That Girl From Nowhere

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘Would you like to take that?’ Mrs Zebila asks.

  ‘Pardon?’ I realise what she is talking about. ‘No, no. Thank you, but no. I’m curious. I love looking at jewellery, it’s one of my favourite things to do. Which is why this collecton is simply amazing to me.’ Carefully, I lay the bracelet back in the box.

  ‘I insist you have it.’

  ‘No, I have no use for it. I don’t keep things I don’t need or don’t fit into my life.’

  Silence passes between us because I’m not sure what either of us are meant to say to my unintentional reminder of who I am. Instead of speaking, I place the lid back on the box. ‘I think I’d better go.’

  ‘You will come back tomorrow?’ she asks eagerly.

  ‘Do you want me to?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Clemency, it is such a pleasure to see you.’

  I know she wants something, but it’s nice to hear. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow then.’

  34

  Abi

  To: Jonas Zebila

  From: Abi Zebila

  Subject: Is it me?

  Thursday, 16 July 2015

  Dear J,

  So here we are. Two weeks later and nada. I’ve had daily texts from her saying hello and asking how we are, but nothing more. No asking to meet up or to talk on the phone, nothing.

  Clearly she’s keeping us at arm’s length. Declan – yes, I finally told him everything – reckons it’s to do with Gran. But he would say that, seeing as he’s terrified of her. We’re all on a knife-edge in the house, except Lily-Rose who asks to see the photos again and again because she’s fascinated by having so many photos of this woman who is her aunt, once being as small as her. She’s not that close to Declan’s sisters, mainly because Declan won’t spend that much time with them. Not sure why, but you know what? My family’s F’d up enough, he’s not forthcoming on sharing that with me.

  I hear Mummy and Daddy talking sometimes in the middle of the night, and, you know, they can’t seem to get over this barrier between them and say what they really feel. I mean, if I had the child I hadn’t seen in nearly forty years walk into my life, I’d be talking with the only other person who’d understand how I felt. They can’t seem to do that. They’re a lot nicer to each other nowadays, and there’s far less of an atmosphere, but they don’t talk.

  Declan and I talk all the time even when we’re not living together. He’s actually been really supportive during all this, and I wish I didn’t have that fear of being with him all the time. If I start to rely on him, will he let me down again? I know it was years ago, but I’m sort of waiting for him to do it again.

  Maybe that’s what Mummy and Daddy are thinking. That if they talk, they have to go over what happened, and why they did it, and what it means about them. Because I can’t imagine what’s going through their heads.

  Ivor is on another planet. I don’t know what his f-ing problem is, but he’s been saying stuff about Clemency being a con artist. He never says it in front of Mummy and Daddy, but if it’s just me and him, he’ll make some comment about how we’re such a trusting family and how she could be from anywhere. I’ve told him to tell that to Mummy and Daddy if he truly believes that – funnily enough, he won’t.

  I wonder if Declan is right and this is all down to Gran – Clemency did look like she’d seen a ghost when she came out of Gran’s room. Maybe Gran told her to back off? But she wouldn’t do that, would she? Look who I’m asking!!! Gran cried with the rest of us, though, so I’m not sure why she’d warn Clemency off.

  Thing is, Gran’s not always rational these days. That’s a realisation I’m coming to accept. She isn’t making sense a lot of the time, she forgets things, she becomes incredibly angry if you point out something contradictory. On top of the other stuff wrong with her, I’m not surprised Mummy wants to get her proper, specialist care from people who can tend to her needs around the clock, give her meds at the right times in the right doses. Also, sometimes it’s a struggle to get her to take the meds. She doesn’t want to, doesn’t like the side effects, wants to skip some in case they’re what’s making her ill.

