The Brighton Mermaid

by Dorothy Koomson

  She calms down again, the fierceness draining away in an instant. ‘But don’t try to get out of it: which of those two are you going to choose?’

  ‘I don’t know. Give me a break, sis, I’ve got bigger things to worry about.’

  ‘Ah-ha !’ she says as though she’s caught me red-handed committing a crime.

  ‘“Ah-ha” what?’

  ‘You didn’t automatically say Zach, which means Aaron must be in with a bit of a chance.’

  ‘I’d really, really like it if we changed the subject now.’

  ‘Nell and Zach and Aaron sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,’ my sister starts to chant under her breath. ‘But who’s she kissing first? Who’s she kissing first?’

  ‘Enough, you! Can you go and find the nurse? I really want to go home.’

  When she disappears behind the curtain, I lean back and close my eyes. And even though I’m sedated, even though I’m safe and I’m fine, tears slowly crawl out of my eyes and down my face.

  Macy

  Sunday, 3 June

  I couldn’t tell her the truth about Jude at the hospital.

  I couldn’t tell her because I’d never seen her like that. She completely fell apart out there and I’d literally had to hold her up. I think the three of us who knew her were completely shocked by her breakdown. She’s always been the epitome of strength and resilience – nothing seems to get Nell down for too long.

  Even when they’d given her drugs to calm her down, I could see that she was teetering on the edge of hysteria again.

  That’s why I couldn’t tell her.

  We’re in her flat – neither of us even thought about going back to my house – and I’m standing in the doorway, watching her sleep. She was zombie-like when they released her from hospital. Zach drove us home; Aaron sat in the front beside him while I sat in the back with Nell. She thanked us all and refused to let either of them help her upstairs.

  I’ve never thought of Nell as fragile, that she could hurt so deeply. She looked broken when I told her that I hated her. And it wasn’t true. I didn’t hate her, not properly.

  I have to tell her, though. The mystery of the Brighton Mermaid is solved, but not the stuff about Jude.

  Jude. Jude. Jude.

  Nell needs to know.

  The best thing to do would be to leave it until tomorrow morning, when we’re both awake and we can do something about it. But it’s burning a hole in my tongue, just like it has burnt a hole in my life since that night I saw her. Since I saw my sister’s best friend get into my dad’s car and disappear into the night, never to be heard from again.

  As I stare at my sister, noting the lines of her face, her eyes open.

  I wonder how long she’s been awake while I’ve been standing here. She told the police officer in the hospital that she’d pretended to be asleep for most of the car journey to the farmhouse so she could listen to what they were saying.

  I walk into Nell’s room as she pushes back her purple duvet and slowly, almost painfully, pulls herself upright. I sit on the edge of her bed and stare at her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asks me.

  I sigh. What’s she going to do when I tell her? Will she shout at me? Will she call me a liar? Will she believe me? For years I haven’t believed me. For aeons I’ve pretended something else happened.

  Jude.

  I open my mouth to tell her and the words jam themselves sideways in my throat. The word. The name.

  ‘Daddy does that, you know,’ Nell says. She doesn’t sound like she was asleep at all, not even groggy from the drugs they pumped into her earlier. ‘He looks at me like he wants to confess something, something terrible, and then changes his mind. What do you want to tell me?’

  ‘Daddy,’ I say. It’s the only word I manage to force out from the words plugging up my vocal cords.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Jude.’

  She’s giving me the Nell hard stare now. She’s connecting things in her head and then she’s throwing them away because that would mean I am saying something she can’t bear to contemplate.

  I don’t even realise I’m wringing my hands until Nell puts her own hands over mine and tries to still them.

  ‘Tell me,’ she says. ‘Tell me about Jude.’

  Jude. Jude. Jude.

  I close my eyes. Behind my eyelids I watch Jude reach for the handle of the car, pull it open. She looks back, over her shoulder, as though someone is chasing her, and then climbs in. My eyes fly open again.

