The evening he asked.
It was a Thursday in the November. He was in the bed by the window by then.
He took my hand and said: “Mum. I want to do something useful. If I can, I want somebody to have my heart.”
And I said something I am not proud of. I said we were not there yet.
And he said: “Mum. Please. If I’m going wherever I’m going, let this be the thing. I’ve already talked to Dr Selvan. She says it can be done.”
He had already talked to the doctor.
I cried, and then I nodded.
He died on the twenty-eighth of February. At ten past four in the morning, with my hand on his chest.
And his heart went, that same night, to an eighteen-year-old girl in another hospital forty miles away.
And the eleven hundred pounds, which I have to describe properly, because it is the only thing in this that still makes me feel sick.
