by Dani Atkins
I eyed the phone with caution, then took a deep breath, tightened my grip around it and waited for the inexplicable feeling to hit me once more. But this time there was nothing. It was just a phone, two models up the scale from mine, but with nothing more intriguing about it than a passcode I couldn’t crack.
Later that evening I was curled up on the settee in a pair of very unsexy pyjamas – a description that applied to all my sleepwear in those days – with the latest bestselling thriller everyone was talking about in my hands. I was two chapters in when something happened that shook me far more than the author’s edge-of-the-seat storyline had.
Propped up on the settee cushion beside me were the two mobiles: mine and its mystery counterpart. I’d keyed in a quick message to my mum on mine, because she still had a tendency to panic if she didn’t hear from me every day, but before returning to my book I picked up the other phone. I pressed the home button, shaking my head at the screen when it told me once again to enter my passcode. I’d tried a few random sequences earlier, in the vague hope that its owner had thought 1-2-3-4 or 1-1-1-1 was a good choice. They hadn’t.
‘Where on earth did you come from?’ I asked the device in my hands. Admittedly, talking to inanimate objects was a little worrying, but nowhere near as disturbing as what happened moments later as my fingers drummed absently on the touchscreen, forming themselves into a pattern as if they had a mind of their own. With no idea how I’d done it, the phone came to life. My gasp of shock wasn’t because I’d somehow tapped in the correct passcode – although that was freaky enough. It was because, half hidden by the icons on the screen, I could see a face I recognised, cuddled up beside one I didn’t.
In all the letters Alex and I had exchanged, I’d never once asked to see a photograph of Lisa, and he’d never volunteered one. I’d always imagined that one day I’d see the face of the woman whose heart had saved my life. I just never expected this would happen because I’d accidentally hacked into her husband’s mobile.
*
It was the first frost of the season, and the view from my bedroom window wouldn’t have looked out of place on the front of a Christmas card. There was a charm to the thick rime coating the roofs, branches and leaves that didn’t quite extend to the car’s windscreen. After a fruitless search for a scraper I had to resort to a credit card, which did the job but left me with fingers the kind of blue I hadn’t seen since before my operation.
I left the engine running as I studied the route to Alex’s house. Google assured me it would take only thirty-eight minutes to get there. I hadn’t realised he lived that close, and as I sat in the gradually warming car, it occurred to me how unusual it must be that all of Lisa’s transplant recipients came from roughly the same region. I’d done my research when I’d been placed on the list, so I knew that organs could be transported from anywhere in the UK, or even abroad. And yet Lisa Stevens’s had gone to four people who lived in the same part of the country as she had. The more I thought about it, the more bizarre it seemed, until eventually I heeded the voice in my head, the one which was calmly advising me to accept it as a coincidence and move on. It was just ‘one of those things’. Although there did seem to have been quite a few of ‘those things’ recently.
As I pulled away from the kerb, I thought back to the call I’d made to Kyra late the night before.
‘You all right?’ she’d asked, sounding breathless with concern at seeing my name flash up on her phone screen.
I felt a pang of remorse that I’d not bothered to check how late it was. Before I had the chance to answer her, I heard a low male voice saying something in the background, and suddenly I realised there was probably a whole other reason why Kyra was out of breath. In the dim light of my living room I blushed at what I’d interrupted.
‘No worries,’ Kyra assured me, sounding more Aussie than ever. Given that her Friday night was clearly far more interesting than mine, she was surprisingly intrigued by what I’d called to say.
‘You hacked into his phone?’
‘Only accidentally,’ I emphasised.
‘How on earth did you do it?’
‘I’ve absolutely no idea.’
‘Crikey, do you know what the odds are against you just randomly guessing the right code?’
‘Ten thousand to one. I checked online.’
Kyra gave a low whistle, like a plumber preparing to give someone a hefty estimate, before asking a question I hadn’t yet considered.
‘Why do you think Alex put his phone in your bag?’
I shivered in the warmth of my cosy lounge. ‘I… I don’t know that he did. Not deliberately.’
I heard a rustling of sheets and imagined Kyra had now swung out of bed and was pacing the room. It was what she did when teaching or trying to get a point across. At least it would give her companion something interesting to look at while he waited.
‘Where did you keep your bag when you were at the planetarium the other night?’
‘It was under my coat, in a pile with everyone else’s.’
‘Zipped up, I assume? You’re always pretty vigilant about that.’
‘I… I guess so.’
‘Then someone had to have put the phone in there. Perhaps someone who wanted to make sure you’d meet up with them again?’
‘You’re making this all sound vaguely sinister and premeditated.’
Kyra remained silent, letting my own observation find a place to land.
‘I just don’t see why he’d do something like that.’
‘Maybe Alex was worried that after last night you might not agree to meet with him again. Which, incidentally, I happen to think would be a very good decision. There’s something really wonky about this whole thing, if you ask me.’
‘I just don’t see why anyone would willingly pretend to lose their phone. It’s too much of an inconvenience being without it. And besides, he didn’t know I’d be able to unlock it and work out it was his. For all he knows, I could have already handed it in to my local police station.’
