The Donor Read online

  Clare Mackintosh is the author of I Let You Go, I See You, Let Me Lie and After the End. All of her books have been Sunday Times bestsellers and have sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. They have also been translated into over thirty-five languages.

  Clare is patron of the Silver Star Society, a charity based at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, which supports parents facing high-risk or difficult pregnancies. She lives in North Wales with her husband and their three children.

  For more information visit Clare’s website www.claremackintosh.com or find her at www.facebook.com/ClareMackWrites or on Twitter @ClareMackint0sh

  Also by Clare Mackintosh

  I Let You Go

  I See You

  Let Me Lie

  After the End

  Non-fiction

  A Cotswold Life

  Copyright

  Published by Sphere

  ISBN: 978-0-7515-7649-8

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Clare Mackintosh 2020

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Sphere

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Clare Mackintosh

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  Chapter 1

  The Newspaper Article

  The reporter is young, with too much gel in his hair, and a habit of saying ‘wow, yeah, right,’ after everything Meg says. She doesn’t seem to notice, and has been happily chatting to him for half an hour.

  ‘I had cancer when I was a toddler,’ she tells him. ‘I got better, but the treatment left me with a heart problem.’ She shrugs, as if it was nothing, instead of an illness that has taken over our lives for the last twelve years. She is on the sofa in our living room, the reporter opposite her, on the armchair Steve sits on to watch the footy. I’m next to Meg, trying not to answer questions for her.

  ‘Wow, yeah, right,’ says the reporter, scribbling in his notebook. He’s wearing a suit that looks as if he’s borrowed it from his dad, and I wonder if he’s on work experience. I look at my amazing daughter and – like I do every single day – count my blessings. We have almost lost her so many times. Yet here she is, my strong, beautiful fourteen-year-old, calmly explaining her illness. Tiny silver earrings shimmer from under her brown hair, which is loose around her shoulders.

  ‘A normal heart pumps blood around your body,’ she is saying. ‘But my heart was too weak to do that properly, so my body wasn’t getting the blood it needed. I’ve always known I would need a heart transplant one day.’

  When the local paper called last week about doing a story on Meg’s new heart, I wasn’t sure. ‘What if it makes her stressed?’ I said to Steve.

  ‘Then we stop the interview.’ He looked at me, seeing the uncertainty in my face. ‘It’s up to Meg, Lizzie.’

  ‘I want to do it,’ she said, the second we asked her. ‘I want to show other sick kids what’s possible.’

  Meg has always been positive, even when she was too ill to go to school, or to play with her friends. Even when she only had enough energy to lie in bed, too tired even to lift the TV remote.

  ‘And how does it feel,’ the reporter says now, ‘to have someone else’s heart?’

  This is the bit of the story they really want. The rest – Meg’s cancer, her heart problem – is just background. There are two hundred heart transplants each year in the UK, and only a handful of those are for children. Meg is a success story. Meg is a miracle. Our miracle.

  The papers could fill their pages with Meg’s life and they’d still only know the half of it – what it’s been like, always knowing that Meg’s heart might give up at any moment. She was on the waiting list for six months, all the time getting more and more sick. Then, on a day just like any other, we got the call, and everything changed.

  ‘We’ve got a match.’

  They had found one. The right size, the right blood group … the right heart for Meg. It was really happening. Meg’s second chance at life. I felt excited and sick all at once, and I ran upstairs and pulled open Meg’s door. She knew, the second she saw my face.

  ‘They’ve got one, haven’t they?’

  Suddenly it hit home. Meg was going under the knife. Hours in an operating theatre, with all the risks that carried …

  ‘It’ll be okay, Mum,’ Meg said, and I thought how wrong it was that she was the one reassuring me.

  She was in theatre for four hours, but it felt like four days. Steve and I sat in the hospital canteen as other people came and went, staring at the bleeper they had given us to let us know when it was over.

  ‘It must be strange,’ the reporter says now.

  For the first time in the interview, Meg stops to think. She puts a hand on her chest, to where the scars are hidden by her hoodie. I feel my own chest tighten. She’s been through so much.

  ‘It is a bit,’ Meg admits. ‘But without this heart I would have died. Feeling a bit strange is better than being a lot dead.’ She grins, and I can tell that the reporter isn’t sure whether to laugh. Meg’s black humour takes a bit of getting used to.

  ‘Um … wow, yeah, right,’ he says. He frowns at his notebook, finding his next question. ‘What would you like to say to people reading this story?’ he asks. His pen hovers above the page.

  ‘To join the organ register,’ Meg says, right away.

  I never even knew about the organ register, till Meg got sick. Now, we’re all on it: Steve, me, all our friends, all Meg’s friends. Your liver and kidneys are no good to you once you’re dead, but they could keep someone else alive.

  The reporter is almost done. ‘Do you have a message for your donor’s family?’

  I keep thinking about the person who used to have Meg’s heart. What would have happened if he hadn’t joined the register?

