Donor, The

by FitzGerald, Helen

  ‘You okay?’ Reece asked. His face was bright red. His eyes tiny pricks of black. He didn’t really want to know if I was okay. He was a bastard.

  ‘I’m going home,’ I said, trying not to think about the gorgeous guy at the bar and the enormity of my arms. (What if I couldn’t hold them up any more? What would happen? Would they drop off?)

  ‘Let me take you,’ Reece said, putting his hand on my back. His hand was as red as his face. Reece was a big red blob.

  ‘I’m never going to fall in love with you, Reece,’ I said, staggering out, my arms a few steps behind me.

  13

  Will had dealt with Georgie’s mood swings for years. Well, not so much swings as heart-wrenching unhappiness which manifested itself either in tearful hopelessness (What if I die tomorrow? If I’m run over by a bus tomorrow I will have lived a shit life!) or in terrifying fits of rage. (Once, she threw a mug of tea at the patio doors because the post was late. Will can’t remember now what letter she’d been expecting.) How on earth, he had wondered, would she cope if anything serious happened? When, aged seven, a friend decided not to come to her birthday party because ‘she just didn’t feel like going to a party’, Georgie vowed never to talk to the offender again, and never did. When an imminent maths test (second year) caused her to yell out of her window to the forty terraces in the street (My father is a fuckwit and maths is a fucking waste of time). When, on a family walk at the nearby wind farm, her new jeans sodden from the rain, she fell to the ground and screamed ‘I hate living here. I am not stepping foot outside again until you say we can move to Spain!’

  So how on earth would this melodramatic knot of anger react to a life-threatening illness?

  It surprised Will, because Georgie’s behaviour changed only marginally. Her rage just turned up a notch to unbridled rage.

  It was after midnight when Georgie finally arrived home from the Bothy, which – unbeknownst to her – was the very place her parents had met all those years ago.

  ‘You look terrible,’ Will said.

  ‘Fuck you,’ she replied.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she lied.

  Will decided, as usual, to let her get away with it. What was the point? And anyway, he had too many other things to worry about. There was mail to not open, bills to not pay. It’d been two weeks since his father had taken away his only income. Since then, he’d watched the reminder notices pile up at the door. The bank had started phoning already, so he’d turned all phones to silent, head firmly in the sand.

  ‘So are you sleeping with Linda Stewart?’ Georgie said. She was holding his mobile phone.

  ‘No.’ He wasn’t lying. They’d had an icky scary screw a fortnight earlier, but her husband had come home the following day and he’d heard nothing since. Technically, they’d slept together but they weren’t sleeping together.

  ‘She’s left a message on your phone,’ Georgie said, pressing loudspeaker on the mobile.

  ‘Give me that. It’s mine,’ he said, but Linda’s voice was already in the room. ‘Will, can I come over after the girls are asleep? He’s still here. But it’s over. I need to see you.’

  ‘Blah … how disgusting,’ Georgie said. ‘I have images. Youch.’

  ‘Please don’t listen to my messages.’ Georgie completely ignored her father, taking the phone off loudspeaker, and pressing 3 to listen to the next.

  ‘Mr Marion, I’m calling from the Hunters and Collectors,’ a male voice said into Georgie’s ear. ‘I have some news …’

  14

  The day before Preston MacMillan of the Hunters and Collectors Private Detective Agency had phoned Will Marion with the good news, Cynthia had been lying on the beach at Dahab, in Egypt. ‘It was the more difficult option,’ she was saying. ‘Leaving was actually the brave thing to do.’

  ‘Bloody right. You’re brave’s what you are. You’re a brave woman.’ She couldn’t for the life of her recall the name of the man she was talking to. He handed back the photograph Cynthia had swapped for his bong. In the photograph were two beautiful little girls, aged three.

  It was his turn with the bong.

  ‘A selfish person would have stayed,’ Cynthia said, touching the photograph.

  ‘Yep.’ The man exhaled thick smoke into the blue sky. ‘You’re not fuckin’ selfish. I can see a mile away you’re a woman with guts.’

