The Donor, Page 5

  ‘Remember what we talked about, hmm?’ Karen whispers. It’s an intimate moment and I feel awkward to be watching them.

  ‘I know,’ Meg says. ‘And I will, I promise.’ She takes one of Karen’s hands and presses it briefly to her heart, and I clench my fists by my side.

  ‘Bye, then,’ I say. Karen looks surprised by my bluntness, but is too polite to say anything. She kisses Meg again – enough, already! – and says goodbye.

  ‘How was the theatre?’ I ask Meg.

  ‘Amazing!’ Meg’s eyes shine. ‘We should go. Karen says you can get season tickets.’

  Bully for Karen, I think, wondering a) whether a theatre season ticket is more than a football season ticket, and b) if Steve could ever be persuaded to give up his beloved Arsenal games.

  ‘Is Dad at work?’ Meg asks. I look at the clock, stalling for time. Actually, he is … but I’m going to have to tell her sometime.

  ‘Sweetheart, Dad’s gone away for a few days.’

  The alarm on Meg’s face is instant. ‘You’ve split up, haven’t you? Is it because of me?’ Tears form in the corners of her eyes.

  ‘No! He’s just staying at Dan’s for a bit. Like you stayed at Karen’s.’ Just without the theatre tickets and the shopping trips, I think. Meg looks doubtful, and I mentally cross my fingers. ‘There’s nothing wrong, sweetheart, I promise.’

  I wait till Meg is asleep before I call Steve to tell him she’s home.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Karen told me.’ Resentment seeps through me. Did she text him? Call? Or did they meet up to share a bottle of wine, Karen moving a little closer to my husband with each sip?

  ‘Now she’s back,’ I say, ‘are you coming home?’ The pause that follows gives me Steve’s answer before he even speaks.

  ‘I need to think about stuff,’ he says. ‘Lizzie – the way you were at Karen’s … it’s a side to you I’ve never seen before – never even knew existed.’

  ‘I lost my temper. It won’t happen again.’

  ‘It isn’t just that, though. Karen’s lost her whole family – she’s all alone – but you don’t seem to care. You used to be so kind, and now … I don’t know who you are any more, Lizzie.’ He puts down the phone. I’m left listening to my own heartbeat, as I press the silent receiver to my ear. A mix of grief and anger swirls in my stomach.

  Karen may have lost her family, but she’s not having mine.

  Chapter 8

  Looking for Answers

  ‘I don’t want you seeing Karen again,’ I tell Meg, the next day. We’re eating breakfast, the empty place at the table a constant reminder of Steve’s absence. Meg’s been quiet and withdrawn ever since she came home, hunched over her phone texting someone she won’t let me see.

  ‘What?’ Meg’s spoon clatters into her cereal bowl, milk splashing onto the table. ‘Why?’

  Because she’s trying to take you away from me, I think. ‘I don’t think it’s good for her,’ I say instead. I was awake all night thinking of the best way to approach this. I feel guilty, pretending it’s Karen I care about, but I think it’s the only way to get through to Meg. ‘She’s been through a terrible trauma,’ I tell Meg, whose mouth is still open in outrage. ‘She needs to grieve for Jake and his dad – I don’t think it’s healthy for her to focus all her attention on you. She’s …’ I think of a word I read once in a magazine. ‘Projecting,’ I say, the strange word clumsy on my lips.

  ‘She’s what?’

  ‘Projecting. Moving the feelings she has for her son, to you. It’s not healthy.’ For either of you, I want to add. I see the hurt in my daughter’s eyes, and waver a fraction.

  You’re doing the right thing, I remind myself. I need to put things back the way they were before Karen came on the scene. She and Jake did a wonderful thing for Meg, and we will always be grateful, but that doesn’t earn Karen a place in our lives. I don’t want her here.

  What about what Meg wants? a voice in my head says.

  ‘Karen says I’m the only good thing to come out of all the sadness,’ Meg says. She looks at me, her eyes pleading. ‘She needs me, Mum, and …’ she pauses, and even before she finishes her sentence I know it’s going to hurt. ‘I need her.’

  ‘You’ve already got a family, Meg!’ It’s out before I can stop it, and Meg’s eyes narrow.