  ‘Just “thank you”,’ Meg says, and her eyes fill with tears. I put my arm round her and squeeze her tight. We don’t know who Meg’s heart came from. We know he was male, and that he died in an accident, and we know he was healthy. That’s it. We don’t know how old he was, or where he lived, or what sort of family he was from. It doesn’t matter, I suppose. It only matters that, before he died, he ticked that box to say he was happy for someone to have his organs. And I thank my lucky stars every day that he did.

  The article is in the local paper on Friday, with a big picture of Meg holding a red, heart-shaped helium balloon. Thank you for my heart, reads the headline. Meg beams from the photo – so different to the pale, thin girl of six months ago. I add my silent thanks to Meg’s printed words.

  I’m not working today. I used to be a teaching assistant in a primary school up the road, but I had to stop when Meg got sick. Since then I’ve picked up shifts wh
ere I can at the chocolate factory on the edge of town. We pack posh chocs into shiny gold boxes with black ribbons, and they don’t mind how much we chat, as long as the job gets done. The chocolates have to be perfect to go in the boxes, and any that aren’t go into the staff shop. A pound a bag – and you get a lot in a bag. Needless to say, Meg loves it.

  I’ve promised to take her into town this afternoon to spend her birthday money, so I take a couple of hours in the morning to get the house straight. Steve is a roofer, and in the summer he works long hours, because in the winter he can’t. We don’t see him till eight or nine most evenings from June till September, and he’s fit for nothing but tea in front of the telly. So I do the housework. He helps out a bit more in the winter, so it all evens out.

  At eleven my friend Samira drops by on her way to work.

  ‘Coffee?’ I ask, as we walk through to the kitchen.

  ‘You bet. It’s been a hell of a week.’

  Samira was Meg’s nurse. We became friendly in the days after Meg’s surgery, when Meg drifted in and out of sleep. Samira would join me for a cuppa when the ward was quiet. We stayed in touch after Meg came home, and I know Samira has a soft spot for the girl she calls her ‘star patient’.

  ‘Did you lose someone?’ I say it quietly, even though Meg is upstairs.

  Samira nods.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I don’t ask who died, or how. Samira wouldn’t tell me, even if I did. I put a mug of coffee – white, one sugar – on the table, and push the tin of biscuits towards her. I couldn’t do her job. For every life they save, there’s another they don’t.

  Samira picks up the newspaper, folded so Meg’s article is on top. ‘How’s she doing?’

  ‘Some days you’d never even know she’d had surgery. She’s going back to school next week.’ For two whole years Meg hardly went to school, and in the six months since her transplant she hasn’t been at all. A tutor worked with her in hospital and at home, but she’s missed a lot. ‘She has to do year nine again, but she’s got a great bunch of friends – they won’t leave her out.’

  Samira is reading the article. ‘This is lovely. You must be very proud of her.’

  ‘I am.’ I look upside down at the article I’ve already read a dozen times. Fourteen-year-old Megan Thomas owes her life to a stranger, it starts. ‘I wish we knew more about him,’ I say.

  Samira holds up one hand, palm towards me. ‘I can’t tell you anything, you know that.’

  ‘Even just a name would—’

  ‘Lizzie, I can’t.’

  We’re interrupted by the sound of feet on the stairs, and Meg comes into the kitchen. ‘Mum, can I have—’ she stops short, her face breaking into a grin when she sees who is here. ‘Samira!’

  Our friend stands, wrapping Meg up in her arms. ‘You look amazing,’ she tells her.

  ‘That,’ Meg says, ‘is because I am amazing.’ She pulls away and gives a twirl, then pats her chest. ‘Still beating.’

  ‘I should hope so too. Any pain?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Out of breath?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘And you’re doing your physiotherapy exercises?’

  Meg rolls her eyes. ‘You’re as bad as Mum. Yes, I’m doing my physio.’

  This eye-rolling is all for show, like a panto where she’s playing the part of a teenager. Meg does her exercises every day. She takes her medication, eats properly, goes to bed when she’s tired. She’s the model patient.

  ‘I have someone else’s heart,’ she said, when she came home from hospital. ‘I have to look after it.’

  ‘Good girl,’ Samira says now. ‘Oh – I almost forgot.’ She slips an envelope out of her bag. ‘Happy birthday – sorry it’s late.’

  Meg opens the card, her eyes lighting up as she spots the gift card for her favourite store. ‘Thank you!’

  ‘You shouldn’t have,’ I tell Samira, but she just winks at me, then drains her coffee.

  ‘I’d better get to work.’

  Meg and I have a lovely afternoon walking around the shops. She spends her birthday money. When she spots a top she loves but can’t afford, I help out with a little extra we can’t really spare. I’d love to be able to spoil her. I’d love to be able to take her on holiday. I look at photos on Facebook of sick kids who get taken to Disneyworld, or go swimming with dolphins, and I wonder what Meg really thinks of our long weekend in Bournemouth.

