The Brighton Mermaid

by Dorothy Koomson

  His voice, even though it was quiet, sounded very serious and it set my tummy spinning. I hadn’t felt this sick with worry since I’d seen that Jude had stolen the mermaid charm bracelet. Maybe that was it. Maybe the police had found out and had come to ask me about it. I knew it would get us into trouble. Jude had started to wear it, hidden it among the other dozens of bracelets she now wore on both arms, and I’d told her the police weren’t stupid, that they’d eventually come knocking on our door because they’d find out somehow, and that she would probably be arrested if she got found with it. That had got through to her and she’d started to keep it in her pocket instead.

  I pulled on my dark blue dressing gown over my pink nightdress and followed my dad downstairs, both of us walking quietly on the perpetually creaky stairs. What was I going to do if they asked me about the bracelet? Would I lie and say I didn’t know where it was? I didn’t though. I mean, I knew Jude had it, but I didn’t know where it was right then. Maybe I could say that? I could say I didn’t know exactly where it was and just hope they didn’t ask me if I knew who had it.

  In the living room, Mum, dressed in dark brown, was sitting on the settee, right next to Jude’s mum, Mrs Dalton, who was also dressed in dark brown. They sat so close together, Mum with her hands covering Mrs Dalton’s, that it was almost impossible to see where my mum began and Jude’s mum ended.

  Jude’s mum was sobbing. Not loudly, but definitely. Her shoulders were rounded and shaking, her body stopping every few seconds to quake, and her fingers were gripped tightly onto Mum’s hands. She looked like she was clinging on to Mum for dear life.

  Mr Dalton stood in front of the fireplace, looking greyish-pale, his blue eyes as dull as his complexion. I had barely stepped foot over the living room threshold when Mrs Dalton virtually threw herself out of her seat and launched herself at me.

  ‘Where is Judana?’ she demanded, grabbing hold of my arms. Through my dressing gown I could feel her fingers digging into my soft flesh. Mrs Dalton’s eyes were wild, unfocused, puffy from the sobbing, as she pushed her face right into mine. Her usually neatly curled hair stuck out at all different angles, matching her ferocious expression. This was so unlike Jude’s mum. Both our mothers were always neat, perfectly made-up and well turned out.

  ‘Lilani, Lilani,’ Mr Dalton said, coming over to us. ‘Let her go.’

  ‘Tell me where my daughter is!’ Mrs Dalton shouted. ‘Tell me!’

  Jude’s dad managed to prise her fingers from me. The tops of my arms throbbed with the imprints of her hands. I rubbed at them, absently. More intense than the pain in my arms was the fear of what she was saying, how she was acting.

  Mr Dalton delivered his wife back to my mum on the sofa, and Dad came to stand beside me. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ Mr Dalton said reasonably. He was the calmest man I’d ever met. Jude was allowed to get away with lots of things I was sure Mrs Dalton wouldn’t have let her get away with because he was so laid-back.

  ‘Enelle, now I’m going to ask you a question,’ he said. ‘Something very, very important. Judana didn’t come home from school earlier today. We want to know where she is. Can you please tell me where she is?’

  Dad placed his hand on my shoulder. I looked up at him and found he was staring down at me. ‘Tell us what you know, Enelle,’ he said.

  I was sure my eyes widened and I started to bite my lower lip. ‘I don’t know, Daddy,’ I eventually replied.

  ‘You do know!’ Jude’s mum shouted suddenly.

  I stepped closer to my dad. If Mrs Dalton shouted again, I was going to step behind my father and hide.

  ‘Lilani, stop. Stop ,’ Mr Dalton said. This was the first time I’d seen him this upset, and I’d never heard him raise his voice, even when he seemed annoyed. I remember Jude saying once that her dad never shouted. Even when she had stand-up screaming rows with her mum (a regular thing), he would step in to calm things down without shouting. Even when she did something bad like sneaking out with me and finding a dead body, he didn’t yell.

  ‘I’m sorry, Nell – we’re sorry, Nell. We just need to find Judana. We thought she went to school today but when she didn’t come home, we called the school. We’ve been waiting for her to turn up. But we couldn’t leave it any longer. Do you know where she is?’

