‘My ex gave me his kidney’

When Sabrina Timms split up with her fiancé she hoped she could start a new life without him – but he ended up saving hers

Lying in bed, staring at the curtains billowing from the breeze outside, I sighed. This was the fourth night in a row I was home alone while my partner, Dan Burdick, had gone out to play with his band.

I glanced at the clock next to the bed: 3am. I was too angry to sleep. “We got engaged to spend time together,” I thought, miserably. “But I’m by myself again.”

It seemed I spent a lot of time alone lately, and it wasn’t fair. I had a busy job and two children, Sierra, then 13, and four-year-old Hope, to look after, and I needed Dan, 30, to help. “I thought he was going to be different,” I muttered, sadly. We’d been together seven years and I thought we’d have been married, and settled by now, yet here I was back to being on my own again.

Only now I’d had a glimpse of happiness and didn’t want to have a husk of a relationship. I wanted to be with Dan, spend time together and be a family. What was the point of us being together if we lived separate lives? I began to cry, realising our relationship was falling apart. But I needed to save it, somehow. I didn’t want my girls to see us unhappy, or arguing. My parents had been divorced, so had Dan’s. That meant we knew first hand how miserable that made everyone… We’d been so happy before. I’d met Dan at a party, and even though I was five years older than him and a single mum to Sierra, he was different.

Most guys were scared off when they found out I had a daughter. Dan respected me. “You’re a strong woman,” he’d said, reaching for my hand. “I admire that.”

Dan had taken me out to nice restaurants and to the movies and often included Sierra on our dates. He’d play his guitar to us when he came round, and his talent and passion for music were inspiring. He was easy to fall in love with, and so when Dan asked me to marry him, I didn’t hesitate.

But a few months later I discovered I was pregnant with our daughter, Hope, and decided to put the wedding on hold. When our baby was born in January 2007, Dan couldn’t wait to be a full-time dad and stay home with the kids. But he was also trying to launch his music career and as soon as I walked through the front door he would run off to record with his friends. We had to share a car and