‘Hmm,’ agreed Kyra, before murmuring something placatory to whoever was currently sharing her bed.
‘Look, I’m really sorry to have bothered you tonight. Just go back to… whatever it was you were doing, and I’ll figure out what to do with the phone.’
‘Just don’t do anything stupid like dashing round to his house in the middle of the night. I don’t want the next time I see your face to be on a missing persons poster somewhere.’
I laughed, nervously.
‘How did you figure out the phone belonged to Alex? Did you read his messages or something?’
‘Of course not,’ I said, in a tone that was a great deal more shocked-Sunday-school-teacher than I’d intended. Probably because I didn’t want Kyra to know how tempted I’d been to do exactly that. ‘I didn’t need to anyway. There was a picture of Connor and his mum on the home screen. He looks just like her,’ I added softly as my eyes dropped to the phone in my hands.
19
Molly
I would have called to let Alex know I was coming, but his landline was ex-directory, so all I could do was hope my unannounced arrival wouldn’t feel like an intrusion – or, worse, an ambush.
The Saturday morning traffic was heavier than I’d been expecting and I was glad because it forced me to concentrate on my driving rather than on the moment when I would knock on Alex’s front door. I’d always thought the first meeting between a recipient and their donor family would be really emotional, but strangely the birthday party in the planetarium hadn’t felt that way. Perhaps because there’d been so many other people present. But as the map counted down each mile to my destination, I realised that today might feel more like a first meeting. Was Alex ready for this so soon after the party? Was I?
The home Alex and Lisa had shared was on the edge of a quiet estate, not quite a gated community but still pretty exclusive. Each house was slightly different from its neighbour, but the one thing they all had in common was an
abundance of windows, most of which were currently catching and reflecting the low October sun like a row of miniature flares. I slowed my car to walking speed, but it was still impossible to make out the house numbers through the glare, so I pulled into a parking bay to allow the butterflies in my stomach to rest their wings.
Alex’s phone was on the passenger seat beside me and I slipped it into the pocket of my quilted jacket before climbing out of the car. The early morning ice had long since melted, so I wasn’t able to blame my wobbly legs on a slippery pavement. Number 7 Woodview Gardens, the address I’d written on numerous envelopes over the past few months, was tucked away at the far end of the road. Beyond its back garden a copse of tall poplar trees cast long, eerie shadows on the gravel driveway as I crunched slowly along it towards the front door.
The traffic sounds from the nearby main road and the twitter of the birds in the trees began fading out as though a dial was being turned. The sound of my heartbeat filled the void. Had I ever heard it this loud before? I truly didn’t think so. The drum crescendo got steadily louder the closer I got to the door, as if my heart recognised this place. It knew it was home.
I shook my head to dislodge the ridiculous idea, pressed the shiny brass doorbell and unconsciously began counting the seconds. I’d got to seven before the front door was flung open. A loud, high-pitched beeping filled the air.
‘Molly!’ Alex cried, a look of consternation on his face. I couldn’t tell whether it signalled annoyance, surprise or even relief.
‘Hi, I—’
‘Sorry, I think the kitchen’s on fire. Come in.’
Strangely, I didn’t even hesitate. Alex had already spun around and was running down the hallway towards a closed door which was shimmering as though through a heat haze.
‘Daddy?’ came a tremulous voice from the top of the staircase. I glanced up and saw a very worried-looking Connor about to make his way down.
‘Stay up there,’ Alex commanded fiercely, reaching for the kitchen-door handle. He barrelled into the room before I had a chance to call out a warning. I’d seen enough disaster movies to know he definitely shouldn’t have done that. In the film version, flames would have belched through the open doorway, engulfing him, but in reality it was just a thick fog that smelt of burning and also curiously of ginger.
‘Shit!’ Alex exclaimed, flinging open the oven door and releasing yet more smoke. I coughed and he whirled around, looking momentarily surprised to see me standing there. ‘You should get out of here. This smoke probably isn’t good for you.’
I doubted the cremated remains of whatever he’d been attempting to cook represented any risk to my health, but given whose heart it was, I simply nodded and backed away. The last thing I saw before closing the kitchen door was Alex thrusting open a set of French doors and lobbing a charcoal-encrusted baking tray into the garden.
Connor was a small white-faced statue sitting on the top step. His eyes looked enormous and his lower lip was trembling. I began slowly climbing up to reach him, approaching him as cautiously as if he were the rabbit with a broken leg I’d found in my garden last summer.
‘Hi Connor. It’s Molly. Do you remember me?’
I was halfway up the staircase, but Connor hadn’t even glanced my way. His attention was fixed on the closed kitchen door. He was visibly shaking and it was all I could do not to run up the last few treads and enfold him tightly in my arms.
‘Is my daddy all right? Is he hurt?’
Sod it. There was no way to stop my feet from running towards him. I closed the distance between us in four strides.
‘He’s fine, sweetie. He’s just opening all the windows and the doors to let the smell out of the kitchen.’
Connor turned his head very slowly towards me, as though on rusty hinges, a blank look on his face. Then a tiny spark of recognition flared in his deep blue eyes.
‘I know you.’
