That Girl From Nowhere

by Dorothy Koomson

  He tells me I’m right almost straight away. Not with words, but in the way he slides down in his seat and slowly runs the palms of his hands over his temples, trying to massage away the memory of it all.

  ‘Smitty—’ he begins.

  ‘I told you what she did to me, Seth,’ I cut in. ‘I told you how she made my childhood a nightmare, how I couldn’t talk to my mother about it because Mum can’t see what she’s like. And you saw what she was like yourself, how she ruined our engagement party, how she’s tried to ruin other stuff, and you still started a secret friendship with her.’

  ‘I didn’t start it, it sort of happened.’

  ‘Everything always “sort of happens” with Nancy. That’s what she does. She starts turning up when no one is around, just for a chat.’

  ‘She wanted me to help her with her website. That was all. And she kept coming over.’

  ‘Even though she’s been doing her website for years and has even designed stuff for other people?’

  ‘It all made sense at the time. But thinking back now, I didn’t do much of anything, not even give her design advice. We sat at the computer together, but she did most of it.’

  ‘And then she starts bringing over the joints and the beers.’

  ‘It was only the odd joint and beer.’

  ‘Even though you don’t ever do drugs, and you very rarely drink during the day, especially when you’re meant to be working.’

  He rubs at his temples again. ‘But it made sense at the time. We were just hanging out while I was working. And …’

  ‘And then suddenly she’s confiding in you about her latest man problem, you’re trying to make her feel better by paying her compliments because men have been shit to her all her life and it’s not her, it’s them. Especially Dylan who you’re even more disappointed in because he’s your friend and he’s abandoned his daughter.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Then, because she’s trusted you, it’s not long before you’re telling her stuff that you wouldn’t normally tell anyone.’

  ‘It didn’t seem so calculated.’

  ‘Of course it didn’t. She’s been doing it all her adult life. All my adult life. She’s tried it on with every boyfriend I’ve ever had. I told you this.’

  ‘But she just needed a friend. That’s what it felt like.’

  ‘I know that’s what it felt like. And that’s fine. But what isn’t fine is that when I asked you about it, you lied to me.’

  ‘How did you find out?’ my husband asks.

  ‘Apart from finding her hair in our bed?’ He blanches. ‘Yes, I know she got into our bed naked and propositioned you, it’s part of her repertoire. The other way I knew what was going on was that she was writing stuff on her blog that could only have come from you. I started to read it when I found her hair.’ If it’s possible, more colour leeches out of his skin and he is now as white as the floor of the café.

  ‘She said she wouldn’t tell anyone she’d done that. She seemed more embarrassed than I did when I turned her down and told her to get dressed. She even asked me if I was going to tell you, and when I said yes, she practically begged me not to. I should have known it was too easy when she said she wouldn’t tell anyone.’

  ‘That’s what she does,’ I remind my husband. ‘She gets you into a situation where you go against your better judgement and suddenly she’s got something over you because you’ve been keeping a secret with her.’

  ‘You believe that I didn’t sleep with her?’

  ‘Yes. Of course I believe you. I knew you wouldn’t sleep with her, Seth, but it wasn’t about that. It was never about that. I asked you – practically begged you that last night – to tell me. But you wouldn’t. I knew if I started asking questions you’d panic even more and lie and I couldn’t stand that. I only wanted you to be truthful with me. I have trusted you more than anyone else I’ve met in my life, and you lied to me.’

  ‘I felt like I couldn’t tell you the truth. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. You were in so much pain and I didn’t want to add to it.’

  ‘You told her we were starting to try for a baby.’ That hurt more than her getting into our bed.

  ‘She wrote that on her blog?’

  ‘No. She texted me saying if we were thinking of trying for a baby that I should talk to her about any tips I might need and not to forget the folic acid. On the surface a nice text from one cousin to another, and if I told anyone else about that text they’d all think I was crazy for being upset by it. In reality, it’s her way of telling me that you’re confiding in her.’

