Heartbeat Away (13 page)

‘This way,' says Sam, throwing me a look as I hesitate by the doorway.

‘Where are we going?'

‘Nowhere special,' he replies with a shrug, and he leads me down the left-hand turning. But as we walk along this quieter road I realise exactly why the little shop is so familiar. And when we round the bend, I finally see it. I throw a glance at Sam, who's looking straight ahead, seemingly unaware.

‘That house, there, the one with the green shutters,' I say, calmly pointing. ‘Someone's changed the gate and painted the front door.'

Sam looks at me warily. ‘How d'you know that?' he asks.

‘Because the gate was broken and the front door used to be dark green,' I reply. ‘It's Callum's house, isn't it?'

We walk further along the pavement towards the house. Apart from the gate and the front door, it's exactly how I've seen it in my mind's eye. I glance at Sam. His face is white as paper.

‘This
is
where Callum lived, isn't it?' I hear myself saying, my heart beating fast and hard with both joy and terror.

He nods slowly and I know for sure I'm having no panic attack. This is all real.

We peer into the front garden. The daffodils are almost finished, their yellow flower heads beginning to shrivel and brown, but under the big magnolia bush I can see the green shoots of bluebells.

‘I don't know what to say,' Sam whispers. ‘I'm sorry. I brought you here to test you.'

‘So, have I passed?'

He nods, glancing at me fearfully.

The front door to the house opens and a short, blond-haired woman of about forty appears, carrying a couple of
milk bottles. As she puts them down on the step, she looks up.

‘Callum's mum,' I whisper, and my heart skips a beat.

Sam nods then waves to her.

‘Sam?' she calls, walking up the path towards us.

‘Hi, Mrs Hunter. How are you?'

‘Getting there,' she says. ‘Slowly.' She tries to smile, but her eyes remain sad. ‘It's so nice to see you! Come on in for a moment . . . Charley's here.'

Sam darts a look at me.

‘It's OK. Bring your friend.' She turns to me, her voice trailing off. ‘This used to be Sam's second home.'

‘This is Becky,' says Sam to Callum's mum.

‘Hi,' I say lamely. There are dark circles under her eyes and she looks as though she hasn't had a good night's sleep for months. A lump rises in my throat. I feel the need to say more, do more . . . and, despite my fear of germs, even hug this complete stranger who actually isn't a stranger at all.

‘Hello,' she replies casually.

To her, I'm just a friend of her son's best friend. I desperately want to tell her the truth, but I know that I can't just blurt out that I'm carrying the beating heart of her dead son.

‘Let's go in,' she says. ‘I'll pop the kettle on.'

She ushers us into the house, through the narrow hallway, pausing at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Go on into the kitchen,' she tells us, then shouts upstairs, ‘Charley, Sam's here! Charley!'

As Sam and I walk into the kitchen with its scrubbed pine table and painted wooden chairs, Sam whispers to me
that he hasn't been here since Callum's funeral.

Mrs Hunter bustles in. ‘She'll be down in a mo,' she says, filling the kettle from the tap.

A minute later the kitchen door opens and a tall, blond girl of about eighteen appears. I instantly recognise her, but I'm still stunned to see how breathtakingly beautiful she is.

‘Hi, Sam,' she says, ‘how's it going?' She flashes him a smile and Sam grins broadly back. He looks like he's won the lottery.

I feel a sharp pang of jealousy. My cheeks are burning, and I glance over at Sam, hoping he hasn't noticed anything. I needn't worry. His eyes are fixed on Charley and he still has that stupid dumbstruck grin on his face.

As we all sit down, I notice that Sam, Charley and Callum's mum all avoid the blue chair. Callum's chair. I imagine him sitting there with his family in the evenings, chewing over the highs and lows of the day, chatting and laughing and bickering over a meal.

Mrs Hunter hands us mugs of tea and tentatively we begin to talk. We discuss the park, skateboarding, Sam's school and mine, Charley's A-level courses, what we all want to do when we leave school, the house . . . everything except Callum. But I know, as the four of us face each other across this table, he is the one dominating all our thoughts. It's as if he's actually here among us, lounging back invisibly on that blue chair, listening to every word we say. It would be rude to talk about him in his presence. When we finish our tea and the talk finally dries up, Mrs Hunter carries the mugs over to the sink.

