When I Was Invisible

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘No, it’s OK, I think I’m just going to wait for her here.’

  ‘Good idea, I’ll go up and check on my own.’ The fake smile she treats me to before she steps in through the doorway is sinister and quietly ferocious. She seems to be already dismembering Nika in her head.

  This is why I should have a MOBILE PHONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could warn Nika about the trainee serial killer heading her way. And this Eliza hasn’t told me which flat Marshall lives in so I can’t buzz up to him to alert him to her approach. It sounded, from their conversation the other day, that Marshall and Nika mainly had sex. Which would make it a safe bet that if they’re together, they’re more than likely engaged in that right now. If Eliza knocks on his door and they’re in flagrante delicto, she’s bound to find out. I suspect when that happens Eliza’s going to go absolutely—

  ‘I thought you’d gone home?’ Nika says to me. I have been so busy fretting in the wake of Eliza’s exit that I haven’t been watching the comings and goings on the street.

  ‘I did,’ I say. I have to stop myself from throwing my arms around her. I am so relieved to see her. Now the noise in my head will stop, and Eliza won’t find her in some state of undress in Marshall’s flat and start dismembering people. ‘I came back. I had to see you. I need to explain.’

  ‘Roni, not tonight. I am exhausted in every way possible, this is not the time for this conversation.’

  ‘I have to tell you why. It’s not an excuse, and I don’t want you to forgive me or even to understand, but I want to be honest. Please. Afterwards I’ll do my best to leave you alone. It’ll be hard, but I’ll try.’

  I wonder what she is seeing when she stands very still, watching me like she does from behind her glasses. I wonder if she sees me with pigtails with pink ribbons at the ends, wearing the same expression as her – someone who has also decided she wants to be a dancer. I wonder if she is looking back through time to the moment when she knew we were going to be the best of friends, the closest of soulmates.

  Possibly, probably, because eventually she says: ‘Fine. I’m too tired to argue with you right now. I’m too tired for much of anything.’ Her keys jangle as she moves to unlock the front door.

  ‘Oh, by the way, I think I might have dropped you in it with Eliza?’ I figure I should mention that now, before we start to talk about the other stuff.

  Nika rolls her eyes. ‘Why, what did you d— Actually, to be honest, I don’t want to know. I don’t care. I’ll deal with her when I have to. Just come in and tell me what you want to tell me and then you can get the last train back to London.’

  She doesn’t make me get the train back to London. She sits and she listens and I find myself telling her everything. I was going to tell her a portion of it and explain why I did what I did, but then I can’t stop. I talk and talk and talk. I even tell her about Gail, about what Gail’s mother said to me and how I knew it was true. As I talk, the noise in my head eases, it lowers and lowers and lowers until I can’t hear it. Until there’s barely a sound in my head.

  When I had made my decision to become a nun, I started to go to weekly confession. I used to seal myself into the wooden box and tell everything to the priest of a church three train stops away. I did not want to speak to anyone who might know me or who might recognise my voice. I wanted the freedom to speak freely. The priest would listen and he would absolve me. When I left the confessional, for a time, the noise in my head would be gone, banished by speaking my truth. I would have the silence I craved. That was how I knew becoming a nun was the right thing to do: where God was, I could find the silence, God was in and with the silence.

  That effect, anaesthetising and cleansing as it was, had started to fade in recent years. Most acutely in recent months when thoughts of Judas started to encroach on all my prayers and all my thoughts away from prayers. That was when I accepted that I had betrayed Nika in a way that I could not ask anyone but her for forgiveness. I accepted, too, that I had betrayed God by not being honest about what I had done in any of my confessions. I was a betrayer, a coward, and this was my chance to put things right.

  ‘Will you pray with me?’ I ask her when I have finished talking. We are sitting in her bed again, the warmest place in the flat, it seems, unless we sit directly in front of the lit oven.

  Nika shakes her head. ‘That’s not for me. But feel free to do it if you want.’