  Steve is working the next day, but on Sunday I cook a roast and we settle down to watch a film together. Meg’s phone lights up every few minutes, and she taps in a message, one eye still on the TV. Steve is nodding off, his head tipped back and his mouth open. Meg is just like him – the same straight nose, the same dimple in the left cheek. I stop watching the film and instead watch my daughter and my husband, my gaze falling first on one and then the other. I feel a warm glow inside. My family are the world to me.

  I’ve got a late shift at the factory on Monday, starting two hours before Steve is due home. It’s not ideal, leaving Meg alone, but I’m five minutes away, and she can text if she needs me. I’m running late. As I race out of the door, shouting a ‘bye, love!’ at Meg as I go, I see that Meg has picked up the post and left it on the table. I pick up a letter addressed to me and stuff it into my bag. I glance at it a couple of times as I drive to work. The envelope is cream, and the address handwritten, so it isn’t a bill, or junk mail, or one of those charity appeals with a pen and a book of raffle tickets. A wedding invitation? Christening? I think hard, but can’t think of anyone in our group of friends who might be sending us an invite.

  It bugs me all the way to work so, when I get there, instead of clocking in and finding my white coat and daft hairnet, I stay in my car. I rip open the envelope and pull out the thick, expensive cream paper inside.

  It’s a letter. Dear Lizzie, it says. I saw the article in the paper. I’m so happy to see your daughter doing so well. I frown, confused, then read on. I miss my son every day, and I’d do anything to have him back, but he would be so happy to know he saved a life.

  A prickle creeps across the back of my neck. He saved a life. I know exactly who this letter is from. I shouldn’t read it. I should give it to Samira, and tell her to pass on a message. We’ve been told not to try to track down Meg’s donor, that it will get complicated, but part of me so badly wants to know more about him …

  Your daughter is beautiful, the letter says. I only wish Jake could see her.

  Jake.

  That’s his name. The owner of Meg’s heart. The man I owe everything to.

  No, not man. Boy. Because this letter is from his mother. Karen Edwards. I feel a lurch in my chest as I think about what it took for her to write this letter. She had to find me from the details in the newspaper, and sit at a desk, writing. Finding the words.

  I sit in my car, the letter in my hands, staring at the final line of the letter.

  Please, Lizzie, could I possibly meet Meg?

  Chapter 2

  Saying Thank You

  ‘You can’t write back.’ Steve puts a mouthful of pork chop and mash in his mouth and chews. He waves his fork around, stressing his point.

  ‘It feels rude not to.’ We’re eating late, and without Meg, who had beans on toast at seven, then went to her bedroom to watch something on her laptop.

  ‘Maybe we should talk to Samira about it.’

  I almost choke on my chop. ‘No way.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I know what she’ll say.’

  ‘Well then …’

  We eat in silence for a bit, but I can’t get the words in the letter out of my head. I miss my son every day. Somewhere, out there, is a mother going through everything I have dreaded for the last fourteen years. A mother who has taken her child to hospital, sat with them as they faded, and begged God or fate to keep them alive.

  Please, Lizzie, could I possibly meet Meg?

  Meg lived, because of this boy. Because of this mother, too, who supported
her son’s choice to donate his organs. How can I throw that lifeline back in her face?

  The next day I pop into the hospital. I take some board games I cleared out from home, to give me an excuse to go into the family room. Samira ducks out of the ward for a moment, rolling her shoulders and stretching her back, which is stiff from bending over patients.

  ‘Oh, hey,’ I say, as if I only just thought of it, ‘do families ever send cards? You know, to be passed on?’

  Samira narrows her eyes slightly. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘And do you pass them on?’

  ‘Of course, but we take out names, addresses, anything personal first. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, Meg wanted to know.’ I feel myself blush at the lie.

  Samira narrows her eyes. ‘Lizzie, trust me: getting to know the relatives of someone who gave you an organ is a really bad idea. It creates all sorts of feelings of guilt. People think they need to repay such a huge act of kindness. But the whole point of giving an organ is that it’s done without any desire for reward. It’s the most selfless thing you can ever do.’ Her face softens and she touches my arm lightly. ‘Look, I’ll pass on anything you want to give me – but leave out your name and address, okay?’

  I blush again, letting her think that she’s right. One thing is certain – I can’t tell Samira that Karen Edwards has sent us a letter.

  I bring up the subject with Meg on Wednesday, when Steve is at work, and we’re out the back of the house. The garden of our two-bed terraced house is tiny, with a square of lawn Steve mows on Sundays, and a little patio with a table and chairs. Around the lawn are borders, only a foot deep, but filled with colour. I kneel on the ground and pick at the tiny weeds around the geraniums.

  Meg is lying on the grass, her T-shirt rolled up to expose a flat, tanned stomach. She’s touchy about her scar, which runs in a deep groove from her neck to just above her belly button, but at home she doesn’t care. I hope that, in time, she’ll relax in public, too, and see her scar for what it is – a sign of survival.

  ‘I got a letter on Monday,’ I start. ‘From the mum of the boy who gave you your heart.’