Donor, The (4 page)

Finding my mother wasn’t my only mission. Hers was a love story that kept me alive. I knew she’d run off with the love of her life. Janet had leaked it one
afternoon
in the supermarket when I was nine.

‘Have you ever heard from my mother?’ I asked her as she weighed courgettes. Dad was at the deli counter, so I felt safe asking. I think Janet was a bit surprised. I probably should have said hello first.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Where did she go?’

‘I don’t know, honey,’ she said. ‘Love’s a funny thing.’

‘It is,’ I said, not knowing what she meant, but
hoping
she’d think I did and tell me more. ‘Is she still in love, do you think?’

‘No idea. That Heath Jones is a strange one. Not sure what she sees in him. But she never was able to get him out of her system.’

After that, I fantasised about my mother’s love for a strange man called Heath Jones. He was always in her system. How romantic. I wanted to see that kind of sacrifice and love first hand. And then, I wanted to find it myself. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl. Mum had found it. She’d sacrificed everything for it. I wanted it.

Four hours is a long time when your feet have
swollen
to the size of basketballs, when you’re freezing cold and breathless and waiting for the toilet to be vacant again so your can retch into the sticky bowl. I was
desperate
for air, but when I staggered off the train and made my way to the taxi stand, it merely fuelled my nausea. The driver was so nervous about my physical state that he stopped three times on the way to the prison.

HM Prison Manchester, previously known as Strangeways, was the home of the quickest hanging in history – 7.5 seconds from cell to death – and had housed Britain’s best-known serial killers: Moors
murderer
Ian Brady and the GP Harold Shipman. I’d read all about the place, imagining my mum visiting her lover there, hooking her fingers through the bars to touch his, saying, ‘I will wait for you, my darling.’ I imagined her writing him letters with secret messages involving symbols and code words – ‘How 4are you?!’ might mean, for example, ‘Next visit I will smuggle in Belgian chocolate.’

It hadn’t been hard to find out about Heath. All I had to do was ask Janet, who Dad couldn’t stand – he said it was because she talked too much, but I knew it was because she was Mum’s best friend back then. He’d blacklisted anyone who’d been onside with Mum.

‘Sure I know where he is,’ Janet said. ‘He’s been in prison for years. It was all over the papers.’

She googled his name as I looked over her shoulder. Within seconds I was staring at the big square frame of Heath Jones, my mother’s lover. The picture was taken from a fair distance. He was walking out of the High Court. It was hard to make out his features exactly, but you could tell he was handsome, in an ‘I might kill you any second’ kind of way. Every feature scowled. His nose: flared in anger. His mouth: tense and closed and alien to smiling. Eyes: the kind newspapers love to print – pure hate, pure evil.

‘Thanks, Janet,’ I said. I went home and set about arranging a visit.

*

I must have fallen asleep in the taxi. When I woke, the driver was gently shaking my shoulder.

‘Are we there?’ I asked, unable to sit up properly. Heath Jones was expecting me at 1 p.m. Sweat was pouring from my body. I felt like I might die.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re at the hospital. You’ve been making sounds. You look bad. You need to see a
doctor
.’

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, he was right, and I got out of the car and staggered into the A and E. It was two hours before a doctor examined me.

‘You have high blood pressure,’ he said. ‘And there are a few other things we’re worried about. We want to run some tests.’

And this is where Will’s story began. Not sooner than this because it’s not a tale about a frustrated artist, or a scorned lover, or a new man, or a struggling single father. It’s a story about kidneys. Two bits of squidgy brown flesh, till now the companion of steak in his mind but from this moment on linked with the
survival
– or not – of his daughter. Georgie’s kidneys had packed it in, the doctor said when the test results came back. They were still in Manchester, and the only words Georgie had spoken to him were, ‘I’ll find her as soon as I’m better.’ As the doctor explained further in his depressing white hospital office, Georgie’s face fell,
because
she realised that time might never come. She had kidney disease. Her liver was suffering. It was rare in teenagers. It was established, chronic, incurable,
progressing
rapidly. Georgie needed more than
medication
. She needed machines to sustain her for now, and a transplant to sustain her for longer. But the chances were slim, her type rare. It was a genetic disease, caused by the gross mismatch of Will and Cynthia – how many more ways could they have been mismatched? – which meant Kay was screened in Glasgow almost immediately after her sister’s diagnosis.

Was Will more scared waiting to hear about Kay’s result? Did he sleep less? Eat less? Tremble more?

