The Brighton Mermaid

by Dorothy Koomson

  Macy and I never talk about the time she couldn’t cope. It’s like it never happened sometimes. The children don’t remember and our parents never knew. I eventually convinced her to go to the doctor and they diagnosed depression. It took a few more weeks for me to convince her to actually take the medication, but once she did, once she started to accept what had happened, she began to get better. I tried to convince her to speak to someone, to a therapist who might listen and unburden her of the things she could not say to anyone else. Even in her depressed state she managed to give me a scathing look that basically said: ‘You first, love. You go get therapy for the way you live your life and I’ll follow suit .’ I knew not to push it because, well, pot and kettle and all that.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ I call up to Macy when I arrive back.

  She said she was going back to bed when I offered to take the children earlier and I had a moment of terror that my latest drama, so soon after the hospital one, would tip her into depression again. I know on a rational level that things don’t work like that, that how Macy is is based on so many different factors, not just circumstance, but I don’t want to be the cause of more distress for her.

  ‘No,’ Macy immediately calls back. ‘I’m off to work in a bit. No rest for the wicked.’

  ‘Cool beans,’ I reply.

  She’s going to work. That’s good. She’s leaving the house. That’s good. There’s one less thing to worry about for today, at least. And all I can do is keep doing things that will get us to the end of the day intact. Or as intact as possible.

  The house is empty. They are all at school or work, so I sit alone at the kitchen table with my closed laptop in front of me. I haven’t even opened it since all this happened. Luckily, most of the files were backed up on here or on a USB drive I took with me, but the paperwork is another matter. They can’t be easily replaced and the burglar made sure to rip and screw up everything they could. It’s details like that, taking the time to do that, which make the whole thing so much more awful. It’s vicious and unnecessary. It makes it personal. And dangerous. And leaves me wondering over and over what triggered it.

  Is it the Brighton Mermaid? Is it my search for Jude? Or is it nothing to do with that at all? Could it be related to Craig Ackerman? He’s a rich, powerful businessman – maybe someone is out to get him and I’m caught in the crossfire? It literally only kicked off after I met him. That would be the most logical conclusion. Especially considering I’ve been looking for Jude and the Brighton Mermaid for years now and I’ve not had anything like this happen to me. At the meeting with Craig Ackerman, something niggled me about him. I wouldn’t be the only person who he has rubbed up the wrong way, so it’s not outside the realm of possibilities that someone might be out to get him. Or someone might know a lot about his background and wants to stop him finding out any more, so they’re trying to stop me.

  I push the laptop away from me. What about Aaron? He has powerful computers; they have the programs he has written over the years and other things he has done for the search for the Brighton Mermaid and Jude. What if he doesn’t tell me everything? What if one of the searches has thrown up something while I wasn’t there and he’s kept quiet about it and is now having to go back and erase all trace of whatever it is, which includes harming me? Which is ridiculous, as I watched him drive away after he dropped me off. There’s no way he could have got into my flat before me.

  Maybe it was Zach. This all started, too, after I met him. Maybe what happened to his grandparents has clouded his mind. He might even be using his undercover investigation as a cover for what he is really up to. Maybe the death of the Brighton Mermaid and/or Jude’s disappearance is all connected to his grandparents’ murder and he doesn’t want me getting in the way. He didn’t seem to blink at all when he saw all the papers that had been thrown around my flat, and he acted with so much guilt when he was looking after me. That can’t have all been about thinking it was to do with his undercover assignment?

  This is ridiculous. I am turning on people because I am scared. Because I am confused. Because I am certain someone is out to get me.

  Instead of opening the laptop, I pick up my mobile. Maybe speaking to Sadie will help.

  Her phone rings, rings, rings, rings, rings, rings … then: ‘Hi! This is Sadie. Leave me a message or give me another call ’cos I might not listen to your message until much, much later which makes the whole message thing pointless, don’t you think? Go on, call again. I dare you.’

  Sadie makes me smile. Even her answering machine message is very ‘her’ – full of life and vibrancy.

