Free Donor, The by Helen FitzGerald Page B

televisual entertainment in a rented flat as far away as possible from his nagging partner (the remote control).
    The first message from William Marion read thus:
    Hello, I wonder if you can help me. My estranged wife, Cynthia Marion, left for India a little over one year ago. Her address before this was Flat 1a, Digby Crescent, Finsbury Park, London. I urgently need to find her. Our two teenage daughters are ill and both need kidney transplants. Can you please contact me via email or on my mobile.
     
Kind regards,
     
Will Marion.
     
     
    In his cupboard office, where he was supposed to be revising chemistry (Did his mother not realise he had learnt it all months earlier? That he would blitz his exams without so much as revising a single page?), Preston emailed back immediately.
    I am happy to help. I am highly skilled in this area, and have a 100% success rate in tracing missing persons. Due to the highly delicate and confidential nature of my assignments, I prefer to communicate via email and ask that you delete all messages from your hard drive once the information has been passed on. My fee is £500 per week plus travel expenses (you say she may be in India, which means I will probably need to travel there and will require an emergency contingency fund to cover the costs involved). One week’s fee is a non-refundable deposit. This should be paid into my PayPal account using this email address. If you would like me to take the case, please do this immediately and provide me with the following details:
     
– your full name and address
     
– your estranged wife’s full name, any aliases, her date of birth, old and recent photographs, bank account details, friends, boyfriends, offending history, psychiatric or medical history, and any other information you feel may be helpful. The more information I have, the easier it will be for me to find her.
     
Once I have received the initial payment and these details, I will get to work without delay.
     
Yours,
     
The Hunters and Collectors
     
     
     Will got back to him at once, depositing the first payment into his PayPal account and giving him all the information he could think of, including Heath’s details, Janet’s address, Meredith’s address, a brief summary of what he knew about Cynthia’s addiction issues, and the name of her band.
    Just as Preston had promised, he set to work straight away.

17
     
     
    Zzzzz. Cynthia unzipped the tent. The sound didn’t wake the Peter man she’d shagged and sang at.
    ‘Who’s asking?’ she said, squinting at the teenager before her. The sun stabbed her hung-over eyes. As they adjusted, she noticed that he looked like a young James Dean. How young is too young? she wondered.
    ‘Delivery boy,’ Preston said. ‘Can we get a coffee?’
    ‘Depends what you’re delivering.’
    ‘News from a loved one,’ he said. ‘Meet you down the beach in ten.’
    Cynthia immediately assumed the boy had come with news of Heath. Perhaps he’d gotten out – but that couldn’t be right, he wasn’t eligible for parole for another month at least. Unless he’d escaped. Heath had considered this before. The last time she visited him, in fact.
    ‘I can’t do this any more,’ she’d said. ‘If they reject you again, I can’t sit around and wait.’
    He got that look in his eye he only got with Cynthia. A little-boy look, pleading.
    ‘I’ll wait for you, Heath, just not here. You understand ?’
    ‘I’ll break out,’ he said, grasping her hand, begging her not to leave him.
    ‘Heath, promise me you won’t do that. You’ve got another year at most – you’ll get parole next time! Don’t try anything daft or you’ll get another ten years and my tits’ll be doubling for my slippers.’
    Maybe he hadn’t listened to her, Cynthia thought as she exited the tent. Maybe he’d packed himself into a large cardboard box and posted himself out the jail. Maybe he’d paid someone to fly a helicopter over the exercise yard and