I suddenly gripped the steering wheel as I remembered what Samira Khan had said that morning. “So cruel to have her son taken from her like that.” She’d given me an intense, searching look when she’d said it. I’d thought she was talking about Mikey but now instinct told me she was referring to the baby Tess gave away. I desperately needed to talk to Samira but she’d left for Pakistan and wouldn’t be back for weeks. Tess’s face came to me as it so often did: the creamy skin, the careful hair, the Mona Lisa smile. She’d always had an air of mystery about her, like she was holding something back. I’d attributed her secrecy to her troubled mind but now it was all starting to make sense.
I arrived at the cardiology department fifteen minutes late and feeling flustered. After registering at the reception, I hurried along the long corridor to the waiting room. The sky outside the large windows was slate-grey but everything else in the room was a shade of NHS blue: the turquoise walls, the royal-blue chairs, the powder-blue table. I needn’t have worried about being late. There was only one other patient waiting. Joe was sitting by the water cooler engrossed in a copy of the Guardian. He’d taken the afternoon off work and cycled over from his office at Manchester Science Park to be with me.
I sat down next to him, my chair creaking in the silence. “Sorry. The traffic was horrendous.”
He looked over the top of his paper then carried on reading. My stomach was churning at the thought of the scan and what it might reveal. I rubbed my sweaty palms down the leg of my jeans and sighed audibly.
Joe put a hand on my knee. “It’ll be fine,” he said.
He took off his reading glasses, folded his paper and slipped them both into his man bag on the floor next to his cycling helmet. He looked good. His face was tanned from long cycle rides in the recent spell of good weather, intensifying the blue of his eyes. His salt-and-pepper hair was newly cropped and lightened by the sun. A snappy dresser, he was wearing the Pretty Green khaki jacket I’d bought him for Christmas with jeans and red Adidas trainers. Though craggier now, his round face still had the boyish look I’d fallen in love with when I was twenty-one. He’d aged well. If it wasn’t for his grey hair, he could have passed for thirty.
I glanced up at the clock. My mouth felt dry so I got up and poured myself a cup of water from the cooler. I’d had echocardiograms before but they never got any easier. I always asked Joe to come with me. Calm and pragmatic, he quashed my irrational “what if’s” with science and stats. We had our ups and downs like any other couple, but at times like this when I was at my most anxious he was like a large oak that I ran to for shelter.
On the drive to the hospital, I’d made the decision not to tell him about the letter just yet. He’d only tell me to leave well alone and not get involved. Don’t get yourself worked up, he’d say. You’re still grieving for Tess and Mikey, you don’t need any more emotional turmoil. But what he’d really mean was that he didn’t need any more emotional turmoil. And I couldn’t blame him for thinking that way. Life with Mikey and Tess had been one long episode of Jeremy Kyle, especially during Mikey’s addiction years. Joe had put up with so much drama and now all he probably wanted was a bit of peace. Another reason I didn’t want to tell him was because I felt strangely protective of Tess’s secret. She was about to be exposed and I needed to find out all the facts before I was prepared to do that. Part of me felt hurt that she’d told Samira Kahn and not Mikey or me. I could understand why. The guilt and shame back then must have been overwhelming and it’s often easier to talk to strangers about your darkest secrets than loved ones. But I couldn’t help feeling sad and betrayed that she’d never confided in me. She and I had become closer in her later years. Or so I’d thought.
Apart from the shuffle of nurses’ shoes along the corridor now and again, the cardiology department was very quiet. The other patient was engrossed in his phone. He was sitting under a poster of a smiling heart holding up a plate of fruit and vegetables. He looked like he hadn’t seen an apple or a carrot in a while though. Rolls of fat hung over the sides of his chair like the drop of a tablecloth and his beautiful grey-blue eyes were hidden in folds of flesh and his ballooning cheeks. His breathing was heavy, his body odour pungent. I feared for him and I wanted to warn him. Stop killing yourself, I wanted to say. Your heart is far too precious.
Familial Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. I half expected to see the words illuminated on the neon sign opposite, the way they were illuminated in my mind after the coroner’s report into Mikey’s death. HCM, as it is commonly known, was the heart condition that had killed my brother. HCM this, HCM that. In the weeks and months after his death I became so obsessed with the details, I almost forgot to grieve for him.
“It’s genetic,” I explained to friends and family when they asked. “Some carriers have no symptoms at all and it never surfaces and other people have mild symptoms. But at its worst it
