When I Was Invisible

by Dorothy Koomson

  11

  Nika

  Brighton, 2016

  I’m impressed. Eliza’s managed to leave it a whole seven days before she arrives at my doorstep. Marshall and I haven’t seen each other since her return because she’s been waiting for him to go to work together, somehow managing to leave work at the exact same time as him, and staying all evening to talk about her recovery – basically doing everything she can to keep us apart.

  ‘Can I have a word?’ she asks.

  ‘Sure,’ I say, trying my best to be pleasant. Eliza moves forward to come in and is surprised when I don’t oblige. Instead, I stand my ground. I’m not going to let her in, she doesn’t get to do that. ‘Is it a long word with lots of letters?’

  She frowns at me, unimpressed by my wit and my not letting her in.

  ‘What I mean is, will it take a long time, this word you want to have? If it will, we can go for a walk. If it won’t, then we can talk here.’

  ‘I don’t think you want to talk out here. The walls are quite thin and I’m sure you won’t want anyone to hear what I’ve got to say. I think we should go inside.’

  ‘A walk it is, then,’ I reply without moving. ‘Or we could go to your place.’

  Her face draws in on itself, her green eyes wary, her features tense. There isn’t enough perfume and room scent in the world to cover the smell of skunk in her flat. She might get away with giving people the impression she’s just too heavy-handed with whichever perfume she’s wearing that day, but there’s no way she can hide it on her belongings. And if I go into her flat, smell it, I will tell Marshall, she can be sure of it. ‘OK, let’s go for a walk.’

  ‘I’ll meet you outside,’ I say to her, then step back and shut the door, gather my phone, my keys, coat, shoes. It’s not cold outside, I don’t think, but I may need to walk around after Eliza’s ‘word’ to clear my head or to get rid of her.

  She’s still there, standing guard at my door. I smile again: it’s amusing that she thinks I’m scared of her, that she thinks of all the things that have happened to me in my life that she features anywhere near the top ten. I was talking to Sasha earlier. She told me that she’d told Mum and Dad that she’d seen me and the first thing they had asked was if Todd knew. First question. Not how was I, where was I, would I come and see them? No: first thought Todd. Sasha is moving out soon and can’t wait: ‘I feel so ungrateful, but I don’t want Tracy-Dee ever thinking this kind of behaviour is normal.’

  Outside, the heat of the promised summer rises up to greet us. About a week after we’d started sleeping together, Marshall asked me if I minded that we never did anything – that all we’d do is screw, eat, and then I’d go back to my flat. ‘Do you mind that we don’t go out and wine and dine and do stuff?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Should I?’

  ‘Most people do when they’re dating,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe we should do that when we get bored of having so much sex, then?’ I replied.

  ‘Good plan, that woman, good plan.’

  ‘I know you and Marshall have been spending a lot of time together,’ Eliza says to cut into my thoughts. ‘As soon as my back was turned you moved in on him.’

  ‘When I first met you, you seemed so nice,’ I say to her. ‘I genuinely thought we could be friends.’

  ‘When I first met you, I didn’t think you were a back-stabbing whore who’d go sniffing around my mate the second my back was turned.’

  Wow, that came from nowhere, I think. There is no reasoning with her, not that I want to, or need to. Not really. ‘Fair enough. Is that the word you wanted to have?’

  ‘I want you to stay away from him.’ Her voice vibrates with the strain of keeping herself in check. ‘Stay away from him. He doesn’t need someone like you hanging around him.’

  ‘Someone like me?’

