The Donor, Page 7

  ‘Do something! For God’s sake do something!’ But it’s Meg who does something. Meg who brings one knee up to her stomach, so fast I almost miss it, and then kicks back and upwards, like a donkey. Karen cries out, bending forwards, her free hand on her injured groin, and Meg smashes her head against Karen’s.

  The glass falls, shattering on the washroom floor, and there’s a surge of movement on either side of me, as police rush forward. Meg runs to me and I wrap her in my arms. I smell the sharp, metallic tang of blood, and the sweet scent of my daughter. Safe at last.

  They put Meg on a stretcher, wheeling her past the curious eyes of holiday-makers to the ambulance waiting outside. She has stopped crying, but she clings to me, not letting go of my hand as I climb inside to sit next to her.

  ‘She said it was a holiday, Mum,’ she sobs. ‘She told me you hated me, that you wouldn’t care if I was there or not.’

  ‘Shh, sweetheart, it’s all okay now.’ I call Steve as soon as I can – it’s okay, she’s safe, it’s all okay – and he meets us at the hospital, pale and shaking.

  ‘They made an announcement,’ he says, hugging me so hard I think I might break. ‘Gates closed due to an “incident”. I felt so helpless, Lizzie.’ He is close to tears.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s all okay,’ I murmur. ‘Meg was amazing.’ We turn and look at her, and she gives a shaky smile. ‘It’s just a precaution, the para-medics said. The cuts to her neck look worse than they are. But they’re concerned about shock, and with Meg’s medical history they need to be extra careful.’

  ‘All that stuff about her son,’ Steve says. ‘The way he loved baked beans, and Westerns, and Irn-Bru …’

  ‘All lies.’

  Looking back, I realise Karen never offered any information about what Jake had liked. Everything was in response to something Meg liked. Jake loved that too! Karen would say. And I believed her.

  ‘I hope they throw away the key,’ Steve says bitterly.

  I didn’t see them handcuff Karen. I didn’t watch them take her away. The police told us there would be statements to take, and a trial, in due course. But for now I don’t even want to think about Karen Edwards. I just want to be with my family.

  ‘How are you feeling, love?’ I ask Meg, when she’s been moved to a bed, and the nurse has pulled the curtain tight around us.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. She gives a wobbly grin. ‘It’s enough to give you a heart attack, though.’

  I don’t know if I want to cry or laugh, and I end up doing a bit of both. My baby girl’s going to be just fine.

  Chapter 13

  Moving On

  I stamp my feet to warm them up, pushing my gloved hands into my pockets. Mist rises each time I breathe. It’s Saturday morning and Meg’s playing football. I was reluctant, at first, but the school has been brilliant. The teachers speak regularly with Meg’s consultant to make sure she isn’t pushed too far. Samira was keen, too.

  ‘The fresh air will do her good,’ she said.

  Meg’s been full time at school for a year, now – playing sport for six months. Her friends look out for her, and slowly – very slowly – I’m learning to let go a little. I still worry when she’s late home, or when her mobile is switched off, but I’m getting there. Steve and I are stronger than ever now. I guess we realised how lucky we were, and how much we nearly lost.

  The ref blows the whistle for half-time – Meg’s team is already two goals up – and I root in my bag for her water bottle. My fingers brush the letter that arrived this morning, with its black stamp across the front: HMP OAKVIEW.

  Karen has to have permission to write to me. All prisoners’ letters are screened, only sent on to pre-approved addresses. When the prison rang, I wasn’t sure. But I gave it some thought, and finally said yes. After all, it was a letter from Karen that started all this – maybe a letter would finish it.

  The trial had been fast. Karen entered a guilty plea, meaning Meg and I didn’t have to give evidence, and I was grateful she had spared Meg from that.

  The first letter came six weeks later. An apology. She’s had a lot of time to think – help from prison therapists – and she knows what she did was wrong. I know how it feels to lose a child, she wrote. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone else.

  Meg doesn’t want anything to do with Karen, and nor does Steve.

  ‘She’s insane,’ he said, when I showed him the first letter. ‘Don’t trust a single word she says.’

  But her letter moved me, and I wrote back, and so we have become pen pals, of sorts. She tells me about prison life, and asks for my forgiveness. I tell her I’m working on it.

  ‘Heartless cow,’ Steve calls her, but I think it’s the opposite. A heart big enough to love, big enough to grieve. Big enough to rule her head and stop her thinking straight. She took Meg because she loved Jake so much she was desperate to do something – anything – to take away the pain.

