Lawrence Weller, a chronic asthmatic, died on the floor of his parents’ bathroom. It was the day of the party celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. </p>
   He was found by his fiancee, Amy. She screamed until her throat was too sore to go on, and then fell to the floor next to him, sobbing into his still chest. </p>
   He was lying on his back, wide-eyed, as if he had been asked a perplexing question; his blue lips slightly parted, as if he had one last thing to say.</p>
   The bathroom door was nearly taken off its hinges as Lawrence’s brother and father ran in to see the horror they had half-expected since Lawrence had nearly died of pneumonia when he was four years old. And there it was next to the shower unit - the dead son everyone loved, the boy they had watched grow in to a man, so many years of always triple-checking they had packed his inhalers whenever they travelled outside the house - and now he was a grown-up ; they had hoped and prayed he was over the worst of the asthma attacks. </p>
   But fate had decreed that the biggest tragedy of their lives would happen on a day when the family home had never looked happier - plastic banners of <i>Happy Anniversary </i>festooned the lounge and dining room; balloons of every colour and shape adorned every ceiling corner. Music filled the place. Love and life were supposed to be in the air, not the chilly claw of the Reaper.</p>
      ‘Someone call a bloody ambulance ... now, now,’ Lawrence’s father shouted. He moved Amy to one side; his other son cradled her, and then he tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation – he had learned First Aid to try and add another skill to the family health arsenal; in case a day like this one came along. But he had always assumed he would never need the skill; never feel his child’s cold lips beneath his. His child was gone. And he knew it even as he blew deep and added compressions to the chest area. My poor boy, he wanted to say, my poor, poor boy. But he kept trying to breathe his life in to his son.</p>
   The paramedics arrived a few minutes later and took over the job of attempted revival. But it was futile. And after approximately fifteen minutes, one of them looked at his watch, wrote the time of death on a pad and turned to Lawrence’s parents.</p>
   ‘I’m so very sorry,’ he said.</p>
   Lawrence’s father hugged his wife and felt her tears soak his shoulder. He looked at his son’s face – he interpreted the wide eyes as desperation, and was suddenly drenched in guilt; assuming his boy had died silently hoping his dad would find him and save him – wasn’t that a father’s duty, to protect his children? And then he looked at the blue Salbutamol inhaler in Lawrence’s left hand. The lid was still on. He wondered whether his poor boy had been too overcome to even take a single breath of the vital steroids.</p>
   The paramedics insisted the family and friends leave them to ‘take care’ of Lawrence’s body. The house emptied reasonably quickly; lots of tears and hugs were exchanged. Amy was taken, by her best friend, Louise, to the spare bedroom where she and Lawrence had been due to spend the night. </p>
   And after an hour or so, when the body had been taken away – Lawrence’s parents followed the ambulance to the hospital – the house fell in to complete silence.</p>

     Michael, Lawrence’s brother, and Sam, Lawrence’s best friend, drank copius amounts of brandy and stared in to space. Michael could hear Louise and Amy upstairs talking and crying, and he wondered if he should offer them some of the alcohol too. But he couldn’t move. His arms and legs felt something other than numb – they felt disappeared. His body felt gone. Just his eyes left. How would life go on now, he thought.</p>
   Sam wanted to do something, say something. He was a teacher; used to giving information and solving ‘issues’. He wanted to believe he could offer a shred of detail that might be remembered as a defining point of hope in this hellish scene. But instead he sipped more and more brandy and kept thinking of Lawrence’s last words to him, just a couple of hours ago, ‘I need to talk to you in a minute or two. I really need your advice.’</p>
   What had been so important? Nothing was now. What ever he needed to say was lost for ever. His best friend, the boy with the frail lungs but the biggest heart, was dead. </p>
   He felt alone. He had never even told Lawrence how much he cared for him. Why didn’t men ever do that, he thought, I must tell my friends I love them, and soon, I must. He drank more brandy, leaned across the arm of his chair and patted Michael’s arm, gently smiling and nodding. Michael looked back at him and tried to return the smile.</p>
      Upstairs, in the spare bedroom, Amy and her best friend, Louise, lay next to each other, holding hands. One moment silent and the next clutching each other as emotion and shock poured out in violent sobs.</p>
   ‘We had just ... we had just decided on a wedding date,’ Amy said.</p>
   ‘I am so sorry, Amy, so sorry. He loved you so much. You were lucky to have him. We all were,’ Louise whispered.</p>
   Later that day, when Lawrence's parents had returned from the hospital - his mother had been prescribed a sedative, which she shared with Amy - Michael, Sam and Louise began to take down the anniversary decorations, quickly filling bin bags with the remnants of the short-lived celebration.</p>
