After You Fell
After You Fell
J. S. LARK
One More Chapter
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © J. S. Lark 2019
Cover design by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Emoji © Shutterstock.com
J. S. Lark asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008366155
Ebook Edition © December 2019 ISBN: 9780008366148
Version: 2019-11-25
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Louise
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Helen
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Revenge Versus Love
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
The Split
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Counting Down the Days
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
An End or Another Beginning?
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Louise
Chapter 74
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
This book is dedicated to an old and deeply missed friend from my school days, Caroline Wentworth; you passed on too soon.
Chapter 1
20 minutes after the fall.
‘Is there a heartbeat?’
Something presses into my neck.
‘Barely and it is weakening.’
A gurgling rumble struggles against the pressure on my throat.
‘Get back. Stay back, please.’ A distant, dominant voice.
There are lots of people here, talking in different tones. Some whispering.
‘Have some respect. The medical team need space. A woman is injured. This is not a circus. Move on.’
‘She’s losing a lot of blood.’
‘I’ll treat her head injury, you find out what else is going on.’
Hands touch my head and leg.
‘This is a nasty break.’
Another breath drags into my lungs. My eyes are open but I can’t see.
‘How bad is it? The woman’s husband is in the car park. He’s asking.’ Another voice.
‘It’s bad. We’ll be lucky if she’s alive when we reach the hospital. Cross your fingers or pray, whichever is your thing.’
‘I’ll keep her breathing.’ A mask presses down and the air is cleaner and colder but the pain of breathing is an excruciating shout.
‘Give her some morphine and get a splint for her leg.’
Where is he?
The air chokes me, as if I am a mile underwater, the weight filling up and crushing my lungs from the inside out.
‘Her airway is constricted. Get me a scalpel. I’ll try a tracheostomy.’
‘She has broken ribs. She may have punctured both lungs.’
I try to speak. My lips will not say a word.
The world is white.
‘Her pulse is fading.’
A siren wails in the distance as the white gradually darkens and becomes black.
Chapter 2
50 minutes before the fall.
‘Don’t touch me!’ An urge for flight darts into my legs and I step back; every muscle in my body is quivering, exhausted by the fight.
I imagine the feel of pavement under my feet. I am running – running and running.
‘You’re upsetting the children. All you think about is yourself. Your baby is crying in there!’ His hand thrusts out, gesturing in a circular motion directing my eyes to the noise coming from the kitchen.
The sound tears at my heart and rips through my head.
‘I can’t cope with her.’ Or you. I don’t want to hear the screams any more. Let me leave.
‘You wanted her.’ His pitch drops, accusing me of betrayal. ‘You promised you would try.’
‘I tried. I can’t do it.’ I can’t cope with the look in your eyes. I failed. But it is not just me. We have failed.
His clenched fist lifts and hovers an inch from my face. One day he’ll break, then he’ll hit me or put his hands around my neck.
‘I can’t help it.’ The words leave my throat in a whisper because he’s too close.
‘You have to help it. I can’t deal with you and if I can’t then the children don’t stand a chance.’ His hand opens.
I think he’s going to slap me.
There’s no loyalty between us any more. No love. No hope. Nothing except anger and arguments.
His hand drops, but he snarls in my face, sounding like an attacking wolf. Then he turns away in a sudden movement, lifting his arm again and striking a fist into the wall.
His mother’s favourite blue and white china vase, an antique on the bookshelf near him, wobbles as if touched by the strength of his anger. Then it falls on the parquet floor, shattering with a sharp sound that breaks our argument. Stop.
His mother found that vase at a car boot sale. She bought it for next to nothing. She was so proud of it. But she is proud of her son too.
He shakes out the hand he’s hurt, ignoring the ruined vase.
‘Mum …’ Our son stands in the centre of the open doorway, his beautiful face distorted in an expression of fear.
‘I’m all right, love. We are both all right. Daddy is just having a tantrum.’
He thrusts a glare over his shoulder with the toss of a dagger, then walks out of the room, herding our son out of the way.
I pull the mobile from the back pocket of my jeans. It drops on the floor with a clatter because my fingers are shaking even harder now the adrenalin is ebbing away.