  I do as she instructed and call again.

  Ring, ring, ring, ring —

  ‘Hello?’ a gruff voice says. Earl, I’m guessing.

  ‘Hello, is Sadie there please?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ he says and then hangs up.

  I stare at the phone in disbelief. ‘No’. Just like that.

  My heart starts to hammer in my chest. Shall I call back? Shall I leave it? I said I’d call her. Why is he answering her phone? He wasn’t exactly overjoyed when we showed up; maybe he’s trying to stop her from pursuing her genealogy research. Maybe he thinks I’m one of those awful telephone marketers that is out to make her life a misery.

  I bring up her number again and press redial.

  He answers after the second ring.

  ‘Hello, sorry, it’s Nell,’ I say quickly. ‘I came to see Sadie the other week about her family tree? I was just wondering if I could talk to her.’

  He doesn’t say anything for a long few seconds. He’s probably trawling through his memory, trying to remember who I am and whether he liked me enough to speak to me or not. ‘No, you can’t speak to her,’ he eventually says.

  ‘Oh, is she out or something?’ I ask.

  ‘No. She’s in a coma. Someone knocked her down.’

  I take a very long breath in, but no air enters my chest because it is tight, like an iron band has been clamped around it.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘Doctors said she’s lucky to be alive,’ he says. ‘Big car it was. Going so fast. People said it didn’t even slow down. Just went straight for her. Mounted the pavement. Lucky to be alive.’

  Breathe, Nell. Breathe. Speak, Nell. Speak . ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘She can’t talk to you,’ he says. ‘She can’t talk to no one. Doctors still don’t know if she’s going to pull through.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ I repeat quietly. ‘Will you let me know how she is or when she wakes up?’

  ‘Why would I?’ he replies. And then hangs up.

  Slowly, with a shaky hand, I put down the phone. In case I was in any doubt, it’s quite clear: this is all about the Brighton Mermaid.

  Macy

  Sunday, 13 May

  Nell thinks I’m so stupid, that I can’t see what’s going on right under my nose.

  It is Sunday evening and all the washing is done, all the ironing has been put away. We have had a roast dinner and everything has been washed up, dried and put away. The children’s homework has been done. They’ve all had a hair wash and bath. They’re all now in their rooms, reading quietly before bed.

  All of this has been done by Nell. She has made this picture-perfect family Sunday happen in the sort of effortless way I’ve always thought is mythical. But this is the second Sunday that she has done this. As well as everything else she’s done today, she’s been bringing me cups of tea and glasses of water and plates of chopped fruit. She’s constantly told me to relax whenever I’ve tried to help, and upstairs is a bath with bubbles and candlelight waiting for me to slip into it.

  Nell thinks I’m blinkered, that I can’t see what she’s doing. She’s become the cuckoo in my nest, doing everything better than me, not shouting at the kids at all, even getting Shane to chop vegetables earlier. And he didn’t even complain when she told him to take the bins out. Told him, not asked . If I ever tell him anything, he rolls his eyes, replies that I’m not his boss and t
o ask nicely if I want him to do something.

  Nell thinks I’m idiotic. That I don’t know what they were really doing when she shut the kitchen door earlier because she’d ‘accidentally’ burnt something and the fumes were filling the house; that I don’t know they were fucking each other’s brains out. I bet they went to the pantry and had that quick, furtive type of sex Shane and I used to have when we had just moved in together and weren’t sure which one of the kids was going to wake up first and come into our bedroom.

  Shane thinks I’m so brainless that I don’t know he’s screwing her as often as he can and then he’s coming to bed and doing it with me. He hasn’t even noticed that I stopped wearing my engagement ring, that I haven’t worn it since Nell arrived.

  Nell thinks I’m so clueless. That I don’t know she wants this, the life she should have had with Shane, and that’s why she’s being so super-efficient and super-amazing at everything. She wants my family and if she carries on being as perfect as she has been, then I think the rest of them are going to want it too.