  ‘Tell me,’ Nell repeats.

  ‘I saw … I saw Jude get into Daddy’s car the night she disappeared. Something woke me and I got up, looked out of the window, and I saw her getting into Daddy’s car. He drove her away and when he came back he was alone.’

  Nell takes her hands away. She closes her eyes and lowers her head as agony claws its way across her face. ‘Do you think he took her and killed her?’ she asks.

  When I don’t reply, she moves her gaze up to look me full in the face. ‘Do you?’ she repeats.

  I want to say ‘No.’ I want to say ‘Of course not.’ I want to say ‘That’s the most ridiculous idea on Earth.’ But if the last twenty-four hours have taught us anything, it’s that you never know. You just never know.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I reply to my sister. ‘I just don’t know.’

  Nell

  Sunday, 3 June

  Dad is being jumped on by his grandchildren when Macy and I arrive.

  He is flat on the floor in the living room and the children are treating him to piley-on, jumping on him and squealing in delight. I’ve never seen Dad like this with the children, but I don’t recall ever really being around them all at the same time. I think I’ve spent a lot of time distancing myself from them, from all of them.

  Mum is sitting on the sofa, with her crochet, obviously pretending none of this is happening. I can imagine this sort of play is like a mallet on the xylophone of her nerves. She (and to be fair Macy) will be seeing all the dangers that could befall them as they roll around on the floor (hitting a head on the fireplace hearth, catching a limb on furniture, falling awkwardly) and she is clearly doing her best not to scream at them to be careful or to stop it.

  I’m proud of Mum for that, at least. It’s probably been challenging for her all week, but she’s clearly been trying.

  ‘Since when did you have a key to Mum and Dad’s house?’ I ask.

  She shrugs. ‘Since always.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I used to live here, remember? When you were off in college, this was our family home.’

  ‘But they’ve changed the locks since then.’

  ‘Probably, but I just asked for a key. You mean you didn’t?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘MAMA!’ the children yell when they hear her voice and look up. They leave their helpless granddad on the living room floor and barrel towards her, almost knocking her over when they make contact.

  Macy bursts into tears. Big fat tears that course down her face, while she tries to gather her children together in her arms that aren’t quite wide enough, while kissing and hugging and kissing and hugging and kissing and hugging them at the same time. While Macy reacquaints herself with her offspring, I stare at my dad.

  It must show on my face, that I know. That I know he was the last person to see Jude on the night she disappeared. It must show because as he sits up, we lock into eye contact, something we haven’t done in twenty-five years, I realise. My father looks into my eyes, I look into his. A small, regretful smile materialises on his lips as he breaks our visual link and gets himself up. He doesn’t look at me again as he brushes himself down because he knows it’s time for us to have that conversation we didn’t have twenty-five years ago, around the time my best friend walked out of my life, never to be seen again.

  The three of us go into the greenhouse when it is dark. When the house is full of warm, fragrant dinner smells and the children’s
voices have finally been quietened by sleep (they’ve made Macy promise she will be there when they wake up, which added an extra fifteen minutes to bedtime), we head for Dad’s place for talking. He switches on the lights in his greenhouse and the plants seem to glow extra green. He goes to the far side of the greenhouse, to his fuchsias. They were Jude’s favourite plants. Even though she didn’t like pink, she loved them. I wonder if Dad grew them for Jude.

  After what he did to her, he grew them for her so he could never forget.

  ‘D—Erm, what happened to Jude?’ I ask. I want to call him Daddy, to be normal with him, but I know after this conversation I won’t be able to call him that again. I probably won’t be able to call him anything. I’ll probably want to erase all memory of him from my mind. I’ve been trying that with Shane; I hope I’ll succeed with my father.

  ‘I saw her at the house,’ Macy says. ‘The night she disappeared, I saw you with her. She got into the car and you drove her away.’

  Were you having an affair with her, Daddy? I want to ask. Did you get her pregnant and have to get rid of her?

  ‘Why did you not ask me about it then, Macenna?’ he says.