  I shook my head. I honestly didn’t know. When she didn’t turn up for school today, I thought she was off sick. I was going to call her earlier in the evening, but then I’d had to do my homework and then it was dinner and then my chores. By then it was after nine o’clock and there was no way Mum and Dad would let me use the phone to call Jude or anyone. I’ll see her tomorrow , I’d thought as I got into bed. We were the daughters of nurses so it was very, very rare that we got more than one day off school when we were ill. I’ll see her tomorrow, and find out how she managed to get a day off school .

  ‘Did she come to school?’ Mr Dalton asked.

  I shook my head. ‘She …’ I began, but my voice sounded croaky and thick, like it’d been dunked in tar. I cleared my throat. ‘She wasn’t at the end of the road where we meet to go and get the bus, and she wasn’t at the bus stop. I thought she was off sick so I got the bus without her.’

  Mr Dalton looked at Mrs Dalton and something seemed to dawn on them at the same time. ‘I thought she’d got up and left for school early,’ Mr Dalton said, because, I assumed, Mrs Dalton would have been at work.

  Mrs Dalton’s face creased up all over again and she began to rock. ‘She wasn’t there the night before, was she?’ she said. ‘She wasn’t there the night before and neither of us knew.’

  Mum glanced at Dad, and a look passed between them before they both turned to face me. Is this what you’re going to do next, Enelle? they were both silently asking. Have you got a plan to run away now you’ve got experience of sneaking out of the house, too?

  The answer was no, of course. I wouldn’t run away. And I’d had no idea Jude was going to do it, either.

  ‘I think we’d better call the police,’ Dad said calmly.

  That spooked me, scared me. After he’d had to come to the station, after the interview at home, ‘I hope that is the last time we have anything to do with the police,’ Dad had said to me and Macy. Mostly to me because, of course, it was all my fault they were there in the first place. For Dad to suggest they get involved now, that meant he was frightened. In fact – I looked from one lined, weathered adult face to another – they were all terrified.

  My gaze swept over the faces around me again: they weren’t simply scared that Jude had run away – they were all scared that she was going to end up like the Brighton Mermaid. I wasn’t sure if they knew that right up until she’d left, Jude had looked like her. Was she going to end up like her, too?

  ‘Yes, yes we should,’ Mr Dalton said shakily, and I saw him wobble where he stood. Carefully, as though he was drunk and trying not to show it, he moved across the room to the sofa and sat next to his wife. He took her hands in his pale peach ones and then spoke to my dad: ‘Could you … Could you please call them for me?’ He spoke very carefully, very quietly – trying to hide the tremors shaking his words. ‘Could you call the police and tell them my daughter has gone missing?’

  Thursday, 15 July

  The awful policeman with the vicious-looking scar on his cheek came with a policewoman to ask me questions about Jude, but he didn’t say a word. He stood by the fireplace and glared at me as I told the policewoman everything Jude and I had done and talked about the day before yesterday.

  ‘She wasn’t upset about anything, no .’

  ‘She didn’t have a boyfriend, no .’

  ‘No one was bullying her at school. Well, no more than any of them had since we’d found, you know , her, on the beach. But no one really said anything. Most of them just stared at us and whispered .’

  ‘No, that didn’t upset us. We kind of got used to it .’

  ‘No, Jude never talked to me about running away. Not ever. We never talked about that sor
t of thing .’

  ‘I wouldn’t run away, no .’

  ‘No, I’m not just saying that because my dad’s standing there. I’ve never wanted to run away – why would I? ’

  ‘OK, maybe most teenagers do want to run away, I don’t .’

  ‘No, I don’t know where she’d go .’

  ‘The only place we’ve been to is London a couple of times on the train. Most of the time our dads drive us to places .’

  ‘Yes, I know even though Jude calls Mr Dalton ‘dad’ he is her stepfather .’

  ‘I’m nearly fifteen so yes, I know that means they’re not biologically related to each other and that’s why she’s black and he’s white .’

