That Girl From Nowhere

by Dorothy Koomson

  Yet, in every thought or imagining of Heaven I had, I didn’t really want to be there. Because I couldn’t come back here when I wanted, I wouldn’t have the people I loved around when I wanted. What was the point of Heaven if I couldn’t be with the people who I wanted to be with and for that to happen, they’d have to die. And I wouldn’t want that.

  I haven’t been in a church since Dad’s funeral, before that it was probably for Karina’s wedding, before that probably Sienna’s christening. I don’t make a habit of going to church, even though we went every week when I was a child.

  This church has the serenity of silence. I remember to genuflect before I slide into a pew. I close my eyes and try to tune in. Try to link myself with the serenity and hush of the building. I want to climb on to that other reality and stand there, looking, searching. If I manage to do that, to be there, to ground myself in that other reality, I may find him. I may feel Dad’s presence.

  The quiet comes slowly, unlinks itself blood cell by blood cell throughout my body until every part of me feels it. I am not here. I am not there. I am everywhere and nowhere.

  ‘Hi, Dad,’ I whisper. ‘Can I talk to you?’

  Tyler is leaning against the wall beside the church door. His arms are folded across his chest, and although it’s a cool day, he’s in one of his seemingly never-ending supply of bright white T-shirts that show off his sleek, beautiful arms.

  ‘Hello,’ he says when I spot him.

  ‘Hi,’ I reply. ‘Bye.’ I don’t want to hang around, having awkward conversations with him, so set off in the direction of home. Maybe Seth has gone to work in a café and Mum will probably be out with Nancy and Sienna. Maybe I will be alone in the flat for a while. If Seth isn’t out, I’ll ask him to go—

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tyler calls at me.

  I stop and, confused, turn back to him. ‘What are you sorry for?’

  ‘I didn’t behave very well the last time I saw you,’ he says. ‘I was shocked, humiliated, and a little angry, so I behaved badly. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You didn’t behave badly at all. And even if you did, I think you were entitled.’

  ‘No. I had the right to be angry, but not to be condescending and downright rude. I apologise.’

  ‘Apology – as unnecessary as it is – accepted. I’ll see you, Tyler.’

  ‘Clemency,’ he calls.

  ‘Yes?’ I ask without bothering to turn around.

  ‘Are you all right? You seem so sad.’

  ‘I know.’ That’s the simple fact: I am sad. About Dad, about Seth, about Mum, about my mother and father and sister and brothers and grandmother. About what I have to do for my grandmother. I am sad. ‘I’ve been sad for weeks, though, have you only just noticed?’

  ‘No. Before, though, you looked sad, which is understandable since your dad had recently died, but now you seem bereft. As though nothing will make any of it any better.’

  I turn to him. ‘I don’t look that bad,’ I say with a smile.

  The concerned look on his face chokes the laugh in my throat. He steps closer. After another step, he reaches for my hand. ‘You don’t look bad at all.’

  I like the feeling of my hand in his, the touch of his skin against mine. He steps closer and the smell of him – sharp tangy citrus, woody notes and, of course, coffee – fills my senses. I inhale deeply, breathe him in. I exhale, push him out again. This is a distraction, a way to escape my complicated, sad life. His hand is on my face, warm and reassuring. He fills my senses on my next in-breath, leaves again as I breathe out. My hand is on his face. Another inhalation that draws him in, an exhalation that pushes him out. His lips are on mine, my lips are on his. We stand in the middle of the pavement of a busy street kissing, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world.

  In the park around the corner from the church, we sit on a bench and watch parents play with their children. I find children fascinating. They seem so free, easy. One girl has sleek pigtails that bounce as she swings arm over arm from one end of the monkey bars to the other. A four-year-old boy with a curtain of blond hair ‘Wheeeee!’s his way down the largest slide in the park, stands up and runs around to climb back up the steps. A little girl, tall but probably younger than she looks, is on the climbing frame, confidently making her way to the top, while a woman who looks like she could be her mother waits fretfully at the bottom of the equipment. They could be mother and daughter – but like me and Mum. The woman is a pale white with light brown hair, the little girl is a warm, dark brown like me.

  Tyler and I haven’t really spoken. We stopped kissing after a couple of minutes and then were completely awkward and embarrassed. I was surprised, not only because we were standing on a main road and it was broad daylight and we were outside a church, but also because, well, I’m a married woman and he was very clear that he didn’t mess with married women.