  It was Cynthia’s turn again. She tucked her photo into her money belt, took the bong and inhaled. Smoky pride filled her up. What a woman. What a girl. Someone less gutsy would’ve stayed with a man she didn’t love, would have hung around and been a bad mother, ruining those two children for life, as she and Heath had been ruined by their respective screw-ups for mothers.

  ‘What’s your name again?’ she asked the man.

  ‘Peter,’ he said. ‘But my friends call me Peter.’

  They laughed till they were rolling on the carpet that had been set out for them on the sand, a carpet they were supposed to be thinking about purchasing. ‘Can we lie on it for a bit?’ the bloke called Peter had asked the carpet salesman two hours earlier. He and Cynthia had met in the carpet shop, and immediately recognised kindred spirits in each other’s long straggly hair, bright eastern clothing and general fucked-out-of-their-mindedness. ‘We don’t want to buy nothing too scratchy,’ the man called Peter had said.

  The salesman, probably the most patient man in the universe, did as they had asked, laying the carpet on the sand before his beach-front shop, and then watched over them as they smoked on top of it. (His best carpet!)

  ‘I’m Cynthia …’ she said to Peter, holding her sore stomach, ‘but my friends call me …’ It was no use, she couldn’t say it. It was too funny.

  ‘That’s it!’ the Egyptian salesman said. ‘Get off my rug!’

  He pulled it from underneath them, leaving Cynthia and Peter guffawing on the beach.

  Over the last year, Cynthia had probably slept with around one hundred men. She was proud of this fact, considering that she was over thirty, okay, over forty, all right all right, the next one, then, but only just. She looked good with clothes on – slim and tanned – and men rarely changed their minds once they saw the stretch marks, track marks, pancake tits and cellulite underneath her youthful vibrant clothing. She’d lost count exactly, but Peter was probably about number 101 and she gave him the attention he deserved in the tent afterwards, asking for little in return.

  She had never been selfish. She was an artist, yes, could’ve been a very important one if she’d been the type to lick arse, but she was not selfish. Hence, she left Will Marion all those years ago for his sake. Will, as uninspired and ordinary as he was, would be a good parent. He would bring the girls up to be good people. She needed to leave so he could do that.

  ‘Can I sing you a song?’ she asked the Peter guy a few hours later. He was asleep. She shook his shoulder. ‘Do you want to hear me sing? Peter! Peter!’

  ‘What?’ He would rather have stayed asleep.

  ‘I’m a singer. You get a song for free.’

  ‘Excellent,’ he said, shutting his eyes.

  Something had happened to her voice in the years since she’d left Scotland. It almost hurt to sing, and she feared it might have hurt even more to listen. She sang, nevertheless, and Peter had the courtesy to clap (eyes still closed) once she’d finished.

  She lay back down beside number 101(ish) and stared at the roof of yet another tent. She missed Heath the same way she missed heroin. She knew he was bad for her, that he hurt her, that he hurt lots of people, that sometimes, when he was angry, he’d scare her so much she’d lock herself in the bathroom for hours on end. How long till his release now? Would she ever stop loving him? Could she ever stop wanting him?

  She’d never been in love with Will Marion. She liked to try things and at the time she felt she ought to try contentment. In the end, though, suburban family life, a mediocre man and two demanding children could never be more than an interesting
experiment.

  Heath, on the other hand – where was that photograph? Was it in her money belt? Oh God, she didn’t lose it on the beach, did she? She needed a smoke, she found a smoke, lit it, and emptied the belt of its money, passport and snapshots until the small photograph of Heath took the panic away – oh Heath, he had always been much more than an experiment.

  They’d both been fourteen years old when they met at the house in Stoke Newington. He’d been with the foster family for several months – what were their names again? John and Petra? Jane and Peter? – she couldn’t recall because she’d only stayed for a few days.

  ‘Cynthia, this is Heath. He’s the same age as you!’ Peter or John had said. Heath was already six feet tall. And very good looking. And he had fags.

  ‘Give us one,’ Cynthia said when her new foster father disappeared into the kitchen.

  ‘Five new pence,’ he said.

  ‘A shillin’? Give us a fag, I’ll give you a dance.’