  I’ve said to Daddy that I’d get her a nice room at our place, I could work out a good deal, I’d see her almost every day, there are nurses who are trained to deal with people who aren’t handling their long-term illnesses very well. When I mentioned it at dinner, after Lily-Rose was in bed, Daddy got really angry. ‘That’s not how we deal with problems in this family,’ he said. We were all sitting there and he raised his voice. ‘We find a way to take care of family members, we don’t move them out and abandon them at the first sign of trouble.’

  None of us said anything and even Ivor looked uncomfortable. It took Daddy a couple of minutes to realise what he’d said in the light of all the recent revelations and he seemed very embarrassed and ashamed. Maybe that’s what the problem is, why he and Mummy can’t talk – they’re ashamed of what they did. Not that I think they’d ever admit it to anyone – not even each other. Kind of ended the discussion about what next for Gran, though.

  Why doesn’t Clemency call? Things got so much better at home after she arrived, and now we’re all in this limbo of waiting for her to get in touch again. I miss her. I miss you.

  Lots of love,

  Abi

  xxxx

  35

  Smitty

  Her jewellery box is like nothing I’ve ever been through. I thought Mrs Lehtinen’s was incredible but my grandmother’s is out of this world. I want to run my fingers through it, feel the different textures dribble through my fingers. I have been to see her on ten of the past fourteen days. Sometimes she has had to struggle to the door, because it is not a day when she is visited by the district nurse, and I have sensed her mortification at being helped back to bed.

  My guilt at not being in touch properly with Abi grows every day, but my visits are not just so I can get to know my grandmother, but also for Abi and the rest of her family, too. It might not be much, spending time with my grandmother to get to know her, seeing if I can stop her thinking about what she wants to do, but if I get this right they’ll never even know what she was planning. And they will have their grandmother, mother, mother-in-law – whatever role she plays in their life – around for as long as possible. I know she thinks I have been doing this to steel myself to be able to do it, but in reality I want her to see that life is worth living. I am being selfish, yes, but like I wanted Dad around as long as possible (and he wanted to stay as long as possible), I want my grandmother around as long as possible, too.

  I have looked through her jewellery – every piece is real – and she has told stories related to every item. The multi-strand pearl choker and matching bracelet that she wore to meet the President of Nihanara at the Nihanara High Commission in London when my grandfather, Ivor, was still alive: ‘I wore traditional Nihanara dress in a royal blue silk. Ivor had it made for me.’

  The gold and emerald necklace – each of the twelve emeralds the size of a penny – that she was given by her husband after she had her first son, Douglas: ‘He was so proud I had given him a son that he spent far too much money on that necklace. I had nowhere to wear it, of course.’ Then there were the large, twenty pence-sized diamond earrings that she wore to my birth father’s graduation from law school: ‘It was one of the proudest days of my life.’ The lily-shaped brooch studded with rubies and sapphires that she had worn to my brother Ivor’s graduation from university: ‘Another of the proudest days of my life.’

  I had brought some dividers from my workshop and put them in the jewellery box – on the days she could barely speak, I would go through it all, untangling what I could and organising them into categories and colours. On the days she couldn’t speak, I would simply go through the jewellery and make up stories about the items I found – the white gold tennis bracelet, the plaited white gold and yellow gold necklace, the diamond-studded cuff (which seemed quite radical for someone as conservative as her) – as I might have done if I
’d had access to the box as a child. The days she could speak, she would try to give me whichever piece of jewellery I had been looking at and I would always have to say no.

