A man falls into step beside the boy and they throw the football between them. The man looks up and his gaze locks onto mine.

It holds me.

The man hugs the boy, whispers something to him and as the kid starts to kick the ball against the back of the beach huts, the man walks towards me. I feel texts buzzing on the phone in my pocket. Fireworks begin to go off all over the city.

He’s next to me now.

‘Do you come here often?’

‘Oh, roughly once every eighteen years.’

‘Funny that. Eighteen years ago tonight, I died,’ he says.

‘Eighteen years ago tonight, I brought someone back to life,’ I whisper.

‘Was it worth it?’

‘I think it was, in the end.’ I reach out for his hand, but instead, I touch his wrist, feeling for his radial pulse, steady and strong. ‘But ask me in another eighteen years, just to make sure.’

Chapter 69: Joel

1 January 2018

Today is my eighteenth re-birthday, though I am also thirty-five.

I have a metal box in my chest, and next year I will need my batteries replaced again. The leads that connect it all up have a habit of stabbing me in the heart when I least expect it. I have mild hypoxic brain damage that messed up my concentration so I’ll never win Mastermind and I have to take pills for the rest of my life.

I am so bloody lucky.

I can’t know when my heart will beat for the last time. No one can.

But looking at the girl who didn’t give up on me makes me feel like a teenager again.

So I kiss her.

Author’s Note

You too could save a life . . . here’s how.

This book is inspired by the night I helped to save a life: Halloween 2013.

The chain of survival worked perfectly. It began with the 999 call-taker who realized CPR was needed and told me what to do. It continued with the despatch of five paramedics and emergency medical technicians from the South East Coast Ambulance Service. They arrived just after midnight and did CPR for twenty-six long minutes before restarting my partner’s heart. And it finished at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, where the medical staff stabilized him, cooled his body to protect the brain, and waited and hoped and celebrated with us when the induced coma ended and he woke up.

They are my heroes.

How to Save a Life is also about the rocky road to recovery: the shock, exhilaration and hard work that follows a life-altering event. Treatment is geared towards healing the body, but for both patients and first responders, the mind takes longer to mend.

I did a first-aid course at work in 2002, but never dreamed I would need it. I am usually pretty uncoordinated, but I was able to give good enough CPR – which means I know you could too.