  I ask her another question then, and she stares at me. She stares at me and stares at me and stares at me. ‘Yes,’ she eventually says.

  And she doesn’t say another word to me all night.

  Nika

  Brighton, 2016

  I’m doing it for Reese. He’s probably dead because of me and I need something good to have come out of the death wish he said I have that most likely got him killed.

  I’m also doing it for a fifteen-year-old girl whose best friend betrayed her when she needed her most.

  I’m doing it for me, for Nika, the girl that no one would ever believe.

  17

  Roni

  London, 2016

  ‘What’s this, brought another nun to try and convert us all, have you?’ Uncle Warren says with a laugh.

  My uncle’s laugh – actually, his voice – grates on me today. He sits on the sofa beside my mother, wearing Dad’s slippers, with the top button of his shirt open. It’s obvious he slept here last night. I’m grateful I wasn’t here: he would have tried to speak to me, probably would have made a few of his unfunny quips then expected me to accept his apology. I would have, as well. It’s hard not to when someone is telling you they are sorry and you’re almost trained to make allowances for them.

  ‘Nika isn’t a nun,’ I say to Mum and Dad.

  ‘Nika? What sort of a name is that? Sounds Eastern European. And no offence, love, but you don’t look Eastern European,’ my uncle says to my friend who is standing beside the living room door.

  I ignore my uncle. I can’t allow myself to be sidetracked by thinking about his nastiness and the effect it has on me. I have to do this. ‘Mum and Dad, do you remember Nika? The other Veronika Harper?’

  They are having tea and coffee in the living room and it is all very civilised and genteel, the epitome of what my mother wanted for her life. I often think she only had children because that was what she, a white, middle-class woman with a respectable husband who had a good job and drove a nice car, was expected to do. She never really engaged with any of us, but by the time she reached the task of bringing me up, she acted as if she was literally going through the motions because she couldn’t be bothered any more. I was ‘a fuss’ personified and that was draining for her. That’s why we children adored my uncle – he was engaged with us, he didn’t mind the fuss, the mess, the effort required to spend time with us. My uncle gave us attention, the type we rarely received unbidden from my mother, and we loved him for it.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Mum says. She gets up and bustles out of the room to retrieve more cups, more side plates for pieces of cake. While she is gone, Dad puts aside his paper and stands up. He holds out his hand to warmly shake Nika’s hand.

  ‘I remember you, Veronika,’ he says. ‘You danced so beautifully as the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker one Christmas. We originally hoped our Veronica would get the part but you did an excellent job. And Veronica had her chance the next year with her role in Swan Lake. You were fantastic, though.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Nika says. She can’t take her hand back from Dad quick enough. All the time she is watching him warily. She has been wary and anxious, has pretty much permanently had her headphones from her music player installed in her ears, zoning out while the music plays, since we left Brighton for here this morning. I have been chasing silence all this time; Nika has been using music as her drug of choice. I know she is itching to put her earphones in right now, to escape from this.

  When Mum has returned with two cups, Nika shakes her hand, too. Uncle Warren hasn’t moved from his seat so if Nika intends to shake his hand
she will have to go to him. It’s obvious she doesn’t want to be here and that even walking into the living room has been enough of an ordeal; there is no way she is moving from where she stands by the door, ready, it seems, to make a run for it.

  It is a sunny Tuesday afternoon in May. I want to remember that. Remember this feeling, what the world felt like before I unpack these coming moments of honesty and truth.

  ‘It’s so nice of you to visit us, Veronika. The other Veronika,’ Mum says with a laugh. ‘I always found it so strange that two people could be from completely different families but have the same last name and would then call their daughters the same thing.’

  I have to do this now, before I chicken out and let my mother slide into being the perfect hostess and it becomes a nightmare trying to get her to listen. I turn to Nika, then swing back to my family. I wish my brothers were here. No more secrets, no more lies. I want all of them to know. It’s time. Trembling, almost violently shaking, I hold my hand out for Nika. When she doesn’t take it, I turn to her again. She is standing frozen, petrified by what I’m about to do. I keep my hand out for her because I need her to do this with me, I need her to hold my hand so I can say it out loud.