Was he angrier when it came in? Or was it a natural reaction to the doubling of misfortune?

Did he cry more when they told him Kay would have to wait just as long?

And when he punched the door of his
never-renovated
kitchen, was it because both of them had rare types? Or was that jagged fist hole for Kay alone?

If bad luck comes in threes, Will felt he’d had all his.

Georgie’s body was dying.

Kay’s body was dying.

And he was the only probable and willing match.

Locked in the upstairs bathroom, shirt off, black marker in hand, he drew a kidney shape on his left side and another on his right.

‘These are my kidneys,’ he said. ‘And there’s only one spare.’

Almost as soon as I became ill, I got a new boyfriend. He presented me with a comfy armchair and I
accepted
. He was dull and predicable, a replica of my father. He liked to feed me but he couldn’t cook. He liked to be with me but he had nothing to say. He liked to give but he always took more.

Oh gurgling machine.

I’d have liked a different kind of boyfriend. One who moved, for example. One who touched me and didn’t just stick it in me and suck and drip and turn my arm to noisy lumps. But I couldn’t have a different kind of boyfriend. I probably never would. What would I say? ‘Not Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Sunday, Jim (for example), I’ll be busy then.’

‘We could have dinner after,’ he might suggest, and I’d have to say, ‘But where/what kind? ’Cause there’s all sorts of shit I can’t eat now. Like bananas. If I eat a banana I’ll probably die, but then I’ll probably die anyways.’

‘What about a walk?’

‘I’d love to, Jim, but I’m exhausted, like all the time.’

‘What about we watch a movie on one of the days in between?’

‘Nup. I’ll be too busy drinking gallons of water and feeling like crap, and anyways I’m yellow. Do you really want a yellow girlfriend?’

Bye bye, Jim (for example).

I named my new boyfriend Alfred. He looked like an Alfred. A square white robot with wires, some very red, some less so. Sometimes I imagined him talking to me and it was always with a deep Alfred-like voice (
Now, now, Georgina, you know you should stay still.
) Alfred who sucked me out and filled me up again and would do so till I died, or till someone else died first, a very special someone, with a limited Gucci-bag-kidney like mine, the type you see in the ‘Get her style’ section of magazines, carried by a B-grade celeb who joined a waiting list and paid thousands to
just get that damned bag
in order to improve her standing.

It was more boring than visiting one of Dad’s
housewives
for coffee or reading a full non-fiction book or listening to Dad read his pre-proposal for an outline of a short film. He read it to us when we were ten. Fifteen minutes had never been more excruciating. What was it about again? All I remember is a leaf. It was a not very interesting brown.

I couldn’t even smoke in there. Had to use foul
nicotine
chewing gum that made me hiccup.

The doctor in Edinburgh gave me a leaflet when he had told me I needed Alfred. On the front of the
leaflet
, a woman was sitting in a chair like mine smiling happily as if it was the best place in the world to be. ‘You should try this!’ her smile said from the glossy page. ‘You should try it now! Even if it’s very
expensive
!’ The woman was at least forty. Perhaps for her it was fun, compared with fighting face lines and
ordering
toilet paper in bulk. But I was sixteen. I had parties to go to, drugs to take, countries to see, love to fall in. I bet the woman on the brochure didn’t even have the disease. I bet when they wrapped the photo shoot she said, ‘Thanks, Maxie!’ whisked the plug from her unpunctured arm and went out shopping while eating a banana. Wish they’d have asked me to pose for it. I’d have done the Vicky and then the middle finger and then the loser sign and then scowled, ‘They are all liars! This is fuckin’ dreadful, I hate it and so will you!’

Some say boredom enhances creativity. Sickly
children
go on to direct Oscar-winning films and pen Booker-winning books. I didn’t give a fuck about
writing
books or directing films. I wanted to go down the offie and then to Club Boho. I wanted to shag
someone
again. Would Alfred really be the love of my life?
That’s it, that’s it, right there, Alfred, yes.

There is something very unsexy about
depending
on someone. If I pulled him out, I’d regret it. So I wouldn’t. I’d semi-decline there, four times a week, four hours a go, and be thankful for Alfred while
hating
the very sight of him. For most people, I supposed, this is what marriage is like.

I’d try hard not to look at Alfred, scouring the
people-filled
room instead. There’s:

EVIE. She is fifty-two. Too old for her name. She has short bright red hair, probably a hangover from her art-teaching days. Her granddaughter bought her a portable DVD player and she watches BBC
adaptations
of Catherine Cookson novels on it. I can hear the dreary dark rain through her earphones.

