‘Christ! You know it’s barely lunchtime, right?’ Rach remarked, jaw dropping with an expression somewhere between admiration and astonishment.
‘Cheers,’ Keeley said, gesturing the glass towards her friend and taking another mouthful. It was Saturday. Keeley had suggested lunch. She needed to talk to someone other than family about the email from Silvie Durand. She needed to say words, out loud, rather than rolling them all around her brain and having them form knots even the best Scout leader wouldn’t be able to undo. She’d suggested here because she was also going to coat her stomach with the pub’s homemade steak and Guinness pie…
‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’ Rach guessed. She sat forward in her chair, festive snowmen earrings hanging from her ears, leaning an elbow against the snow-sprayed windowpane next to their table. ‘Is Roland forcing the issue on Mr Peterson? Because, if you really don’t want to do it, even for a big bonus, then we can say the feathers… or the fur… is detrimental to your health.’ Rach took a swig of her flavoured gin and tonic. ‘I know I said you should stop playing the Little Miss Transplant card but, when it comes to stuffed carcasses, I’d be inclined to let it slide just this once.’
Little Miss Transplant. Yes, that was her. She was the keeper of someone else’s precious organ. A walking, talking, living mausoleum. And that was one of the reasons she shouldn’t be considering this offer to meet with her donor’s mother. What good could it do for either of them? More than a year had passed. What was there to say? No, she should email back, type that it was so nice to hear from her, that she would be forever grateful for the gift of life but… Keeley took another swig of her drink. Except no matter how she worded a ‘thanks, but no thanks’ it sounded like a ‘sorry, not sorry’. And this woman had lost her daughter. Ferne. Now her donor had a name it seemed to make things even harder.
‘Keeley?’ Rach said. It sounded as if her friend was asking for clarification to a previous question and Keeley had zoned out.
‘Yes?’
‘What’s wrong? Because I know there’s something wrong.’
Now that pint was fizzing back up into her throat and Keeley was regretting the speed in which she’d swallowed it.
‘The mother of my kidney donor wants to meet me,’ she started. ‘She’s offered Eurostar tickets and a stay in Paris in exchange for a chance to get to know me… a bit… I guess however much you can get to know someone in… a couple of weeks or so.’ The words were in the air and the look on Rach’s face said it all. Her friend downed her gin and tonic and looked like she wanted to give head to the ice cubes to get every last millilitre of booze from the glass.
‘Is that allowed?’ Rach asked suddenly. Her cheeks were now as red as the ones on the snowmen dangling from her earlobes.
‘Is what allowed?’
‘Mothers of donors being able to jump into your life like that without warning.’ She picked up her glass and swirled the ice cubes around. ‘Do they tell you about that before you go through with the operation?’
It hadn’t been a case of deep consultation on anything to do with the operation from what little Keeley could remember. She had been more-or-less unconscious, in and out, not knowing what was going on at all and calling out for Bea. She had learned later that Bea had never made it to a hospital bed. Bea had died in the taxi, the paramedics having to gently separate their joined hands so they could cut Keeley free…
‘My dad said that, at the time, after it happened, we agreed that if the donor’s family wanted to get in contact we were happy for our details to be passed on.’ Keeley took a breath. ‘I think, my parents were so grateful, so happy that I was alive… that they would have agreed to pretty much anything.’ Not that it wasn’t a good thing. She swallowed as that thought went across her mind. Was it a good thing? She wasn’t sure, if her mum had the time over again, that she would agree to contact.
‘And who is she? Is she really the mother of your donor? I mean, there are hundreds of people emailing other people telling them they know they’re entitled to compensation from an accident they never had.’ Rach sniffed. ‘So, how do you know she is who she says she is?’
There had been many things that had crossed Keeley’s mind since she had read the email from Silvie Durand, but the woman being an imposter wasn’t one of them. What would there be to gain?
‘You don’t think I should go,’ Keeley translated.
‘I don’t think someone sending you an email inviting you to Paris is a normal, everyday thing, that’s all.’
‘I know,’ Keeley breathed. ‘But my whole life isn’t a normal every day thing, is it?’
‘What does your mum say?’ Rach asked.
Keeley curled a hand around her glass, fingers tightening. Rach knew very well how Lizzie would have reacted. Rach was well aware of Lizzie’s overprotective bent.
‘She thinks Silvie Durand is going to imprison me in a Perspex, soundproof box in a storage facility and start calling me Beck… or, you know, Ferne,’ Keeley sighed. Why had this situation arisen? Why now? When the Andrews family were just, somehow, beginning to mend.
‘Ferne?’ Rach queried, snowmen still jangling.
Rach obviously had no idea who Ferne was. And the name hadn’t meant anything until the email. But now her donor had a name and a mother, Ferne was becoming one of the most important names in Keeley’s world.
‘That’s the name of my donor. Ferne Durand. She’s French. Was French. Hence the invitation to Paris and—’
‘French?’ Rach queried, brow furrowing. ‘How does that work?’
‘Um, what do you mean?’
‘Well, what was she doing here in England when you had your accident? Was she sick? Did she have an accident too? Or did they fly in the body part from France? Isn’t there some sort of use-by date with a kidney?’
‘I…’ Keeley didn’t know where to start. She only had some of the puzzle pieces. Which was maybe why she needed to speak to Silvie Durand. But was it speak to her? Or meet with her? She took a breath. ‘Rach, I wanted your take on it. Because you’re my best friend and because you’re not my mum and because you don’t always take the safe option.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Rach asked, sniffing as if offended. ‘You’ve somehow just made me sound super-slutty.’
Keeley sat a little taller in her chair, taking a glance outside at London life on the street below. There were workmen on ladders, attaching festive signage to lampposts, swarths of thick green fake fir swags under their arms. What would Paris feel like at this time of year? What did Paris feel like at any time of the year? She focused back to Rach and steadied her nerve. ‘I want to go.’
‘You want to go?’ Rach exclaimed.
Keeley hadn’t known she actually wanted to go until the words were out of her mouth and she felt them in her soul. How could she not go? How could she not want to meet the mother of her donor? She was only here because of this woman’s daughter’s selfless act. She nodded at Rach.
‘You want to go,’ Rach repeated, softer this time, as if saying the words again, more slowly would help them feel more agreeable.