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘How could you, Seth? It was such a big deal, we have talked for years about it so I could get my head around it. We got married and everything so I’d feel safer about trying for a baby. I didn’t even tell my dad in my last few months with him that we’d got married and were trying to conceive. even though I knew how happy it would make him, because we agreed it was something for you and me. There were so many times when I came close to telling him, when I wanted to say that we’d at least got married so he’d feel happy that I’d be settled once he was gone, but I didn’t because we’d agreed that no one else was to know. And you just up and told Nancy about us trying for a baby. Her of all people. Why didn’t you just tell her we’d got married and be done with it?’

  These feelings, bottled up inside for so long, don’t feel better out in the open. It’s worse. They’re raw, like newly scraped skin exposed to salt, it’s an indescribable pain. Safety is so underrated, dismissed as being boring and dull in the whole spectrum of a grand amour relationship. Passion, sex, grand gestures, romantic meals, big long kisses, swooning … They are what love is meant to be about. They are the things we are meant to crave and revel in, but safety? It’s something that apparently signals a relationship has become stale and predictable. Safety is what I need, what Seth always told me he needed. If either of us were to fall, we needed to know that we would have a soft landing place, that we would be safe. He loved his parents but, as he got older, realised how smothering they were and he only felt able to breathe when we had got together. He found safety with me. And safety, trust, is what I’d had with Seth. The safety to be myself. I opened myself up to him, trusted him with my thoughts and fears and the depth of the void inside, and how I could never fill it. With Seth, I was safe. Then, somehow, I wasn’t. I couldn’t trust him, I couldn’t rely on him to not repeat things to the one person who had made my life a misery. Without safety and trust I couldn’t be with him any longer. Without safety and trust I have this pain that doesn’t feel like it will go.

  When Seth is highly stressed he closes his eyes and focuses his attention on the blackness inside his eyelids and takes deep breaths to try to calm his racing heart. I watch him sit with his eyes closed, the rise and fall of his chest slowing and slowing until he is holding his breath for long seconds, releasing it for an equally long amount of time.

  When I’m stressed, I want to run. Not jogging or anything constructive like that, I just have an urge to stop what I’m doing, throw down whatever I’m holding and run away as fast as I can, only stopping when my legs and feet are too exhausted to move or I come to an intractable natural barrier. I want to run. I want to leave all of this behind and run away again.

  ‘Can you forgive me?’ he asks. He has opened his eyes and is staring at me.

  No. That is the answer. I don’t think so, no.

  ‘I want to,’ I say instead. ‘I’m not—’ I stop. The agony of what I am saying is slashed across his face. His eyes are closed again. He’s retreating into darkness, calming his erratic heart with measured breathing. ‘I want to,’ I repeat.

  It’s not only about forgiveness. It’s forgetting as well. Can you truly forgive someone if you haven’t forgotten what they have done? Our marriage won’t withstand the need for forgiveness. Together, we can withstand a lot of things: arguments, comments from other people about how we shouldn’t be together, disapproval from my moth
er, poverty, even attempts by Nancy to break us up, but it can’t withstand something like a breach of trust that requires forgiveness. We could pretend, we could get back together and carry on, but I know the moment I don’t tell him something because I fear he’ll tell someone else, will be the moment I’ll know I haven’t forgotten. And if I haven’t forgotten, then I haven’t forgiven.

  I want to forgive him. I want to move on and get back together, but I won’t be able to forget. Without forgetting, forgiveness is meaningless.

  Seth wants to walk around for a bit to clear his head. I’d love to as well. But I have another difficult conversation to have, a huge apology to make, and I can’t delay it any longer.

  46

  Abi

  To: Jonas Zebila

  From: Abi Zebila

  Subject: Big news

  Friday, 24 July 2015

  Dear J,

  I meant to tell you something. I’m up the duff again. Yes, big news. It was all planned, which is why Declan keeps going on about getting married. No, Mummy and Daddy don’t know and I’m not sure if this is or isn’t the time to tell them. Is the time because they’re so stressed about Gran nothing will seem as bad; is not the time because they’re so stressed about Gran, telling them now would be incredibly selfish.

