Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
LAUREL
For the first time, I inserted my shiny new key into the shiny new lock and turned it. The door swung obligingly open, and I stepped inside.
I was greeted by the smell of paint and the sight of a billion dust motes dancing in the afternoon sunlight that flooded through the windows.
In a few minutes, the man with a van I’d hired to bring my boxes of stuff over from Mel’s place would arrive; later this afternoon, after a trip to Ikea, he’d bring yet more boxes, this time of flat-pack furniture for me to assemble.
For now, though, the flat was empty – a bland shell waiting to be turned into a home.
It felt airy and spacious, although I knew that once the furniture was in place it would feel a lot smaller.
There was a living room and kitchen in one, a bedroom overlooking what would eventually become a communal garden, and a bathroom, the walls tiled in the jade green I’d chosen on a whim.
I’d buy plants, I decided. I’d put up a rack on the wall for my bike to live on. I’d choose new bedding – pink, maybe, in a floral design with leaves to match the green of the plants.
I’d have a housewarming party, inviting friends over to admire my new home.
It would be home. It would have to be.
But Gray would never see it. He’d never kick his shoes off, sit down on the bed and hold out his arms for me to join him.
I’d never cook him a meal and serve it on my new white plates.
He’d never emerge, dripping and fragrant, from the shower.
I’d never greet him at the door or kiss him goodbye there.
There would never be traces of him there: clean clothes he would bring so he had something to change into after we’d been for a bike ride together or had sweaty sex; a spare charger for his phone; a toothbrush to stand alongside mine on the shelf above the basin.
I’d said, It’ll be easier when I have my own place.
Apologetic, because he was a proper adult with a home of his own, and I was sharing with Mel and it didn’t feel right to bring my married lover over to spend the night.
Yeah, it’ll be easier, he’d agreed, remorseful because even when Anna and the children were away, he didn’t feel right having me round to the house on Damask Square.
One of the main reasons I’d decided to take the plunge and buy a flat of my own was that it would make it easier to see Gray.
But it would never happen now. It would never be easier.
The loss of him was like a hole inside me that refused to heal – a chronic wound.
I wished I had something of him here, some token that would serve as a concrete reminder of him.
Not the earrings he’d given me, or any of the other little gifts: the L’Occitane hand cream he’d bought me when my skin was chapped and dry from washing in disinfectant at work; the book of cycle rides he’d promised we would do together; the cashmere socks that had kept my ankles warm all last winter.
Those things were mine now. They were reminders of him, but they weren’t his; they’d never been part of him. I wished I’d thought to ask him for something – anything – a piece of clothing, a handwritten note, a lock of hair.
I had nothing. I thought of all his possessions that Anna would have to sort through, deciding what to donate to charity shops, what to keep and what to throw away.
I imagined myself rummaging through their bins and coming away with some trash or treasure for myself, but I knew I would never do that.
I imagined writing to Anna and asking if there was anything she could spare, but I knew I’d never do that either.
Gray’s things weren’t mine, and Gray himself had never been mine.
I was shaken out of my gloom by a knock on the door and the arrival of Piotr, with his permanent smile and his impressive biceps, who’d lugged my boxes up five flights of stairs because the lift was temporarily out of order.
I thanked him profusely and tipped him lavishly, and he set off down the stairs again, still smiling, promising to return in two hours, depending how bad the traffic was in the Dartford Crossing.
I set about arranging my clothes in the built-in wardrobe, conscious of how shabby and grubby everything seemed to look on the bright new shelves, even though it had all seemed perfectly okay when I’d taken it out of Mel’s spare bedroom the day before.
I tore off the bubble wrap from the framed photographs and placed them on the mantelpiece in the living room: me with my mum and dad, me and Justin on his wedding day, me holding my tiny newborn nephew, me and Mel in pink sparkles on a hen night.
There were none of me and Gray – those were only on my phone, and looking at them was too painful still.
There was nothing of Gray here – nothing of me and him together. There never would be.
But there was something of him that hadn’t died. The thought came to me quite suddenly, along with the name I’d only heard once and not even expected to remember.
Joel.
Out there was a part of Gray that was still alive, performing its biological function inside the body of another man.
The thought was almost fantastical. Somewhere, there was a scar that was the twin of the one I’d seen on Gray’s abdomen the first time we’d had sex.
I’d only asked about it afterwards – What happened there? – even though I knew the answer.
I donated a kidney, he’d said, quite casually, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to do. A good friend of mine was ill, and I had the chance to make him better. So I took it.
And this Joel – whoever he was – had taken a part of Gray.
Joel. There could be hundreds or even thousands of them in the country – if he still was in the country. If he was even still alive – I knew very little about the prognosis for kidney recipients, but I guessed that it wouldn’t be universally positive, especially not after so long.
He’d been ill. Probably he was still ill, requiring ongoing monitoring and medication to stop his body rejecting the organ that had been Gray’s. Ill with what?
It had been a long time since I’d qualified as a nurse. I hadn’t properly studied in years – not since I finished my master’s degree. But now, I felt a rush of what I’d felt back then: curiosity. An urge – almost a craving – to know more, understand more.
I wanted to find out why Gray might have donated an organ to Joel – why Joel had needed it; whether it was still doing its job.
It was just a kidney – but to me it was fascinating because I wanted to know what had led to it being transplanted from Gray’s healthy body to his friend’s ailing one. More than that – it was important, significant, precious even, because it had been Gray’s and I’d loved him.
I had nothing of his. The earrings he had given me had never really belonged to him, never been a part of him. But someone, some man named Joel, had something that had fundamentally, viscerally, been Gray’s. I wanted to find it – find the man in whose body it had been for twenty-five years.
I didn’t know how I could do that – I didn’t even know whether it would be possible. I didn’t know whether Joel was still alive. But I was determined to find out.