Donor, The (18 page)

He thought I was staring but I wasn’t. I could see him, standing behind the bushes, watching me. I hadn’t moved for about a half an hour. Still, he watched. I’d
decided
that in a minute’s time – I’d been counting down for twenty minutes – I was going to suddenly stand up. I wondered what he would do. How he would react.

It was time.

I stood up.

I planned to stand still for several minutes. Would he move at all? Not yet.

Several minutes later, I stretched my arms to the sky. Would he find this interesting? He hadn’t moved. He was still watching. Must have found it very interesting.

I decided to walk slowly out of the park. Would he find this fascinating?

He followed me – about fifty paces behind, I
reckoned
– must’ve found it very fascinating.

I decided to run. All the way from Pollokshaws Road to Newlands Park, as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast considering my poor health and smoke-addled lungs.

He ran too, twenty strides behind. Must’ve been enthralled.

I decided to stare in Newlands Park. I sat by the small pond at the dip of the hill, cross-legged, and stared. I decided I would do this for two hours.

Would Preston have the stamina?

The minutes passed more quickly than I expected. In my stare, I didn’t imagine so much as remember. Not bad things, to my surprise. Good things, when things were better. I remembered me and Kay as
toddlers
, playing on the trampoline. She had so many rules about safety, Kay. I ignored them all. Double bounced her, for example. We always ended up
laughing
, despite the injuries. I remembered the first
grownup
movie I watched with Dad. It was
Back to the Future.
We sat on the edge of the sofa the whole way through, both loving it. I remembered those stupid caravan
holidays
on Arran – exploring caves, climbing hills, eating too much at the pub, playing charades, the three of us snuggling in bed. I remembered Dad saying, ‘I am the luckiest man alive to have you girls. I am the happiest, luckiest man alive.’

I remembered that he said this all the time, once a week or more, probably.

Each minute was filled with happy memories.

Occasionally, there were gentle interruptions from the present: a tummy rumble, a baby-filled pram stopping by the pond, a dog pooing on the grass, Preston
shuffling
from his chosen position behind the tennis shed, schoolchildren having a swing before homework, tea and bath, a couple, holding hands.

And then – in the second hour – this:

‘Preston MacMillan, you are under arrest. Put your hands in the air.’

I saw him run from the tennis shed towards the park exit. He was a fast runner.

‘Stop now!’ a police officer shouted, but Preston kept running, through the park gate, across the road and up the street. I ran towards the exit to see what was happening. Three officers were chasing him on foot up the street, one of them gaining on him as he neared the main road at the end, another shouting at him to stop, another radioing for back-up. Just before the intersection, the fastest officer caught up with him and pounced on him. Panting as I reached the scene, I watched as the second officer handcuffed him and as the third radioed to cancel the back-up.

‘What have you done?’ I said as he lay face down on the asphalt.

As the police man-handled him across the road and into the car, Preston told me as much as he could about what happened with the drug dealer. ‘Will you visit me?’ he asked as they pushed him down into the back seat.

I said I would.

It didn’t take Will long to find Kay. She was in the third hospital he called. When he arrived, she was lying across several chairs in the Accident and Emergency Department, knuckles white as she clutched her black phone in her sleep. Was that really Kay? Where had her face gone? The one with expression and colour? And her body? Once strong and vibrant, now a shell.

‘Kay, honey?’ Will said, touching her bony shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’

She opened her eyes. ‘Dad?’

‘Are you all right, darlin’?’

A beat. ‘I’m not. I’m really not.’

He held her as she cried. Tough, positive, non-crier Kay, sobbing in her dad’s arms.

‘Do you know where your sister is?’ Will asked.

‘No. Our mother visited Georgie last night and she ran off not long after. Didn’t come back.’

‘Let’s go find her, darling.’

*

Will and Kay were both in a panic about Georgie when they arrived at the house, but there was no need to worry. She was there, on the sofa, staring.

She didn’t talk at all as Will drove them to the
hospital
for dialysis. And she stared into space, comatose, while the machine went to work on her. Will sat in a chair opposite his daughters, watching blood
moving
through tubes, arms lumpy and throbbing at entry point. They were thin yet puffy, both of them. And yellow. And so unhappy-looking that he would have shot himself right there if the gun hadn’t been filed under G in his office filing cabinet.