  She stops walking. ‘I’ve been on the Internet trying to find out about you. But you know what’s odd? There is nothing about you. It’s like you don’t exist.’ She’s trembling as she speaks; colour is rising up her neck, spreading up towards her cheeks. Her agitation, the need for something to calm her down, is almost painful to watch. From her back pocket she retrieves her fancy phone, with a touchscreen and sleek body. I’m surprised she hasn’t already sold it, although it’s probably only a matter of time. Unless she’s managed to scam cash from her parents on her recent visit. ‘But then, the other day, I was scrolling through Facebook and this comes up.’ She shows me her phone. I am looking at a picture of a woman in her thirties. She has long dreadlocks, loose around her face, but there’s enough of her face on show to see her features. She has cheekbones that are prominent from the way she smiles, brown eyes that look tired and don’t quite hit the centre of the camera. Below the slightly blurry picture of this woman I vaguely recognise are words. I read them several times before I actually take in what they are saying.

  Have you seen this woman?

  Grace ‘Ace’ Carter is in her thirties and went missing from her homeless hostel bedsit in the Birmingham area in January 2016. Grace is vulnerable and is thought to have been suffering from depression, and her family and friends are very worried about her. If you or anyone know where she might be, contact her uncle on the email below. Please share.

  ‘OK, it’s very sad she’s missing, but I don’t know what it’s got to do with me,’ I say. My voice does not waver, my expression does not falter. I do not give anything away.

  ‘That’s what I thought first of all, but then I looked properly and I thought, “She looks like Nika.” And then I looked a bit closer, and I realised, that is Nika. That is you. Cut off the hair, add glasses and this Grace Carter person doesn’t just look like you, she is you.’

  If Eliza is looking for a reaction, she doesn’t get one. What am I supposed to do? Break down and confess all to this woman who means me nothing but harm?

  ‘It all fits,’ she says. ‘This homeless woman called Grace Carter disappears in January and not long afterwards you turn up here with a new name, new look and not very much of a backstory. Marshall doesn’t know very much about your background, I don’t, anyone I’ve asked in the building doesn’t. So, what did you do, steal someone’s identity and then take over her life?’

  It’s Judge, of course. He’s trying to find me, trying to shut me up. I’ve been keeping an eye on the news, but there’s been nothing at all about him being arrested or even investigated. I’ve assumed that the policeman, DS Brennan, was working for Judge when he persuaded me to leave, that all the stuff he told me in the car about how Judge would go through every single one of my friends until I shut up, how I shouldn’t worry because he – DS Brennan – would take care of Reese whilst he was in hospital and would keep an eye out for him when he was released, had all been lies to stop me testifying against Judge. But this thing on the Internet, when Judge is using people’s willingness to help others to try to find me, I assume to silence me, means the policeman might have been genuine. And the fact Judge is looking for me at all means he must think there’s a real possibility that he might be charged with something. It also means he might have killed Reese to shut him up.

  ‘You watch too much telly,’ I say to Eliza.

  ‘You aren’t getting around it by trying to make out I’m crazy,’ she says. ‘That is you.’

  ‘If you really believe that, then you should pass on whatever information you have to the police.’

  ‘What?’ She wasn’t expecting that response.

  ‘That’s what I would do. I don’t believe everything I read on the Internet. I don’t know who it is that is looking for anyone who appears to be missing, so if I genuinely thought someone was committing a crime or someone was vulnerable and missing and I knew where they were, I’d report it to the police so they could decide what needed to be done. But that’s me.’

  Eliza’s lips scrunch together like screwed-up tissue paper, her nostrils flare like a bull about to charge. ‘Stay away from Marshall. Stay away from both of us,’
she says. ‘I’ve noticed you, Nika, always skulking around, won’t let anyone into your flat, keeping yourself to yourself. Well, I’m pretty sure you won’t want Marshall to see this, so stay away from him or else.’

  ‘Or else?’

  She fronts up to me, right in my face. Her perfume is overwhelming this close, but I catch the scent of what she is trying to hide – cannabis in its strongest form, skunk. When you know what it smells like, no perfume can disguise it. ‘Or else I will show him this and then you’ll have to tell him all your little secrets or lose him.’