Hearts don’t really leap into throats, and I knew for a fact that mine was firmly stitched into place, but it certainly felt as though it had broken free at Connor’s words.
‘You’re the teacher lady from the party.’
My crashing disappointment at this response made absolutely no sense. I mustered up a smile. ‘That’s right. I’m Molly. I met you and your cousin Maisie the other night.’
Connor couldn’t quite manage his own smile yet, but at least the trembling had stopped. His eyes went back to the closed door. There was no sound from within the kitchen, and even though I knew there hadn’t been an actual fire or any real danger, a tiny frisson of apprehension tiptoed down my spine.
I was hunkered down on the step below Connor and, working purely on instinct, I held out my hand to him. Aeons passed; trees blossomed and then lost their leaves; fruit withered on branches in the time it took Connor to decide to place his hand in mine. Or so it seemed.
I held the hands of children his age every day, but this felt very different.
‘Shall we go and see what your daddy is up to?’
He nodded mutely up at me and allowed me to pull him to his feet.
I knocked lightly on the kitchen door, keeping Connor slightly behind me in case I’d seriously underestimated the situation. ‘Hi, Alex. Can we come in?’
Alex opened the door, letting out a waft of reassuringly fresh air. Connor was a blur. Greyhound fast, he raced past me and hurled himself at his dad. His spindly arms were wound so tightly around Alex’s waist that his clasped hands had turned white.
‘I think Connor was a little concerned you were okay in here?’ I kept my voice deliberately light, careful not to embarrass the boy, but my eyes filled in the blanks.
Alex looked momentarily lost, unsure how to react, then bent down and kissed the top of his son’s head. ‘I’m fine. Everything’s fine.’
Connor shook his head fiercely, his face still buried in his dad’s pale blue shirt.
‘Everything except our gingerbread men, that is,’ Alex joked.
Connor gave a sound that fell halfway between a laugh and a sob.
‘Oh, is that what you were making?’ I asked.
Alex directed his gaze towards the lawn and a still smouldering baking tray. ‘That was batch number three. I think maybe the universe is trying to tell us that we shouldn’t go for lucky number four.’
‘Not if you don’t want to raze your home to the ground,’ I said teasingly, breathing a silent sigh of relief as I saw Connor relax enough to release his bear-hug hold on Alex.
‘I actually didn’t incinerate the first two attempts, but they were still inedible,’ Alex said. ‘Somehow I don’t think Bake Off are going to be knocking at my door anytime soon.’ He turned to Connor. ‘Your mum would be horrified if she saw what I’ve done to her baking tray.’
The light which had only just returned to Connor’s eyes was gone in an instant, as if a switch had been flicked. I saw it. And his father did too. Alex shook his head and bit his lip: one step forwards and two steps back.
‘Can I go back upstairs and play?’ Connor asked, shutting down and shutting us out so effectively, I already knew this was something that happened more often than it should.
‘Sure you can, champ,’ Alex said, resorting to the kind of jollity I could have told him little kids always saw right through.
Left alone in the cold kitchen that still smelt of burnt biscuits, Alex turned to me with a look so helpless, it made my heart lurch just as it had with Connor on the stairs.
‘I can’t seem to get it right,’ he said.
‘It must be so hard.’
‘It is.’ Two words, but there was a whole world of pain in them.
There was a brief silence, and then Alex glanced at me and said, ‘Not that I’m trying to be rude or anything, but what exactly are you doing here today, Molly?’
I blushed like a nervous teenager. ‘Oh, sorry. I should have said. I found this.’ I reached into my pocket for his phone.
His look of astonishment was almost comical. ‘Oh my God. Wh
ere on earth did you find it?’
Kyra had been wrong about him. She had to have been. Surely no one was that good an actor? He seemed genuinely amazed.
‘In my handbag, actually.’
‘Huh? How did that happen? Did you mistake it for yours?’
There was a sound in the hallway, a kind of shuffling noise.
‘No. I have a different model. But the weird thing is that my bag was tucked away all night, so it’s hard to work out how your phone ended up in there. Unless…’ My voice trailed off; there was no way I could say ‘unless you put it in there’ without creating the world’s most awkward situation.
But in the end I didn’t have to.
‘Unless someone put it there,’ Alex interjected, his eyes travelling beyond me to the hallway, where the shuffling footsteps suddenly picked up speed, changed direction and pounded up the stairs.
‘Connor?’ I said, surprised. ‘What makes you think it was him?’
Alex’s smile transformed his face from pleasant to really good-looking. ‘You mean other than the guilty exit we just witnessed?’
A grin twitched at my lips.
‘I think, Dr Watson, we might have found the culprit.’
Without missing a beat in our conversation, Alex’s fingers had gone straight to the camera icon on his phone’s home screen to check that whatever it was he was hoping to find was still there. How many times a day did he still do that, I wondered – search for her face because he couldn’t go a minute longer without seeing it again?
‘I’m really grateful to you for bringing this back,’ he said, slipping the phone into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘I was actually on hold with my insurance company just now, trying to arrange for a replacement. That was how come I lost track of time – which would have been a really poor excuse if I’d burnt the house down.’