The atria of the heart are tiny - small and delicate as silver Turkish thimbles and as intricately decorated with filigree arterioles. They are the Chippendales of human organs, holding a mere three and a half teaspoons of blood - a nosebleed; a careless, sharpened chisel. The ventricles are hardly giant vessels either, holding no more than a quarter of a cup of blood. Yet these thimbles contract and spill more than two thousand gallons of blood a day, filling and emptying more than one hundred thousand times. This is masterminded by the sinoatrial node and if it fails a pacemaker can replace it. No larger than a pocket watch, it nestles in the fat of the chest wall and has a battery that lasts between five and fifteen years. Sometimes I feel as if the battery of my heart is running down but my doctor tells me it isn’t. How would he know?

* * *

The day Ian and I had our first order for a deck in Cotham, Sonja cooked up a feast to celebrate. We were living in a small flat in Kingsdown then and the three of us sat at the kitchen table, wolfing down food and laughing about the possibility of riches. Ian drank buckets of wine, became morose and eventually fell silent. Sonja and I were clearing up when he tapped me on the shoulder. ‘It’s different for you,’ he signed.

‘Eh? What are you on about?’

‘Deafness. You can’t see it’

I put down the plates I was carrying. Faced him. ‘So?’

‘It’s invisible. You can’t see it.’

‘I know that.’

Ian slumped against a counter, folding his massive arms. ‘And you,’ he said to Sonja, ‘no one can see your problem. Both of you can walk into a room and nobody notices anything. You’re lucky.’

Lucky? Sonja and I glanced at each other. This was something neither of us really wanted to think about. I was getting nervous.

Ian held out his hands, turned them over again and again so the pink palms appeared and disappeared. ‘I walk into a room and I know the first thing people think is, He’s black.’

‘No, it’s not,’ said Sonja. ‘The first thing they think is, Bloody hell, he’s handsome.’ And she smiled, walked over to Ian and wrapped her arms round him, as I picked up the plates again.

I arrive at the gates to Ellen’s house as snow begins to fall again, flustered into eddies by a light wind. I climb out of the Jeep and push the gates open, difficult even for me because they grate across gravel, and I see my mother helping Ellen from her car. The outside lights are on, flushing the snow deep yellow in the dark afternoon, and I stand and watch them, shocked. They look so old. Ellen staggers and her blanket falls from her shoulders. Beneath it she is a waif, a shadow. This is Ellen? My mother frowns, reaches for the blanket, Ellen holding her arm. I run across the gravel and they both look up in fear. Wordlessly I pick Ellen up — she weighs nothing — and carry her to the door, my mother following. ‘Where?’ I motion.