Donor, The (17 page)

Will woke late and sore. Even his penis was bruised. Out of the bedroom (or garage), Linda was a sweet person, a close friend, called him ‘Good Guy’, made muffins. Inside, she was a sadistic nutjob wringing juice from body parts with bare hands.

The house was empty. Will was glad because he had things he needed to do, privately. He went into his office before his morning coffee, picked up his
notebook
(had he left it open?) and sat on the sofa bed. He inhaled deeply and blew the air onto the notebook. ‘4)’ he wrote at the top of page four. He couldn’t write the word. How could he? Then, if he couldn’t write it on a piece of paper, how would he ever do it?

‘Suicide.’

Will felt he’d already done it. Like scratching ‘I love Cynthia’ on the fence of the Bothy after their third date all those years ago. If he hadn’t loved her before that scribe, he felt he must after.

About 55,600,000 search results. Suicide was a
popular
subject. He narrowed the criteria: ‘How to commit suicide safely’, deleted ‘safely’, as it was ridiculous, and clicked on Wikipedia’s succinct guide to the choices available.

Options now forming a list in his notebook, Will pondered, scoring them out of ten thus:

Often sidetracked, Will set to on the death poem required for a Samurai warrior to commit seppuku. One hour and seventeen scrunched sheets of A4 printing paper later, this was the result:

12d. Death Poem

I’ve always found it difficult

To choose the perfect gift

Till now.

Smile about this.

Please, when you open this,

Smile.

Though wrapped with love,

The paper is meaningless

As I’ve only ever lived through you

And this way

I can continue.

He was pleased with the poem. It made him cry. He wiped his tears and wrote:

Okay, here we go! Legal, painless. Just need
compelling
reason to die. (What could be more
compelling
than my reason?) Dignified, not scary, kind, clean, calm.

*

As he googled, he became more and more excited. Dignitas! People went there all the time. Never came back, mind.

Dignitas, the Swiss suicide clinic, the five-star
suicide
clinic, the suicide clinic voted by users as the best suicide clinic in the world. Could it be painless? Could he arrange safe, immediate transplants in Switzerland?

He’d considered being a kidney tourist, why not a suicide tourist? He’d always wanted to travel.

He read everything there was to read about it online. It was a crushing blow when he discovered that he needed recommendations from doctors (15g), which he would never get, and also that the girls may be
prosecuted
for helping him (15h).

‘2/10’ he wrote, downhearted.

So, he thought, perusing the very tidy list which had in fact taken up three pages after the one he’d ripped out earlier …

It’d have to be the gun.

Will opened his daughter’s diary. What had she said exactly?
You’d be surprised how easy it is to get a gun.

If
she
could find one, surely he could? Where would she have looked?

He googled, as usual, and only found one helpful article. It was titled ‘Dial a gun’. Apparently it was possible to get a gun within two hours in Scotland. Unfortunately, the newspaper article did not offer the telephone number. What it did say was that gang members in Glasgow were arming themselves with guns more and more often.

What gangs did Georgie know of?

The Young Mayfield Posse, perhaps? Or The Broady up the road, regularly accused of setting fires to wheelie bins and throwing bricks into the windows of the
dining
rooms bordering the park?

He decided on the latter. Georgie often disappeared down to the park, often came back smelling of drink. It was dark. The local hoodlums might just be there.

The local park offered dog walking for the older residents of Will’s neighbourhood and a drinking and fighting playground for their children and for the youngsters who lived on the other side of the river. They didn’t have to swim over, the poor people from yonder schemes, but they had to walk further, and it was worth it, because in the park there was always something going on.

Like tonight.

A group of ten or so boys aged around seventeen were hanging around the lane that separated the park from the terraces. Swearing loudly and throwing
bottles
at the bench, they noticed him coming and
quietened
slightly. Maybe he was a cop, they probably thought. Or just some middle-class arsehole come to make their lives more interesting.

‘Excuse me!’ Will said before he got too close. ‘I want to talk to the leader.’

The boys laughed. Like they had a leader. Like they weren’t fuckin’ democratic.

‘We’re socialists,’ a boy yelled. ‘You can talk to all of us.’

Will moved a little closer, worried a bottle might come his way, or a knife, or a bullet. ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ he said. ‘Honestly, I just need some
information
. I’d rather not talk to everyone.’

One of the boys stepped forward. ‘Information is expensive.’

‘I’ll talk to you,’ Will said, flashing the ten-pound note he held between his fingers to indicate that, yes, the boy would be paid for his cooperation.

They spoke in the bushes halfway down to the river. ‘I need a gun,’ Will said. ‘Just feeling tetchy, would like to have one in case of trouble, you know?’

The young man burst out laughing. ‘A gun? You kidding me? Why would I know how to get a fucking gun?’

‘Sorry,’ Will said. ‘I just thought …’

‘I know exactly what you thought, you stuck-up prick. Now fuck off,’ he said, taking the ten pounds.

*

Hmm. Okay, that didn’t go to plan. Will decided to try another tack. He went home, got his car keys and drove to the roughest pub in town. It was in the East End, a notorious haunt for Glasgow gangsters. Cynthia used to meet Heath there for a drink. (‘He’s an old friend, Will. I need to keep up with my friends!’ she used to say.)

