by Dani Atkins
‘Why them, Todd? Why these four people?’
His brother looked completely mystified. ‘What do you mean?’
‘There are thousands of people waiting for transplants. Why were these four people chosen?’
Todd gave an uncomfortable shrug. ‘It was their turn? They’d got to the top of their waiting list?’
Alex shook his head. He was sounding more and more like a crazy conspiracy theorist, but it was impossible to rewind now he’d started. ‘But that’s just it. They hadn’t. Molly had only just gone on the list. And neither she, nor Jamie nor even Barbara were critical at that point. They leapfrogged over God knows how many other people. And why were there no other matches? Why just four people? You were there that day when I signed the forms.’ Todd reached out and squeezed his brother’s hand. ‘We both heard Gillian say that as many as twenty people could be saved by Lisa’s donation. But in the end it was just these four. And every single one of them got in touch with me. They all felt compelled to make contact. Do you know how rare that is?’
Todd shook his head and Alex waited for his brother to subtly suggest that perhaps he ought to ‘see someone’ to discuss these feelings. But Todd stayed quiet, letting his silence do the talking.
‘There has to be a reason behind all of this,’ Alex continued. ‘A reason why Lisa was taken when everyone else in her carriage survived. A reason why these people have been given a second chance. There’s an answer here, and just because I haven’t figured it out yet doesn’t make it any less true.’
*
Alex knew it was the right house without even checking the number on the gate. It perfectly matched the image he had in his head. Perhaps she’d described it to him in one of her letters, he mused, or perhaps it was simply because it looked so very her. He switched off the car’s engine, and yet even when it had cooled into silence he remained in the driver’s seat, staring at the house. Much as he hated to admit it, Todd’s misgivings had sown tiny seeds of doubt, and as fast as Alex plucked them out, they kept shooting up again.
He sighed and reached for the bouquet of flowers on the passenger seat. To linger any longer would probably cause curtains to twitch at one of the many windows sporting a Neighbourhood Watch sticker, so he drowned out Todd’s annoyingly persistent voice with a tuneless whistle and climbed out of the car.
There was no bell to be seen, so he knocked lightly on the frosted glass panel on the door and composed his features into a smile as he waited. One minute stretched into two. If it gets to three, I’ll turn around and leave, he promised himself. I’ll take it as a sign that I shouldn’t have come here today. He smiled wryly. He was doing a lot of looking for signs these days, for hidden messages from the universe or from—
The shadow behind the glass twisted and morphed into the shape of an approaching figure, and Alex fought the desire to run away, like a kid playing Knock, Knock, Ginger – a game his ten-year-old self had found hilariously addictive. There was the rattle of a latch and the door swung open, and suddenly all thoughts of running were gone as the surprised expression on her face dissolved into one of delight.
‘Alex.’ She turned his name into a greeting, and he smiled back. He briefly considered leaning in to kiss her cheek, but instinctively knew that was a step too far.
‘Come in,’ she urged, inviting him in with a wave of her arm.
‘I’m sorry for just turning up unannounced like this,’ he said, following her into the small but cosy lounge. ‘Is it a good time for you?’
‘Of course. Any time is a good time for me, and it’s a lovely surprise to see you again so soon. My goodness, are those for me?’ Alex glowed with pleasure at the genuine delight on her face as the bouquet passed from his hand to hers. ‘I don’t think anyone has given me flowers since my sixtieth birthday.’
That was one of the saddest things Alex had heard in a while, and he made a mental note to be sure to bring her flowers whenever they met again in the future. If they met again, the annoying voice in his head chipped in.
‘Please sit down,’ Barbara said, gesturing to the settee behind him, which had already been claimed by several small furry bodies.
Alex felt a twitch in his nose and wondered if he might be allergic to cats; there really did seem to be quite a few of them in there.
‘Can I make you some tea?’ Barbara asked, sounding a little flustered as she added, ‘If I’d known you were coming, I’d have baked us a little cake.’
