Donor, The (3 page)

As months turned into years, yearnings for a
remorseful
Cynthia faded. Will focused all his attention on the girls, hoping they would be content and happy
without
their mother.

Kay
was
happy. She was always happy. How could twins be so different? Both brown-eyed and
blonde-haired
, but on the inside, so very different. Kay came out of her mother’s body with a smile on her face and it never left. Whenever Will looked at her, his blood warmed. Whenever he thought about her, he smiled. She was endorphins to him: chocolate, exercise, all things good.

On Christmas morning, Kay always ran downstairs at 6 a.m. – breathless – to shake, touch and then open her gifts. She’d jump up and down afterwards,
hugging
him, saying, ‘You are the best daddy in the whole entire world. Thank you! I love you!’ This reaction was despite the fact that Will was totally crap at gift buying (and wrapping), dilly-dallying around till the
most-wanted
toys were sold out and buying inappropriate alternatives instead (a basketball instead of a netball, Princess Diaries 1 instead of Princess Diaries 2). No matter what cock-up he’d made, Kay was happy. She’d laugh about it later, but never complain at the time.

On her first day at school, Kay walked into the school building, her head held high. Will wept as she disappeared inside. From then on, as he waited in the playground for the bell to ring, he would keep his eyes on the school door, unable and unwilling to join in conversations about bathroom renovations,
anticipating
the smile that had always stopped him moping.

‘Daddy!’ she would say, running towards him and grasping his legs.

‘Hello, petal!’ Will would say. ‘How was your day?’

She’d tell him all about it on the way home. Janey was being mean (asking for private talks with her other best friend Charlotte). Mrs Jones had given her team a gold star for keeping their table tidy. Archie was in trouble again. She got nine out of ten for a maths test. She had pizza for lunch.

There was nothing complicated about her. Emotionally intelligent is what she was. She knew how she felt and why. She knew what she wanted and why. No second guessing. Even when she started her
periods
, she was matter of fact about it.
I’m feeling
hormonal
, she told her dad.
I’ve written what I need from the chemist on your shopping list.
And that was the end of it.

God forgive him, but Kay was the light of Will’s life. Nothing about her reminded him of Cynthia. Nothing about her upset him. She didn’t despise him. And he would have done anything, anything, for her.

Kay wrote an essay in fourth year. Will found it in a pile of old papers on her desk. It was called ‘The Person I Admire Most’.

Will must’ve read this about three thousand times. It always sent him to sleep with a smile.

* * *

He would often read the essay after lying in bed
worrying
about Georgie, who did not come out of her
mother’s
body with a smile on her face. She screamed herself blue. Will tried to hold her after the nurse had weighed and measured and checked her, but she frightened him with her anger and he handed her back almost
immediately
, taking Kay instead, who’d fallen asleep after two minutes of smiling.

When they were toddlers, Georgie would follow Kay down the stairs on Christmas morning, rubbing her eyes with exhaustion. She’d relish Kay’s excitement, insisting that her sister open all her presents first. ‘It does feel like a teddy bear!’ she’d say as Kay poked at the badly wrapped gift. ‘Why don’t you open it? Oh look what Daddy bought you! Yes, it is beautiful.’ Eventually, she’d open hers, ripping paper quickly,
discarding
, moving on to the next. Will couldn’t recall her showing anything other than disdain for anything he’d ever bought her. (‘Why is this pink? Did you forget my favourite colour?’)

While Kay had waved at Will (smiling) as she walked into school for the first time, Georgie had howled and grasped his legs and yelled. ‘I don’t want to go, Daddy! I want to stay home with you.’ He hadn’t known what to do, except to say, ‘Look at your sister. She’s excited. She
knows
it’s gonna be fun. Why don’t you follow her in?’

‘Why don’t
you
follow her in?’ Georgie said as a teacher took her hand and led her towards the door.

