Page 56 of All the Things We Never Knew

‘Like holding a housewarming for your nearest and dearest. You’ve been in that flat – what, six weeks now? And have we been invited round for so much as a cup of tea? Have we fuck.’

‘I know, I know.’ I took a long sip of my drink and dunked a chip into ketchup. ‘I’ll get around to it, I promise. It’s just all a bit new. I’m not ready to have people spilling red wine on my sofa, treading crisps into the carpet and being sick in my shiny toilet.’

‘All wrong.’ He shook his head in mock reproof. ‘Anyway. How are you, darling girl? Bearing up all right?’

If I was honest, I was struggling. Some mornings it took all my energy to get out of bed, and a few times when I’d managed that, I’d had to call in sick so I could spend the day crying on the sofa. Once, after an elderly patient had passed away peacefully surrounded by her family, I’d had a full-blown panic attack.

Cycling felt like the one thing that kept me sane, because it was the one time I could imagine I was close to Gray again. And Lulu’s absence that day was hitting me harder than I wanted to admit to anyone, even Harry.

Feeling the sting of impending tears, I pushed my sunglasses down off my forehead.

‘I’m okay,’ I said. ‘Just about. You know – one day at a time. But I’m not going to lie – it’s hard.’

Harry nodded sympathetically, waiting for me to carry on.

‘I keep thinking,’ I said, ‘about the guy who Gray donated his kidney to. You know, if it hadn’t been for that, he might have been able to have treatment. The cancer would probably still have killed him – pancreatic, you know, it’s a fucker. But if he could’ve had a few rounds of chemo he might still be here. I could have had another couple of months with him. And his wife and kids, obviously. And instead, there’s someone out there walking around with a bit of Gray inside him, still alive. Or at least, I hope he is. If he is, then – you know. It wouldn’t have been for nothing. Not that it would bring Gray back.’

Harry reached across the table and took my hand. ‘You poor love. It’s tough, isn’t it? But you know a donated organ’s not like a book that you’re meant to return to the library, right? Once it’s gone it’s gone.’

I took my sunglasses off and wiped my eyes with a paper napkin. ‘I know. The surgeons would be kept pretty busy if they had to check them in and out every two weeks.’

Harry laughed. ‘You’re not wrong. It’s quite a thing though, an altruistic donation like that. Was the guy related to him?’

‘Just a friend, apparently. Someone he knew in secondary school. Gray never talked about it much – I think they lost touch soon after. But I got the impression… This is going to sound weird.’

‘Go on.’

‘I got the impression it was – not like paying a debt, like in those urban myths that go round online sometimes. But because he felt like he owed the guy something, in more of a moral sense.’

I could remember what he had said, quite clearly. It was one of the nights we’d spent at the Premier Inn – or not a night, because Gray would need to be home by about two-thirty. We’d been lying in bed, the remains of a Chinese takeaway surrounding us. Gray was wearing his boxer shorts, and I was still naked, because he said there was nothing sexier than me eating chicken fried rice with no clothes on.

The top of the scar was visible above the waistband of his underwear, and I ran the blunt end of a chopstick lightly over it.

‘So what happened?’ I asked.

He knew me well enough for me not to need to elaborate on the question, and I knew him well enough to expect the kind of answer I’d got.

‘I was at a party and I met this hot Russian girl. She kept buying me drinks and then she invited me back to her hotel room. I thought it was my lucky night – and then I woke up in a bath full of ice.’

‘Come on!’ I urged. ‘Tell me what really happened.’

He reached over and pulled me close against him. ‘You going to have that last spring roll? There’s nothing to tell. I had a mate who needed a kidney, and I had a spare one, and it felt like the least I could do.’

‘What was wrong with him?’

‘His kidneys were fucked, obviously. Now come here,’ he breathed as he pulled me down on top of him. ‘We’ve still got twenty minutes until pumpkin o’clock.’

‘What do you mean, a moral sense?’ Harry said now. ‘Are you saying he was pressurised into it somehow?’

‘No! Not that at all – at least that’s not the impression I got. More like he was so grateful to the guy, he’d do that willingly. “It felt like the least I could do”, was what he said.’

Harry poured the last of the sangria into our glasses. ‘He sounds like one hell of a man, your Gray.’

‘He was. But what I want to know – what I can’t help thinking – is, if the recipient is still alive, how can I find him?’

Harry shook his head. ‘There are definitely ethical safeguards around that kind of thing.’

‘I know, but – there can’t be that many people who received donor kidneys in around 2000, right?’