  ‘I need you,’ I say to her in my head.

  She steps forward and slips her hand into mine; our fingers intertwine and I am brave. I have courage. She is standing beside me and there is near silence in my head. This is the right thing to do.

  ‘Bloody hell! You’re not about to tell us you’re one of them, are you?’ Uncle Warren says. ‘I always did think you were a bit odd, and wanting to be around other women all day … Well, you know how that’s gonna turn you. It’s not—’

  ‘Mum and Dad, when I was fifteen I went with Nika to the police.’ My uncle stops moving and speaking, as do my parents. They obviously do not know about this. ‘Our ballet teacher had been molesting us since we were eleven, and he progressively got worse until at thirteen it got as bad as it can get. Nika went to the police …’ I have to stop. I can’t do this. I remember the emptiness of her eyes as we stood outside the station, the way she had disappeared into blankness because she knew no one would believe her now and she had to go back to him again and again. ‘Nika went to the police and I … I lied and said it wasn’t true. I had to lie because … because Uncle Warren had been molesting me since I was eight years old and I was scared what he would do to Brian and Damian if I had to tell the police about it.’

  In my parents’ living room, five people react in different ways to what I have said: I feel the tears that have been sitting at the rim of my eyes start to fall; Nika does not move and I suspect she doesn’t breathe; my uncle turns white and looks from one parent to another to see who is going to react first; my father stares at me like I have just appeared in front of him in a puff of smoke; and my mother … my mother glares at me as though I have betrayed her by telling this secret that was not so secret to her.

  ‘He stopped because Mum walked in on him … she walked in on him forcing …’ I have to say the word, I have to say that hideous word to not minimise it any longer, to make it clear how horrific it was. ‘Mum walked in on him … r-r— raping me in the kitchen when he was meant to be watching me after school.’

  ‘Veronica!’ Mum breathes in a shocked voice.

  ‘I saw you, Mum. I saw you in the reflection of the kitchen window. I saw you walk into the kitchen with the shopping, and then walk out again, and come back making lots of noise so he would know you were there.’ Nika’s hand is tight against mine, so tight we are both probably in pain because every one of her finger bones seems to dig into me. ‘You saw what he was doing to me, how he was hurting me, and rather than shout at him or get rid of him or call the police, you just walked out again.’

  I saw her outline in the kitchen window, and I thought I was saved, that what was happening was over and now she knew, she’d stop him, she’d get rid of him. But instead, she stepped backwards, and pulled the door almost shut behind her. I started to choke and cry, not only because he was hurting me, but because my mum had seen what he was doing to me and she had gone away. And she wasn’t coming back. The minutes between the realisation that she was never coming back and her loud slamming of the front door followed by her excessively loud ‘I’m home’ call were the longest I’d ever experienced. He’d let me go, hissed at me to put my knickers back on, fix myself up, and to remember that if I ever said a word to anyone he’d kill my brothers and make it look like an accident.

  ‘I couldn’t tell the police officers the truth because he’d always told me he would kill Brian and Damian and I knew he’d do it. He was always here and I knew he’d do it during one of the times he took them out on their bikes and everyone would think it was an accident, except I would know the truth and it would be my fault they were dead because I didn’t keep quiet.’

  After that day that Mum saw him raping me, my uncle never touched me again, but he was always around, regularly leering at me, constantly in my face. He never touched me again, but the threat of it was always as clear and present as daylight; the knowledge that my mum knew and would do nothing so as to avoid causing a fuss was always there, too.

  After that day, my mother never looked me in the eye again; she acted as though I was invisible.

  My father is on his feet. ‘Is this true?’ he asks my mother, his voice quivering. He’s confused and angry and shocked and scared, all at the same time, each emotion vying with the others to be the one let out first.