After that, each afternoon as he stood in the
playground
with the mums, a tiny worry would niggle the back of his mind. (What would Georgie’s problem be today? She had the wrong gym kit? Her teacher yelled too much?) No matter what it was, he always tried to be positive, and sometimes he managed – like the time every other girl in the class – including Kay – was invited to Mhairi Magee’s soft-play birthday party. Will sat Georgie down and said it was a mistake, that Mhairi’s mum said she had put an invitation in the schoolbag. ‘Thank goodness she couldn’t find it,’ he told her. ‘You can’t go, because I’ve already booked tickets for us to go tobogganing!’ But mostly, Will felt he failed to react to Georgie’s worries appropriately. They seemed to seep into him and shudder.

In fourth year, Georgie also had to submit an essay about the person she admired most. She chose Gandhi. Will wasn’t surprised. If she ever wrote an essay about him, he would not want to read it.

At least
I
left him a note.

Okay, so I ran away a week before my final exams, but what did it matter? I was dumb as dog shit anyways and had no ambitions other than the one I ran away to do. Plus it was his fault. He drove me away with his lump-of-lard-ed-ness. What did he ever do? What had he ever achieved? If I’d had to come in from school one more time to find him listening to that stupid song ‘Time to Say Goodbye’, and eating crisps, I would have murdered him. If I’d had to eat out with him one more time and wait while he pondered the menu (
What are you having? What would you recommend? Could we share? Could you order for me?
) I would have killed him all over again. Get this, right: he couldn’t even decide where to go on holidays. Every summer, about a week before the break, he’d get us round the kitchen table and play some stupid game. He’d hide a five-pound note under his hand and say, ‘Bessie up or down?’ We’d take turns each year. ‘Down!’ Kay would say enthusiastically, and if she was right, if the noggin of England’s Queen was down the way, she’d get to decide (between a caravan in Arran or a cottage in fucking Arran!). We never went anywhere else, ever. Kay and I were the only ones in our year never to have been across a bigger stretch of water than the one between Ardrossan and Brodick.

He drove
her
away too. I completely understood how she must have felt: suffocated, frustrated, angry, wanting to run for the hills screaming, ‘I’m free!’

I knew he would have been angry with me. He was always angry with me. He’d have yelled, ‘Why? Why me? What have I done? Have I not given you
everything
?’ He’d have wondered why I chose
now
to leave; screwing up my education when he’d done everything he could to keep us in this decent area, in these decent schools. He’d have said to Kay, ‘Have I not been good to her? Have I not spent every spare minute with her, encouraged her friendships, listened when she needed to talk, put up with her tantrums, her rage at the world?’

Poor Kay. I can imagine she would have told him it wasn’t his fault. She’d have made him a cup of tea and put her arm around him and told him she loved him and that I loved him too, in my own way, and that maybe I just needed to do this thing. Maybe he should just let me.

He wasn’t able to. He was worried that I’d harm myself. I’d been drinking for a few years by then, my addictive personality perhaps inherited from my
drug-using
mother. He probably assumed I’d get proper wellied and do myself or someone else in. So he left Kay with his groupie housewife and drove to Central Station. That’s the problem with using someone else’s credit cards. They can find you. Within hours of my departure, he knew where I was and what I was doing. Should’ve withdrawn the cash like Mum did.

I was walking along the platform when I heard his voice. I turned to see him running towards me with that dumb, tearful face. I thought about pushing my way through the crowds of people waiting at each
carriage
door but I didn’t have the strength.

How long had it been since I’d had any strength? A long time, looking back, the first real clue being about a year earlier, when I started avoiding all stairs,
taking
time to consider if I really needed to ascend to my bedroom or to my locker on the second floor at school. As time wore on, my weariness grew. Maybe I needed sleep, perhaps it was that extra vodka down the park the night before, or was it that time of the month? But as weeks grew into months, one thing after another adding to my general sense of ill being, it became
obvious
that something might be wrong. Why did I need to pee all the time? Did the boy at the end-of-year party get me pregnant? (I did a test. He didn’t, which was no surprise as his mother had walked into his
bedroom
before either of us managed to reach the end.) Why, when peeing was an ongoing and urgent need, did nothing come out when I made it to the loo?
Come pee, come,
I would beg.
Why on earth won’t you come?
Did I have an STD? A urinary infection? I was tested for the former at the family planning clinic (all clear) and drank those powder things that get rid of the latter (didn’t work). So why?