The phone lies there, looking up at me with a fresh crack across the screen, another testimony of our failure.
Bile rises in my throat, a bitter taste that wants me to be sick. I bend to pick up the phone. I can’t remember when I last ate.
The desire to hear my mother’s voice screams as loudly as my child.
I bring up my recent calls, and touch the icon saying ‘Mum’.
The phone rings twice before she answers. ‘Hello, love.’
‘Mum.’ Help me.
‘Yes, darling.’
I sniff back the tears before they run from my nose as well as my eyes.
‘Are you all right?’
‘No. We argued.’
‘Again.’ A tut echoes from the phone.
We haven’t made it through a single day without arguing this year.
A tear drips from my chin, falling to leave a tiny puddle on the floor that will run into a crack between the blocks of wood. The story of my marriage is shouting, shattered china, cracked glass and puddles of tears.
I swipe other tears away with the heel of a shaking palm. But tears trickle from my nose. I wipe them on the back of my hand. ‘He doesn’t love me. None of them do.’
‘The children do.’
‘No. They hate me. They blame me because he does.’
‘The children love you. Shall we come over to see you? Would that calm the argument?’
‘Do you think he’ll leave? Do you think he’ll take the children?’
‘No.’
‘He can’t stand to be in a room with me.’ Our marriage is cracked down the middle, as if the earth between us has been torn open in an earthquake and his position is on the other side of the ravine, with a glowering expression of judgement. I have tried to reach out. But I can’t reach him. He has other women because I do not want him to touch me like that. But I still want to be hugged sometimes. Those moments never happen. He doesn’t even kiss my cheek.
‘We’ll come and talk to him.’
‘Mum, you can’t. It will cause more trouble.’
‘I can’t leave you this upset. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.’
At least if they came they would be here for the children.
His parents have gone out for the day. They turn their backs on our rows.
‘All right. But I’m going out, Mum. I need to get away from the house. I love you. Look after the children when you get here.’
‘I love you too, darling. We’ll see you soon.’
‘Goodbye, Mum.’
‘Goodbye, dear.’
I step over the broken china, to look for paper and a pen in the drawer of the television stand and write a note telling him where I am going. To stop him being angry when he discovers that I have gone.
The note left beside the television, and the china and my tears left on the floor, I push down the door handle to get out.
The patio door glides open with a whisper, keeping my departure a secret. He will not know I have gone for a while. I’ll use the back gate into the alley beside the house.
The sound of a lawnmower cutting grass in a nearby garden enters the living room. The breeze carries the scent of freshly cut grass and the sweet perfume of the mauve wisteria flowers that dangle from the plant above the door.
The note I left by the TV blows off the side and flutters to the floor.
Chapter 3
3 days after the fall.
There’s a rhythmic electronic beeping near my left ear. It echoes back from bare walls.
The thin elastic cord holding the mask over my nose and mouth scratches at the top of my ear. I turn my head, twisting my neck to look at the machines. The air inside the mask is warm and moist with condensation that tells me I have been lying here with this mask on for some time.
A soft whistle plays out from the oxygen cylinder near the bed.
A bank of tubes that are connected to my neck rattle with a plastic pitch as I look over at the open door.
I am alone in the clinically all-white room with the machines.
The urge to touch the wound lifts my hand and drags the black cable hanging from the finger-clip over the greying-white cotton blanket.
The clip is sending messages to one of the machines beside me, measuring the oxygen level in my blood.
It feels as though a weight is hanging from my wrist, the pressure of gravity drains so much energy from me with the tiniest movement – I am used to that feeling. But a pulse thumps through the crook of my elbow – that is a new sensation.
Pump-pump.
Pump-pump.
The rhythm of a drumbeat is everywhere inside me and it is repeating on the monitor.
Bleep-bleep.
Bleep-bleep.
The oxygen travels deep into my lungs, releasing energy that says something is coming.
You are going to be strong.
The feeling speaks.
Nothing else tells me a ghost is here and I do not usually hear them talk, I just know when they’re near.
It might be my belief speaking.
I breathe out, and listen to the throb of sound in my ears. That is the heart calling to me. The rhythm of it tingles all the way down to my fingertips.