JIMMY. He’s forty. He’s heard a rumour he’s next to go. He rubs his phone as an expectant mother rubs her bursting nine-month belly.

PEGGY. She’s very old. I don’t know how old. Being here doesn’t seem to worry her. Even though she knows she’s never getting a new one. I expect she sits still at home in the same way. Here, at least, she has SAMUEL to talk to.

He’s around thirty-eight. He gets angry when
people
get the call inexplicably before him. He shouts at nurses, things like: ‘What is the system? How can this be? Did he use his connections? Did he
pay?
’

Samuel was talking about RON, forty-nine. He was very rich. Knew people. How come it only took three months for him to be whisked away and inserted with a red lump of life?

And, of course, there’s Kay, sitting beside me,
reading
her books, taking notes carefully and optimistically, as if one day she will actually finish school, graduate, be a physiotherapist. As if.

*

‘Georgie, how you feeling?’ Like clockwork, my father had arrived. Looking at his eyes evoked the same
feelings
as looking at Alfred. So I didn’t.

‘Bored,’ I said, staring blankly over his shoulder.

‘I brought your iPod. Put some new tunes on.’ He paused, sat down, fidgeted. ‘Georgie, I’m going away for a few days.’

‘Oh?’ I didn’t believe him. He sometimes made grand gestures at a change of routine (
We’ll go to Ireland for the weekend …
We never did … never got further than Arran …
I need to get out of this job …
Didn’t.
I’m going to write a horror film, starting next week …
Never did …
Let’s play badminton Thursdays, as a family …
Yeah, yeah).

He paused. ‘I’m going to find your mother.’

I may have flinched a little, but within seconds my default ‘whatever’ had taken control again. Like he would get off his arse and do something meaningful. Like I didn’t know him too well. He’d go home after the visit, put on the telly, drink too much wine and forget all about it.

I had a coping strategy. I wasn’t going to think about any of it any more. I wasn’t going to worry about my blood and how dirty it was and where it came from, and who it came from, any more. After Dad left, I decided to go out and find a boy. His name would not be Alfred.

*

‘What colour would you say I am?’ I asked a boy who went by the name of Eddie. As usual, I felt tired and nauseous, but I was on a mission.

‘I dunno. Normal.’

‘You’re a smooth talker, Eddie.’

‘Pink, then, like very nice roses.’

That was better. Eddie had a job and a flat. I wasn’t interested in either.

My attempt to fall in love with him went something like this (before I list the events, let me just tell you outright that it failed):

Eddie and I drink too much beer in a pub in the Southside then get a taxi into a club in the town, where we drink too much vodka.

Eddie dances badly, but likes the way I dance. He holds me by the hips, hooks one leg through mine and tries to rub me with the top of his quad.

Eddie says we should get out of here.

In the taxi, Eddie puts his hand under my shirt and feels my nipple. I’m so tired. I don’t like having my nipples felt. Tweak tweak pinch, like ow, like why?

We arrive at his flat in Shawlands and, still determined to fall in love, I follow him up a paint-peely close and into the hall, which has three bikes in it.

What do you like about me?
I ask him and he says it’s my tits.

In the bedroom, Eddie undresses. He’s very thin and white. I can see at least two ribs. He has either shaved his pubic hair or he’s eleven. His penis looks like a nose.

What first attracted you to me?
I ask him.
It was your tits,
he says, pulling my bra over my head without bothering to unclip it and catching my top lip for a moment along the way.

He pops one of what he likes about me in his mouth. I feel sick. I don’t like how he’s gnawing at me. What am I? A breastfeeding mother?
Unlatch,
I say, so he does, a little taken aback, before heading towards the lower region, taking my jeans and pants down, kneeling.

Am I actually going to vomit? I don’t like how he’s lapping at me.
When you spotted me on the dance floor did you think I was beautiful?
I ask, but his mouth is too busy to say more than
Mmm hmm.

Eddie is very quick at what he does next. Jack
rabbit
bang bang bang and he’s so thin I can hardly feel him on top and he sighs and slides off and says
Ah!
and lights a fag and I say
Well?
And he says
Well what?
And I say
What was it that attracted you to me?
And he says
God, haven’t we done enough talking already?
And oh I need the bathroom now but it’s already coming out as I say
I’m never going to fall in love with you, Eddie.