‘Thanks, Mrs Hunter. We'd better be going now,' says Sam, getting up.

She doesn't say anything for a second or two. Then, without turning round, she says quietly, ‘Sam – there's some things of yours in Callum's room.' Her voice quivers slightly as she says Callum's name. ‘Charley – show them where they all are, will you?'

‘OK.'

I realise now it's too painful for her to go into her own son's bedroom. Even speaking his name is difficult. I think of the letter I tried to write to my donor's family, with its clumsy attempts to thank them and express my sadness ‘at their loss'. I had absolutely no understanding until this moment how incredibly huge and shattering that loss is.

The three of us head upstairs. I know instinctively that Callum's bedroom is the one at the end of the landing on the left, but I'm not prepared for what I see when I stand at the doorway and peek in.

The room is decorated in a similar shade of pale blue to mine. His bed is underneath the window, just where I've finally moved mine. His wardrobe, chest of drawers and a desk are positioned in exactly the same places that I've put mine.

‘Mum can't bear to change anything. It's just how it was the day Callum died,' says Charley, quietly. ‘I suppose it still hasn't really sunk in, to be honest. I think Mum half expects him to come back home any minute.'

With a small sigh, Charley opens Callum's wardrobe and takes out a black rucksack and a battered skateboard. ‘I think that's everything,' she says.

‘Thanks, Charley.'

‘Oh, I've got one of your CDs in my room . . .' She heads towards the door.

‘Don't worry. Keep it,' says Sam, picking up the bag and skateboard. ‘Is your dad around?'

Charley stops in her tracks and turns round. ‘I thought you knew,' she says, staring at him. ‘My parents split up last year.'

‘No. I didn't know.' Sam shakes his head in bewilderment. ‘I'm really sorry, Charley.'

‘Dad left a few weeks before Callum died.'

‘He never told me.'

‘Callum refused point blank to see Dad after he'd gone. That's when he went off the rails. Truanting. Getting into trouble. Some nights he didn't come home at all.'

‘Callum wouldn't tell me anything,' Sam says, ‘but I knew something was wrong.'

‘One morning, he came in with cuts on his face. God knows what he was getting mixed up in.' Charley frowned. ‘It was like he'd pushed some kind of gigantic self-destruct button.'

Sam and I walk back up Callum's street in silence, both of us deep in thought. As we pass the shop, Sam speaks for the first time.

‘Why couldn't he have just told me? Instead of fighting, I could have done something to help.'

‘You're not to blame.'

He shakes his head and sighs. ‘You don't know that. What if I could have stopped him? Kept him out of trouble.' He looks at me, suddenly realising the full implications of what he's just said. ‘Oh . . . I didn't —'

‘It's OK.' I blink away the tears prickling at the back of my eyes.

As we enter the park and walk across the grass to the other side, I slowly gather up the courage to ask the question that's been on my mind for months. ‘What happened, Sam?' I ask. ‘How did Callum die?'

‘I don't know exactly. But about a week after our fight, I got a call from him out of the blue. It was late. Half-eleven
– twelve, maybe. He wasn't at home.' He shrugs. ‘I don't know where he was – he wouldn't say. He was agitated though – excited – asked me to lie to his mum, to say that he was at my house if she asked. Didn't want her to worry. I pleaded with him to tell me what was going on. He said he couldn't talk any more, had to go. Then he cut me off. I tried to ring him back, but he'd turned off his phone. The following day I found out that less than an hour later, he'd been hit by a car. The driver was in shock. Said Callum had run out like crazy from nowhere and there was no way he could have avoided him. He died instantly.'

When we reach my house, I feel relieved that Sam says he has to get home straight away. I love being with him, but his presence is a constant reminder of Callum. I desperately need time and space to think. Get my head sorted.

I think about how Sam described the changes in Callum during the month before his death, and I remember the uncontrollable surge of anger I felt when I pushed Shannon and broke her wrist.