  I rest my head on his shoulder, he has his hand on my leg. We sit like an established couple spending precious time together, doing not much.

  ‘Who was the woman in the wheelchair?’ I ask.

  ‘Manma,’ he replies. ‘My grandma. I take her to church every other Wednesday, my brother does the other week. My mum sits outside and waits for us to load her into the car then drives her home.’

  ‘She waits outside?’

  ‘Yup, my mum isn’t setting foot in a church. Her and Manma have had some spectacular rows about it, but my mum isn’t having it. She takes Manma there and takes her home, but she won’t step inside.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘Lots of reasons, none that I completely agree with or understand to be honest, not that I completely agree with Manma’s arguments either, but that’s my family for you – they’re always on the verge of falling out and then straight back to normal.’

  ‘It must be so strange, growing up in a big family. I had no siblings and only really had my cousin Nancy who was my age. How many siblings do you have?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Wow! It must have been so noisy.’ Envy is oozing out of me so fast I’m surprised Tyler can’t see big, green globules of it. ‘It must have been brilliant. Not that only having Mum and Dad wasn’t brilliant because it was.’

  ‘It drove me mad. There was never any peace and quiet, no privacy. My mum and dad kept trying until my mum got her girl in the end, that’s the main thing.’

  I laugh. I’ve heard of people doing that. It took me a lifetime to get my head around the idea of having a child. Seth and I talked and talked and talked about it and I was still uncertain. When I had got my head around it, I had been so excited about the prospect of having a baby with him. I knew he’d love the child and I would, too. And I would have someone who was not only linked to me biologically, but would link me to him, too. The fact he had told Nancy about that still breaks my heart.

  ‘A lot of thinking going on in that head of yours,’ Tyler says. He’s looking down at me. His eyes are a shade of brown that I’ve only ever seen on a pebble pendant I bought on holiday in Lisbon. It wasn’t quite a dark chocolate, it was a colour in between that and mahogany. I’d stripped the pendant of its chain and jumprings, then set it into a little silver tray and strung it with little cream beads as a belt. I’d sold it for £125. The most I’d ever got for something so small and unrelated to a wedding.

  ‘I was just thinking about a conversation I had the other day. I thought I knew what I felt about most things, but in this instance, once the subject was raised, I realised I didn’t have any opinion on it at all. Has that ever happened to you?’

  I wonder if I can sound him out in a theoretical sense, if he’ll be able to tell me what I need to hear. Talking to Dad was good, but I’d had no response. I didn’t have him tell me if it was the right or wrong thing to do. I’ll still be doing it, because no matter what my grandmother is like, she does not deserve to live the rest of her life in fear of being trapped, but I need someone else’s opinion.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ Tyl
er says.

  ‘I mean, let’s say, for example euthanasia or assisted suicide. It came up in conversation the other day, and I realised I can’t even have a proper conversation about it because I don’t have a fully formed opinion.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s usual. I don’t think anyone knows what they think about something like that until they’re actually touched by it.’

  ‘What do you think about it, then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He grins down at me and then slowly strokes his thumb over my cheek.

  ‘You are such a wind-up merchant.’

  ‘A wind-up coffee merchant, thank you.’ He strokes his thumb over my cheek again. ‘My grandmother, Manma, has been in a wheelchair for a long time. Osteoarthritis that’s particularly bad in her knees and ankles. She can’t be upright for long periods. Her hands, elbows and wrists are bad but not like her knees. It’s been really hard for her over the years.’

  ‘And she wanted someone to help her die?’

  ‘No! No way. She’s determined to outlive us all. But other people don’t think she has any quality of life so subtly and sometimes unsubtly they tell her she would be better off dead.’

  ‘You’re not serious!’ I say that like I haven’t been told all my life subtly and unsubtly, I should be grateful my birth mother didn’t abort me and had me adopted instead.

  ‘They don’t often say it outright, but you know the pitying looks, the “How can you stand it when you used to be so active?” and “I suppose you live through your children and grandchildren now” comments are all saying the same thing – because she can’t do what they think of as “healthy”, “normal” things, they assume she must feel bad about it, too.

