Caitlin nodded again, without making eye contact, then rummaged in her soft, zebra-striped handbag and pulled out her mobile phone.

The consultant’s eyes widened as Caitlin stabbed some buttons, reading the display. ‘Yes,’ she said distantly, as if to herself. ‘Yup, he told me.’

‘Yes,’ Lynn stepped in hastily. ‘He has, he’s – he’s told us the news – you know – what you have told him. Thank you for seeing us so quickly.’

Somewhere outside, along the street, a car alarm was shrieking.

The consultant looked at Caitlin again for a moment, watching her send a text and then put the phone back in her bag.

‘We have to act quickly,’ he said.

‘I don’t really understand exactly what has changed,’ Caitlin said. ‘Can you sort of explain it to me in simple terms? Sort of, like, idiot language?’

He smiled. ‘I’ll do my best. As you know, for the past six years you’ve been suffering from primary sclerosing cholangitis, Caitlin. Originally you had the milder – if you can call it that – juvenile form, but recently and very swiftly it has turned into the advanced adult form. We’ve tried to keep it under control with a mixture of drugs and surgery for the past six years, in the hope that your liver might cure itself – but that only happens very rarely, and I’m afraid in your case it has not. Your liver has now deteriorated to a point where your life would be in danger if we did not take action.’

Her voice very small suddenly, Caitlin said, ‘So I’m going to die, right?’

Lynn grabbed her hand and squeezed hard. ‘No, darling, you are not. Absolutely not. You are going to be fine.’ She looked at the doctor for reassurance.

The doctor replied impassively, ‘I’ve been in touch with the Royal South London Hospital and arranged for you to be admitted there tonight for assessment for transplantation.’

‘I hate that fucking place,’ Caitlin said.

‘It is the best unit in the country,’ he replied. ‘There are other hospitals, but this is the one we work with normally from down here.’

Caitlin rummaged in her bag again. ‘The thing is, I’m busy tonight. Me and Luke are going to a club. Digital. There’s a band I need to see.’

There was a brief silence. Then the consultant said, with far more tenderness than Lynn had imagined he was capable of, ‘Caitlin, you are not at all well. It would be very unwise to go out. I need to get you into hospital right away. I want to find you a new liver as quickly as possible.’

Caitlin looked at him for a moment through her jaundiced yellow eyes. ‘How do you define well?’ she asked.

The consultant, his face thawing into a smile, said, ‘Would you really like my definition?’

‘Yes. How do you define well?’

‘Being alive and not feeling sick might be a good place to start,’ he said. ‘How does that sound to you?’

Caitlin shrugged. ‘Yup, that’s probably quite good.’ She nodded, absorbing the words, clearly thinking about them.

‘If you have a liver transplant, Caitlin,’ he said, ‘the chances are good that you will start to feel well again and get back to normal.’

‘And if I don’t? Like – don’t have a transplant?’

Lynn wanted to butt in and say something, tell her daughter just exactly what would happen. But she knew she had to keep silent and play this out as an onlooker.

‘Then,’ he said baldly, ‘I’m afraid you will die. I think you have only a short time to live. A few months at the most. It could be much less.’

There was a long silence. Lynn felt the grip of her daughter’s hand suddenly and she squeezed back, as hard as she could.

‘Die?’ Caitlin said.

It came out as a trembling whisper. Caitlin turned to her mother in shock, stared at her face. Lynn smiled at her, unable to think for a moment of anything she could say to her child.

Nervously, Caitlin asked, ‘Is this true? Mum? Is this what they already told you?’

‘You are very seriously ill, darling. But if you have a transplant it will be fine. You’ll be well again. You’ll be able to live a completely normal life.’

Caitlin was silent. She withdrew her hand and put a finger in her mouth, something Lynn had not seen her do in years. There was a beep, then a fax machine on a shelf near the doctor printed out a sheet of paper.

‘I’ve been on the Net,’ Caitlin said abruptly. ‘I Googled liver transplants. They come from dead people, right?’

‘Mostly, yes.’

‘So I’d be getting a dead person’s liver?’

‘There is no absolute guarantee we’ll be lucky in getting you a liver at all.’

Lynn stared at him in stunned silence. ‘What do you mean, no guarantee?’

‘You both have to understand,’ he said in a matter-of-fact way that made Lynn want to rise up and slap him, ‘that there is a shortage of livers and that you have a rare blood group, which makes it harder than for some people. It depends if I can get you in as a priority – which I am hoping I can. But your condition is technically “chronic” and patients with “acute” liver failure tend to get priority. I’ll have to fight that corner for you. At least you tick some of the right boxes, being young and otherwise healthy.’

‘So, if I get one at all, it’s likely I’m going to spend the rest of my life with a dead woman’s liver in me?’

‘Or a man’s,’ he said.

‘How great is that?’

‘Isn’t that a lot better than the alternative, darling?’ Lynn asked, and tried to take her hand again, but was brushed away.

‘So this is going to be from some organ donor?’

‘Yes,’ Neil Granger said.

‘So I would be carrying around for the rest of my life the knowledge that someone died and I’ve got a bit of them inside me?’

‘I can give you some literature to read, Caitlin,’ he said. ‘And when you go up to the Royal, you will meet a lot of people, including social workers and psychologists, who will talk to you all about what it means. But there is one important thing to remember. The loved ones and families of people who have died often take great comfort from knowing that the death wasn’t completely in vain. That that person’s death has enabled someone else to live.’

Caitlin was pensive for some moments, then she said, ‘Great, you want me to have a liver transplant so that someone else can feel good about their daughter’s, or husband’s, or son’s death?’

‘No, that’s not the reason. I want you to have it so I can save your life.’

‘Life sucks, doesn’t it?’ Caitlin said. ‘Life really sucks.’

‘Death sucks even more,’ the consultant replied.

Susan Cooper had discovered that there was a fine view from this particular window, just past the lifts on the seventh floor of the Royal Sussex County Hospital, across the rooftops of Kemp Town to the English Channel. All today, the sea had been a brilliant, sparkling blue, but now, at six o’clock on this late November evening, the falling darkness had turned it into an inky void, stretching to infinity beyond the lights of the city.

She was staring out at that vast blackness now. Her hands rested on the radiator, not for the warmth it gave off but merely to support her drained body. She stared silently, bleakly, through the reflection of her face in the window, feeling the draught of cold air through the thin glass. But feeling little else.

She was numb with shock. She could not believe this was happening.

She made a mental list of the people she still needed to call. She’d dreaded breaking the news to Nat’s brother, to his sister in Australia, to his friends. Both his parents had died in their fifties, his father from a heart attack, his mother from cancer, and Nat used to joke that he would never make old bones. Some joke.

She turned, padded back to the Intensive Care Unit and rang the bell. A nurse let her in. It was warmer in here than out in the corridor. The temperature was maintained at 34- 35°C, high enough for the patients to lie in hospital pyjamas, or naked, without any risk of catching cold. It was an irony, she thought, although she did not dwell on it, that she had once worked as a nurse here, in this very unit. It was in this hospital that she and Nat had met – shortly after he had started as a junior registrar.