That Girl From Nowhere

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘I’m not sure what a cappuccino type of day is, but I’m looking forward to finding out.’

  His gaze drifts casually to my left hand, the one not holding the cup. ‘That’s an impressive number of rings,’ he says.

  I am a walking advert for my work: I always have on at least my butterfly pendant, a necklace which holds a couple of rings, earrings, and at least one ring on every finger. Each ring shows off a different technique I have tested out, gives clients something solid and real to examine. My hands feel naked, vulnerable and incomplete without my rings; my neck feels bare and unfinished without my necklaces.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say to him.

  ‘Any of them …’ he stops, embarrassment suddenly crawling across his features like an army of ants out looking for cake crumbs. ‘Erm … any of them, real?’

  That wasn’t what you were going to ask, I think. I’m surprised you were going to ask the other thing, but that wasn’t what you were going to ask. ‘If you mean are any of them made from precious metals, then they all are.’

  ‘Right, right. Of course.’ His hand jerks open the door. ‘I’ll see you then?’

  ‘I might drop by again.’

  ‘Well, you do that. What’s your name, out of interest?’

  ‘I told you, I’m That Girl From Nowhere.’

  ‘Cool. I’m Tyler. No way near as exotic as yours, but I thought I’d tell you. In case you wanted to know.’

  ‘Bye, Tyler,’ I reply.

  ‘Bye, TGFN,’ he says.

  7

  Abi

  To: Jonas Zebila

  From: Abi Zebila

  Subject: Just a quickie

  Tuesday, 2 June 2015

  Jonas,

  Gran is coming home today. Mummy actually told me that she’d rather Gran went to somewhere people could take better care of her but Daddy wouldn’t hear of it.

  Mummy seems so sad, so burdened. She loves looking after Lily-Rose, she told me that, but everything else seems too much for her at the moment.

  The other day I was in the loft looking for my old dolls’ house that Ivor has been promising to bring down for Lily-Rose for months. In one of the boxes I found Mummy’s drawings, paintings and sketches, like the ones she made on the boxes we used to sleep in as babies. She’s so talented. She could teach art or even sell some of her stuff. Over the years she’s drawn and sketched and painted a lot of butterflies. They’re breathtaking. No two butterflies are the same, but the patterns on the wings are so perfectly symmetrical, you’d think they were done on a computer. I sat there going through them and completely forgot the time.

  When I’d finished going through the artwork, I felt almost bereft that it was over. I couldn’t help wondering why she stopped drawing and painting except for the stuff on our boxes.

  Is that what’s going to happen to me? Am I going to become so consumed by being a mother and wife that I end up giving up my passions? That’s what scares me about being with Declan properly. The idea that I’ll lose myself; I’ll simply become an extension of him and Lily-Rose, and I’ll disappear.

  When I was cleaning up the dolls’ house with Mummy and Lily-Rose, I asked Mummy why she never decorated any of our boxes with butterflies since she’d practised them so many times. She looked alarmed and said, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I saw your artwork in the loft. That was why I was so long. I liked the butterfly drawings the most. I was wondering why you didn’t decorate any of our boxes with butterflies. And actually, why did you stop drawing?’

  ‘I only decorate the baby boxes, you know that,’ she said.

  ‘What about not putting any butterflies on one of our boxes?’

  She just stared at me like I was talking a different language until Lily-Rose said, ‘Can I see the butterflies?’

  Mummy frowned at me and gave me this Now look what you’ve done look, and said, ‘There is nothing to see.’ And that was the end of that. She got up from the floor in the living room where we were doing the cleaning and went off to start dinner. If I had a talent like that I’d be talking about it all the time, not pretending I didn’t know what my own daughter was talking about. What’s the betting if I go back up to the loft tonight those pictures will have disappeared?