  ‘This isn’t about what’s healthy for Karen at all, is it? You’re jealous! My God, Mum, you’re jealous of a woman who lost her whole family!’ She shakes her head, and the disgust on her face makes me cry inside, but I can’t deny it. It’s true. I am jealous of Karen, and of the closeness I saw between her and Meg. And of the respect I see in Steve’s eyes when he talks about her. Jealous of a grieving mother – what kind of horrible person does that make me?

  Meg pushes back her chair. ‘I’m going to my room.’

  ‘You haven’t finished your breakfast.’

  ‘I’m not hungry any more.’ She stomps out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  What a mess I’ve made of all this. All I want to do is protect my family – that’s all I’ve ever tried to do – but instead I’ve driven them away.

  I try to distract myself with housework, clearing out the kitchen cupboards and pulling the sofa from the wall to hoover behind it. But all the time I see Karen Edwards in my head. I need to show Steve and Meg that Karen isn’t the perfect woman they think she is. Somehow I need to make them understand that all my instincts are screaming at me to stay away from this woman. But how do I do that, when she’s done nothing wrong?

  I get out my laptop and log on. I don’t even know what I’m hoping to see, but I have to do something.

  Karen isn’t hard to find. Google brings up dozens of news sites about the tragic crash that ended the life of her husband, Michael, and their seventeen-year-old son, Jake.

  Karen and Michael had given Jake the motorbike for his birthday, a few weeks before. ‘If only we’d got him a PlayStation instead,’ Karen is quoted as saying. ‘A laptop – anything but that bike.’ The quote runs with a picture of a distressed Karen in her lounge, holding a family photo. Despite my feelings about her, I feel a lump in my throat.

  I scan the articles. I learn that Karen’s husband was the biker, and that Jake had been obsessed with them from a young age as a result. Karen refused even to sit on a bike. I learn that the accident was no one’s fault; an icy road, poor visibility, a new rider. Jake had lost control, skidding into his dad. Michael Edwards died at the scene; Jake a few hours later at the hospital, his mother by his side.

  The doctors would have had the conversation as Jake was dying. Mrs Edwards, I know this is the worst possible time to ask you to make decisions … They would have talked about organ donation, about the lives Jake could save. Whichever organs had survived the accident and were suitable for transplant; his eyes, his kidneys, his liver … and of course, his heart.

  I stare at the photo of Jake. He’s standing beside a bike with a helium balloon tied to the handlebars. Happy Birthday! He’s wearing jeans and a hoodie, with Converse trainers and a bunch of leather bracelets tied round his wrist. He’s grinning from ear to ear – obviously chuffed to bits with his present. He looks like a nice kid.

  I swallow hard. What am I doing? I imagine what it would be like if it were the other way round – if Meg had died instead of Jake. I imagine how empty our lives would be. And I imagine how much it would mean to me, to know that Meg’s death had saved someone else from the heartache I was feeling. I’m sobbing hard when I pick up the phone and dial Samira’s number.

  ‘Hiya Lizzie, y’all right? I’m about to go into the ward – can I ring you later?’

  ‘Okay,’ I say, but I can’t hide the gulp that follows, and there’s a change in Samira’s tone.

  ‘What’s wrong? Is it Meg? Shall I call—’

  ‘No – no, Meg’s fine,’ I reassure her. ‘But … Samira, I’ve done something stupid.’ Silence fills the phone line, and I picture Samira, standing outside the hospital, wo
rried she’ll be late for work. I speak quickly. ‘I’ve been talking to the mother of Meg’s donor. I know – I know! I ignored your advice. And I’m not handling it well, Samira. Meg adores her, and they’re spending so much time together, and – I’m not proud of this – it’s making me feel like an outsider.’

  Samira sighs. ‘I did warn you, Lizzie. Look, I hate to do this, but I’m going to be late if—’

  But now that I’m confessing, I can’t stop. ‘I googled them,’ I tell Samira, ‘and I’m the one with the problem – not them. They look like a nice family. He got a bike for his seventeenth birthday and was killed out on the road with his dad a few days later – it must have been awful.’