  Even though he didn’t say anything, I knew the awful policeman was staring at me and in his head twisting every word I spoke, using it to prove to himself that I was a dirty girl, a dirty little slut like he’d marked Jude and me out to be. While he stared at me, I knew my dad was staring at him, making him feel like he was making me feel.

  I tried to concentrate, though. This was important. I knew that everything I said could be a clue – the clue – that would help them find Jude. Because I didn’t like her being away. Because if she had run away, that meant she was far more likely to meet someone who could do to her what someone did to the Brighton Mermaid. Because I needed Jude back.

  Jude and I had sort of known each other before we were born. Our mums had met working at a hospital in Hayward’s Heath, and had become instant friends. They were very different – Mum was very serious, very considered in all she did. (Dad used to make it his mission to get her drunk on watered-down sherry.) Jude’s mum, on the other hand, liked to party and apparently she did a lot of it before Jude’s father had died in a car crash in a work vehicle, two months before Jude was born.

  Although Jude’s mum eventually got a decent pay-out for his death in service, Mum regularly told Dad that Jude’s mum would often say, ‘I’d give it all back in a second if I could have my Raymond back.’ Jude’s mum first met Mr Dalton while the death-in-service claim was going through, and then three years later they had run into each other in the street and had hit it off.

  I couldn’t remember a time when Jude and I weren’t together, weren’t best friends. We didn’t look alike, but we liked it when people thought we were sisters. Even when we fell out – which was rare – we’d make it up really quickly because there never seemed to be much point in being cross with Jude. She was who she was and I was who I was. Even when I hated her, hated the things she did that got me in trouble, I could only do that because I knew she’d always be there for me to love, too. I wouldn’t hate her sometimes if I couldn’t love her twice as much all the time.

  The police had to find her. She wouldn’t be safe anywhere else. I knew that. They had to find her.

  ‘Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about, Enelle?’ the policewoman asked.

  ‘Like what?’ I replied.

  From her pocket she produced a clear plastic bag with a silver charm bracelet at the bottom.

  I’d wanted to tell them about it. Had wanted to say that she had it and it was cursed and I hadn’t told because I didn’t want to get her into trouble, but the nasty policeman was in the room with us. I kept remembering how he’d treated us when we had done nothing wrong. The thought of what he would do, say, when we had done something wrong had been enough to make me hold my tongue.

  ‘Like this,’ she said.

  My mouth was dry and I felt sick again, just like I did the first time Jude had shown me the thing. I didn’t speak.

  ‘Neither of her parents recognise it. We think it’s quite coincidental that she had this hidden away in a book that she used to store articles about the Brighton Mermaid. Did this belong to Judana or the Brighton Mermaid?’

  I couldn’t speak. I wanted to, but couldn’t.

  ‘Was this Judana’s bracelet?’ the officer tried again. I hadn’t thought much of this policewoman when she was questioning me before, but now I could see how sharp she actually was. She’d waited until she had as much information from me as possible before she presented this.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Did she take it from the body you both found?’

  Hesitant nod; terrified nod.

  ‘Is that why Judana has run away? Did she take it and did you say you were going to tell on her?’

  I shook my head quickly. ‘I would never tell on her. Never.’

  ‘I see.’ The policewoman fixed her gaze on me. ‘Do you know where Judana is but aren’t telling because she asked you to lie for her?’

  ‘No, no,’ I say. ‘I really don’t know where she is. I wish I did. If I knew, I would tell you. If I’d even heard from her I would tell. I promise. I would tell you. I want her back more than anyone. I just want her back.’

  The policewoman nodded. I wasn’t sure if she believed me or not but she told me to contact her the second I heard anything and then sat back to look over her notes.

  I couldn’t help myself now I wasn’t talking to the policewoman – I turned my head towards the awful policeman, standing like a malevolent statue by the fireplace. He had a triumphant sneer shading his lip. I was right about you two , his nasty, narrowed eyes were saying to me. Dirty girl, dirty little slut .

  Suddenly Dad was there: he stepped between us, stopped the policeman from what he was doing. I could only see Dad’s strong back, but I could tell he had his arms folded across his chest and he was staring at the policeman, glaring at him to let him know that he was going to protect me from anything this man tried to do to me.