  What do you think? Was I being insensitive? Maybe she had a miscarriage and the butterfly box would have been for the baby she’d lost. Oh, I feel awful now. Maybe that’s it. Why she feels so distant sometimes. It would make sense. I know I’d feel worried about everything if I went through that. Add that to how Gran treats her sometimes and I’m not surprised she doesn’t share much with me. Sorry, I’m being insensitive to you now.

  I’m not sure if you want to talk about what happened, but how are you and Meredith after everything? I’m guessing because I haven’t heard anything to the contrary that nothing’s changed? I’ve been keeping an eye online on what you’ve been up to. Congratulations on your award. I’m really proud of you.

  I miss you. Remember how it used to be me and you against Ivor? That man always took himself far too seriously even when he was, like, twelve. At least you knew how to have a laugh. I wish … I miss you. I know I said that already but it needs repeating. As many times as I can until you reply. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.

  Love,

  Abi

  xxxxx

  P.S. Mrs L says hello. Again!

  8

  Smitty

  Mum is in her pink silk dressing gown, sitting on the sofa, staring into space when I return to the flat. The TV is off and the room is now bright from the rising sun.

  I was heading for the shop and my workshop, but for some reason my feet had turned towards home instead when I left the café, Beached Heads. I thought it was because I was bunking off work, but actually, I must have known on some level that this would be a bad day for Mum. It’s been almost three weeks without a serious setback, so today she is obviously due one.

  Usually a healthy-ish pink, Mum’s face is pale, each line more pronounced than usual. Her blue eyes are glassy and unfocused. Grief. Grief has made her fragile, delicate and friable; sorrow has carved itself deep into every part of her.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ I whisper. Along with my bag I place my half-drunk coffee on the TV shelf in the living room, then go to her. She doesn’t move. I put my arms around her and gently tug her towards me. We’re not the huggy type, Mum and I, but she needs this.

  ‘I’m not meant to be without him,’ she says.

  It’s been too short a time for her not to feel like this, and too long a time we’ve already spent without him.

  ‘I think feeling like that is normal,’ I say. Anything else I say will sound trite and rubbish and as if I’m telling her how she should grieve. My mother’s grief is a world away from mine. He was my dad, he was her whole world. Even before he became ill Mum didn’t seem to function very well without him. If he was away for whatever reason she would find it difficult to concentrate, she’d be up and down several times a night, would stare into space as if counting down the minutes until he returned.

  I found it hard every day, knowing I wouldn’t see him again, wouldn’t be with him again – Mum must have found it impossible. Despite everything, I couldn’t have left her in Leeds on her own. She would have fallen apart.

  ‘Clemency, I’m so glad I have you. Please don’t leave me. You must promise me you won’t do that to me. You won’t leave me.’

  When Mum says things like this, however infrequently, they are said to last a lifetime, to burn in my head like a beacon in case I forget who she is and what she means to me. When Mum begs in her own quiet way, she is begging me not to do that thing I could do that would replace her. When Mum pleads and asks me not to leave her, and it probably is once in a blue moon, she is imploring me not to look for my biological parents. She doesn’t want me to find the woman who gave birth to me. To her, it’s not about me needing to find people who look like me, those who could hold the pieces that complete the puzzle of the quirks of my
personality or adding another branch to my family tree that could help me to stop feeling like I’m from nowhere and could be from somewhere. To her, it’s a source of unknown terror and anxiety.

  Mum doesn’t have Dad any more so the thought of me finding another mother, maybe half-siblings and maybe even finding another father, is frightening to her. Her fears have been heightened, cranked up to a level nearing hysteria now Dad isn’t here to reassure her she wouldn’t be replaced. He was good at that, at calming her fears and encouraging her to accept any decisions I made.

  Even then, even then, it’s always been an unspoken agreement that I wouldn’t do it while she was alive. Me moving to Brighton, where I was born, must have pushed the panic button in her mind. She must have been convinced that I was about to renege on our deal. Her fears are mingled, like dye in water, with her grief and uncertainty about the future.

  I look over at the cup sitting beside my green, many-pocketed bag. I’m not enjoying this very much if it’s a cappuccino kind of day. Shame really, as Tyler the coffee man’s cappuccino is very good.

