Never Let Me Go: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

Kathy recounts the start of her life as a carer. She says that the long hours, the “solitude,” and the difficulty of dealing with people’s donations makes the job a tough one—but Kathy has shown an aptitude for it. Kathy runs into Laura after several years on the job—one of her acquaintances from Hailsham, who was always cracking a joke—at a treatment center, where Laura is also working as a carer. Kathy notices that Laura is no longer so carefree, and indeed, Laura talks for a long time about the difficulties of her job, before she mentions Ruth, whom neither Kathy nor Laura has seen for some time. Ruth is already a donor, and her first donation has gone “poorly.”

Laura suggests that, since Kathy is allowed to choose her donors now, Kathy should volunteer to be Ruth’s carers. But Kathy says that might not be a good idea. Laura also mentions the fact that Hailsham is closing—a piece of information Kathy heard several weeks before. Kathy does not know what to think of this news—she is shocked by it—but she finds an apt metaphor for her feeling when, one day, she watches a clown holding a fistful of bright balloons. Kathy worries that one balloon might be “let go and fly away,” and she wonders whether that isn’t similar to the feeling of the Hailsham students now in the world, with Hailsham gone. The thing that once bound them together will soon no longer exist.

Because of this feeling about the balloons, Kathy decides that, though it might be difficult, she ought to try to be Ruth’s carer. She volunteers for the position and begins meeting with Ruth at a treatment center in Dover. At first, their meetings are somewhat tense, and the two of them have difficulty reconnecting with one another. Ruth seems uncomfortable with the idea that she needs so much help—her health is frail after only one donation—and that Kathy is the one providing aid.

Then, “out of the blue,” Ruth mentions one session that there is an abandoned boat that has run aground several hours away, and that one can visit the boat—it’s not blocked off from the surrounding marshes. The rumor of the boat has been going around the treatment centers, and Ruth is in the mood for a break from the monotony of the hospital. Kathy, hesitant and first, finally agrees to take Ruth in her (Kathy’s) car to see the boat, and after a brief conversation regarding Tommy, who is also working as a donor now, Kathy and Ruth decide to pick him up and take him along as well.