A hum rumbles in my nerves. I saw bees on a honeycomb once, when they had been pulled out of a hive. When my nerves hum like this, I see the shimmering silver wings of the bees as they work and dance to tell the others where to go.
Angels dance, in spheres of light, to tell others which way to go.
I can’t feel the wound, only the soft dressings that cover where the incision was made.
Beneath the sheet and blanket is a rash of sensors, scattered over my chest, their information conducting the rhythms on the machines.
A thin plastic tube shakes as I move my hand down; the tube dangles from the clear bag, dripping fluid into my arm.
A man slid the long needle for the tube under my skin while someone on the other side of me counted down from ten. I can’t remember anything else from then until now.
Voices chatter from somewhere outside the room. Things move and footsteps squeak across the tiled floor. The sound of one set of soft-soled shoes comes closer.
‘Helen?’
The owner of the unknown voice is at the doorway into the room. A nurse with dark hair scraped back into a high ponytail, wearing a pale blue pyjama uniform. She has a bright smile, with white teeth that look chemically treated.
‘Hello.’ The word scrapes my throat as though my voice hasn’t been used for a year.
The nurse’s smile widens as she comes closer and touches my hand.
Her hand is cold.
‘Hello. I am Mandy. I haven’t had the privilege before, but I am glad to meet you at the point you’ll be getting better.’ She turns away, looking at the monitors.
‘What time is it?’
‘Eleven, and it’s Saturday. We kept you unconscious for a while after the operation to give your body chance to rest.’
‘Is everything okay?’
She smiles again, more reassuring than any words could give, before looking at the bag of slowly dripping liquid. ‘Everything is fine and your brother is waiting outside. He’d like to come in and see you if you are up to a visit?’
‘Is he alone?’
‘Yes.’
A ripple of pleasure skims through my body. He chose to stay here with me. ‘Please.’
‘He’s been here a lot.’
A smile pulls at my lips. A smile that has risen all the way up through my body, right from my toes to my lips.
When the nurse leaves, my fingers curl and press into the crisply starched sheet. I check that my toes move, brushing them against the weight of the sheet and blanket.
The machine’s rhythm carries on with its sharp bleep declaring the pace of my heart. My heart now; someone else’s heart before.
But mine now.
The pulse resonates in my fingertips, toes and ears. It is a strange feeling – an extreme, unreal feeling – to have a heart that works.
A sphere of light shimmers at the corner of the room. Near the ceiling.
I look at the open door, waiting for him to come.
Pump-pump. Pump-pump.
The sphere flies in front of my vision, across the open door. But it stays in the room with me.
I am in a hospital. It doesn’t surprise me that there are spirits. But I do not want to engage with them here. They will have experienced pain here. I have known enough of my own pain, I don’t want to know theirs.
Another breath runs out of my lungs, in a smooth, easy, painless motion.
I am used to a lack of energy that doesn’t give me the strength to breathe. A week ago, my heart lurched in a beat when I breathed in but barely moved when I breathed out.
‘Hello, you.’
‘Simon.’ The excitement in my recognition is muffled by the mask but my hand stretches out, in the way I would have reached out and wrapped my arms about his neck if I could.
His footsteps are heavier than the nurses, hard leather soles that I am used to hearing on tiled hospital floors.
‘How are you feeling?’ He lifts the mask off my nose and moves it down to balance on my chin so he can kiss my cheek. Extra pulses shoot from my new heart.
‘Tired. But amazing, and thirsty.’
‘You can give her some water?’ The nurse is standing by the open door.
I nod at Simon, ignoring her. The pillowcase feels coarse and my hair dirty.
He’s all I have. Him and his children.
I want my own children, though, not just to borrow his.
Another ripple of emotion flows through my prone body.
I have the heart I have been waiting for. But I no longer have Dan.
We had talked about adoption.
Now I have a healthy heart, now I can have children, and Dan is not here.
Pump-pump. Pump-pump.
The heart moves in my chest, squeezing out and pulling in the blood – its pulse striking its rhythm in every artery like the tune of a ticking clock in an empty house. It is so strong it feels as if the heart will beat its way out of my body.