The pub looked like an oversized shipping container rendered in grey concrete. Will was scared as he walked in, although no one turned around, no one stopped talking. They liked strangers in these parts.

‘Pint, thanks,’ he said as calmly as he could,
downing
it quickly with a trembling hand and ordering another.

A group of middle-aged men spoke seriously in the corner. Looked like the guys in
The Sopranos
, only weedier and scarred and pinched. He waited till one of them went to the loo, and followed him in.

It probably wasn’t gangland etiquette to do business while pissing. Nevertheless, Will decided to broach the subject full flow. ‘You know who I should speak to here?’ he said, pleased with how cryptic he was being.

‘Anyone you like,’ the guy said, not flinching,
shaking
his dick, zipping his fly, and leaving.

He returned to the bar, ordered another pint, and when he felt drunk enough, he said to the barmaid, a woman of around fifty, with bleached hair and orange make-up, ‘You know where I can get a gun?’

The barmaid looked at him like he was an alien. ‘No,’ she said, moving to the other end to take an order.

Shit, this was not going well. It wasn’t easy to get a gun at all. He sipped his beer slowly, his mind racing as to the next option – Gun shop? Rifle club? – when a man in his thirties, with a scar from right ear to lip, sat beside him, whisky in hand, and said, ‘What type you looking for?’

Surprised at the sly and excellent exchange of
information
in the establishment, Will said, ‘Handgun. And bullets. Long as it works, if you know what I mean. I have cash.’

‘Sorry,’ the guy said. ‘Can’t help you.’

Will watched the man leave the bar and walk over to his table. He sighed, downed the rest of his drink and stood to leave. As he did, he noticed a beer mat in front of him, which had a phone number written on it in blue ink.

In the car outside the pub, Will dialled the number. ‘Hello?’ he said. ‘I was talking to someone in the pub just now.’

‘Alexandra Park, just inside the entrance, one hour,’ a male voice said.

The man in the park wasn’t the one he’d met at the bar. This one was barely twenty, wearing jeans and a hoody. He had a suitcase in his hand. ‘Two hundred,’ was all he said.

Will counted the money, handed it over and took the suitcase, not knowing what was inside, hoping, praying, that it would be the gun he had ordered, forgetting that what he’d ordered was the weapon he would use to take his own life.

*

At home an hour later, Will held the gun in his hand. He didn’t know what it was called. He didn’t know how to load it or use it, or anything. It was icy cold, small, scary. He touched it tentatively, put it on his desk, and wrote under section 7:

He searched a long time before the correct image appeared on screen and took his time practising how to load and where to squeeze. Satisfied he had this right, he turned to:

In the head, he decided. Right temple.

He had to be reasonably close to a hospital, or at least he needed to know that an ambulance was on its way. He looked up the average response time for an ambulance in the area – which was twenty-two minutes. Should be fine, as long as he called first. He added:

As soon as the girls became ill, he’d registered as a donor, but he needed to make sure his kidneys went to the right people. He drafted the note he would write:

Dear Sir/Madam,

The last two points were where Will became unstuck. His handwriting became very wobbly as he wrote them down. How could he press the trigger? He imagined pressing it, holding it against his temple and just doing it. Or just not doing it.

And what would he say when he rang the girls? ‘Hey, Georgie! Hey, Kay! Just ringing to say I’m about to shoot myself in the head. Can you come home now? If you hurry, maybe you can catch a lift to the hospital with my dead body?’

They would be devastated. They would be angry. They would hate him. They would hate themselves. And go mad with the guilt.

*

Will hid the gun in his filing cabinet under G, closed his notebook and exploded. Tears spurted from his eyes. Liquid from his mouth and nose. His fists bashed walls. His mouth spurted words: ‘I can’t do it! I’m too scared! I’m a useless arsehole!’

He threw CDs from the shelf, found the one he was looking for and stamped on it. Twisted it. Stamped again. ‘It’s not time to say goodbye.’ He fell to the ground, paused … ‘But my list is all done. It’s all done.’

Twenty minutes or so later, and a little calmer, Will lay on the carpet and hugged himself. Suicide wasn’t just impossible because of his cowardice and fear, the aftermath would be unbearable for the girls. How could he leave Georgie and Kay to deal with it? Could he really do this? Would they cope?

Kay, maybe.

But Georgie? The guilt would eat her up. She was like an emotional satellite dish, picking up signals from all around her, buzzing with worries, constantly
empathising
.

‘What will I do?’ he said out loud. ‘What am I going to do?’

It took him a long time to realise that all he could do was get himself together, make sure the girls were okay and be a father to them. They were okay, weren’t they?

Were they?

Where were they?

He’d been considering suicide for hours. A new day had come and gone. It was getting dark again. And the girls weren’t in the house. Will phoned their personal mobiles – no answer. Most parents would ring friends or boyfriends at this point, but Will immediately rang the hospital.

‘Mr Marion,’ the nurse said. ‘I was about to call you. Georgie and Kay didn’t come in for dialysis this evening. Is everything okay?’