‘Did she bring a liver with her?’

Lynn laughed and Caitlin managed a wry grin.

‘Do you want me to bring her up here, darling, or are you going to come down?’

Caitlin nodded pensively for some moments, then said, ‘How ill do you want me to look?’

The doorbell rang.

Lynn kissed her on the forehead. ‘Just be natural, OK?’

Caitlin lolled her head back and let her tongue fall out of her mouth. ‘Yrrrrrr,’ she said. ‘I’m dying for a new liver and a nice glass of Chianti to wash it down with!’

‘Shut up, Hannibal!’

Lynn left the room, hurried downstairs, and opened the front door.

The elegance of the woman standing in the porch took her by surprise. Lynn had not known what to expect, but had imagined someone rather dour and formal, perhaps a little creepy. Certainly not the tall, beautiful woman – early forties, she guessed – with wavy, shoulder-length blonde hair and a fur-trimmed black suede coat to die for.

‘Mrs Lynn Beckett?’ she quizzed in a deep, sensual, broken English accent.

‘Marlene Hartmann?’

The woman gave her a disarming smile, her cobalt blue eyes full of warmth.

‘I am so sorry to be late. There was a delay because of snow in München. But now I am here, alles ist in Ordnung, ja?’

Thrown for a second by the sudden switch of language, Lynn mumbled, ‘Um, yes, yes,’ then stepped back and ushered her into the hall.

Marlene Hartmann strode past her and Lynn noted, with dismay, the faintest hint of a frown of disapproval on her face. Directing her into the sitting room, she asked, ‘May I take your coat?’

The German woman shrugged it off her shoulders with the haughtiness of a diva, then handed it to Lynn, without looking at her, as if she were a cloakroom attendant.

‘Would you like some tea or coffee?’ Lynn was cringingly conscious of the woman’s roaming eyes, clocking every detail, every stain, every chip in the paintwork, the cheap furniture, the old telly. Her best friend, Sue Shackleton, had once had a German boyfriend and had briefed her that Germans were very particular about coffee. At the same time as buying the flowers last night, Lynn had bought a packet of freshly ground roasted Colombian beans.

‘Do you have mint tea, perhaps?’

‘Er – mint tea? Actually – yes, yes, I do,’ Lynn said, masking her disappointment at her wasted purchase.

A few minutes later she came into the living room, carrying a tray with a mint tea and a milky instant coffee for herself. The German woman was standing at the mantelpiece, holding a framed photograph of Caitlin, who was dressed as a Goth, with spiky black hair, a black tunic, a chin stud and a ring through her nose.

‘This is your daughter?’

‘Yes, Caitlin. It was taken about two years ago.’

She replaced the photograph, then sat down on the sofa, placing her black attaché case beside her.

‘A very beautiful young lady. A strong face. Good bone structure. She could model, maybe?’

‘Maybe.’ Lynn swallowed, thinking, If she lives. Then she put on her most positive smile. ‘Would you like to meet her now?’

‘No, not yet. Give to me first a little of her medical history.’

Lynn put the tray down on the coffee table, handed the woman her cup, then sat in an armchair beside her.

‘Well, OK – I’ll try. Up until nine she was fine, a normal, healthy child. Then she started having bowel problems, strong occasional stomach pains. Our GP diagnosed it initially as indeterminate colitis. That was followed by diarrhoea with blood in it, which persisted for a couple of months, and she felt tired all the time. He referred her to a liver specialist.’

Lynn sipped her coffee.

‘The specialist said that her spleen and liver were enlarged. She had a distended stomach and she was losing weight. Her tiredness was getting worse. She was always falling asleep, wherever she was. She was going to school, but needed four or five naps a day. Then she started getting stomach pains that went on all night. The poor kid was really distressed and kept asking, “Why me?”’

Suddenly, Lynn looked up and saw Caitlin entering the room.

‘Hi!’ she said.

‘Angel – this is Mrs Hartmann.’

Caitlin shook the woman’s hand warily. ‘Nice to meet you.’ Her voice was quavering.

Lynn saw the woman studying her daughter closely. ‘It is very nice to meet you, Caitlin.’

‘Darling, I was just telling Mrs Hartmann about your stomach pains that used to keep you awake all night. Then the doctor put you on antibiotics, didn’t he? Which worked well, for a time, didn’t they?’

Caitlin sat down in the opposite sofa. ‘I can only sort of remember.’

‘You were very young, then.’ Lynn turned back to Marlene Hartmann. ‘Then they stopped working. That was when she was twelve. She was diagnosed with a condition called PSC – primary sclerosing cholangitis. She spent almost a year in hospital – first down here, then in London, in the liver unit at the Royal South London. She had an operation to put stents inside her bile ducts.’

Lynn looked at her daughter for confirmation.

Caitlin nodded.

‘Can you understand what it is like for an active teenager to spend a year in a hospital ward?’

Marlene Hartmann smiled sympathetically at Caitlin. ‘I can imagine.’

Lynn shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think you can imagine what it is like in an English hospital, I really don’t think so. She was at the Royal South London, one of our top hospitals. At one point, because of overcrowding, they put her, a teenage girl, in a mixed ward. No television. Surrounded by deranged elderly people. She had to put up with confused women and men climbing into bed with her, day and night. She was in a terrible state. I used to go up and sit with her until they threw me out. I’d then sleep in the waiting room or in the corridor.’ She looked at Caitlin for corroboration. ‘Didn’t I, darling?’

‘It wasn’t that great in that ward,’ Caitlin confirmed, with a wistful smile.

‘When she came out, we tried everything. We went to healers, priests, tried colloidal silver, a blood transfusion, acupuncture, the lot. Nothing worked. My poor angel was like a little old person, shuffling along, falling over – weren’t you, darling? If it wasn’t for our GP, I don’t know what would have happened. He’s been a saint. Dr Ross Hunter. He found a new specialist who put Caitlin on a different regime of drugs, and he got Caitlin’s life back – for a while. She returned to school, was able to swim, play netball, and she took up music again, which had always been a big love of hers. She started playing the saxophone.’

Lynn drank some more of her coffee, then noticed, to her irritation, that Caitlin’s concentration had gone and she was texting on her phone.

‘Then about six months ago, everything went pear-shaped. She started finding her breathing difficult on the saxophone, didn’t you, darling?’

Caitlin raised her head, nodded, and returned to her texting.

‘Now the specialist has told us that she needs to have a transplant – as a matter of urgency. They found a matching donor and I took her up to the Royal for the operation a couple of days ago. But at the last minute they said there were problems with the donor liver – although they never explained exactly what those problems were – not to my satisfaction. Then we were told – or at least, it was hinted to us very strongly – that she was not being treated as a priority. Which meant that she could be in that group of 20 per cent of those waiting for a liver transplant who…’

She hesitated, looking at Caitlin. But Caitlin completed the sentence for her.

‘Who die before they get one, is what my mother is saying.’

Marlene Hartmann took Caitlin’s hand, and looked deeply into her eyes. ‘Caitlin, mein Liebling, please trust me. In today’s world, no person needs to die because they cannot get the organ they need. Look at me, OK?’ She tapped her chest and pouted her lips. ‘You see me?’