  He was never mine in the first place, I should point that out to her. No matter how much you may love someone, you never possess them. You can only ever borrow the right to spend time with them. I was only ever borrowing the right to spend time with Marshall because it was what he wanted, too. Yes, I thought when this began it was going to work out, he was my first connection to the world and through him, through learning from being with him, I would form more connections, more and more of them until I was properly hooked into life, into the world. It turns out I was only borrowing that time with him. It was never going to be anything more permanent than that.

  I can’t make connections to the world. Not when I am who I am. Not when I opened a letter my sister forwarded to me today and I found that once again the past has chased me down. Once again, I’ve been reminded that I am not normal, I am not like anyone else, and I am not allowed to have nice things like my dalliance with Marshall. I am broken, and no matter how hard I try, how hard I pretend, nothing is going to fix me.

  ‘Does Marshall know you’ve lost your job, Eliza?’

  Unlike me, Eliza isn’t very good at disguising moments when she is caught off guard: her eyes widen in that moment of shock, then the horror ensnares her face and she takes a step back. Too late she remembers that she is meant to have the upper hand, she is the one who is meant to be in control here, and she rallies, pretends I haven’t guessed another of her little secrets.

  ‘Just remember what I said. Stay away or I show Marshall this picture, all right?’

  Her dramatic walk away is wasted on me. I don’t care about Eliza. I don’t care about anyone right now. Right now, all I care about is how to fall off the face of the Earth again.

  Roni

  London, 2016

  On my bed, Mum has left a pile of my post and a message written on the notepaper she uses to write her shopping lists: ‘Veronica. Kindly return the many calls to Cliff. It is rude to not return calls and I do not like having to speak to him. Kind regards. Mum.’

  It is rude not to return Cliff’s calls. But I’m a bit concerned that he hasn’t got the message yet that I will not be pursuing that element of dating for the time being.

  I open my payslip, my bank statement, the other pieces of junk mail that have somehow managed to only find me now that I am back living here. Maybe I should contact the junk mail senders – I’m sure they’d find Nika no worries. The final envelope is bigger than normal and with a thick, expensive texture to it. It’s obviously an invite, but it is postmarked Brighton. I’m not sure what it could be, or who I know in Brighton. Once open, I have to read it over and over again. Revulsion has worked its way through my body several times, squeezing out my capacity to breathe. I stare at the words that are gold-embossed onto the thick cream card in my hand.

  This could be called divine intervention. A fulfilment of the desperate, life-limiting need I have to find Nika. But is there really no other way? If she is alive she will show up and I will be able to find her. But really, is there no other way? The invitation falls from my numb fingers and I sit back on the bed. I move back as far as possible, to the very furthest corner, and bring my knees to my chest as I stare at the invite. I really, really wish there was another way.

  12

  Nika

  Brighton, 2016

  The brass plaque on the wall beside the red door reads:

  Daneaux School of Dance

  Est. 1975

  Paris. London. Brighton

  At the centre of the red door there is huge silver 40, above two white balloons also branded with the number 40.

  Inside I can hear the sounds of a party, a hubbub of people talking, glasses clinking, low music and frequent bursts of laughter. I stand on the steep stone steps leading up to the dance studio and close my eyes. I can imagine who is in there. All the girls from when I was taking ballet, when I wanted to be a dancer. All the women from before I was even born. All the women and girls who came after me. So many of them, all of them with different stories, different life experiences, all here to celebrate the life and times and enduring success of the man who abused me for six years, nearly eight if you count the two years he spent before that grooming Roni and me to be so enamoured with him that we would question ourselves before we questioned or spoke out against him.

  I don’t know why I’ve come here. When I opened the letter, forwarded by Sasha with a Brighton postmark, I hadn’t been expecting to see his name, see his wife’s name, to be confronted with the fact they lived so near to me now. The generic letter inserted with the invite was appealing with me to come and mark another important anniversary in the life of a great man. His dance school had produced dancers who had gone on to secure prestigious scholarships at prominent dance schools across the world; he had personally tutored women who had danced for all of the best ballet companies across the globe. And he had been responsible for young girls who had found a way to express themselves through dance, who had enjoyed the freedom that dancing gave them.

