‘Crushed soggy nuts, they always remind me of,’ Duncan piped up. ‘Terry at the pub dropped a whole bag of Planters into his pint once. Refused to fish them out and, once he’d finished the beer, he ate them. I had a couple and they tasted just like this. Nice.’
‘Fascinating,’ Lizzie remarked, shaking her head.
‘OK,’ Keeley said. ‘I think we’ve done all the necessary small-talk now.’ She put down her fork and looked at each of them in turn. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I can’t,’ Lizzie breathed immediately. ‘I just can’t.’ There were tears in her mum’s eyes and Keeley watched as Duncan reached for his wife’s hand. This was serious. Was her body somehow rejecting the kidney and she didn’t know? Surely she would know. She’d be ill, wouldn’t she? She was sure the doctor said she would be ill if that happened.
She swallowed, then ploughed on. ‘Dad?’
‘Duncan,’ Lizzie bleated. She seemed to be pleading with her eyes.
‘Keeley, love, we’ve had an email today,’ Duncan began, squeezing Lizzie’s hand in his. ‘It was from a lady called Silvie Durand.’
The name rang no bells with Keeley. Should it? Her dad was looking at her now like Silvie Durand might be the keeper of the secrets of the universe or the real mastermind behind Oreos. Lizzie let out a whimper.
‘Who is she?’ Keeley asked, her tone a little tentative. If this woman was making her mum cry then she didn’t like the prospect of what came next. Shit… was she adopted? That was the tone of this conversation. She held her breath. Was this Silvie Durand her birth mother? She shuddered. No, that only happened in books… didn’t it?
Duncan cleared his throat and picked up his glass, downing the contents of the alcohol-free wine like he was hoping for a hit akin to Jack Daniels.
‘She’s… the mother… of your kidney donor,’ Duncan said, the words forced out. ‘Her daughter. She was called Ferne. She was the girl… the woman… whose kidney you received after the accident.’
Not adopted then. But it was ground-breaking, life-shifting stuff and she wasn’t prepared. Keeley held her breath, as the shock rose up from her chest to her head, her eyes prickling as she tried to keep looking at her parents. Her donor now had a name. A woman. A woman who had passed away on the same night Bea had. A woman who had chosen to give life to others after she died. A woman who had saved her. Her name was Ferne.
‘What did she say?’ Keeley whispered. ‘In the email.’ For some reason the one thing at the forefront of her mind was the possibility of someone asking for the kidney back like it was a present they regretted giving and now wanted to return to the shop for a refund or give to someone else. Someone more worthy maybe. She tried to shake those thoughts out of her head. The counsellor hadn’t suggested that action would work with regard to clarity of thought process, but Keeley always felt a little better after she had done it.
‘This Silvie wants to take you away from us,’ Lizzie jumped in. ‘She will think, that because you’ve got a bit from her daughter, that you’re partly her daughter now and, if you go, you’ll like it better there and then you’ll leave here and then you’ll… you’ll divorce us… because we haven’t coped well with losing Bea and we’ve jumped between being overprotective, to being dismissive, and all the things in between. And I don’t ask you enough about what’s going on in your life because I’m always too busy filling my life with things so I don’t have to think. Because if I think then… I hurt.’
Keeley watched her mum burst into a flood of tears that could have washed over the Thames Barrier and sent the city whirlpooling to the bottom of the riverbed. She didn’t know what to do. Why didn’t she know what to do? Because she was in shock. Both from this news of her donor’s mother making contact and her own mother breaking down and being open for the very first time.
‘There’s a lot to take in there,’ Duncan said, breaking the sobbing with words. ‘A lot to take in.’ And Keeley still didn’t know what to say. She’d asked what the email had said and no one had answered her question.