be cooking a feast I won’t be allowed too much of and Dad will probably have my share of the things I shouldn’t eat. And, after we’ve eaten all the turkey dinner – sorry – we’ll all eat low-fat cheese, pickles and chocolates we don’t need and then probably fall asleep in front of the wood burner that my dad has stoked so much it’s made the living room the temperature of the inside of a volcano.’
Erica snorted. ‘Love it, man.’ She sniffed. ‘Apart from the not-eating-what-you-want bit. They don’t go into that in films where the characters have had transplants, do they?’
Keeley shrugged her shoulders. ‘Those scriptwriters are kidney-ing themselves.’ She smiled at her transplant humour. She had a kidney joke for most occasions.
Because that was why she had to proceed with caution in life. Her ultimate gift last year had been a new kidney from a donor she knew nothing about. A priceless present that had saved her life and stopped the Andrews family losing both their children in the same accident. It had been nothing short of a miracle, but it had also been a complete game-changer where normal life was concerned. Nothing was ever going to be quite the same again. But, at least she was here.
‘That’s better,’ Erica stated with a grin. ‘Your face has cheered up now.’
‘So, shall I get you a cup of tea? Or shall I see if I can make it a hot chocolate? I can’t guarantee the ones here are as good as the hospital’s though,’ Keeley offered.
‘Carlsberg?’ Erica asked, ever hopeful.
‘I might be able to find some mulled wine.’
‘Make it a double. My kidneys are already as done as the rest of me.’
Four
The Andrews’ Home, Kensington, London
Keeley pulled her boots off by the front door and closed her eyes as she took a second to rest up against the wall of the hallway. Opening her eyes again, she saw there was tinsel around the plants that hadn’t been there this morning and a poinsettia in a pot on the telephone table. Her mum really was kicking early festivities up a notch this year and it was possibly because Lizzie was an emotional purchaser. Their confrontation this morning over Warburton’s finest had probably prompted a trip to John Lewis…
Stifling a yawn, Keeley picked up her boots and padded down the hall. She was tired today. First she had planned out a house-doctoring project in Lambeth and then she had tried to persuade Roland that if he made her enter Mr Peterson’s house again she would most probably voluntarily succumb to the formaldehyde or, if that somehow didn’t work, she would quit. Remarkably, neither of those vaguely veiled threats had stopped Roland from putting an appointment for a visit into her online diary…
And then there was Erica. Her gorgeous friend wasn’t doing at all well, despite all the bullishness. She really wasn’t expected to last until Christmas and that thought cut Keeley to the quick. She knew Erica was in pain – despite the heavy medication she was on – and that her leaving was inevitable now, but the thought of her slipping into a final sleep was unthinkable.
Keeley took a breath and put a hand to her middle, just above one of her scars. It still ached sometimes and it had been aching so much today she’d skipped a visit to the gym. She just wasn’t in the right frame of mind.
She put her hand to the door of the kitchen/diner ready to be faced with whoever her mum had round that evening for Baileys and a charcuterie board. But the conversation she could clearly hear wasn’t about who had done what to who at the last Wives Association meeting, but her parents discussing something that sounded important. She paused. And kept listening…
‘Lizzie, we’re going to have to tell her. How can we not?’ Duncan’s voice said.
‘Oh, I’ll tell you how we cannot. We can pretend that the email never arrived. We can send it to junk like you do with all my discount codes from Wallis. I’m quite happy to forget I saw it. What I’m not happy about is that I decided to share it with you,’ Lizzie said in reply.
‘You didn’t share it with me. And I’m not sure you would have shared it with me if I hadn’t snuck up behind you and seen it. I think it would have been deleted already if I’d played another game of darts before I came back into the