  A great man, respected by so many.

  I have not come to celebrate him. I suppose I wanted to come along and see if anyone would show up. I was hoping as I walked here that he and his wife, possibly his son, would be sitting alone, having to think back over all the things he had done and realise that no one would pretend now, when the girls didn’t have to go because their parents compelled them to, they would vote with their feet, they would stay away. They would not flock into his place of business and his home address, and share drink, food, time and stories with him.

  I arrived and discovered he is not alone. He is surrounded by people, the party on all floors of the house sounds full, burgeoning with people who think the world of him and his dance school.

  I did not understand why they sent me an invite to my parents’ address. Was it all so easily forgotten that I was the one who spoke out, who went to the police, who ran away as soon as she could? Or was I so unimportant, was what I accused him of so ludicrous to everyone, including my parents, that they thought I’d laugh it off as a childish misunderstanding to be set aside now I was an adult and understood the ways of the world? Or, as is most likely, did they send an invite to me, thinking it would get to the other Veronica?

  When I was sixteen and a half, it stopped, he stopped. I had been to the police a year before and nothing had changed. If anything, it got worse. But then, when I was sixteen and a half, the lessons became about dancing, about teaching me new techniques instead of punishing me for repeatedly speaking out.

  I remember the day it stopped clearly. I heard his breathing change, and the familiar dread of knowing what would come next began to creep through me because the sound of his breathing was always the warning. The next thing he said would be the start of it and I braced myself for that, for my body to become rigid with fear, for my mind to try to blank out, when the studio door suddenly banged open. It was Mrs Daneaux. She seemed to be all smiles, but still had that cold look in her eye she’d reserved for me since I’d told her what he’d been doing and he had convinced her I was lying.

  He went to greet her, tried to shoo her out again, but she was having none of it. She decided to stay and watch the progress of one of their star pupils. After that, she regularly showed up unannounced, which stopped him from touching me again.

  So for the last six months of living in Chiselwick, I learnt to dance again without fear lining the pit of my stomach like cement, and without bile foam
ing like lava in my throat. I never remembered what it was like to dance for the love of it and I still had disgust crawling over every part of my body, and the memories of what had happened were like scorch marks in my mind, but I could dance.

  I know, even now, if I told people about it, they would question why I put up with it when I was fifteen, when I was sixteen, when I was nearly seventeen. Surely by then I was older and taller and stronger. I could have stopped it if I’d wanted to. I know people wouldn’t understand, whatever age I was, whenever I saw him, whenever he came near me, whenever anyone did something that triggered the memory of him, I would become eleven years old again – horrified that someone I adored would do something that felt so awful; I would be thirteen again – stupefied because what he did to me was so distressing I’d spent the whole night throwing up. When I was older and apparently able to stop it if I wanted to, I was actually still thirteen, stuck back in that moment of terror, frozen with shock.

  When I was sixteen and a half it all stopped, but I never quite managed to stop the feelings of hating myself that made me want to disappear.

  I shouldn’t have come to this place, I realise. I should have stayed at home and told myself that everyone had abandoned him, instead of coming here to see the reality is that no one cares what he was accused of, everyone still considers him a great man.

  ‘I wondered if you’d show up,’ she says. Her voice hasn’t changed at all. I remember it as clearly as though I only heard it yesterday. Standing beside me, waiting for our turn on the stage, shouting into my ear that this club was rubbish and we should try somewhere else, begging me to speak to her and repeating that she was sorry. I remember her voice clearly, even though nearly twenty years have stacked themselves neatly between us. It won’t really matter how she looks, because she sounds the same. ‘I should say, I hoped you would turn up. You’re the only reason why I came here,’ she adds.