Page 4 of The Book of Heartbreak

Munu had cautioned me against getting too attached to Carly, and I did my best. Mum had found her on a Facebook group and hired her despite the fact that she probably had no qualifications to look after children.

Carly would pick me up from school with sheer joy every time she saw me.

She was firm but warm, and her house maintained a constant aroma of fish fingers and nail polish.

Sometimes a word or a smell lands me back on her squeaky leather sofa – where we watched movies with ratings above my age while I snuggled against her like a kitten.

Munu would perch on my shoulder to complain and, like the fool I was, I’d shoo her away.

‘You’re her job,’ she’d protest. ‘You’ll end up heartbroken if you don’t wise up now.’

I was eight when Carly left.

Her departure was my first true heartbreak. The earth quivered around me when I learned she was gone, the rumble foretelling my first death.

After three uneventful years, I ventured into friendship again at eleven, but it soon ended even more disastrously than my first attempt in the playground.

Again, I hate to say that Munu had warned me.

‘I do not trust this Aurelie,’ she kept saying, but her advice fell on deaf ears.

Aurelie was a lovely friend, until we both developed a crush on the same boy.

I was willing to step aside, but before I could, Aurelie chose to discard our friendship to claim Thomas for herself.

My heart was shattered once more. Twice heartbroken, twice dead.

This time, the ground seemed to split beneath me, each crack resonating with my despair.

I hoped it would be the last. Surely, no pain could surpass betrayal by my best friend.

Yet, only two years later, Ferit, Mum’s most enduring flame, crumpled my heart like a ball of paper.

I had stupidly accepted him as a father figure despite Munu’s pleas, and this unwise decision cost me dearly.

When Ferit finally slammed the door and left for good, my mother and I both collapsed under the weight of our heartbreak.

But of course, unlike me, Mum didn’t die.

Not until today.

As my disobedient heart stops beating for the fourth time, the quivering of the earthquake diminishes, and the physical pain withdraws.

My eyes adjust to the sticky darkness of the Inbetween, a realm of drifting shadows – caught between life and the Otherside.

This is where I always end up when I die, stranded between fading and returning, until Munu pushes me back into the world of the living.

The Inbetween looks like a lighthouse, although I’ve never stayed long enough to scrutinise it properly. Time is scarce here.

I find myself on the terrace that wraps around the rotunda, separated from the starless night by wrought-iron bars. The lantern on the stone wall behind me emits a weak, silvery light that struggles against the engulfing darkness.

I grip the railing and lean over. There is no sound, no movement, yet there’s a palpable sense of something churning beneath. For a moment, I consider diving in to uncover its secrets. It could be the space between the planets, or an ocean of dreams.

But before I can move, Munu’s familiar chatter fills the silence like birdsong.

‘Why didn’t you fight the curse, canim?’ She’s struggling to hold back tears, I realise with shock. Munu never cries. She insists on setting a strong example for me.

‘It just happened,’ I whisper, and gaze into the void, where the impatient night ticks like a clock. Whatever unfolds here fits into a mere blink in the world I left behind.

‘ Rule number two: channel sorrow into rage ,’ Munu recites. ‘That might have spared you, had you applied it. Instead, you gave up, didn’t you?’

I don’t bother pointing out that there’s no use in repeating rules for survival when you’re already dead.

Besides, how could I possibly convert the raw shock of my mother’s loss into fury?

Mum wasn’t exactly Mother of the Year; most days, her eyes would slip over me, as if she couldn’t tolerate the sight of me.

But things were different once – I would fall asleep in her embrace, lulled by tales of Istanbul and gentle strokes as she brushed my hair.

‘I-I don’t think anything could have saved me,’ I stutter. ‘M-Mum is dead.’

It was a battle destined to be lost.

Munu’s eyes go wide for a second, then she shakes her head, lips pursed. ‘Well, she’d been gone a while now, hadn’t she? You could barely call that living. Let me guess. Alcohol poisoning, was it? Couldn’t she have drunk less, at least for a couple more months?!’

‘It was an accident,’ I say coldly. Sober or not, I loved Mum, and that was my fault. Not hers.

‘I’m sorry, canim.’ Munu flutters up to face me.

Her red lipstick and pink dress emit a neon radiance, but the shadows trailing behind her linger as a reminder that she belongs to a place beyond the railing, pulsing like a hungry mouth eager to swallow us both.

