the tim
e,’ he replies. ‘We were like that. Loved her to hell and back, but, Christ, we fought like cats and dogs.’

  I don’t know why, but this surprises me.

  ‘How—’ I clear my throat. ‘How did she die?’ I ask cautiously. ‘I mean, was there any warning?’

  ‘Maybe, but I wasn’t here.’ He swallows, running his palm across the carpet and staring at his hand fixatedly. ‘I was delivering a playhouse. The doctor said she might’ve felt a headache – I later found out it would’ve been the most painful headache ever, like, unbearable pain. I found her in April’s room, collapsed beside her cot.’ He swallows again, tears welling up in his eyes. ‘April was fast asleep. Nicki was already gone.’ His tears spill over and he brushes them away again. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ I whisper, fighting back tears myself.

  I feel compelled to go and sit beside him on the carpet. I do it without thinking. He stays very still, very quiet, tears rolling relentlessly down his cheeks.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it.’ He sounds stunned. ‘I couldn’t believe what was happening. She was gone. Just like that. I don’t even remember calling the ambulance. I think I just went into shock. Thank God for Jocelyn. She came over when she saw the ambulance pull up and took April until I’d had a chance to call our parents. I don’t remember those conversations either.’ He looks utterly bewildered. ‘Sorry, I don’t know why I’m even talking about all of this to you,’ he says, shaking himself.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ I say. ‘I’m a pretty good listener.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s not what you’re here for.’

  He gets to his feet, but I stay where I am, dazed and wounded.

  But, of course, I’m not his friend. I’m his wife’s ghostwriter. I’m here to do a job. I’d probably do well to remember that.

  Chapter 22

  Two days later, Charlie starts rebuilding Nicki’s heart. He repairs the fragments that came apart with the force of the blow when she threw it against the wall, and paints the new pieces of driftwood pale pink before fixing them into the missing section with silver wire.