  She shrugs.

  Because she was scared the truth would be too horrible to hear .

  ‘Judana came to the house that night,’ Dad says. ‘She did not want to wake anyone else up and was throwing stones up at Enelle’s window … She was in a state.

  ‘She almost ran away when I opened the door and whispered to her to come in. After hesitating, looking up at Enelle’s window a few more times, she did.

  ‘I took her into the kitchen and sat her down. Your mother was working that night and the pair of you were asleep. Or so I thought, Macenna; I did not realise you were awake. I asked her what the matter was and she wouldn’t tell me for a long time.

  ‘Eventually, I made her coffee and I sat down and waited for her to talk.’

  1993

  Jude

  Wednesday, 14 July

  Nell’s dad had always been the coolest dad. He was like a proper dad. Nell never really got that. She didn’t live with my dad so she didn’t realise what it was like to know that someone just didn’t want you around.

  But he loved Mum. Everything was always about Mum. I heard them doing it sometimes and it made me feel sick. I don’t think Mum would have done it if she knew I could hear, but I always thought my dad wanted me to hear. Every morning after they’d done it he’d make a special point of asking me how I slept.

  Nell’s dad, who I always wished was my dad, sat me at their kitchen table and made me coffee. He asked me to tell him everything that was the matter, what had made me come there at that time of night. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t think he’d believe me. He said nothing for a long, long time. And I sat staring into my coffee, turning over and over in my head what had happened. A few days earlier, I’d been getting my bag out of the boot of my dad’s car and saw something glint down the side. I’d managed to get it out with a nail and found a small, silver mermaid charm. Like the kind that comes off a charm bracelet. Like the kind that comes off a charm bracelet that girl was wearing that I had taken. I’d spent a lot of time looking at that bracelet, examining it, and some of its loops were open, so some of the charms were missing. And this looked like a charm from that. Of course, it could have been from anywhere, anyone, so I’d pretended it was no big deal. Pretended I could forget about it. I’d wanted to tell Nell but she was already so freaked out by everything, she looked like she spent the whole night crying sometimes, that I knew she would completely lose it about this. So I took the charm, and I’d kept it and I didn’t say anything to anyone.

  And then, that night, while Mum was at work, I’d heard voices outside. I was meant to be in bed asleep, but I’d been lying fully clothed in bed, thinking about the girl we found, about the charm, about what to do, when I heard two men talking. They were quiet, but they were there. I’d crept out of bed and had gone to the window. My dad was in the back garden, smoking with someone else. I couldn’t see his face properly at first, but then he turned around and I saw him.

  I had to jump back in absolute horror. I’d seen him that night on the seafront, when I was going to the phone box to call the police. He’d smiled at me and he had such an awful look in his eye that I’d thought he was going to attack me so I’d started walking really quickly. He hadn’t followed me, but he did watch me, and I remembered his face because of how scared he’d made me feel. With that and the charm in my dad’s car, I’d known that they were both involved. They’d probably killed her. I hadn’t known what to do, so I’d waited until they had gone out to come to see Nell. To see what she thought I should do.

  I couldn’t tell that to Mr Okorie. He probably wouldn’t believe me. But he was waiting for me to speak, so eventually I said, ‘It’s about my stepfather. My dad.’

  Mr Okorie’s face drew in on itself in a way I had never seen before. Did he know? Did he suspect?

  ‘Has he … has he been inappropriate with you?’

  That floored me. I thought him and my dad were friends – why would he even ask that?

  ‘It’s all right, Judana,’ he said in his deep voice, ‘you can tell me. I will understand.’

  I didn’t say anything, because he hadn’t been inappropriate with me, not in the way Mr Okorie meant, but I did suspect him of doing something awful or being part of something terrible.

  ‘Would you like to go to the police about it?’ Nell’s dad asked.