  Nell

  Tuesday, 15 May

  ‘Cup of tea?’ I call to Macy as I return from taking the children to school.

  I’m very nervous now about what could happen to members of my family. If someone has deliberately hurt Sadie, who is miles away, then I think anyone is in danger. I haven’t told Macy, obviously. Nor Shane, who I fear may blurt it out and use it against Macy like he did the other week. That bothers me still. I keep looking back over our relationship and wondering if he was like this with me. I can’t remember it, though. I remember how nasty he turned when I said I was going to go to college, like it was ever a possibility that I wouldn’t go, but nothing like that, nothing so insidious and underhand.

  It must be hard for him, living with someone who has multiple anxieties, and I’m hoping it was a one-off moment of frustration, but does that excuse what he said? I wrestle with that every day and I’ve spent the time I’ve been here trying to take on as many burdens as I can so Macy doesn’t get herself worked up and I never have to bawl out Shane for saying something like that again. Because that is what will happen if he says it again – I will scream at him.

  Macy doesn’t answer my call up the stairs for tea. She rarely accepts a cup, she mostly says she’s off to work and then leaves the house fifteen minutes later. It’s unusual for her not to reply at all, though. Maybe she’s asleep. Or, as is most likely, she’s gone to work already. She’s done that a couple of times – left the house while I take the children to school in Shane’s people carrier.

  I toss the house keys Shane gave me onto the side and head for the kitchen. Pope’s threat is hanging over my head, and every day I get closer to detonation, but I’m still struggling with everything. I know I should go home, sort through the chaos of papers and start again, but I can’t. For many reasons. Not just the fear of what might happen to my family if I’m not here constantly watching out for them, but also … I like it here. I like this life of taking the kids to school, cleaning up, cooking the evening meal, helping with homework, supervising bedtime. I feel useful. I feel I’m atoning for all the problems that my night out twenty-five years ago caused the people I love. Slowly but surely I’m making life easier for Macy and that means I am, in some way, making up for causing her problems in the first place. Yes, it was Pope who stalked and brutalised our family for years, who eventually caused my parents to move away, but it was me who brought him into our lives by finding that poor dead woman. And it was me who could have stopped everything that happened from happening by simply doing what Jude did and crying when Pope was being nasty and calling us dirty girls and dirty little sluts. If I had cried, if I hadn’t defied him, things would have been different.

  I move the bowls the children ate their cut fruit from and the side plates from their toast to the sink, and grab a cloth to wipe clean the table.

  Zach has called and texted me several times. Every day, in fact. He wants to talk to me, he misses me, he’d just like the chance to explain. All fair enough – I miss him, I want to talk to him, I want to be with him – but dealing with him is way, way down my list of priorities.

  Aaron has texted me several times, too. But not the usual ‘He needs to see you’ message, just ‘Call me’. I’m sure he’s turned up at my flat only to find I’m not there. Contacting Aaron, when his father isn’t demanding it, isn’t a priority. My family are who I need to take care of now.

  On the side by the kettle is Macy’s work pass. I frown at it. She never forgets it because she won’t be allowed into her building without it. By the toaster are her car keys. She usually waits for me to return to take her car, but a couple of times Shane has got a lift to work so I’ve used his car and she has left before I’ve returned. But there’s something odd about this. The car keys, fine (she could have got the train). But not the pass. She works in the big financial services building not far from Old Steine in the centre of Brighton. It would be a royal pain having to come back for it, especially without her car. I take my mobile out of my pocket and dial Macy’s number. I’ll drop it off to her.

  When I press call, there’s an almost dramatic pause and then I hear the tinny opening bars of Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’ starting upstairs. Working on autopilot, I climb the stairs and go to Macy and Shane’s bedroom. The sound becomes louder and louder as I approach.

  In the bedroom, on the bed, beside a plain white sheet of paper, sits Macy’s mobile with ‘Nell calling …’ flashing on the screen while the phone vibrates and throws out the musical call tone.

  I don’t need to read the note to know what it says.