   Sam began cutting the necks of the balloons with kitchen scissors, gently allowing the air to leave; rather than loudly popping them.</p>
   ‘No, no, Sam, stop,’ Amy said. ‘Not that one. That was the last one Lawrence blew up. I want to keep it.’</p>
Sam handed the silver balloon to Amy and hugged her, taking care not to crush the prized possession.</p>
    She took the balloon up to the spare bedroom, carefully wedged it between a chair leg and the wardrobe, and put on Lawrence’s pyjama top and took a deep breath of his natural aroma from the sleeve. The scent triggered a sudden vision of him struggling to catch his breath, pulling at his collar perhaps, and trying to call out for help. She clenched her eyes shut and re-ordered her thoughts to the sight of him smiling above her, kissing her forehead and handing her a cup of tea in bed, as he had done on that very morning. And then she crawled under the duvet and stroked the pillow where his head should have been.</p>
   Shortly after, Louise looked in on her, said she would see her tomorrow, and left.</p>
   The following week was like a fever dream to Amy. Michael called her every day, as did Louise and Sam. She tried to find things to distract her, to avoid thinking about the look on her lover’s face as he lay dead on a bathroom floor. </p>
   The nights were the worst, alone in their bed, in their home - wall-mounted sketches by Lawrence they had framed (he had been an architect) and various holiday photographs. They only served as painful reminders of how there was no future to come.</p>
   ‘Do you feel able to write a eulogy?’ Michael asked her, two days before the funeral. ‘It wouldn’t have to be much. I just thought it might be a chance for us all to talk about how much he meant to us.’
   ‘Of course. I want to tell him about, you know...where ever he is.'</p>
   Michael smiled and nodded and stroked her hand.</p>
   Amy barely slept over the next 48 hours, trying to think about what to say. How she could verbalise the depth of her love. </p>
   Throughout each day since Lawrence had died she found herself returning to the hat-box under their bed, where she had placed the silver balloon for safekeeping. It was beginning to look a little diminished – slight crinkles were slowly appearing around the tied neck – and she wanted to find a way to preserve it - not just for a little while longer, for as long as she lived. The balloon held what might have been Lawrence’s last breath. </p>
Amy spent some hours looking up preservation techniques online: Formaldehyde? Dry ice? Some form of jelly?</p> 
   She eventually dismissed each one as either unworkable or ridiculous and concentrated on the eulogy.</p>

   She began with a poem by EE Cummings, a favourite of Lawrence’s, and the one they had talked about using at their wedding. </p> <i> I carry your heart with me, I carry it in my heart </i></p>
   She cried as she wrote down the poem and glanced at a desk photograph of the two of the them, hugging by a Christmas tree. Taken by Louise two years before.</p>
   Eventually, at two o’clock in the morning, on the day of Lawrence’s funeral, she was finished. She re-read the words one last time before falling asleep. And was woken by the radio clock alarm in what felt like minutes later.</p>
   Amy dressed in the black clothing she had bought for this awful day. She wanted to cover herself in darkness; let what ever celestial being(s) might be ‘out there’ know how crushed she felt; how much she blamed it/them for ruining her life. </p>
Michael and Louise called to confirm the time their car would be collecting her, and then she sat and stared at the sketch Lawrence had finished fairly recently. A self-portrait – bright eyes and a sweet smile. Amy had asked him for it as an anniversary present.</p>
  She hadn’t eaten that morning, but instead made a third cup of coffee and sat on the bed. She pulled the hat-box on to the duvet and opened the lid. The balloon was sagging and now looked about half-empty. She cried again. There was no way to preserve a balloon and even if she knew how, it was too late for this special gift. She knew what she had to do. She went to the kitchen and brought some scissors back to the bed.</p>
   She had watched Sam gently cutting the tops of the other balloons during the wedding anniversary clear-up. The air from each one had flown out, some of it making Sam’s fringe rise up. </p>
   Amy lifted the silver balloon out of the hat-box with the care of someone holding a newborn baby. She pressed it against her cheek and then kissed it.</p>
   ‘I will always love you, Lawrence. I carry you in my heart,’ she whispered, her mouth against the balloon skin.</p>
   Then she picked up the scissors, pinched the tied neck and made a delicate cut. Air started to leak out. Amy held the balloon near her face and closed her eyes to allow Lawrence’s breath to wash over her.</p>
   And then she heard words in the breath: Lawrence’s voice, like a recording.</p>
   She squeezed the leak shut, swallowed hard and stared around the room. What the hell was going on? </p>
   Amy ran around the flat, checked the answer phone and the computers. Where had that come from? Then she sat on the sofa and held the balloon up again. She was shaking as she let the last of the air dash across her face. And there were his last words, his last breath.</p>
   ‘I’m in love with Louise ...’