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Geoffrey.’ Mum is shaking and white, her hands moving frantically as she tries to explain, but she hasn’t moved from her seat. ‘He said it was only that one time, that he’d got caught up and confused about how he felt about her, and it had gone too far. I told him. I told him not to go near her again. I made sure he didn’t touch her again. I let her go out as much as she wanted so she could be out of the house if he was here.’

  ‘STOP TALKING, MARGARET! STOP TALKING RIGHT NOW!’ Dad screams at her. Dad turns to me and opens his arms to me. Nika releases my hand and I go to him. He takes me in his arms, holds me so I am close, I am protected. ‘My poor baby girl,’ he whispers against my hair. ‘My poor, poor baby girl. I’m so sorry, I should have known. I should have known. I am so very, very sorry that I didn’t. I’m so very sorry I didn’t protect you.’

  The noise in my head is gone. Probably not for ever, but I can think at last. I can think and I can stop thinking. I can be. I can find the silence, even for this tiniest moment of time. My father rocks and hushes me and there is silence for once.

  ‘And Nika, I’m so sorry for what you went through, too,’ my father says, releasing me from his hold to bring her in, too. He wants to comfort her, to show her that he believes her. That she matters, too.

  We turn to where she was standing, but she’s gone. My uncle has gone, too, probably running while he has the chance. But Nika is the one I care about. She deserves to have someone comfort her, to tell her they believe her, to hold her and tell her they’re sorry. She deserves that, more than I do.

  I tear out of the living room, out of the front door and on to the street. I look up and down the road, my eyes wildly searching for her, but there’s no sign of her. No lone figures walking away in either direction. Just houses and cars. No people. No Nika.

  ‘NIKA!’ I call out because she can’t have gone that far. ‘Nika, come back. NIKA! PLEASE! Please, come back.’ I stand in the street and shout for long enough for curtains to start to twitch, people to start to take notice. I keep on screaming, though, shouting for her to come back. Eventually, my dad comes and places a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘She’s gone, Veronica. She’s gone. Come back inside. Come back and tell me everything.’

  ‘But I couldn’t have done it without her,’ I explain. ‘Her parents never believed her and now she’s gone and she doesn’t think anyone cares about her. It’s not fair, Dad.’

  ‘I know, Veronica, I know.’ He gently brings me back
into the house and takes me in his arms again to try to hug me better.

  Nika

  London, 2016

  I hear her calling my name, telling me to come back.

  I can’t go back. How can I? Her father believed her. She didn’t need me to be there, all she needed was to say the words and he believed her. No one has ever believed me first time. How could I go back and watch her have what I needed all along?

  ‘NIKA!’ I hear her screaming.

  But I don’t move from sitting here behind a parked car. I’m not going to move until she goes inside and I can go away from this place, this town, and never come back.

  18

  Nika

  Brighton, 2016

  I want to go back to my flat, crawl into a hole and disappear again.

  I am tempted, in such a visceral, animalistic way, to ditch this life and go back to being Grace Carter. That is dangerous thinking, precarious fantasising, not only for me but for everyone I knew back then, too.

  Instead, I walk slowly back from Brighton station, keeping my head lowered in case I see anyone I know. When I arrive home, I let myself into the communal hall, then walk up the three flights of stairs to the second floor, walk along the corridor that is identical to my floor and stop outside 207.

  Marshall won’t be back from work yet, but I need to not be on my own. I need to be with someone I feel safe with and who knows me as someone undamaged and untainted by life. I have had to switch off my phone, because Roni has been calling it non-stop since I disappeared from her house and she stopped shouting for me in the street. I know she’ll turn up at some point, maybe even today, so I need to be not there right now. I sit down, pull my knees up to my chest, slowly push a black earbud into each ear. I push the play button on the music player. INXS’s ‘Need You Tonight’ starts to play in my ears and I smile to myself. Sometimes my music player seems to know what I’m going through and throws up a song accordingly. I haven’t heard this song in an age. I rest my forehead on my knees, curl up into the music and allow myself to drift away.