Donor, The Read Online Free Page B

with me. I’m sixteen and I can do what I want now. I’ve gone to find my mum.
     
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    Okay, so I ran away a week before my final exams, but what did it matter? I was dumb as dog shit anyways and had no ambitions other than the one I ran away to do. Plus it was his fault. He drove me away with his lump-of-lard-ed-ness. What did he ever do? What had he ever achieved? If I’d had to come in from school one more time to find him listening to that stupid song ‘Time to Say Goodbye’, and eating crisps, I would have murdered him. If I’d had to eat out with him one more time and wait while he pondered the menu ( What are you having? What would you recommend? Could we share? Could you order for me? ) I would have killed him all over again. Get this, right: he couldn’t even decide where to go on holidays. Every summer, about a week before the break, he’d get us round the kitchen table and play some stupid game. He’d hide a five-pound note under his hand and say, ‘Bessie up or down?’ We’d take turns each year. ‘Down!’ Kay would say enthusiastically, and if she was right, if the noggin of England’s Queen was down the way, she’d get to decide (between a caravan in Arran or a cottage in fucking Arran!). We never went anywhere else, ever. Kay and I were the only ones in our year never to have been across a bigger stretch of water than the one between Ardrossan and Brodick.
    He drove her away too. I completely understood how she must have felt: suffocated, frustrated, angry, wanting to run for the hills screaming, ‘I’m free!’
    I knew he would have been angry with me. He was always angry with me. He’d have yelled, ‘Why? Why me? What have I done? Have I not given you everything ?’ He’d have wondered why I chose now to leave; screwing up my education when he’d done everything he could to keep us in this decent area, in these decent schools. He’d have said to Kay, ‘Have I not been good to her? Have I not spent every spare minute with her, encouraged her friendships, listened when she needed to talk, put up with her tantrums, her rage at the world?’
    Poor Kay. I can imagine she would have told him it wasn’t his fault. She’d have made him a cup of tea and put her arm around him and told him she loved him and that I loved him too, in my own way, and that maybe I just needed to do this thing. Maybe he should just let me.
    He wasn’t able to. He was worried that I’d harm myself. I’d been drinking for a few years by then, my addictive personality perhaps inherited from my drug-using mother. He probably assumed I’d get proper wellied and do myself or someone else in. So he left Kay with his groupie housewife and drove to Central Station. That’s the problem with using someone else’s credit cards. They can find you. Within hours of my departure, he knew where I was and what I was doing. Should’ve withdrawn the cash like Mum did.
    I was walking along the platform when I heard his voice. I turned to see him running towards me with that dumb, tearful face. I thought about pushing my way through the crowds of people waiting at each carriage door but I didn’t have the strength.
    How long had it been since I’d had any strength? A long time, looking back, the first real clue being about a year earlier, when I started avoiding all stairs, taking time to consider if I really needed to ascend to my bedroom or to my locker on the second floor at school. As time wore on, my weariness grew. Maybe I needed sleep, perhaps it was that extra vodka down the park the night before, or was it that time of the month? But as weeks grew into months, one thing after another adding to my general sense of ill being, it became obvious that something might be wrong. Why did I need to pee all the time? Did the boy at the end-of-year party get me pregnant? (I did a test. He didn’t, which was no surprise as his mother had walked into his bedroom before either of us managed to reach the end.) Why, when