Rain pitter-patters against the window drawing me from sleep. Callie is the first thing on my mind, thoughts jostling for my attention before I have even opened my eyes. Rolling over, I check the time. It’s not yet eight. Sunday stretches before me with endless hours to fill. It’s far too early to ring Rachel; I’ve always been an early riser but she never surfaces before eleven at weekends. I think of our phone conversation last night, and the frustration I had heard in her voice still stings, and I’m not sure whether I want to talk to her today. Meeting Tom and Amanda has stirred up so many emotions; things I thought I’d got over. Rachel has never felt the crushing weight of loss, and I am pleased she hasn’t, but that means there is sometimes a divide between us. The things we can talk about and the things we can’t.

I throw back the covers. It is chilly. I slip my feet into fluffy socks before crossing the room. I slide the wooden box out from the bottom of the wardrobe and place it on the bed. Sitting cross-legged on the mattress I wrap my duvet around my shoulders like a cape. It’s so quiet. I open up iTunes and set the music onto shuffle. The Goo Goo Dolls sing ‘Iris’, and I place both hands on the lid of the box, but I still don’t feel ready to open it. I’m never ready to open it. Instead, I run my fingertips over the ornate carvings of the elephants that adorn the box. Confronting the past is the best way to step into the future, Vanessa says, but what if I’m not ready to let go?

My phone begins to buzz and a photo of Sam flashes up, and I think it’s because I’m feeling so lost and alone I answer it rather than diverting it to voicemail, as usual.

‘Hey,’ he says, and the sound of his voice snatches my breath away. I try to keep our contact to text or messenger. Hearing him is so bloody hard.

‘I thought you’d be awake. What you doing?’

‘Nothing,’ I say.

‘I wanted to check how it went yesterday?’

‘OK,’ I say but the catch in my voice betrays me.

‘Shall I come around? Do you need to talk?’

‘No.’ Having him here, in the space we once shared, would be unbearable. We don’t speak for a moment. I hear him breathing. Remember the time when I’d lie in this bed with his arm around my shoulder. My head on his chest. The rise and fall. ‘Sam,’ I say. ‘There’s somewhere I want to go. Will you please take me?’

* * *

I’m hovering in the porch, shielded from the rain. Sam’s cherry red Fiat turns into the road and I dart towards the kerb, feet splashing through puddles, hood pulled over my head. My body moulds itself into the passenger seat I’ve sat in a thousand times before. My legs stretch out, my feet in the footwell, and it seems the seat hasn’t been moved since I last sat here. The floor is littered with discarded plastic wrappers from the humbugs that Sam always crunches when he drives. The smell of mint has embedded itself in the interior. We don’t speak, as if Sam senses I’m not quite ready to talk about yesterday, but the silence is comfortable, familiar, and after a quick stop we’re here.

Thunder rumbles and lightning illuminates the church in front of me. The churchyard is empty. The light rain of this morning is now torrential and the sky a mass of darkened clouds. We trudge between the gravestones. There’s a smell of rotting leaves, and the bushes rustle with an unseen animal. My trainers are soaked, and the bottom of my jeans cling to my legs. Sam is carrying the silk flowers we’d called into Asda to buy, and as I suddenly stop he walks into me.

‘This is it.’ The headstone is black and shiny. ‘Callie Amanda Valentine’ etched in a swirling font. This is where she rests, and as I think of her body lying there, her heart inside of me, my knees buckle and I sink onto the wet grass, overcome with the enormity of it all. Sam lays down the flowers and steps back, resting his hand on my shoulder. My fingers trace the inscription – ‘Once Met Never Forgotten’– and although I never met her, I know I will think of her every single day for the rest of my life, this girl who gave me a second chance.

I blink back tears that threaten to spill down my cheeks.

‘I won’t let you go,’ a man’s voice whispers, but it isn’t Sam and there is no one else here.

From out of nowhere I have the sensation of being pushed. I’m falling. Panic grips me and I stagger to my feet. I’m stumbling, running, desperate to get away, and as an arm snakes around my waist, forcing me to stop, I spin around and lash out.

‘Jenna!’ Sam’s face swims into focus, and I cling onto the front of his raincoat, and he envelops me in his arms. I press my nose against his neck and breathe in his familiar spicy aftershave. He doesn’t let me go until I’ve stopped shaking.

* * *

‘What happened back there? You looked terrified?’ We’re sitting in Sam’s car and I’m huddled in his bottle green fleece.

‘I don’t know. I felt… strange. It’s happened before. Vanessa thinks my medication is too strong but Dr Kapur says he won’t reduce it again until after my six-month check-up. It’s nothing to worry about,’ I say with a confidence I don’t feel. I’m shaken to the core but I don’t know what else to tell Sam. How could I hear a voice? Feel hands pushing me? Be swamped with fear one minute and it’s gone the next? Sometimes it feels as though I am going mad.

‘It might be worth another chat with him. You look really pale, Jen. Do you want me to come to the hospital with you?’

‘No,’ I say, even though I do.

At first, after the transplant, I thought things would go back to normal. We nearly had enough saved for a deposit on a house. We’d have the three children we’d talked about. That was in the early days. The days I’d thought a new heart meant a new life, but the doctor shook his head and told me if I wanted to stay alive there’d be no future swelling of my belly. No kicking of miniature feet against my skin. No tiny person with Sam’s eyes and my hair wrapping their small fingers around mine as they guzzled milk. Sam said it didn’t matter, of course, but when he mentioned adoption I knew he still longed for a family

Statistically the survival and recovery rates for heart transplant patients are improving all the time, but even though I know them all off by heart I still Google them endlessly. Searching for a new miracle story. Someone who has defied the odds and is still alive after ten years, fifteen, twenty. The knowledge I might not be here in five years’ time is always at the back of my mind. I bury it under ‘aren’t I luckys,’ and ‘there are always exceptions,’ but five years seems impossibly short and yet sometimes longer than I dare hope for. How can I adopt a child knowing I might not be around to see them grow? Sam says we can still be a family of two but that would almost feel as though I’ve trapped him. He has the chance to meet someone new. Have children. And I want, more than anything else in the world, for him to be happy.

But today, it’s easy to wish things were different. Cold rain drips off my hair and trickles down my cheek and he leans forward and wipes it away with his thumb. My skin tingles. ‘I worry about you.’ His lips brush mine, warm and soft. His breath smells of mint and despite myself I entwine my fingers in his hair and kiss him back before I come to my senses and push him away.

‘Sam…’

‘I know.’ He leans back in his seat. ‘Friends.’ He twists the key in the ignition and the engine roars to life, and in his eyes, I watch his hopes die.