‘But I warned you that things may come to this. Didn’t I? ’

Munu seems to hate everyone except me. She claims her life was mundane, though she admits she was quite naughty – perhaps the reason she ended up with assignments like me instead of eternal rest. The work she does has made her so intolerant of the living, it doesn’t surprise me that she never liked Mum.

Let her cry! Munu used to complain when I’d consume myself with worry about her .

Why do you care if she ate anything? She isn’t your pet, for Heavens’ sake, she’s your parent.

To Munu, Mum was a threat to my survival, especially after what happened with Ferit.

She never forgave Mum for letting him into our lives.

But I know it was my own weak heart that’s to blame, nothing else.

‘Fine. I fucked up again, okay?’ I whisper into the shadows, clinging to my anger, ready to rub it like a bulging blister until it bursts.

I brace myself, expecting a rebuke for exhausting my last resurrection, but Munu refrains from chastising me further.

‘What’s happened has happened.’ Her eyes are full moons as she looks at me and calms her tone. ‘You’ll be fine. You’ll move on.’

Is it possible to move on from the death of your own mother?

And at what cost, if such a thing may be achieved?

But I’ll get no answers here. The dark obscures everything around us.

I’d be naive to expect the Inbetween to offer any insight.

Had Munu’s bosses – the Hidden, whoever they are – asked me for feedback, I would’ve told them it would be preferable to end up dead in a remote, exotic location, and not in an abandoned lighthouse.

But they never seem to care, and it remains a mystery as to why they bothered assigning Munu to help me.

‘We are so close to your eighteenth birthday – to eliminating the curse,’ Munu goes on. ‘You’re better off without her for this final stretch.’

‘Stop,’ I snap. I sometimes forget how brutally honest my friend can be. I can barely muster the energy to explain to Munu that this loss is unlike anything else that killed me before. Losing my mother is a sudden, crushing blow. A bottomless well I’ll tumble into for as long as I live.

‘Only six more months, and you will survive,’ Munu continues as if I haven’t spoken. ‘You’ll be normal – nearly – and nothing and no one will be able to break your heart after that.’

‘I don’t think anything else can break my heart any more,’ I mutter.

‘Well, precisely!’ Munu says, and she looks happy.

Munu makes it sound all pink and fluffy, but the truth is that in six months, on 10th December, I’ll be eighteen, and the curse will be no more. Of course, freedom comes with a steep price, one I’ll never feel ready to pay. But if I survive until then without another heartbreak, I will live.

‘You can’t afford another mistake, canim.

You need to think about yourself, and no one else.

’ Munu rushes through the words, without even waiting for a sign of acknowledgement.

‘Once you’re back with the living, no matter how tempting other people’s efforts at comfort, you must ignore them.

Don’t let the grief cripple you. You can’t be vulnerable.

You must live, Sare. You’re my most special assignment. You must survive.’

I wouldn’t call it surviving. When I wake up on my eighteenth birthday, the curse will claim my heart and rob me of the ability to love.

For Munu, a life devoid of affection is the ultimate victory.

I should be relieved, happy even, for I’ll never have to brace the pain of another heartbreak once the curse sees through its grim promise.

Though no matter how hard I try, I can never throw off the pervasive sense of future loss.

‘I’ll be okay.’ I hardly believe it myself, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Munu has her doubts either.

‘Shut yourself away. People can’t be trusted. They bring nothing but misery, anyway.’ She looks up to the dim lantern. ‘Keep the flame of anger alight. Anger won’t break your heart. Hold on to your grudges as if they’re your shields. Try to channel all that grief into resentment.’

‘Enough – please.’ I’m in no state for lectures I’ve heard a thousand times already, nor for formulating a grand survival plan, or even pondering my next steps upon return.

I certainly don’t need to try to resent my own mother instead of grieving for her, especially since I did so much of that when she was alive.

‘Just do what you need to do,’ I implore in a voice heavy with desperation. ‘Send me back.’

For the last time , I think. I should feel grateful. But right now, I’m just numb.

Munu nods softly. Despite her tough-love approach, I know she will never break my heart.

‘Okay, canim. I’ll count to five, in the name of the Hidden and their superiors.’ Munu reaches for my left hand. I open it, gazing at the three scars in my palm, now joined by a fourth – the deepest, a perfect circle. A dot, as if it marks an end.

I look at it, and I remind myself that I have no other chance left. I have no one.

Munu blows on the scar and a cool wind sweeps through me as if I’m made of dust. ‘I weave you back to life,’ I hear her say, and I am pushed and pulled, drawn and erased, torn and mended as she counts. ‘One, two, three—’