Alex shook his head with a gentle smile. ‘Tea would be lovely, thank you, Barbara. Can I help you?’
‘No, no. You just sit and relax and make friends with my family.’
Alex made a small mental correction, because that was the saddest thing he’d heard in a while. He cast his mind back through the letters they’d exchanged and realised she’d never once mentioned a family – not a human one, at least.
Very gingerly he sat down on the edge of the faded chintz settee, careful not to disturb the very large black cat curled up on the cushion behind him.
‘Just push old Lucifer out the way,’ Barbara advised, already heading towards the door. ‘He’ll probably come back and sit on your lap in a minute.’
Alex smiled weakly. Frankly, anything with claws that long and the devil as a namesake could keep the cushion he was on; after all, he’d got there first.
As crockery clinked in the kitchen, Alex got to his feet and examined the framed photographs on the mantle above the small Victorian fireplace. Most showed a much younger Barbara alongside a barrel-chested man with a bushy moustache, presumably her late husband Archie. Their wedding photo, taken on the registry office steps, featured Barbara in an extremely short white dress and floppy-brimmed hat; Alex tried but failed to see the snowy-haired, wrinkly-skinned pensioner in the leggy, fresh-faced girl in the photo.
‘The seventeenth of May 1965. The happiest day of my life,’ Barbara said as she came in carrying a plate of custard creams that Alex knew he would eat, even though he wasn’t in the least bit hungry.
She crossed to where he stood at the hearth, miraculously staying upright as one of her cats wove between her feet like a determined assassin. ‘I always thought we’d go together, somehow,’ she said sadly. ‘I wasn’t ready to spend my old age alone.’ There were tears in her watercolour-blue eyes and she brushed them away with an angry swipe of her hand. ‘Goodness, this isn’t like me at all,’ she said, absently bending down and scratching the head of a white cat at her feet. ‘And of course, I’m not alone, not really.’
Her words resonated with Alex in a way that suddenly made his eyes feel hot and scratchy. He really must be allergic to cats, after all.
‘How many of them do you have – cats, I mean?’
‘Just the six at the moment,’ Barbara said, her eyes going to a large crate in the corner of the room which Alex hadn’t even spotted until then. Inside it was a very fat ginger-coloured cat.
‘Has that one been exceptionally naughty? Is that why it’s locked up?’ he joked.
‘No. That one is my Meg. She’s a queen. She’s due to give birth any time now.’
On that disturbing piece of information, Barbara once again left the room to continue preparing their tea. Alex’s eyes went to the cat in the cage, and a prickle of sweat formed on his upper lip. The room was ridiculously hot, but perhaps that was because it was about to become a delivery suite. The ginger cat was pacing restlessly, her claws clicking like a metronome on the newspaper lining the crate as she completed circuit after circuit of the place where her kittens would be born.
Alex sat down as far from the cage as he could. He’d never been much of a pet person, but Lisa had spent quite a while quietly campaigning for them to get a dog. ‘I think it would be really good for Connor,’ she’d said, and Alex had begun to waver. But then… Well, things had changed, and a puppy was now the last thing on his mind.
‘I hope English Breakfast is okay? I never could get on with those fancy foreign ones.’
Alex
had been so lost in thought, he hadn’t even heard Barbara come in, and it took a moment or two for him to return to the present. He leapt to his feet, taking the heavy tray from her hands, which were trembling under the weight of it.
‘It’s the only type we buy,’ he replied, aware the pronoun landmine had tripped him up once again. He wondered if Barbara had noticed.
There was a family-sized teapot beneath a knitted cosy, and a matching milk jug and sugar bowl, complete with dainty miniature silver tongs. He was touched that she’d gone to so much effort and wondered how frequently this tea service came out of the cupboard. Not that often, he guessed.
‘So, Alex,’ Barbara said as she passed him a bone-china cup so delicate it was practically transparent, ‘what exactly is it you’ve come here to ask me today?’