This room, the dialysis unit, had become their second home, and Will hated it. He hated seeing his girls tied to their machines, itching for time to pass, four long hours a shot. He hated watching the others come and go. He hated seeing the girls make friends with those whose only common features were illness, depression and this parallel world. Hated seeing them envy the ones who got the call, pity the ones who never would, hated that they both, now, seemed to have lost the will to live. The waiting, the machines, the
sickness
, it had driven them both mad.

When they got home five hours later, Will stopped Georgie from following her sister upstairs. ‘Can we talk?’

‘Okay,’ Georgie got herself a glass of water and sat down at the kitchen table. ‘Let’s talk about the pros and cons of Georgie Marion. There are more cons, it seems.’

Shit. Will slumped into his chair. ‘Let me explain.’

‘Go ahead.’

He paused. How could he explain? ‘I was pissed and stoned,’ he said.

‘Good one. Just like Mum.’

‘More than that. I was angry with you.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘You make me so angry sometimes, Georgie.’

‘Kill me, then. Save Kay.’

‘You know why you make me angry? I realised it after I wrote it down.’

‘Let me think. I’m horrible and mean and unhappy and selfish … what else was there?’

‘Because you’re right.’

‘You should’ve listed that as a pro. Whatever that means.’

‘You’re right. I’m a useless arsehole. I never do
anything
. I never achieve anything. Can’t even decide where to go abroad, so we never do.’

‘So what? You want me to feel sorry for you? Help you?’

‘No, I want you to know I love you so much. Maybe it’ll make you squirm to say this, but you’re my best friend in the world. I love you and Kay the same. But you
know
me. You challenge me. Every day I spend with you is a day I learn something about myself. Usually things I don’t like, but you’re right to show me those things.’

Georgie hadn’t looked at him yet, but she was
softening
, he could tell.

‘When your mother left you took on all the anger. Someone had to. I couldn’t. I had to try and look after you. Not only that, you looked after your sister. She’s actually much more vulnerable than you. More straightforward, less moody, but I can see you in ten years’ time, doing great things, Georgie, being
someone
really amazing … and being my pal. God, do you press my buttons, though.’

‘You are an arsehole.’

‘I know I am. A big smelly one.’

‘A huge smelly one.’

‘I would never choose between you. I would never ever hurt you.’

Georgie paused. ‘Kay needs it most. You should force her, just tell her and that’s that.’

‘I can’t do that. I won’t. And she wouldn’t let me. Will you forgive me for what I did?’

‘Yeah, I will.’

‘Will you promise never to hurt yourself?’

‘If you promise never to read my diary.’

As they hugged, Will whispered to Georgie, ‘You remember how we used to decide where to go on holiday?’

‘Bessie up or down.’

‘Go get your sister.’

* * *

Will, Georgie and Kay sat around the kitchen table. Will’s hands rested side by side, palms down, in the middle. Underneath was a five-pound note.

They were all staring at the hand.

‘Bessie up or down?’ Will asked Kay.

‘Get her to choose,’ she said.

Okay then, Georgie, ‘Bessie up or down?’

Georgie breathed in, held her chin up with her fists, breathed out, stared at her father’s hands, and said … ‘UP.’

Kay bit at the inner lining of her lip. Georgie stopped breathing altogether. Will slowly removed his shaking hands from the five-pound note.

Bessie, Queen Elizabeth, was not there. She was face down.

The kidney would go to Kay.

‘No,’ Kay cried. ‘No!’

‘Yes,’ Georgie said, smiling, walking over to her
sister
’s side of the table and hugging her gently. ‘Yes, yes, yes, my beautiful twin.’ 

Will went to be tested the following day. In the first instance, all the nurse required was blood. So simple, after the long wait, to have a nurse extract liquid and place it in a small plastic bottle. Will watched as she labelled it. He’d always felt confident there’d be no problem. Now, though, he felt terrified. What if he was unsuitable? He willed the bottle of blood with his eyes:
You’d better do the right thing, pal.

He went home that night and tried not to think about it. If his tissue type was compatible, there’d be many more tests to complete: general health,
psychological
well-being. He couldn’t wait to get them done, to lie on a bench in hospital and count down from ten until he fell asleep. When he woke, Kay would be on the road to recovery. And he could look after her, and put the rest of his energies into helping Georgie.

Will, Kay and Georgie watched a goofy comedy that night. Huddled on the sofa eating crisps and
linking
hands, no one mentioned the test. Instead, they laughed till halfway through the movie, when it went seriously downhill, and went to their beds to not sleep.

* * *

‘Will? It’s Mr Jamieson.’ The phone had woken him.

‘Hello, yes.’ Will’s heart stopped.

‘Can you come in to my office?