  Only it doesn’t work like that. The pain we inflict on others doesn’t take away our own despair. That is a journey we have to walk alone. Karen was right when she said she started a life sentence the day Jake and his dad died, and now she’s serving a prison sentence as well. I wouldn’t take that away from her even if I could. She deserves to face justice for what she did, but if I can find it in my heart to forgive her, I will.

  Chapter 14

  Forgiveness

  Dear Karen,

  It’s strange to think that we are both seeing therapists, in very different places. Mine has an office at the top of a steep staircase above a doctor’s surgery. She has shiny leather sofas and boxes of tissues wherever you look. She lets me talk about Meg – not just about what you did, but about before. About when Meg was a toddler, and they found the cancer. About the chemo, and the months in hospital. I told her about Meg getting sick again, about the agonising wait for a transplant. And I realised I’ve spent the last twelve years waiting for Meg to die. It was bound to affect me, the therapist said.

  I think it’s all coming out now – all those years of worry, building up inside me. I’ve stopped my shifts at the chocolate factory. We’ve had to take out a loan, but we’ll cope, we always do. And I’ve started taking walks, whatever the weather. I see the therapist once a week, and I spend time with Meg and with Steve, and slowly I think I’m getting better. In a funny sort of way I think I needed everything to come to a head. So that I could move on and start seeing Meg as a young woman, not my sick child.

  All of which is a very long-winded way of saying: I forgive you. I understand that a mother’s love is stronger than anything else in the world. I know how bitterly you regret letting it take over. I forgive you, Karen.

  Lizzie.

  Karen Edwards reads the letter a second time. She smiles.

  Karen isn’t seeing a therapist. She gave up after the second session, spending her time instead in the gym or the library – exercising her body and her brain.

  But Lizzie bought it. Just like she bought Karen’s tear-stained apologies. Please forgive me, Lizzie, I lost my mind for a while, I’m better now …

  Karen didn’t lose her mind. She is in full possession of her mind, which tells her what it’s told her every day for the last three years. Jake should have had the heart that Meg Thomas had, and with it, he might have lived. With it, she wouldn’t be here, in this noisy, filthy prison with inmates who call her names and spit in her food, and hiss child molester as she passes them. If Karen blamed Lizzie before, now she blames her two-fold.

  She will be out in a few years, if she keeps her nose clean. The Thomas family will be worried, for a while. They’ll bolt their doors and check over their shoulders, but gradually they’ll realise nothing bad is going to happen.

  Or so they’ll think.

  Because one day, when they least expect it, Karen is going to take what’s hers. An eye for an eye; a life for a life.

  One day, Karen is going to make Lizzie Thomas pay.

  To join the NHS Organ Donor Register, visit organ-don
ation.nhs.uk or call 0300 123 23 23

  THE SENSATIONAL SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

  and winner of the Theakston Old Peculier

  Crime Novel of the Year 2016

  ‘A terrific, compelling read with an astonishing twist that floored me’

  PETER JAMES

  ‘Extraordinarily atmospheric, Mackintosh’s emotional debut doesn’t miss a beat’

  ALEX MARWOOD

  A tragic accident. It all happened so quickly.

  She couldn’t have prevented it. Could she?

  In a split second, Jenna Gray’s world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh. Desperate to escape, Jenna moves to a remote cottage on the Welsh coast, but she is haunted by her fears, her grief and her memories of a cruel November night that changed her life forever.

  Slowly, Jenna begins to glimpse the potential for happiness in her future. But her past is about to catch up with her, and the consequences will be devastating …

  The twisty, gripping number one bestseller,

  winner of the RICHARD AND JUDY

  SUMMER BOOK CLUB 2017

  ‘Another edge-of-your-seat thriller … a terrifyingly plausible plot and gasp-inducing ending’

  GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

  ‘Deliciously creepy tale of urban paranoia’

  RUTH WARE

  When Zoe Walker sees her photo in the classifieds section of a London newspaper, she is determined to find out why it’s there. There’s no explanation: just a grainy image, a website address and a phone number. She takes it home to her family, who are convinced it’s just someone who looks like Zoe. But the next day the advert shows a photo of a different woman, and another the day after that.

  Is it a mistake? A coincidence?

  Or is someone keeping track of every move they make …

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Clare Mackintosh

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14