Donor, The (11 page)

For some reason, Will had skipped ahead to the fifth page of his notebook and was now writing on it.

There were many reasons for this, in fact.

First, he had phoned his parents to thank them for being tested. This is how the phone call went: 

Will hung up.

Not long after the phone call, Will hit Georgie. He’d done this a few times when she was younger. Usually a pathetic tut-tut to the hand which shocked her into submission and tears but punished him much more. He always felt so guilty and ashamed afterwards that he threw all parenting skills to the wind and gave Georgie whatever she wanted for at least a week, so long as she tried to forget what he had done. He’d never hit Kay. She’d never pressed his buttons the way Georgie had.

Somehow, corporal punishment had seemed less inappropriate when Georgie was much shorter than him. This evening, he had started a fight with
virtually
a grown woman – wrong in itself – but even more terrible considering the unwritten rule that children should never hit their parents back.

She’d pushed him to the limit again.

That old excuse.

She’d called him a failure.

No reason to threaten her …
One more word young lady!

She’d said if it wasn’t for him maybe Cynthia would never have turned to drugs.

Still not grounds to grab her and hold her against the kitchen wall with his arm.

If it wasn’t for him, she would be healthy and happy and Kay wouldn’t be at death’s door.

That was it. That was enough. How dare she?

* * *

It happened several hours ago, but his hand was still red from the connection with his daughter’s face.

He began chanting a skipping-rope game the girls used to play when they were younger.

No missing a loop. If you do you’ll get no soup. No excuses will be taken less you go to Doctor Bacon.

He was drunk, which was probably the second
reason
for his note-taking on page five of his jotter.

Georgie
, he wrote in one column.

Kay
, he wrote in the other.

Using his ruler, he drew a line down the middle.

He underlined the names with the ruler.

He made two columns under each name, headed
Pros
and
Cons
.

Before writing anything further, he took another swig from the second bottle of red wine he had opened that night.
Where was she?
he wondered. After the face slap, he had slid down the kitchen wall and cried like a baby. He hadn’t seen or heard anything for several minutes. During that time, she must have left. He’d got up eventually and checked every room. She was no longer in the house. She’d left the front door open. She was somewhere else altogether. Where had she gone?

He returned to his work in progress … the pros and cons of Georgie Marion, sixteen years old.

The pros and cons of Kay Marion, also sixteen.

Where was Kay? In hospital still, resting as she had been instructed, with Mr Jamieson and the nurses
taking
better care of her than he had. Making sure she took her medication and that she ate properly and rested and would recover in time for her exams.

Will took the last swig from the bottle. The
notebook
was beckoning but he needed another bottle and a joint. He couldn’t do this without dope.

Where was it?

When had he last had some? Years back, Linda had come over with a small bag. ‘Here, Good Guy,’ she’d said. ‘You need to chill out.’

He rummaged through the filing cabinet in the
corner
of the room. Didn’t he put it in the D file a few years back? Clever, hey? D for dope. Could’ve chosen G for grass or C for cannabis – the options were
endless
– but he’d gone for D all those years ago as
nothing
else in his life seemed to start with D. What in his life started with D? Hmm. Dry cleaning – who’d file anything about dry cleaning? And anyhow, none of his clothes required ironing, let alone dry cleaning. There was something in his life starting with D now, he thought. Death.

It wasn’t in the D file.

Oh, that’s right, he remembered. He’d moved his stash when he realised the girls might go in there for dance timetables and put it under M (for marijuana), where it would rest alongside mortgage documents that were of no interest whatsoever to them.

Aha! A small plastic pocket next to his latest
mortgage
reminder. It had one of those press-shut plastic seals at the top. It was still there, and inside was a small lump of greenery.

What was he doing? What had he just written down? Since the diagnosis, the option had been in the back of his mind, he supposed, in the same way that
winning
the lottery always had, or smashing Cynthia over the head with a large metal object had, but he never thought he would knowingly take it from the back and move it to the front, that he would let it travel to the pen in his hand so it would be written down in his notebook, that he would now be anaesthetising
himself
in order to consider it seriously. It was ridiculous. He should never have let the idea enter his mind at all. He should rip that page to shreds.