  ‘Why would I want to see you dance?’

  ‘Because I’ll do it naked.’

  Obviously it was a deal. In the garden shed, Cynthia writhed like a post-pubescent – excited to show off the breasts and hair that had recently sprouted. Her dance moves had been perfected in her previous foster home. The social workers’ vigilant vetting had ensured that no black or mixed-race children were cared for by the white carers, that there was adequate square footage in the house to accommodate orphans of both genders, but it had not delved as far as the magazine drawer in the family room, which housed a fantastic variety of porn.

  Heath was in love. He gave Cynthia the first of many cigarettes and so began a beautiful romance. In Heath’s attic bedroom at 2 a.m. that night they took their first acid tab together. At 4 p.m. in Boots the Chemists the following day they stole two packets of condoms and three packets of throat lozenges – they had no intention of using the latter. The day after that they stayed off school together. That night after not going to school they wrote a song, smoked grass, kissed, danced, laughed, touched, screwed …

  Oh boy, did they screw. Angrily.

  The day after, they ran away.

  After that, they were in love and inseparable.

  One last year with foster carers – the lovely Meredith, who surprised them by not being afraid of them, even appearing to like them.

  After that they formed a band and lived life to the full. They did experiments, dared each other to break boundaries (Take this drug! Sing that song! Break into that shop! Seduce that girl while I watch!).

  It was passion, Cynthia supposed. Was it passion to want someone so much that you’re willing to put up with the odd beating? To work for him, sometimes, if there was no money for gear, him keeping watch in the living room while she made money in the bedroom? To worry sometimes, that he might go further than a small fracture, that he might go so far as to kill her?

  He spent a total of ninety-five days out of prison between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-three. His offences were mainly serious assaults and drugs charges but his sentences were always extended because of his behaviour inside – rioting, drug use, hostage taking, assaults and one dirty protest.

  During these years, Cynthia visited regularly, but when she turned thirty-three she decided to try and go straight. Or was Cynthia becoming an everyday woman with an everyday biological clock?

  ‘I’ve met someone,’ she told Heath in the visits room of Saughton Prison one rainy November.

  ‘I dare you to marry him,’ Heath snarled.

  So she did, but not because of what Heath said, which was really a warning, but because Will, she thought, might be the answer to her problems. He might wean her off heroin and, more importantly, off Heath.

  She was too scared to visit Heath again.

  At first, Cynthia quite enjoyed being mollycoddled. But Will Marion was a bore and sobriety was over-rated. She was glad when Heath appeared on her doorstep and said: ‘Well, if it isn’t Mrs Marion.’ With Heath to make love to on the sly, she thought, perhaps she could handle the drudgery of suburban life. Perhaps she could handle being a mother.

  *

  As Cynthia lay in the tent in Dahab, Peter snoring beside her, she congratulated herself once more for leaving Will all those years ago. She had made the right decision. She was not cut out for that life, and she would only have made it impossible for Will and the girls. She drew the last of her cigarette and lay back to imagine Heath. The years after she left Will blurred in a drugs haze – how many flats did she and Heath squat in? Who were they living with? She couldn’t recall. But it was fun, wasn’t it? Scary sometimes, like the time Heath stole a car for them to get home from a club and closed his eyes as they approached a red light. ‘If we’re meant to be together the universe will protect us,’ he said. ‘Ten seconds? Fifteen?’ He ignored Cynthia’s screams and pushed her arms away from the wheel with his elbows. ‘If God loves us, we’ll survive. If not, I don’t want to live. One, two, three …’ Turned out, God loved Heath and Cynthia a whole bunch more than Miriam from Jedburgh and the Ford Escort she’d just bought. Then there was the time a punter did something she didn’t like and she protested and yelled and Heath came into the bedroom and beat the man’s head against the window pane until he stopped moving. But being scared was similar to fun, wasn’t it?

  He got life at the age of forty-two – which meant ten years minimum in HM Prison Manchester. Cynthia waited, and waited. She tried rehab. She tried singing again. She tried making new friends at the local supermarket. She tried to make the days pass until he was out. But that last rejection was too much. She decided to deal with his absence the way she had when coke supplies dwindled in Glasgow in 1991. She accepted it. She moved on to something else. She withdrew. She got off the heavy stuff – indeed she stole what was left from the dealers she was living with in Finsbury Park, sold it, and got on a plane.