He didn’t tell the girls. He showered and dressed as quickly as he could and drove to the hospital. How many of these tortuous waits would he have to endure, he wondered. How many would be bad news? Surely not all of them. Surely, this time, the news would be good.

*

Will sat down when asked to. Oh no, the guy was perching his bottom on the edge of the desk. It made him so nervous that sweat patches formed under his arms and on his chest. His hands were trembling.

‘Your tissue type …’

‘Yeah …’ Will asked. ‘What?’

‘It’s not a match. Not even close to a match.’

Had he just heard those words? He had to repeat them to hear them properly. ‘It’s not even close to a match.’ His voice was monotone.

‘That’s right.’

‘Are you sure?’ Will refused to let one sentence tie the noose. He didn’t believe it yet. It couldn’t be.

‘I’m sure. In fact, Mr Marion, I don’t know how to put this, but …’

‘Put what?’

‘After the results, I had a look through your file …’

‘And?’

‘I noticed a small detail in the profiles, something peculiar … it made me want to be sure.’

‘Of what? Just tell me!’

‘Your girls both have beautiful brown eyes.’

‘I know that.’

‘Your wife has blue eyes.’

‘She does.’

‘You have blue eyes.’

Will didn’t say anything.

‘Are you sure Cynthia is the mother?’

‘Of course I’m sure. I saw them come out of her. What on earth are you saying here?’

‘To be 100 per cent I did another test. A DNA test, rushed it through. Will … I don’t know how to tell you this, but …’

‘Just fucking say it.’

‘Two blue-eyed parents cannot have brown-eyed children.’

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry … it’s genetically impossible. And the DNA test confirmed it. Mr Marion, I am so sorry, but you’re not the girls’ biological father.’

Heath had been in his new cell, in his new prison, for over one week. His engagement to Cynthia – and her newfound address in Glasgow – had pushed the
transfer
on a little. And now, here he was, sitting at the desk in his cell, chewing the end of his prison-issue biro. This letter had to be good. Perfect. If he convinced them, he’d be out within a week.

It wasn’t just the freedom he could taste in his mouth, smell in the air, it was her, his Cynthia, waiting for him in this very same city. She’d wangled a housing-benefit flat in Govanhill. Nice old tenement, close to town, two bedrooms, furnished. It would be their marital home. They would put their instruments in one room and – yes! – get the band together again. They’d put a large double bed in the second, where they would do it as often and as imaginatively as possible.

Oh, but it was no good. He’d written this kind of shite before, and they always turned him down. He needed something that would really grab them, let them know he had indeed changed and would not be a threat to the community.

He thought about some of his pals, come and gone. How did they convince the board? One had a dying mother who needed to be cared for – this had helped. One had a new baby. One had been rejected so often they just kind of had to let him out. One had done every course on offer three times over as well as joining the ‘Garden Party’ – i.e. the guys in green shirts who tend the three pot plants in the prison. Heath had the fiancée thing, but he had nothing else.

He needed to think about it. There must be
something
he could write to convince them.

‘Jones!’ An officer had opened his cell door. ‘Visitor.’

* * *

Heath waited for his name and table number to be called at the prison-side entrance to the visits hall. Beside him were eleven other inmates. He could
already
see Cynthia at table six. She looked out of it. Heath was jealous. He couldn’t wait to get completely and utterly shitfaced.

‘James, table three,’ the officer said, and elderly sex offender James headed towards his loyal disbelieving brother at table three.

‘MacMillan, table five!’ Good-looking Preston MacMillan walked towards his crying mother. Heath watched this young boy closely. He was very pretty. A fish out of water. Not only that, but he stopped at Cynthia’s table and spoke to her. She said something to him. How on earth did they know each other?

‘Jones, table six,’ the officer ordered and Heath waltzed over to Cynthia, eyeing pretty-boy MacMillan as he sat opposite her and took her hand in his.

‘You know that guy?’ Heath said, pointing to Preston.

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘He’s the private detective who brought me back from Egypt. He’s a prick, Heath. In the hotel in Cairo, he got me to take my pants off then analysed me like some creepy pervert doctor. I don’t like him.’

‘I don’t like him either,’ Heath snarled, his brain ticking as much as a brain like his could.

On the table behind them, Preston McMillan sat with his mother wondering three things.

Who was that thug Cynthia Marion was visiting?