I can't escape it: having Callum's heart beating away inside me is changing me. His memories are affecting me. My family have noticed I'm different since my transplant. Everyone at school is aware of it. I have to face the truth about myself. For better or worse, I'm no longer the person I used to be.

But what exactly was going on in Callum's life? From what Sam and Charley said, it sounded as if he was mixed up in something really bad. Whatever it was, he must have been in way over his head.

Then I think about the night he died: he ran straight out in front of a car. Had someone been chasing him? Charley said he'd been truanting and not coming home at night. Was he mixed up in a gang? There are reports of fights and stabbings in the local newspapers every week. I feel a chill flood through me. Did Callum hurt someone, and is that why I hurt Shannon? My imagination flits from one scary scenario to another.

That night I sleep badly, tormented by a nightmare. I'm in a dark, confined space surrounded by strangers. There's no way out.

I wake suddenly and sit bolt upright, my heart pounding. I suck air into my lungs and try to reassure myself that I'm not still in that frightening place. Gradually, my eyes adjust to the lack of light and I begin to make out the familiar shapes of my things in my darkened bedroom. But even now I'm not totally convinced I'm safe. As I sit waiting for dawn, too frightened to go back to sleep, I realise the only thing I'm completely sure of is my bad heart.

I stare at the piece of bacon on my plate.

‘Thought you didn't eat meat?' says Danny, who has wolfed down his four rashers, two eggs and a fried tomato and is now tucking into his second bowl of cereal.

‘Well – maybe I've decided I do like it after all,' I reply as I tentatively push the bacon around the plate with my fork, plucking up courage to actually put it in my mouth.

Danny watches me intently. He's all kitted out in his Man United gear, ready to go to a half-term course. ‘I'll have it if you don't want it,' he says. ‘I'm going to need tons of energy today.'

I stab at the piece of shrivelled up flesh then force it into my mouth. ‘Sorry, Squirt. Too late.'

The tangy, salty, animal taste hits my tongue immediately. Trying not to grimace, I move it around the inside of my mouth, chewing it as rapidly as I can, then swallowing it down too hastily, in one congealed lump. I can feel the pit of my stomach angrily rejecting it and I fight hard to keep it there.

‘So what do you want to do today, Becky?' asks Joe, avoiding my eye as he concentrates on buttering his toast. ‘Your choice. Barring trips to Florida, visits to expensive theme parks or anything involving a house full of hyperactive teenagers. I've had my orders.'

He's taken a few days off for half-term while Mum carries on working. For a moment, I can't help but wonder what Leah, Jodie and Alesha are doing this week. I've tried not to think about them over the last few days. Before I got ill, the four of us always used to hang out together in the holidays and have loads of laughs. Those days are long gone, I think bitterly.

‘Well, there is something . . .' I say, finally.

‘The usual retail therapy, I suppose?' he says with a mock sigh.

‘Well, sort of. I want to spend my birthday money.'

Half an hour later, we drop Danny off at the sports centre then I direct Joe out of town.

‘So what exactly did you want to buy, Becky?' he asks, bemused, as we pull up outside a large DIY store.

‘Paint.'

‘Paint?'

‘I want to paint my room and change it round again.'

‘Oh, come on. Not again. You've got to be joking . . .'

‘I'm not.'

‘Becky, don't wind me up.' I can tell from the tone of his voice he thinks we're heading for yet another row.

‘I'm not. Will you help me, Joe? Please.'

He looks at me, sees I'm deadly serious then gives a sigh and shakes his head. ‘What colour this time?'

My mind goes blank; I haven't even considered this detail. ‘Any,' I say eventually, ‘as long as it's not blue.'

We buy a large tin of yellow paint and a couple of new rollers.

‘Goodness only knows what your mum's going to say about all this,' says Joe an hour later, as he heaves all the furniture into the middle of my bedroom.

‘She loves yellow,' I reply evasively.

‘That wasn't what I meant and you know it,' he mutters.

We work all morning and finish just before lunchtime.

‘Well,' says Joe, looking round the room. ‘Was it worth it?'

I nod, breathing out a small sigh of relief. I have to untangle myself from Callum and this is one of the ways I can do it. ‘Thanks.'