  I shook my head. Not after that policeman. I didn’t want to see him ever again. I didn’t want to be around him ever again. I’d always been a little scared of the police, I think most people are, but he had frightened me. And because none of the other police officers had stopped him, nor been nice to us in any way, I couldn’t stand for it to happen again. It might not be that same policeman I talked to, but none of the others made me feel safe, either. And if I was accusing my really respectable dad of something … ‘No, Mr Okorie, I don’t.’

  ‘Judana, you have always been like a daughter to me,’ Nell’s dad said. It was true, of course. He did treat me like Nell and Macy, he told me off, he helped me with my homework, he was openly dis-approving of some of the things I wore, he acted like he loved me. He was like a dad should be, I thought. ‘I will do anything to protect you as I would Enelle and Macenna.’

  All this time, I’d thought I didn’t really have a dad who cared, and I did. I honestly did. ‘What do you think I should do?’ He didn’t know what I was really asking about, just what he thought had happened, but I wanted him to give me an idea of what to do.

  ‘The only thing I can think of if you don’t want to go to the police is for you to move in here. Stay with us. I will protect you.’

  I shook my head. ‘My mum wouldn’t stand for that. I’d have to tell her why. And if I tell her why, then she’d expect me to go to the police. But I can’t stay at home either.’

  ‘Judana, think again about going to the police.’

  I had to get away from here. That was the only answer. If I was away from here, I could think properly about what to do. How to let the police know about my dad. ‘I think I need to leave. That’s the only way.’

  Nell’s dad looked so sad and tired then. ‘Where would you go?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just away from here.’

  ‘Judana, I cannot let you go out into the world on your own like that. I wouldn’t allow Enelle or Macenna to do so; I cannot let you do it, either.’

  It was the only way. I’d have to run away if he wouldn’t let me go. ‘Maybe … I think, well, I know my mum has a cousin who lives in France. Maybe I could go there.’

  He didn’t believe me. ‘Give me the number of this cousin and I will call them to arrange everything.’

  ‘I do have the number, but if you ring them, they’ll … probably … ring Mum and tell her I’m coming. It’ll … it’ll be easier if I can just show up and then beg them to let me contact Mum in my own time.�
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  ‘Judana …’

  ‘Please, Mr Okorie, I just need to get away for a bit. I can’t think here. I just need a bit of time. A bit of space.’

  ‘I do not want you to leave, Judana. I would prefer it if you went to the police.’ He studied me for long seconds. ‘You are going to leave whatever I say, aren’t you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Is there really a cousin in France?’

  I needed to leave. France seemed good. It was out of the country, I didn’t need to get on a plane to get there. I’d need money and a passport, though. I’d have to sneak back to my house to get both.

  ‘Judana, is there really a cousin in France?’ he asked again.

  I didn’t like lying to Mr Okorie, but … I nodded.

  I wasn’t sure if he believed me completely, or if he told himself I was telling the truth to stop me from just running away and ending up God knows where, but he sighed again. Looked even sadder.

  ‘I will give you all the money I can get my hands on,’ he said. ‘Do you have your passport with you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I will give you Enelle’s passport and drive you to Newhaven to get the ferry to France. No one will check the passport too closely. Where does your mother’s cousin live?’

  ‘Calais. No, no, I mean Dieppe. Where the ferry comes in. I have the address in my address book.’

  ‘Call your mother’s cousin from the ferry port when you arrive and call me, too.’

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t do that, Mr Okorie. I can’t let anyone know where I am. Not at first. He’ll come and find me. I just know he will.’

  Nell’s dad was silent for a long time. He was thinking it all over. ‘I know he will,’ he finally agreed.

  ‘Can you … can you just not tell anyone where I’ve gone or that you’ve seen me? And I promise, when I’m ready, when I’m less scared, I’ll get in touch. I promise. I promise.’

  I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to have the life I thought I would live, as best friends with Nell, getting a proper boyfriend, passing my exams, going to university. I didn’t want to leave but if I wasn’t going to go to the police then I had to, because I couldn’t live in a house with my dad and pretend.