*
Forty-five minutes later, a slightly discomfited Alex put his car in gear and pulled away from Barbara’s neat Victorian house. He’d achieved his objective – she’d agreed to join them at Todd’s Bonfire Night party – so why was there a lingering bitter taste on his tongue that even an entire plate of custard creams hadn’t managed to erase?
Because you exerted your not inconsiderable charms to persuade a sweet old lady to spend a second night with a group of people she doesn’t know, Lisa’s voice chided softly. It was strange how his conscience had started to sound more and more like his late wife over the last six months.
She’s lonely, he countered, in the confessional booth of his car. It’ll be good for her to spend time with real people instead of a bunch of cats.
She loves those cats, his late wife reminded him gently. That’s why she was reluctant to accept. She’s worried they’ll be frightened by the fireworks. Lisa’s argument was so persuasive, he had to force himself not to turn to the passenger seat, where, had the dice been rolled differently, his wife would be sitting, gently taking him to task.
Not that Barbara had needed Lisa to be her champion. She was perfectly capable of asking her own hard questions. ‘You say you want to get to know us better, Alex dear, but wasn’t that what we were all doing the other evening?’
Alex had fidgeted uncomfortably as though under interrogation. ‘I may have misjudged things by inviting everyone to Lisa’s birthday celebration at the planetarium,’ he admitted.
Barbara had demurred charmingly. ‘Not at all. It was important for us to see how much Lisa was loved and is missed by her family and friends.’
Alex had smiled sadly. This was why he liked Barbara. She wasn’t afraid of speaking Lisa’s name. Having lost her own partner, she understood that the only thing more painful than talking about them was never hearing them talked about at all.
‘I… I just want Connor to get to know the people his mum helped,’ he’d said awkwardly, trying to drown out Lisa’s hiss of disapproval in his head. Not fair, Alex, she chided. You can’t use our son as a bargaining tool here. But he did.
Barbara’s eyes might have been cloudy with incipient cataracts, but there was no mistaking the flash of sympathy in them. ‘He still doesn’t know who we are, does he?’
Alex shook his head. ‘He knows that there were some people Lisa helped to get better before she… went away.’ He’d always hated euphemisms; he’d always been a-spade-is-a-spade type of person, but that was before he’d discovered some things were just too painful to put into words. ‘Connor refuses to believe his mum died. He’s still positive that she’s coming back for him.’
That was what had persuaded Barbara. ‘Then of course I’ll be there, Alex. How could I not come?’
21
Molly
The fog was dense, bouncing the car headlights back at me as I circled the station car park looking for a space. The one I found was far enough away from the main entrance to justify pulling on a bobble hat and winding a chunky scarf around my neck before leaving the car.
I glanced at my watch and forced myself to walk faster across the tarmac, praying I wouldn’t twist an ankle in one of the potholes hidden by the swirling carpet of fog. I felt like a performer walking across a stage pumped with dry ice. And oddly that illusion continued when I entered the brightly lit station, where the tuneful sound of piano music rose above the hum of the crowd.
There were far more people on the concourse than I’d expected this late on a Saturday afternoon. I zigzagged past passengers talking hurriedly into their mobile phones, catching snatches of disgruntled conversations. When I eventually found a pocket of space to stand in and read the electronic board, the chaos began to make sense: All trains delayed due to fog.
The piano was still playing somewhere nearby, an upbeat tune I vaguely recognised, but it wasn’t enough to lighten my spirits. Mum had been away for weeks on what had felt like the world’s longest holiday, and I’d been really excited about seeing her today. I’d even wanted to drive down to the port where her ship had been due to dock, a proposal she’d immediately rejected. ‘You shouldn’t be driving halfway around the country,’ she’d said. ‘Not with your…’ And then she’d laughed, almost embarrassed. Old habits died hard, and I could hardly blame her for forgetting that I was no longer incapable of driving for hours, or lifting heavy suitcases, or doing anything else a healthy woman in her early thirties might normally be expected to manage.