When would he see the new boy again? Came through prison reception the same time as Preston. Got changed in the dog box next to him. Had an interesting shaped back, like a swimmer’s. After they’d changed into prison uniform, they’d both been escorted to the remand hall. The desk man sent Preston to a cell on the third flat and the new boy to one on the second. Would they meet at mealtime? Exercise,
perhaps
? What memento could he gather in this place? And where could he hide it?

Lastly, Preston wondered if his mother would ever shut up.
It’s my fault, I’ve been a bad mother, I can’t lose you as well! Oh, Preston, what I am to do?

Tuning out his mother as much as possible, he tried to hear what Cynthia was saying to the thug. This was all he managed:

HEATH:
I don’t care about anyone but you.

CYNTHIA:
They looked so sick.

HEATH:
And what about us? You think
we’re
doing well?

*

As the prisoners were being escorted back to the halls some time later, Preston sidled up to Heath and said, ‘So, you know Cynthia Marion?’

‘What’s it to you?’ Heath said.

‘Her daughter is a friend of mine. Sounds like you were talking about her.’

Heath stopped dead. ‘You eary-wigging my
conversation
?’

‘I suppose I was.’

‘Tell you what. Sign up for hairdressing this
afternoon
. I’ll fill you in on everything I know there.’

*

The hairdressing unit was a classroom opposite B Hall. Around twenty desks dotted the room, equipped with plastic-wigged heads. Implements were handed out under the strict supervision of the officer in charge – scissors, combs, brushes, hairdryers, dye, bleach,
clippers
.

In his seat next to Heath, Preston listened as the officer tried to remain macho while teaching the basic skills of hairdressing.

‘And how do you know my fiancée?’ Heath asked Preston as they followed the instructions regarding washing and massaging the head.

‘I don’t really.’

‘You didn’t meet in a hotel in Cairo?’

‘We met on a beach in Dahab.’

‘And in a hotel in Cairo?’

‘Listen, what’s your name again?’ Preston started.

‘Holy shit,’ Heath said midway through his attempt to give a number 1 to the blond wig before him. ‘I’ve hurt myself here!’ Heath had somehow managed to make his finger bleed.

‘Wait there,’ the officer said, worried by the blood that was spurting from Heath’s finger. I’ll get the
firs-taid
kit.’

Unsupervised, Heath immediately grabbed Preston by the neck in a stranglehold, bashed his head
face-down
onto the table and put his knee on his back. He had the clippers in his other hand, which he held at Preston’s head.

‘You fucked my fiancée?’ he said, turning the
clippers
on.

‘No!’ Preston said.

Heath shaved a neat line in the middle of Preston’s head, from his neck all the way to his forehead.

‘Tell me what you did.’

‘She just asked me to touch it.’

Heath began to shave a second line to the left of the first.

‘I don’t like it when people lie.’

‘I’m not lying.’

‘You calling
her
a liar?’

A third line was completed. Heath liked his work. As always, it was meticulous, but it wasn’t doing the job. He turned Preston around so he was facing him, held him firmly by the neck with one hand, grabbed the hairdryer, prised open Preston’s mouth with his
fingers
and placed the large round nozzle into his mouth, stretching it, filling it.

‘You want to tell the truth now, you perverted prick?’

Preston couldn’t speak. The hairdryer was in his mouth. He struggled. Why was no one doing anything to help? What was taking the officer so long?

Heath turned the hairdryer onto high.

Preston’s legs wriggled as hot air blasted into his mouth and lungs. Tears streamed from his eyes.

Heath took the hairdryer out. Preston gasped. His tongue and throat were badly burnt.

‘How about now? Anything come to mind?’

‘She asked me to. I didn’t want to! I didn’t like it! I promise. I’m not a liar.’

‘No, and I suffer from low self-esteem. We all do.’ Several frightened-looking apprentice hairdressers laughed.

Heath put the dryer back in Preston’s mouth, pushing it in further this time. Knee on his chest, he pinched Preston’s nostrils with his fingers and turned it on high again.

Preston’s legs wriggled for a while, then stopped. His face – and the thick bald stripe on his head – turned bright red, then grey, then blue. The men in the room watched, terrified. Was he dead? Should they do something? If they did, would they die too?

‘How’s that bleeding?’ the officer said, returning to the room. Heath pulled the dryer from Preston’s mouth just in time. He fell to the floor.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ the officer asked, looking at Preston as he writhed and gasped on the ground, his hand over his scorched mouth.

‘Cannae stand the sight of blood, the wee poof.’

Preston rolled around the floor, moaning.

‘Get up, you fearty,’ the officer said, before tending to Heath’s cut finger.