  I don’t need to pick it up and see what she’s told Shane and me in her neat handwriting. It’s obvious.

  Macy has left home.

  Macy

  Tuesday, 15 May

  To whom it may concern

  Yes, that’s you and you. Nell and Shane. Shane and Nell. I have no idea who is going to read this letter first.

  I’ve gone. Left. Departed for pastures new. I’ve left because it’s obvious you don’t need me around any more. Nell has taken my place rather expertly in the house and the kids have started to go to her with anything they want or need. They don’t come to me and that’s fine. I want them to be happy and if they’re going to be happy with Nell, then I’m going to step aside.

  I see you, Shane. I see you staring at my sister. You long for her, don’t you? Just admit it. I asked you if it was you wanting Nell that made you try it on with me again and you said no. I actually think you meant it at the time. But let’s be realistic. You only started having sex with me after I shut you two up in the kitchen and made you talk. I think, unconsciously, you wanted her and settled for me. Now it’s a million times worse because she’s here all the time. I keep wondering how long it will be before I walk in on you two at it.

  I don’t want to be worrying about that any more. So it’s best I bow out now. Just be honest with yourselves about how you really feel about each other.

  This letter was meant to be a lot more, I don’t know, balanced than this. But I don’t have much time.

  Please take care of my children, Nell, I know you love them more than anything.

  Macy

  Nell

  Tuesday, 15 May

  ‘Why would she do this?’ Shane asks.

  We are standing at the foot of the stairs and he has read the letter a few times with his hand firmly over his mouth and his eyes blinking as though he’s been repeatedly punched in the face. I called to tell him at work and he got a taxi home straight away.

  He looks at me, frowning. ‘You don’t think I was trying it on with her because I really want you, do you?’ he asks.

  ‘No, I don’t think that. And she doesn’t think that, either,’ I say. ‘She was just upset and lashing out.’

  He’s looking at me with contempt and disgust. The feelings I have for myself. I shouldn’t have come here. I should have used more of my savings, which I seem to
be eating through at the rate of knots, to book into a hotel rather than come here. Rather than do this to Macy and her family. I didn’t think. I just wanted to be around family, to fit in somewhere, to hide away from dead rats and lie-by-omission boyfriends. And, as a result, I’ve decimated Macy’s life.

  This is why Macy hates me. I know it is. She doesn’t hate me all the time, but I can see it sometimes, a tiny flash of resentment will bolt across her eyes when she remembers something that happened as a result of me finding the Brighton Mermaid. She will be catapulted back to that time and then will detest herself for feeling that way, which will bring on a huge attack of her anxiety and self-loathing. It must have been torture for her to have to live with me. I am a nightmare.

  ‘Where do you think she’s gone?’ Shane asks.

  I shake my head. ‘I have no idea.’ When it comes down to it, I have no real clue about Macy’s life. Does she have friends? Is there somewhere she goes to be at peace? Does she go to the gym or yoga class? Is she training for a marathon? All questions I have no idea of the answers to. We don’t talk, I realise that now. My sister and I don’t talk. We speak to each other, but it is all surface, super-ficial, because we do not know much about each other. And because she hates me, really. Not all the time, not even most of the time, but enough for her to not really share anything of her life beyond our visits. Enough for her to do this.

  ‘We have to find her,’ Shane says. He sounds desperate. Truly panicked. I’m wondering if he’s thinking that whoever is after me is after her, too. ‘You have to find her.’

  ‘I have to? I really don’t know how.’

  His face twists and he looks incredulous and furious all at once.

  ‘You don’t know how? ’ he snarls.

  ‘I honestly don’t know how to find her,’ I say quickly, to try to stop him getting more angry with me. ‘I’m not an investigator, I just look for families and I find people who don’t have a name to go with their faces. I use family trees and DNA and geographical connections. If someone’s been gone a while I can maybe find them when they put down roots, start to leave a trail, but I don’t know how to look for someone when they’ve deliberately gone leaving everything behind.’