The crowd was starting to surge towards the food outlets and cafes at the perimeter of the station, and I bobbed along with everyone else. It was a shame I hadn’t brought a book to read, but at least the piano music was a pleasant distraction. The two pianos had been donated to the station concourse six months ago. They were there for anyone to play, and I’d heard ‘Chopsticks’ crucified on them on many occasions, as well as a few concert-level classical performances. Today’s pianist was way better than most, although obviously not a professional. It was their choice of easy-listening jazz that put a bounce in my step, a style of music that always reminded me of my dad.
I was humming – probably a little tunelessly – under my breath as the unseen pianist segued into their next song. My feet recognised the tune first, and faltered, then my heart skipped a beat as though trying to sync with the rhythm of the music. My ears were slow in identifying the song, when they should probably have been expecting it.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard ‘Fly Me to the Moon’, but here it was now, being played by some random person who’d jumped on the piano to while away the minutes. Ever since Connor had presented me with his drawing, I seemed to have been having encounters with the moon at every turn. It had been on the front of my mum’s last postcard and on the fabric of a scarf I’d found in the street, and it had even featured as a topic at the top of a podcast chart when I’d been searching for something to listen to at the gym. But more than that, the moon had begun to infiltrate my dreams, vividly enough to jerk me from sleep. I’d woken on several occasions in the last week confused and disorientated, with thoughts of Alex’s son bizarrely in my head. Could an obsession be contagious, I wondered, because it certainly felt like I was being stalked by something I’d given scarcely more than a passing thought to before.
The haunting melody filled the concourse. I committed the cardinal sin of coming to an abrupt stop in the fast-flowing crowd, causing people behind me to collide like falling dominoes. They swerved around me, cursing in irritation as I slowly pivoted in the direction of the music. This is just a coincidence, I told myself as my feet led me like a sleepwalker towards the unseen piano, though the odds of someone playing this particular song did seem extraordinarily high. Those odds became truly incalculable when a gap in the crowd gave me my first glimpse of the piano, or rather the person who was seated at the keyboard.
He hit two wrong notes when he saw me, before swiftly recovering. I came to a stop a few feet away from him, transfixed by his fingers as they flew skilfully over the keys. He was playing without sheet music or any trace of inhibition as far as I could tell. He seemed relaxed, as though this was his comfort zone; I, on the other hand, was completely
thrown by the sight of him in this unexpected setting.
He said nothing until the final chords had dissipated, then turned to me with an easy smile as he reached for the dark glasses he’d left folded on the piano’s lid.
‘Hello, Molly.’
My mouth felt weirdly dry, making my voice sound scratchy as I replied. ‘Hi, Mac.’
He slid smoothly off the piano stool, with a smile and a nod to the person who’d been patiently waiting to take their turn at the keyboard, and crossed to stand before me. I instantly regretted having opted for flat boots instead of heels. Mac made me feel small, like a child, a sensation I’d never experienced before with any of my taller friends.
‘You play the piano,’ I said idiotically, as though informing him of something he might somehow have failed to notice.
‘I do,’ Mac confirmed. There was a grin hovering on his lips which he seemed to be having trouble containing.
‘Why that particular song, if you don’t mind me asking? Why “Fly Me to the Moon”?’
The grin disappeared and Mac’s dark brows drew closer together. I could hardly blame him; even I could hear it was a strange question to have asked.
‘No reason, really. I was just playing whatever popped into my head. I probably heard it on the radio or somewhere recently.’
‘Well, you play really well,’ I said, trying to ignore the frisson as he placed a guiding hand on my back to steer me through the crowd. Mac was surprisingly tactile. Was that a lingering trait from when he’d lost his sight or had he always been that way? I couldn’t imagine a time when I’d know him well enough to ask that question.
‘My mother would definitely thank you for the compliment. She was my piano teacher and I was without doubt her most reluctant and inept student.’ He grinned and gave a what-are-you-going-to-do shrug that instantly shaved a decade off him.
‘Are you here to catch a train?’ I really did seem to have cornered the market in stupid comments. Mac had a knack of making me feel nervous and awkward, turning me into a bumbling fool.