  On the eleventh day, when I did not want to pore through her jewellery any more, listening to the stories that came with each piece, I sat and looked at her. She seemed better, stronger. Maybe this is what she needs: someone to look after her, spend time with her, rather than simply feeding her, medicating her, ensuring her basic needs are met. I could be that person. Or I could try. I could fit in these visits around my work, which would bond us and would allow her to think that maybe carrying on for a little longer may not be so bad. They are only snatches of time that I have spent with her, but with her jewellery and her stories, I feel like I have got to know her a little better, I can see her as my grandmother rather than simply the woman who gave birth to the man who impregnated my birth mother. I have a sense of what she is like, but that doesn’t bother me. Maybe if I did spend more time with her, if I did listen to her worries, she might come to realise that carrying on for a little longer need not be so bad. I am being arrogant, I suppose, arrogant and selfish, but I have developed a kind of grudging admiration for who she is, how uncompromising she has been throughout her life. I like her in the way I would possibly like my cousin Nancy if Nancy hadn’t spent what felt like her every waking moment trying to destroy me. My grandmother may not be likeable or to everyone’s taste, but I have found myself enjoying the time I have spent with her these past couple of weeks. It’s been at the expense of seeing Abi, who I would love to spend time with, but this has been necessary and far more urgent.

  ‘I am not scared of dying,’ my grandmother says to me, as though we are in the middle of a conversation.

  I nod at her, I feel she has more to say. Today is a day when she can speak with long gaps to gather herself. And I think she can sense that today is the day where we have reached a crossroads with this arrangement. It’s been miraculous that it has lasted this long without us being caught out, and it can’t continue.

  ‘You asked me to tell you something about myself that no one knows,’ she continues. ‘I am not scared of dying. I am scared of merely existing.’

  ‘But haven’t you felt better this past little while? You seem better.’

  ‘I am existing. Not living. I am counting down time until the end.’

  ‘But if you got involved in more things, found stuff that you enjoyed doing, you might not feel like that,’ I say.

  She lifts her arms, reminds me of the quaking in her hands – the way she is not in control of herself. The way that even if she does find something she enjoys it would have to be suitable for her needs.

  ‘Clemency, I am not scared of dying. I am scared of being locked into this body, unable to escape, unable to tell anyone to let me go.’

  That horrific image of being in trapped inside myself – unable to move, to speak, to let anyone know how much I still understand and feel – sends chilling vibrations through me and reminds me again of that terror of mine of being trapped and having to claw my way out of anywhere, but to have my prison be my own body … I shudder again.

  ‘You could leave a living will, a do not resuscitate order? Tell people now that’s what you want.’ Doing that would be better than what she is asking of me. I am not a person who is impressed by money and position, like my grandmother is, we have very little common ground, but she is still a part of my family I have only recently found. I do not want to have to live with the memory of her death when I have only had a glimpse of her life.

  ‘Yes, I could,’ she says sadly, disappointed that I’ve even suggested this when it feels like a suitable middle ground.

  ‘Why isn’t that a good option?’ I ask.

  ‘My illnesses, they have taken over my body, I am at their mercy … I can be sure of nothing but the knowledge that when this disease is good and ready it will take me … I do not want to leave this to chance … I do not want to linger … I want the chance to choose. My one last decision that my illnesses cannot take away from me.’

  I know what she is saying because these past few days I have learnt she has a need to be back in control, in even the smallest way possible. But it still feels so wrong, wanting me to do this. ‘Why didn’t you see me when I was born?’ I ask. This still niggles at me. She wants me to do something so huge for her, but she did not want to see me when I first came into existence. And, in some ways, it feels like she only wants to see me now because she wants something from me – if she did not need me, I would not exist for her.

  She stares at me, gathering herself to produce a chunk of speech that is coherent and fluent, not halted and slurred. ‘I was a proud woman. I wanted to see you, my first grandchild, but … I was scared of what people would say. I was worried about what our family would look like. An unmarried young girl is suddenly with child months after moving into my home. I thought people would believe that my husband, not Julius, was responsible. Most of all, I did not see you because Julius … he was not ready for the responsibility. He was too young.’

  He shouldn’t have had sex then, crosses rather uncharitably through my mind. When I started having sex at fifteen, I wasn’t ready to be a parent. I probably would have done it if it was necessary but I wouldn’t have been ready for it.

  ‘Did he want to keep me?’ I ask her.

  She manages to pull her twitching face into a smile. ‘You do not want to know the answer to that question,’ she replies.