  Gran is home. She seems better. In fact, this is the best she’s looked in a long time but it’s still stressful, especially for Mummy. Not only because she does most of the caring, but I get the impression having Clemency around has made Mummy rethink a lot of things about her life. I noticed that the box of artwork she ‘disappeared’ from the loft is now in the pantry area of the kitchen – she must be going through it again.

  Since Gran has been in hospital Mummy’s been sketching on random pieces of paper and has got herself a sketch pad now. I wonder if she’s going to take her art up again if she gets the chance? I’m not sure she can, because Gran’s care is the most important thing in her life and Mummy has to make everything fit around that. The best thing, though, is that if I need a hug, I know I can get it from her now. No, it’s not all happy families around here – if it was I’d have told them I’m pregnant – but it’s getting there between me and Mummy. Everyone knowing her secret is, I think, slowly turning her into the type of mother I always wanted. So, all a bit strange round here but not terrible.

  Love and miss you,

  Abi

  xxxx

  PS I forgot the other big news: Clemency is going to look after Lily-Rose. When I texted her about Gran being in hospital she said she’d take her next week so I can work. Lily will be over the moon as she loves Clemency’s niece, Sienna. They’ve decided they’re cousins. So let’s see how that pans out.

  47

  Smitty

  ‘What can I get you?’ he asks politely. I’ve been downgraded. Not only to ‘just another customer’ but to ‘annoying customer who I deal with politely’. If you spend a lot of time in Beached Heads, as I have, you notice how Tyler deals with people, how he categorises them. Loyal customers are treated like friends, he finds things to banter about, he remembers their orders, he assigns them their own special cups. Ordinary customers get the banter and recommendations on new coffees, are possibly assigned a cup if they’ve been more than once. Annoying customers get a polite greeting where he asks them what they want.

  ‘How about a big cushion to break my fall when I throw myself to my knees and apologise profusely?’

  ‘I don’t do cushions,’ he says. Politely.

  ‘OK, I’ll do it without the cushions, then …’ Nothing. No response, no hint that he wants me to continue or to leave. I lower my voice. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I can’t even begin to understand how you feel. That wasn’t meant to happen.’

  He jerks his head indicating that I should come to the other end of the counter, to near the machine where he taught me to make coffee. It’s quieter there, more private.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I repeat, a little more confident now that he’s not going to sling me out or ignore me. He does want to hear what I’ve got to say. ‘It was such incredibly bad timing.’

  ‘I don’t mess with married women. It’s not my thing – never has been, never will be,’ he states.

  ‘I’m not married in that sense of the word.’

  ‘That guy wasn’t your husband?’

  ‘Yes, he is, but we’ve split up. I thought he’d got the message that we’d split up.’

  ‘He’s stalking you, then?’

  ‘No, not exactly. Or even at all. He came here because he wanted us to sort out splitting up.’

  Tyler’s lips move upwards but they don’t manage to make one of those smiles that I have been feeding my crush on. ‘That makes no sense to me. Have you split up or not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But he doesn’t know.’

  ‘He does now. I thought he knew before, but there won’t be a scrap of doubt in his mind any longer. That’s why it’s taken me so long to come see you. We were sorting things out.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘No, I mean, when did you split up?’

  ‘Nearly two and a half months ago. Although I haven’t seen him in nine weeks.’

  ‘In other words, when you moved down here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ahh, right. And when did you last speak to him?’

  ‘Apart from this morning?’ I ask, jokily, trying to inject some levity into this. He’s being altogether too polite for this to turn out well for me. And I hate Polite Tyler.

  ‘Yes, apart from this morning.’ Deadpan. He is not playing.

  ‘He’s been ringing me and texting, but I haven’t replied.’

  ‘Not really split up, then.’

  ‘We had. He didn’t want it to be true.’

  ‘Had you started divorce proceedings? Or even seen a solicitor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s not what being split up is. It’s fine, you do what you gotta do, but like I said, I don’t mess with married women.’