  I bring myself back to my mother and to what she wants me to do. ‘I promise, Mum,’ I state. Well, what else am I going to say to the woman who gave me everything, especially now that I have no one else but her.

  With Seth, April 2015, Leeds

  ‘I’m so sorry about your dad,’ Seth said.

  He’d been saying this repeatedly. I guessed it was his way of trying to make himself believe it – if he kept saying it, it might, in one of the repetitions, become a fact in his mind. Seth and Dad were similar kinds of people: laidback, fiercely protective, generous with their time and affection.

  We moved through the darkness in our flat, both heading for the bedroom to strip off our funeral clothes, get into something else, anything else but these black garments.

  I’d offered to stay with Mum, of course, but after the wake, she wanted to be alone. We stayed to clean up, loitering and tidying as much as possible because we were both reluctant to go home. When I left I knew that would be it. I would be admitting my time there with Dad had come to an end and I couldn’t bear for that to be true right then.

  Instead of taking my clothes off, I collapsed on to the bed, flat on my back, a starfish out of water, staring up at the ceiling. It reminded me of the picture of Seth from when we’d first moved in here. He’d starfished on the bed and I had taken a snap of him. Then we’d lain together on the bed and Seth had held the camera up to take a photo of us together: two loved-up starfish in their new home.

  Seth sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off his shoes, which we’d never normally wear in the house, let alone into the bedroom. I felt the motion of him loosening his tie, releasing his top button. ‘Shall I make a coffee?’ he asked. ‘Or do you want something stronger? I think there’s some port left.’

  ‘No, stay here a minute.’ Maybe longer. Maybe for ever. Maybe if we stayed where we were for ever, nothing would change. Everything had to change now Dad was … now we’d reached this stage. Maybe if we stayed here, though, maybe if I didn’t let Seth out of my sight, nothing else would have to change.

  He stretched his long body beside me, stroked his fingers down my face, tucked my hair behind my ear. We hadn’t been together properly for the last four months. We’d spoken, had kissed briefly in the times I’d come back home, but not this. I touched his face, resting my hand on his cheek, and he came towards me. Our lips met and we both closed our eyes, connecting ourselves together. I pushed his jacket over his shoulders. I was aware of the thick silk of his tie as I tugged at it until it was undone. The small, matte-black buttons of his shirt came apart easily until he was bare-chested, the paleness of his skin visible in the half-light of the room. He pushed my ankle-length dress up, over my thighs, around my waist, to my chest until he gently tugged it over my head and discarded it beside the bed. My fingers went to his trousers, slipped the shiny, black tongue of his slim belt though its loop, out of its buckle until it was free, then I moved on to his button, pushing down the top of his trousers. His fingers unhooked the small metal clasps of my bra, slipped it off, before they moved on to removing my knickers, plain and black, as you’d expect for a funeral.

  A gasp, a deep cry escaped from my throat as he entered me. A new sensation; in all the time of being with him, I’d never felt such a perfect mingling of agony and pleasure as he pushed himself into my body.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ he murmured beside my ear. ‘It feels so good to be inside you again.’

  ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ I whispered back. I dug my fingers into him, urging him to go deeper, to completely fill me up. He responded, pushing harder, slower but harder. The pleasure came from being together again, having each other back, reminding ourselves of what we shared. The pain came from knowing why we’d been apart for so long. The orgasms – loud, urgent, ecstatically raw – came from that blending of desolation and joyful reunion.

  Seth lay on his front, his head in profile on the pillow while his fingers played with my hair, coiling curls around his fingers. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling again.

  ‘We could have made a baby,’ he eventually said.

  He’d put words to the panic that was amassing inside. We could have. No contraception, not even withdrawal. I’d felt when he was about to, but I hadn’t wanted him to, I’d clung on to him, keeping him with me until it was too late to change the outcome. Have unprotected sex … and end up paying for it for the rest of your life, started to flash in my head.