  It doesn’t matter , I wanted to say to Dad. I don’t really care what the policeman thinks of me, how he looks at me, what he wants to say to me. As long as he helps find Jude, I don’t care much about him at all .

  Now

  Nell

  Saturday, 24 March

  My office blinds are closed so the room is in partial darkness, the light outside too weak to force its way into the room. There’s something comforting about standing in the half-light, looking at the shapes of your world.

  I have three computers that I use to find people. One doesn’t connect to the Internet, ever, so I keep all my files on there, stripped of all the things that ‘tag’ you and give away vital information to other people. One computer is solely for the Internet and still runs with pretty high software and data protections. The third is a backup of the other two computers. The backup computer sits on top of the chest of drawers I use to store my files, while the other two computers sit side by side on my desk, Post-its and notes tacked at various points around the screens.

  I have large noticeboards all over the room and a whiteboard. Stuck on them are family trees, DNA sequencing printouts, information about the people I’m helping with their searches, newspaper articles, other printouts. There are also pictures that Macy’s children have drawn for me over the years.

  Right now I’m staring at the photograph of Jude I have pinned up on the noticeboard behind my desk.

  I don’t have many of her. We were friends and teens before selfies and social media and storing images on mobile phones. We were buddies when not taking your camera film to the shop meant not getting that photo. The picture on my noticeboard is one of us on our first day of secondary school but I’ve cut myself out of it, so it’s just Jude standing outside in our garden. She has her hair plaited into neat cornrows, she wears small gold sleeper earrings, and she’s smiling at the camera.

  Jude and I were so similar, so close, and so very different, too. She made me laugh, made me angry, made me scared, made me jealous when she got something I didn’t. And then she vanished.

  1993

  Nell

  Thursday, 26 August

  ‘We will have to go down to Blatchington Road to get all your uniform—’

  Mum was cut short by the banging at the front door. All of us at the dinner table jumped and then froze, shocked at how loud the sound had been.

  No
one had ever knocked that hard at our door, especially not during dinner. Dad was the first to recover, to unfreeze and then to move from his seat, ready to go and answer the bang.

  And suddenly there was another bang as the front door was, it sounded like, kicked open, slamming back against the wall as it gave way.

  Then footsteps – loud and determined; thundering and threatening – were coming down our corridor. It sounded like an army was headed our way, stampeding towards us with no sign of stopping.

  Dad was near the door by the time they arrived – six of them, dressed in uniform, all large, all terrifyingly grim-faced. None of them stopped, not one of them broke stride as they barrelled towards Dad.

  Macy started screaming, Mum drew back in her seat and I got to my feet. Many hands grabbed my father, pulling him, pushing him, forcing him down onto the brown paisley carpet with such force there was an almighty loud thud as he hit the floor.

  Macy’s screams tipped over into hysteria, the sound deafening and horrifying. Mum was frozen where she sat, petrified.

  I moved. I ran forwards, grabbed at the men who had Dad and started to pull them away. My fingers slipped on their rough uniforms, my body was no match for their strength, but I kept going, kept trying to help my father … Except of course I wasn’t doing any of that. Macy screamed, my mother sat frozen – and I was rooted to the spot, too shocked to do anything.

  Six men pinned down my father: one of the policemen had his knee in the small of Dad’s back; another had his hands on Dad’s neck and face, pushing them into the floor; a third looked like he was resting all his weight on Dad, trying to cause as much pain as possible.

  I couldn’t move and I couldn’t stop it.

  I’d never seen such violence before. It was different from television. This wasn’t removed and distant and fake. This was real, this was live, this was brutal. All I could do was watch as Dad’s facial muscles were tautened by torture, his body twisted and held in unnatural ways, blood spilling from his mouth. This was brutal and horrifying; cruel and inhumane. We’d heard they could be like this, that the people who had sworn to protect us could be viciously violent, but that was something that happened to other people – to criminals, to the guilty. It didn’t happen to people like us who lived in the nice parts of Brighton and had jobs and went to school and paid our bills on time. This sort of thing happened to other people who weren’t respectable.