  Zzzz … Someone was fiddling with the zipper of the tent. ‘Excuse me?’ a man said from outside. ‘Is there a Cynthia Marion in there?’

  15

  It had been two weeks since the weed visited Heath in prison. Since then, Heath had felt jubilant and powerful. As he lay in his bunk listening to the night noises of the hall, he smiled. He’d come in handy all right, the poofter. That’s what he and Cynth used to call him (although sometimes she became a bit defensive – ‘He’s not gay, Heath! Don’t be so judgemental!’). If he wasn’t gay, then what was he? He was pathetically small. Around five-nine, five-ten at the most. And what were those shoulders all about? They’d work for a girl, maybe, but not a grown man. Jesus, why did she ever bother with the guy, dare or no dare?

  ‘Well, if it isn’t Mrs Marion!’ Heath had said when he arrived on her doorstep. She looked about as freshly married as a widow of eighty-five. ‘May I come in?’

  And so Cynthia let him in. Let him take her in his car and in his flat. Told him all about her twice-a-week sex life with Will Marion.

  ‘He tells me he loves me constantly!’ she told Heath, and he laughed. ‘He tells me I have a beautiful flat stomach! He goes on and on, for an hour sometimes.’

  Sounded to Heath like better sex could be had in the prison showers than in their marital bedroom. The guy seemed like a pathetically grateful teenager, without the physique to match.

  God knows how the three years happened. Cynthia went on some nutcase mission to be normal – bonking Heath non-stop in the meantime, of course – and he sat by and waited till she was finished, distracting himself with a few bimbos along the way.

  And now he was back. The little poofter. Back for more.

  Oh, he’d get more all right.

  *

  Heath pointed his torch at the photograph of Cynthia that he’d pinned to the underside of the top bunk. He knew why Cynthia had left eleven months earlier. He’d promised her he’d get out back then and he was sure he would – if it wasn’t for that fucking yap-yap social worker, the greasy little prick. He understood that she didn’t want the days to drag
like they did for him. But he never doubted she’d be there for him when he got out. She knew better than to cross him like that.

  16

  Preston MacMillan wasn’t calling Will’s mobile from his office. There were two good reasons for this. Firstly, he was in Egypt. And secondly, he didn’t have an office. The Hunters and Collectors Private Detective Agency was actually the cupboard off the living room of his West End tenement flat. For his birthday, Preston’s mum had paid Fred, her seventy-year-old neighbour, to decorate the cupboard in preparation for his advanced higher exams. Under her not-very-close supervision, Fred put shelves all the way to the ceiling at one end, a brand-spanking-new Ikea desk at the other and a big swivelly chair betwixt. ‘Thanks, Mum!’ Preston had said. ‘This is really amazing.’

  ‘Nothing is too good for my boy, you know that, don’t you, Preston? You know I love you?’ his mother replied. ‘Now come and blow out the candles.’

  Preston was seventeen years old.

  *

  The detective agency idea had come to Preston one Sunday afternoon two years earlier. He was watching Dexter, an American television show featuring a serial killer. The thing about this killer was that he turned his problem into something positive by only murdering really badass people. Ka-ching! Preston sat up straight. It was perfect. He liked to follow people, women mainly. And he’d been in trouble for it once – oh, but Briony was worth the referral to the Children’s Panel he got for standing over her bed that time. But he also followed males – James Marshall, for instance, who had a better train set than him aged seven. He’d followed him since the train set: as he rode his bike to the secret hideout aged nine, as he played rugby down Giffnock aged eleven, as he kissed Rebecca Gordon behind the scout hall aged fourteen, as he set fire to wheelie bins aged sixteen. He always kept mementos, too. In an old computer box on the top shelf of his new office, a growing collection reminded him of his subjects. James Marshall’s water bottle. Susie Davidson’s locker key. Maria McDowall’s glove. Pauline Bryce’s nail polish remover.