  ‘That’d be pretty amazing, though, wouldn’t it?’ he said. ‘I know we put those plans on hold these last few months but it’d be incredible if we did it now.’

  A baby. Me. I loved children. Playing with them was never a chore. Sienna, my cousin Nancy’s daughter, had once stayed with us for three months while Nancy was off finding herself, and I’d loved that. I had loved taking care of Sienna’s every need, waking up with her in our flat, going to sleep with her in our flat, being with her.

  But … But … A baby. Me? How would I know how to care for it? Would I really want to keep it? And even after all the discussions, it still scared me that I knew nothing of the potential anomalies in my DNA; disorders unknown to me because I couldn’t just ask my mother or father about any medical conditions that might run in the bloodline, in the family.

  A baby? Me? What about the father, too? How could I trust him to stick around when my biological father hadn’t and had made it necessary for my biological mother to give me away or ‘place me for adoption’, as I was meant to say and think.

  In all the dreams and fantasises I had about how I came to be adopted, the ones I could never tell anyone, I knew this one was the truest. This was the one that would fit most comfortably with reality. My mother, who was probably young, told my father she was pregnant and he in turn rejected her. Probably called her names, and questioned who else she’d been with. Then he went incommunicado because he wanted nothing to do with her or the child she was carrying. She tried to get him to change his mind, but then she found out he was seeing someone else – had been all along – and she knew it was hopeless. And when she told her parents they were so disappointed, they didn’t have the money or the means to bring up another child. The shame would have killed them, too. She had nowhere to turn, so she did the best she could. She found a box and she decorated it in butterflies, the most beautiful creatures in nature, and she made it comfortable for me to sleep in. And she cried and cried when she had to hand me over, but she made sure I got the box because it was something no one else had. It was all she could afford to give me, but it was something completely unique and completely invaluable. Like the jewellery I made for people – it may have been inspired by other pieces but everything I made for others was made with that person in mind. That person was one of a kind, so was the jewellery I made for them.

  No one else had a butterfly box like mine. I used it to store all my precious photographs, and even though it had been bashe
d about over time because of the many moves I’d been through, the times I hadn’t been as careful as I should have been with it, I still had that box and I still treasured it.

  I couldn’t have a baby if I couldn’t trust its father. I turned to Seth, carefully considered him. I hadn’t grown used to his features over the years, I was always surprised by how attractive he was to me every time I looked at him. I had spent years looking at him, but until that New Year’s Eve when we’d first had sex, I hadn’t seen him. When I finally ‘saw’ him that night, I could never be used to those features again. Each time seeing him gave me a tiny thrill in the bottom of my heart.

  ‘Seth …’ I began. I had planned to wait, leave it for a bit until I did this, but now I’d been reckless and stupid, now I’d given in to the flashing neon sign in my brain about unprotected sex with a virtual stranger, I had to do this now. I had to ask him. The very fact I had to ask set us back twenty-odd years and made him a virtual stranger again. And the fact that I knew what he was going to say, how he was going to answer, meant not only was he going to stay a stranger, but also that I would have to go through with my plan. I wanted to be wrong. Desperately. But I knew what the answer was going to be.

  ‘Seth, do you have something you need to tell me?’

  His sudden flash of panic that I might know was almost physical as it scattered through him like the fallen beads from a snapped necklace. He caught himself, though, reasoned that I couldn’t possibly know, and gathered up those panic-broken beads, strung them back together. Calm and composed, he replied, ‘No, not that I know of.’

  I shut my eyes. Wrong answer. The reply I was expecting, but had been hoping I wouldn’t get. I had prayed, actually prayed, to a God I only partially believed in, that Seth wouldn’t do this to me or to us. ‘Seth, please. I need you to be completely honest with me, no matter what it is, just tell me. Please, forget about what’s happened with my dad, and the fact we haven’t seen each other properly in weeks, please, you can tell me anything. Anything.’