  ‘I do, I really do.’

  ‘Clemency…. I do not know you well. I wish I did not have this clock above my head that will stop me from getting to know you. I would like the time to know you, so I could explain the answer to that question. But even if my body lives on, locked in or not, my mind will not allow me to know you more than this. This is the most well I will ever feel again. This is the most I will ever get to know you. I will never know you enough to explain.’

  That causes tears to spring into my eyes and my stomach swirl with a fluttering of ice butterflies. No matter how much time I spend with her, this is the most she will ever get to know me.

  ‘I am grateful I have lived long enough to meet you. I wish I had not been so proud. I wish I had more time.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ I confess when I have gathered myself together.

  ‘Say you will think about what I have asked of you,’ she says. ‘I am not scared of dying, remember that. I am scared of merely existing. Say you promise you will think about what I have asked of you.’

  I sigh deeply, take a deep breath to replace the air my sigh has stolen. This time, I know when I say it, I will mean it – I will be doing nothing but thinking about it. ‘I promise,’ I state.

  36

  Smitty

  In my nightmares, things happen to me and I am powerless to stop them. I can usually see what is about to happen, how things are going to turn out, but I can’t change the outcome. I am usually too shocked or too frightened to fight back or even to speak.

  This is one of my nightmare moments. Except I am wide awake.

  I have wandered back from my workshop, my head full of how to negotiate a lower price for the latest quote for Melissa’s locket to become a watch because it is astronomical. Even if I didn’t charge her for my work it would be too much. I have also had another call from Mrs Lehtinen, wanting me to come back and show her some design ideas. I’m sure she just wants an update on whether I am the girl in the butterfly box. I have five wedding rings to make as well as a twenty-first birthday pendant to design for the world’s most picky mother. As I walked home – no Tyler in Beached Heads, I noticed – I dreamed of a sit down, followed by a long hot shower.

  I was tired, but I was enjoying the haze of work, the fug that I have been constantly carrying with me, because it stopped me thinking about the other stuff. A distance away from home, I clocked the outlines of a woman and a young girl on the bench nearest my block of flats. The woman wasn’t simply sitting on the
bench, she was reclining on it with her shorts-exposed legs stretched out in front of her. Sunglasses adorned her face, and the wind teased her hair while she intently read from the mobile in her left hand. Her right hand she used to brush her hair out of her face, twirling the ends of random locks around her fingers. The girl, her head surrounded by blonde ringlets, was dancing and singing around the bench, putting on a show for the uninterested woman she is performing for.

  I was in a haze, my head in the clouds, and it took a moment for me to get here, to this moment. This moment where I register that I am in a nightmare situation because the person on the bench is the monster from almost every single bad dream I have ever had.

  This moment, when I realise what is unfolding in front of me, is like that other moment in a nightmare where I try to stop running, but my feet slip and slide and I can’t stop because I’m in motion, my body is propelling me forwards, closer and closer towards the monster. But the fear and horror I feel makes me reek, and the monster catches my scent, stops what it is doing and looks up, away from its mobile, in my direction. I can’t stop, I have nowhere to run to, because the monster has seen me, and it takes its sunglasses off, lowers its mobile and smiles at me before it trills, ‘Hi!’

  She is shrill when she longs to be husky, sexy, the stuff of men’s wet dreams. ‘We just happened to be in the area.’

  ‘Auntie Smitty!’ Sienna squeals. She hurtles across the distance, squealing my name as she runs. ‘Auntie Smitty! Auntie Smitty! Auntie Smitty!’

  At speed she collides with my legs and I almost topple backwards but manage to keep upright. She wraps her arms around me like she is a koala and I am the trunk of a tree. Slowly, I lower myself to her height and wrap my arms around her. ‘You must have grown about eight foot,’ I say to her, but I can’t take my eyes off the reclining monster that is smiling on the bench.