It can’t. It is trapped inside me now. Attached, so its movement keeps me alive.
There is someone here, though.
Someone with me.
Someone who is no longer alive.
The weight and density of their spirit is filling the space in the small room, making the atmosphere close. As if I am standing in a large crowd and too many people are breathing the same air.
The owner of the heart?
The straw Simon holds to my mouth scrapes my lip.
I have been breathing slowly for months, sitting in a bed or a chair, doing nothing, trying not to tire out my heart; preserving my life second by second and hoping that a heart would be found. The longing for children kept me going even when my old heart cracked open and oozed pain like the leaking yolk of a soft-boiled egg.
I can have the children I want now.
Thank you. I say the words to the soul that’s hovering around me. If it is you: thank you.
This operation is a beginning. Today is the start of a new life for me. But it was the end of theirs.
The water is deliciously cool. It tastes far too nice to be water. I can feel it inside my throat as I swallow almost as much as I can feel the beat of the heart in my chest.
Simon is the one that kept me alive when I was young. He gave me reason after reason to fight on with unconditional love as wide as an ocean. I want to give all the love that he’s taught me to my children.
He takes the cup away and puts it down.
I lift a hand, asking him to hold it.
His hand strokes over my hair, the touch stirring strands that are matted. His hand falls, wraps around mine and holds tight. ‘You’re going to be okay.’
I nod. I know.
A cartoon-like sparkle catches in his right eye, the white light in the room reflecting on the sheen of tears. The aura around him is sunshine, orange and yellow, and the orb is hovering behind him.
But the orb is not the owner of the heart.
The weight of exhaustion suddenly presses like large hands on my chest, pushing me down and submerging me in a swamp of fatigue. I can’t stay awake any more.
A memory of Simon and me curled up tight together as children hovers.
The bleep echoing my heartbeat slows.
Chapter 4
2 weeks and 3 days after the fall.
‘Come on, then. Hurry up. There are people waiting to greet you,’ Simon shouts over his shoulder as he walks ahead with the small suitcase I have brought back from the hospital.
I am walking much quicker than I had on the way out to his car after we had the call saying a heart was available. But there is a sharp pulling in my chest that means I do not rush. It is from the surgery, though, not weakness. I still have that celebrating hard pump of blood, like the vibration of a chiming bell ringing in every artery and vein, yelling out that one day soon I am going to be entirely better. Hear ye. Hear ye. Helen Matthews is well.
My brain is diagnosing the level of my health like a Fitbit measuring every sensation – each out breath and every moment a muscle or tendon moves. I do not want to reject this heart.
The front door opens.
‘Hello.’ Miriam, Mim, waves as she steps out. ‘It is good to see you with colour in your cheeks.’ The colours around her are muddy browns and greens. It is a spiteful aura.
‘Auntie Helen!’ Kevin and Liam squeeze past their mother’s legs and run to me.
‘Remember what I said,’ Simon calls. ‘Be careful with your aunt, she’s recovering.’
I lift my hands, encouraging the twins to grasp one each. ‘As long as you don’t pull I’ll be fine.’ They are used to Auntie Helen’s frailty.
A picture runs through my mind, a memory that doesn’t belong to me. I am running along a beach, holding the hand of a small girl and jumping the shallow waves that roll onto the sand. I know the girl is my daughter, but I do not know how I know.
I want a daughter first. If I can pick.
‘Welcome home.’ Mim’s arms wrap around my neck and she kisses my cheek. I do not mirror the embrace; the boys have possession of my hands. ‘We have a celebration tea planned—’
‘With fizzy orange!’
‘And ice cream!’ the boys add as their hands slip out of mine in unison. They run into the house bursting with the constant excitement of four-year-olds.
‘And pizza. Sorry, it’s more their party than yours,’ Mim whispers.
I don’t mind. If the boys are happy, I’m happy.
I have been guilty of spoiling Simon’s boys as if they are mine since they were born. They are a relief for the craving in my womb.
Dan hated me talking about children. He always said he wanted children, but then changed his mind two years ago.
‘Don’t go on about children, you can’t have them, you are too ill, stop talking about babies, even if we adopt how are you going to look after a child?’