Read Donor, The for Free Online Page B

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.

10
     
     
    Kay was fast asleep and Georgie was ‘out with friends’ – which for some years had been code for ‘out doing God knows what’ – when Will took a newly purchased notebook into his office. He cleared a space on the desk, opened the notebook at the first page and wrote the heading ‘1) Cynthia’. The fact that he had written the number ‘1’ scared him, because this indicated that there were subsequent options; that if this did not work he would need to move on to numbers 2) and 3) and – God forbid – 4), or even 5). He was unwilling to consider failure. He would succeed. He would do everything in his power to get that woman’s kidney. Okay, so the plan was not foolproof. He might not find her. She might be dead. If alive, she might not be compatible. He might not be, for that matter. No! Of course he would be. He had always been able to do everything for those girls. He would be able to do this too. From the moment he received the diagnoses, Will just knew that he would be compatible and refused to consider otherwise.
    So both parents saving both children was the best option – and should be attempted in full before any others were considered.
    A week earlier, Will had spoken to the specialist about the test. ‘Not yet,’ he had said. The doctor, Mr Jamieson – who always had Van Morrison on repeat on the CD player in his office – nodded when Will told him there was no hurry. ‘We can do that any time,’ Will said. ‘Just dotting the i’s. Of course I’ll be suitable .’
    Sometimes a dreadful scenario crept into Will’s thoughts, one where he has already been tested and is ready to donate, but there is no other donor available. In this