But what was he doing? The dope! Ah, there it was. He was on a roll to make a roll and would finish one thing at a time.

He had some tobacco in a pouch taped under his desk. And some papers in an old box filled with street maps of Glasgow, Arran and York (he’d taken the girls to York for a weekend three years earlier. It was pretty stressful. Georgie made it known that she found
everything
about the city boring).

Licking the papers and sticking them together felt nice, a ritual that had always soothed him.

Still, he should never have hit her.

He placed some of the dry tobacco on the paper then crumbled some of the stale weed on top of it, like pepper. He fashioned a roach from the corner of a box of multivitamins on his desk and rolled the neatest joint he had ever rolled.

Just like riding a bicycle.

That guy was following me. I’d known since the
corner
of Buchanan Street and Argyle Street but I didn’t want to let on. He was about ten metres behind me now. Every time I turned my head slightly to the left or right, he stopped and pretended to look in a shop window. Either he wasn’t very good at it or he didn’t care if I saw him.

The cold air pinched at my left cheek. I hadn’t looked, but I could feel the shape of my father’s hand imprinted there. Prick. I should have hit him back. Why didn’t I? Maybe because I’d never seen him so out of control. Oh, dull composed father of mine.

‘Georgie, your mother is never coming back,’ he’d said when I was three and again and again till I was ten. ‘She likes bad things. We should count our blessings,’ or some such shit.

‘Georgie, you’re sick, darling. You need dialysis.’

‘I know the whole list thing is hard, but we need to be patient.’

For the first time ever, he completely lost it:
yelling
and screaming in the hospital, trying to hit that wretched feral stray who was my mother. That’s what happens when you store shit inside for a lifetime. It rots, then explodes.

It had been the most exhausting and upsetting day of my life. When I got back to the safe haven of my home, the last thing I needed was more crap. The
fucking
bully. I don’t even know what I said that annoyed him so much that he whacked me on the head.

I was in front of the St Enoch Shopping Centre now. It was after midnight and the town was deserted bar the two of us. I’d been drinking since the slap, my usual response to stress, but the alcohol had merely numbed me a little, like it does when you have a cold. I needed something more. As I heard Preston’s footsteps on the concrete behind me, I wondered if I might be able to have some fun with this. Hell, I needed some fun.

My mission to find love! It was at times like this that I turned to my newfound diversion from the facts of my life, which in twenty-four hours had increased by three million to the power of crap.

‘Reece? Sorry to wake you,’ I said. ‘But I need to talk to someone.’

I walked all the way to his flat in the Merchant City. It was in one of those old warehouses that people think are trendy but are actually just old warehouses filled with poxy boxy flats. His was on the first floor.

I deliberately left the foyer door open, gently wedging a rock under it with my foot. On the first floor I snibbed the front door of Reece’s flat before walking into the living room as he had instructed me to do over the intercom.

He had everything that I wanted ready: some more of that powder we’d had at the Bothy before it made me walk into a pillar, and his dick, somewhere under those godawful pyjamas.

I ingested the powder first, but my anger and
adrenalin
diffused it, as it had the alcohol.

‘I need some more,’ I said. ‘That’s doing nothing.’

Reece placed a small lump on his glass coffee table and cut at it with his Bank of Scotland card. He lined it up neatly for me and handed me a sawn-off straw.

‘Do you mind if I get into something more
comfortable
?’ he asked. I almost exhaled all the coke with my laugh. ‘What could be more comfortable than those things?’ I said, looking at his blue flannelette number.

‘I’ll just be a minute.’

I leant back into the sofa – black leather, of course – and closed my eyes. Where was Preston? Had he come in yet? Where would he hide? I focused: my ears are bionical, oh yes they are, and they will seek you out!

Some whistling from the bedroom: Reece.

A tap dripping in the kitchen: the tap.

Nothing …

Nothing …

Whistle …

Tap …

Ah, there … amongst all that, a tiny cough. I waited … hggh hgggh, again … muffled this time. He’d probably put his hand over his mouth.