  ‘Um, Lizzie …’

  ‘I saw photos of him – he was just a boy, Samira! Why am I finding this so hard to—’

  ‘Lizzie!’ Samira’s shout stuns me into silence. ‘Listen to me. I have to go into work, but I’m going to call you the second I get a break, okay? You’ve got the wrong end of the stick.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I shouldn’t even be telling you this, you know that …’ Samira sighs. ‘But Meg’s donor wasn’t a seventeen-year-old boy. He was a thirty-five-year-old man. Don’t do anything, okay, Lizzie? I’ll call you the second I can.’

  The line goes dead and I hold the silent phone to my ear, my heart pounding. Jake wasn’t Meg’s donor?

  Then who the hell is Karen Edwards, and what does she want with my family?

  Chapter 9

  Missing

  ‘Meg!’ I shout up the stairs, taking a step towards the hall. Then I turn back, so thrown by what I’ve just learned, that I don’t know where I am. What should I do? Who is Karen Edwards? My fingers hover over the keys on my phone. ‘Meg!’

  I’m trying to make sense of what I’ve just found out. I saw the newspaper reports. The accident was just as Karen said it was – she told us the truth.

  Except for one important detail. Meg’s heart didn’t belong to Jake Edwards.

  Who do I call first: Steve, or the police? Or should I go to the station in person? That would be better – they won’t be able to fob me off if I’m standing in front of them. ‘Meg!’ I call her again. She’ll have to come with me – I’m not letting her out of my sight again.

  The police will want the letter Karen sent – the letter that started all this. Where is it? My breath is coming in bursts, fast and shallow, making me light-headed. I stop for a second, place my hands flat on the kitchen table to ground myself.

  ‘Calm down,’ I say out loud. I might not know who Karen really is, or what she wants, but at least I’ve uncovered her lies before anything terrible happened. Or have I? My chest tightens at the thought of the days Meg spent at Karen’s house. I assumed Meg was angry with me for butting in, but what if something dreadful happened at Karen’s house?

  I stop myself. No, Meg’s obsessed with Karen – that’s part of the problem. That’s why she wouldn’t believe me when I said something wasn’t right. Well, she’ll have to believe me now. I take the stairs two at a time and burst into Meg’s room without knocking.

  ‘Meg, this is going to come as a bit of a shock …’ I look around Meg’s tiny room. Is she in the loo? I step onto the landing, but the door to the bathroom we all share is wide open – there’s no one inside. ‘Meg?’ I say. And then I see it: her bedroom window, wide open, the photos and trinkets on her windowsill pushed to one side. Meg’s gone.

  My mobile is still in my hand, and this time I don’t hesitate. I call 999, leaning out of the window as I talk to the operator. Meg’s bedroom is above the kitchen, a flat-roofed extension put on by the people who lived here before us. By the back door is a bench, easing Meg’s drop down to the patio. Did she go when I was on the phone to Samira? Or sooner, when the hoover was on and I wouldn’t have heard her window open? I look at my watch. Meg came up to her room at breakfast time and it’s almost midday now – she’s been gone for hours.

  ‘I see this is the second time your daughter’s been reported missing in the last two weeks,’ the police operator says.

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘And she was found safe and well at a friend’s house, is that right?’

  ‘Not a friend!’ I say angrily. ‘She’s been lying to us!’ I stumble through the whole story, but it sounds insane. Even though the operator tells me the police are on their way to Karen’s house, I call Steve.

  ‘The police want me to stay here, in case Meg comes back,’ I tell him, once I’ve told him everything. ‘They need to take another report.’

  ‘I’ll go to Karen’s,’ he says, without hesitation. A wave of relief washes over me. He believes me. We might have our differences, but when I need him, he’s there. For me, and for Meg.

  Waiting is agony. The police arrive – the same pair as last time – and they fill out the forms, asking all the same questions as last time.

  ‘You know all this!’ I say, frustrated. ‘Shouldn’t you be at –’ I can’t bring myself to say her name, ‘– that woman’s house instead?’

  ‘Officers are on their way to her address,’ says PC Clarke. ‘They’ll call the second they have an update.’ As if on cue, her radio crackles into life. ‘Excuse me,’ she says, going into the garden to take the call. I watch through the window, trying to interpret her expression.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, when she returns. ‘There’s no one at Mrs Edwards’ house. Is there anywhere else you think she might have gone?’

