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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.’

9
     
     
    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,