And why, when it did come out sometimes, was it like milkshake froth? Why were my ankles swollen? Why was I itchy and nauseous? Why did I have a foul taste in my mouth that no amount of toothpaste or mouthwash would get rid of? For several weeks before my attempt to find my mother, I had spent long
periods
each night googling online medical services, only to discover that I had every disease there is.

‘You’re worrying about nothing,’ Kay said, when I asked her about the milkshake froth one night. I get that sometimes too. I’m sure it’s normal. Maybe
hormones
? And of course you’re tired. You never sleep!’

But as I stood on the platform, my father before me, I knew there was something seriously wrong, not just hormones or lack of sleep.
Ah, fuck
, I thought,
breathless
. I would need to talk to him.

‘Georgie, please don’t do this.’

‘You can’t stop me.’

‘But where are you going? How are you going to find her?

‘I’m going to see the guy she ran off with. Janet told me how to find him.’

‘Where is he?’ I could hear a tremor in my father’s voice. A pathetic tremor that stifled his thoughts:
Why didn’t I do that? Why didn’t I ask Janet about Heath?

‘He’s in HM Prison Manchester.’

This first letter, scribed, tongue out, three years prior to Georgie’s planned visit, had come to no good. Heath hadn’t expected early release, not on first
application
, but it pissed him off nevertheless, so much so that he phoned Cynthia in rehab feeling so sorry for himself that he decided to tell her she shouldn’t bother waiting for him any more (
Leave me and you’ll fuckin’ regret it!
) and that she should start afresh (
Bring me some gear or you’ll fuckin’ regret it.
)

‘I’m out of here Friday,’ Cynthia said. ‘I’ll bring something in then.’

He thought of her as his Cathy. He the dark
brooding
love-her-of-life Heathcliff. They had been destined for each other since they met as teenagers, never quite having fun together, but never quite aiming to either. He would never let her leave him. She would never want to.

‘Cynthia,’ he said. It was the only word that made him weak.

‘Heath,’ she replied, this being their goodbye.

*

The following year, Heath sat at his desk, ruler in hand, and wrote a second letter to the parole board:

As usual, Heath phoned Cynthia before the ink of his rejection had dried. Mobile phones were strictly
forbidden
in the prison, but strictly necessary, and Heath
always
had the most up-to-date under his mattress. This sentence, he had an iPhone. He used it for porn. He used it for games. He used it to organise the
bringing-in
of drugs – he had three types of contact for this on the outside: the dealer (there were three he trusted, two of whom he’d protected during previous sentences), the person who paid the dealer the money (he left money with a friend in Manchester who was very scared of him) and the courier (which the dealer organised, who used various methods to get the gear inside, often involving the support of a corrupt officer). Heath also used the phone to organise punishment on the outside should something go wrong with the deals, arranging for so and so to be maimed by so and so. And, of course, the phone gave him easy access to the love of his life. With a cell phone in his cell, he was the managing director of a fully operational business.

‘Oh, Heath,’ Cynthia said when he called to tell her the bad news. ‘What am I supposed to do without you?’

Cynthia had visited regularly for years, but in this last year, expression had receded from her eyes each time. Her hair had become thin, dry, unwashed, unbrushed. Was he losing her? She had already lost herself.

‘No,’ two men and two women took turns to say from their table. ‘We do not think you are ready.’

The following day, after Heath phoned with the bad news on his recently upgraded iPhone, Cynthia visited him. ‘I can’t wait here any longer,’ she said. ‘I need to get away till you get out.’

Heath was devastated, but he understood how she felt. ‘I’ll get out next time,’ he said. ‘One way or another. You will come back for me?’

‘Of course I will,’ she said.

* * *

The last year had been the slowest yet. In his cell, he tossed his fifth attempt at a letter to the parole board in the bin and lay down on his bed to look at the
photograph
he’d cherished for years. Cynthia, lying in a field. Elbow to head, not smiling at him, but loving him. ‘I know you’ll come back,’ he said to himself. ‘I know you will.’

‘You know a Georgina Marion?’ an officer was asking through the spy hole in his cell door.

It took Heath a few seconds to recognise the name of his beloved’s daughter. ‘Aye.’

‘She wants to visit you. I’ll add her to your list then, yeah?’