  ‘Meg’s with Karen, I just know it.’

  ‘We’ll send out a description,’ PC Stanford says, ‘and if you could contact Meg’s other friends, that would be great. In the meantime, what can you tell us about Karen Edwards?’

  I realise that, for all the chats I’ve had with Karen – or about her, with Meg – I know hardly anything about her. Not where she works, or who her friends are, or where she might be now, with my daughter.

  ‘Only that she’s been lying to us for weeks,’ I say bitterly.

  ‘Can you think of any reason why she’d want to pretend to be the mother of Meg’s donor?’ PC Clarke says.

  ‘She’s mad,’ I say. She must be, to do something so sick, something so strange. Just then my mobile rings, Steve’s name flashing up on the screen. I snatch it up. ‘Have you found her?’

  ‘I’ve been knocking on doors in the street,’ Steve says. He sounds like I feel – wrung-out and sick with worry. ‘One of the neighbours saw them together an hour ago, outside Karen’s house.’

  ‘And Meg was okay? She wasn’t hurt?’

  PC Clarke raises an eyebrow. I mouth someone saw Meg at her.

  ‘Yes, but …’ Steve’s voice breaks. ‘They were getting into a car. They had suitcases with them, Lizzie – the neighbour said it looked like they were going away for a while.’

  There’s a buzzing in my ears and I think I might be about to faint. Numbly, I pass the mobile to PC Clarke, who takes over with a brisk air of authority. I stumble out of the kitchen and into the hall, clutching at the bannister as I go upstairs and into Meg’s bedroom again. I have to check something. I have to know if my instincts are right, yet again …

  In the bottom of Meg’s wardrobe is a bag she took on a school trip to France that we saved all year to pay for. Afterwards she put everything – her travel pillow, an adaptor, even some left-over Euros – in the case and zipped it shut. ‘Ready for next time,’ she told me, as if we’re the sort of family who have a holiday every year. I unzip the case. The pillow is there, the adaptor, the money … but my instincts were right. Meg’s passport is missing. Karen is taking her out of the country.

  Chapter 10

  A Race Against Time

  I’ve never been in a police station before. Never even had to call the police before this month, and now I feel like I’ve always been here – that PCs Clarke and Stanford have always been with us. We drove in convoy to the station. Steve followed the police car, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, me in the
passenger seat, unable to stop crying.

  ‘They’ll find her, love,’ Steve kept saying. But I couldn’t stop my mind going to dark places that made the tears come even harder. When I thought Meg had Jake’s heart, I could understand Karen’s obsession with her. I didn’t like it, but I understood it. Meg had a piece of her son – it made sense that Karen was deeply attached. But Karen has nothing to do with the heart that saved Meg’s life, so what does she want from us? Why did she lie to us?

  We parked the car and followed PC Clarke to the room we’re in now. It’s stuffy and too hot, the thermostat turned up to tropical. There’s a table and four chairs, and lots of detectives who come in and out, asking questions and writing in small black notebooks. Who was Meg’s consultant? What’s Samira’s last name? What medication does Meg take? Did Karen ever mention any other locations – anywhere abroad?

  The door opens, and Detective Sergeant Morgan comes in. She’s in charge, I think – at least, that’s the impression she gives. But there are so many officers, and so many questions, and it all seems to be moving so fast, yet at the same time far, far too slowly.

  ‘Another cup of tea?’ DS Morgan nods towards PC Stanford, who hurries out of the room, presumably to make it. I don’t remember drinking the last one.

  ‘Is there news?’ I try to read the detective sergeant’s face, but she’s played this game more times than I have.

  ‘There’s nothing in our files for Karen Edwards.’ DS Morgan skirts my question. ‘She has no criminal record. She isn’t listed with social services, or on the sex offender’s register.’

  ‘Maybe she’s just never been caught,’ Steve says grimly. I let out a cry. My poor baby.

  ‘There’s a black Audi registered in her name – index number AKE 340 – which I believe fits with what you’ve seen her driving?’ I nod. ‘We’ve logged the number with ANPR – that’s automatic number plate recognition – so if she passes any cameras we’ll get a hit and know what direction she’s travelling in.’