  ‘I’m only a married woman in name. And not even in name because we both kept our own names.’

  My feeble attempt at humour is met with: ‘Where did he sleep last night?’

  Ah, that question. He is so convinced that I am married more than in name, whatever I say now will be wrong. ‘We slept top to toe.’

  ‘No sofa in your house?’

  ‘I couldn’t ask him to sleep on the sofa after his long drive and there were other things. I told you that I had a full house, it would have been too complicated.’

  I receive a cordial, disappointed smile. Tyler picks up the nearest cup, the pastel yellow cup with white daisies all over the bowl. Then he takes a matching saucer. The way he picks it up makes it feel like it is no longer my assigned cup, just something he’d give to a customer he could not care less if he saw again or not. ‘Coffee?’ he asks. ‘Cappuccino? Mocha?’

  ‘Please believe me, Tyler. Nothing happened because we’re not together any more,’ I explain. ‘I would have told you about him if we’d been out on another date. It’s not really first date talk. But please believe me, I would have told you.’

  ‘I don’t mess with married women,’ he reiterates. ‘And, much as I like you, you’re married. You don’t think you are, but you are. You couldn’t even make him sleep on the floor. You shared a bed with him because you’re not done with him. Which is cool, but not something I want to get involved with.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. I—’ I stop. This is humiliating. Excruciatingly humiliating. I am begging someone to believe that I’m not still with my husband. I am trying to stop someone from dumping me, rejecting me. I thought I was done with being scared of rejection by men when I got together with Seth. I’ve been rebuffed so many times in my life, I should be used to it by now. I shouldn’t mind too much standing in front of Tyler with him holding my favourite of his coffee cups in his hand, with him poised to make me a polite cup of coffee with w
hich to wash down this huge, rich, creamy dose of rejection.

  I wish I’d thought to take a picture of my favourite Beached Heads cup that Tyler had assigned me before this day. It would have made the wall at home. I’d have to take it down along with the picture of him and store them in the butterfly box, of course, but at least I’d be able to look at it occasionally even though I’d never be drinking from it again.

  ‘I think I’d better go,’ I say to him.

  ‘Coffee to go?’ he asks, his face open and friendly. Polite.

  ‘No, no, I’m fine.’

  ‘Are you sure? I’m making one anyway for the bottomless cup at the back, there. It’s no trouble.’

  ‘Oh, go on then, if—’ I catch myself. ‘No, actually, no.’ I’m a little more forceful than necessary but I’m not going to play along with this. He’s got every right to reject me but that doesn’t mean I have to accept it placidly. ‘I’m just going to go. Do some work or something. I’ll see ya.’

  ‘Yeah. Drop by any time you fancy a coffee, Clemency,’ he says, the politest kick to the guts I’ve ever had, I think.

  Tap, tap, tap. Pause. Tap, tap, tap. Pause. Tap. Pause. Tap.

  Seth’s secret knock. We came up with our secret knocks and secret codes in texts, in case either of us was ever taken hostage and we needed to let the other one know there was danger. (We loved doing stupid things like that.) He’s tapping on Lottie’s door. How he knew I was in here, have been in here since I briefly returned to the flat after I humiliated myself at Beached Heads, I don’t know. My guess is that he’s too scared to ring the doorbell to the flat in case Nancy or my mother answer. They’ve gone to Southampton for the day. Shopping, eating, hanging out like a family does on their summer holidays.

  ‘It’s open,’ I call.

  He slides back the door and is a bit taken aback to see me splayed out like a starfish on the floor. I hoist myself upright to sitting while he climbs in and shuts the door behind himself, seals us into the place where we spent many hours working together. We reloved Lottie back to this current state of glory. The bodywork was mainly good, but she needed a lot of work – hence the name – and both Seth and I wanted to do it. We housed her in a garage a short walk away from the flat and every night after work and most weekends, we’d work on her. We talked so much while we worked on her. We talked about our lives before we met, about our years in college, about having children, about the engagement party, about deciding to get married. All those important things were discussed, and very often decided, while we worked on some part of Lottie.