I waited, then opened my eyes and looked in the direction of the cough. Ha-ha. It had come from the hall cupboard, just outside the living room.

‘Reece? Are you okay? Are you going to be long?’

‘Just a couple of minutes!’ he yelled.

‘While you’re in there, I’m going to the toilet!’ I wanted to give Preston time to find a better hiding place. What would he see from the hall cupboard?

Alas, no wee. And while vodka and Coke and coke had done nothing to enhance my mood, it had
certainly
worked on my good health. Don’t close your eyes, G, I said to myself. Close your eyes, and you’re dead meat.

I wiped, although there was no need to, and entered the living room again.

‘Reece!’ I said, ‘I’m back in the living room!’

‘Just a minute!’ he said. What on earth was he doing?

Standing in the middle of the living room, I looked carefully at the possibilities. Was Preston behind the dark grey curtains? (Who would choose dark grey curtains? Did Reece not have enough dark grey in his Glasgow life already?) I couldn’t see a bulge … maybe Preston had decided it was too obvious.

I tiptoed over to the sofa. Perhaps he was lying behind it. But I didn’t want to know for sure so I didn’t peek. Not knowing added to the excitement.

Oh, and there was a bamboo screen, separating the dining table from the sofa/television area. That’d be a good choice, I thought. Stand behind that. A bit risky, but there were clothes hanging over it so perhaps he could use those to disguise himself.

Reece was back.

‘Oh my fudge, you look wonderful!’ I said. He had changed into a nurse’s outfit. Not the one he wore at work, mind – all sensible trousers and ironed shirt – but a PVC nursey number, with a zip all the way from the bottom to the top. The bottom only just hid his bits, which I feared may have been harnessed (or not) by a girl’s thong. At the top, he wore a padded bra, probably with chicken-fillet inserts to enhance his cleavage. He had patterned white stockings (the kind with a seam down the back of the leg) and white
high-heeled
shoes (the kind a bride might wear).

On his head was a small nursey hat thing. Around his shoulders a stethoscope.

‘How are you feeling this evening, Ms Marion?’ Nurse Reece said. He had lipstick on. I have to admit, it suited him. Green wasn’t the right colour eye shadow for him, though. Perhaps I’d tell him one day.

‘I’m feeling very poorly,’ I said, still trying to decide on the whereabouts of my stalker. ‘I’m so glad you’re here to help me, nurse. But my eyes can’t cope with all this light.’ I dimmed the lights down so far that – yes – I could now see the reflection of Preston’s arm in the bay window. Not wanting Nurse Reece to see the same, I closed the grey curtains.

‘What do you think is wrong with me?’

‘I think you need a big cock in your cunt,’ he said.

‘Really?’ I said. ‘Is that it? All that work and that’s it? Straight onto the cock-in-cunt thing?’

He lifted the dress a little and there it was – the cock that he intended for my cunt.

‘Oh yeah, baby.’

‘Oh yeah, baby?’ I repeated. ‘Goddam it. Get down.’

‘What?’

‘Sit on the sofa. You’re a bollocks nurse.’ I slowly unzipped the dress all the way and took it off him. He looked hilarious dressed in nothing but stockings, heels and a hard on.

‘Let me be the nurse,’ I said. ‘Kneel on the couch and do as I say.’

*

I do hope Preston appreciated all the effort I made. Bum high in the air, pointed right at his screen hiding place. Careful unveiling, not too much, not too soon. Cunning use of filthy talk that he could easily
interpret
as being just for him. Heels on no matter how tricky the position. After Reece had reached his
Code Red! Code Red! Code Red!
I locked myself and Reece in the bathroom long enough for Preston to exit the flat.

‘I thought you said you were never going to fall in love with me,’ Reece said as he lathered his pubic hair into a Santa beard. Mascara and green eye shadow was running down his chubby cheeks.

‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘Have you seen my pants?’ God, Reece was gross naked. He wasn’t overly fat, but he had man boobs. And his dick had shrivelled into the inch of gathered foreskin. Blah. I had to leave, forget the pants.

I would never fall in love with Reece.

No, but I might just do so with Preston.