500 Miles from You (Scottish Bookshop #3)(8)
“You mean, let’s see where everyone else is FaceTuning themselves.”
“And lip-filler watch.”
“On it,” said Kim-Ange, and she refilled their glasses with the filthy purple alcohol and they sat down and scrolled through the absurdly overfiltered pictures of everyone they’d ever known, and then for good measure they made their own ridiculously overfiltered FaceTuned pic that turned them both into busty size 6s with giant fish lips, stuck their figures onto a background of a golden beach, and posted it. Immediately the likes started pouring in.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Lissa, rolling her eyes.
“Now everyone’s going to ask me how Hawaii was,” said Kim-Ange, getting up to go to bed.
“Tell them you got sponsored by a luxury holiday site to go for free for the ’Gram,” suggested Lissa.
“I will, I will.” And Kim-Ange kissed her on the cheek and Lissa went to bed, feeling slightly better, or, at least, a little drunk.
Chapter 9
Cormac wasn’t entirely disappointed to notice that Emer had gone by the time he got home. There was a text on his phone he didn’t read the whole of, but it definitely included the phrase “you’re like a really shit Batman.” He was pondering this when, for the third time that evening, Jake rang.
Cormac hurried out into the street.
“That was quick,” said Jake suspiciously. “I take it she left.”
“Don’t you start,” said Cormac.
“Ah,” said Jake. “The thing about lady problems is . . .”
“Don’t start,” said Cormac. “And for the third time, I’m not even on call.”
“I know,” Jake said, and tried, and failed, to suppress a smile.
Cormac gave him a sideways look. It wasn’t like any call to be great fun. Unless, in Jake’s case, a supermodel had gotten herself stuck in the bath or something ridiculous like that. “What?”
“I thought you might like this one.”
“What?”
“It’s your young Islay.”
Cormac’s heart started beating extremely quickly. “What about her?”
“It’s only come up. Ten minutes ago.”
“You are kidding,” said Cormac.
Jake shook his head. “Nope. Some poor kid down south.”
“The right age?”
“Fifteen.”
“Oh God,” said Cormac. Then: “Oh God.”
“I know.” Jake whistled through his teeth. “I never thought we’d get there.”
Heart and lung transplants were so rare, and the chances of success so slim, that the heart was transplanted only into patients who desperately needed it.
“It’s the right size: he was tiny. Couple more years growing, and they can do it together.”
Cormac had watched the clock run down on patients before, had been fully expecting it to happen again.
“Chuffing hell,” he said. “That is absolutely brilliant news.”
“Want to come with me to get her?” said Jake.
Cormac did. And he clasped his hand on Jake’s shoulder as they climbed into the van, Tim the silent driver pulling away.
LISSA COULDN’T SLEEP.
Outside the nurses’ block, with its single-glazed windows, was the ongoing sound of London, rumbling away. Normally Lissa didn’t mind it, quite liked it, in fact: the steady, reassuring noise of lorry deliveries; bottles being recycled from pubs; bin pickups; sirens; shouting. It was the city she’d been born in, the city she’d always known. It was her lullaby.
But tonight, it was getting right on her nerves, as she lay there, eyes dry and wide, wondering how many other Kais were out there, how many other boys wouldn’t make it home to their mothers.
Normally in her job she followed people into their homes. Alive people who got better, hopefully, or at least reached a stage of acceptance and learned to deal with whatever hand of cards they’d been dealt.
This had happened the wrong way around, and all she could see was a dripping pool of blood and wide staring eyes and someone who could have been her brother, could have been anyone she’d been at school with . . .
Every lorry stopping on the road sounded like danger; a car’s screeching brakes made her stiffen. She could feel the adrenaline shoot through her, without warning, feel it spurting through her system even as one bit of her was chanting, Must rest, must rest, and her phone glowed on the table, counting down the minutes until she had to get up; even as she could see the sky lightening through her cheap, thin standard-issue curtains. She groaned, turned over in bed, stuffed her head under the pillow, feeling simultaneously grimly alert and as if all her limbs were pinned down by stones, and the night ground on.
Chapter 10
Joan had arrived by the time the boys got back there to Islay’s house. All the lights were blazing in the quiet village street. Mrs. Murray, who ran the village shop, lived next door and had gotten up to see what all the fuss was about, just in case she missed any vitally important gossip.
She didn’t consider what she did to be gossip, but instead an intensely important life force to the surrounding area and, in fact, a moral source for good, practically heroic—hence her standing in her eiderdown dressing gown outside her (spotless) front step at one o’clock in the morning. Plus, everyone had known wee Islay from a bairn, knew it wisnae fair, the poor lass. When all the other kids were running themselves ragged down at Zahira’s nursery, she’d had to be kept home like a china doll sat on a shelf, never moving, jumping, running—everything children wanted to do. She was made of porcelain and couldn’t be let out. It was a real hardship, to live somewhere as beautiful as Kirrinfief, which had the loch close by, the mountains, and as much freedom and space to play in as a child could dream of, and be stuck indoors all the time watching TV or playing with her iPad.