  ‘And we’ve had some close shaves in the past – Manma will have been ill enough to be hospitalised and more than a few times we’ve had to ask the doctors to speed up or do everything they can to keep her alive. Not all of them, obviously, and not every time, but there’ve been enough who you can see aren’t working as fast as other doctors have. In their minds, I guess, she’s old, she’s had her time, she’s in a wheelchair, her quality of life isn’t up to the standard they’d like to live at so it’s fair enough to let her fade away. It’s really scary, having to stand up to the professionals who you’re trusting to do their best. And for them, their best is to let people like Manma die.

  ‘After all those times, she’s still around, still being who she is. The thought that someone else would have euthanised her because she didn’t fit their ideal of what they want from life is very upsetting.’

  ‘But some people want to die. Not like your grandmother, but other people in the same situation as her would rather not be kept alive, they’d rather just go,’ I say.

  ‘And that’s fair enough. That’s their choice. But someone taking that choice away is just wrong. And putting pressure on people by implying their life isn’t as great as it is for someone young or able-bodied is even more wrong.’

  ‘But what if they can’t do it themselves and they need help? The person who helps them could get into trouble.’

  He focuses on me with such intensity the air in my chest stops. Does he know? Does he know what I’m waiting to do?

  He changes his line of vision to across the park and takes his hand away from my cheek. ‘It’s a pretty complicated subject,’ he says, his words are bathed in frostiness.

  ‘Where has the sudden drop in temperature come from?’ I ask.

  ‘Pardon?’ he asks.

  ‘Why have you gone all funny?’

  He is silent for a few moments, although his face reveals plenty: he’s struggling with whether to say what he wants to say or to keep his counsel. When he looks at me again, he’s obviously decided to speak. ‘It feels like I’m being led down the path to agreeing with something I don’t agree with. I mean, you see my grandmother and suddenly you’re asking these questions. I know it’s not popular and people should, if possible, be allowed to decide when they go, but I also think we have a responsibility to others. Not just to people we know, but to people we don’t know. It’s not popular, no, but we should think about other people and how the choices we make impact on them. I don’t want to be led into an argument where I’m forced to agree that if you want to die you should be allowed to. That’s not something I necessarily disagree with. I think if it becomes the norm, though, so the people who “help” don’t get into trouble, it will lead to potentially vulnerable people like Manma being in danger.’ As he speaks his words gather momentum and power and volume. ‘On paper my grandmother hasn’t got this glittering lifestyle where she lives without pain and drugs and a huge loss of what people call “dignity”, but it’s her life. She lives it. I don’t want her, or people like her, to feel that assisted dying is the only option for them, even obliquely, when the rest of us don’t have to deal with those pressures.’

  ‘I wasn’t leading you anywhere. I was talking – that’s all.’

  ‘With subjects like that, people don’t often “just talk”, they always have an agenda.’

  ‘Not always … I don’t have an agenda. And it has nothing to do with seeing your grandmother. I just wanted to … Remember, I said about how you don’t realise you don’t know what you think about a subject until you start to think about it? Well, yeah, that’s what this conversation was about.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he says. His apology seems genuine, heartfelt. ‘It’s one of those subjects that people have such strong feelings about and I’ve had some humdinger rows. Things get said that can’t be taken back …’

  ‘I can’t remember ever having a conversation with anyone about it.’

  ‘Apart from the person the other day, obviously.’

  If only you knew what that conversation was really about, I think. ‘Yes, well, apart from that person. You’ve honestly had more than one conversation about it?’

  ‘Occupational hazard.’

  ‘What, people turn up in a coffee shop and start spouting off about euthanasia? It’s all fun and games in your café, ain’t it?’

  Tyler kisses me, presses his mouth on to mine and slowly opens me up with his tongue. His hand is on my face and the kiss is delicate but firm, exciting and sensuous. I close my eyes and fall into the moment, tumble right into it and forget. I forget about everything that’s gone before, everything that’s to come. I allow myself to be free and unburdened for just a minute or two. Then it’s all back. All of it, everyone, and what I have to do is at the front of that. I need to tell someone. Mid-kiss I pull away from Tyler.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I, erm, need to go.’

  ‘Go? Go where?’

  I inhale a few times, calm my nerves, prepare myself to upset him. I don’t deserve him anyway. He’s far too nice for me. All that stuff he was saying was right, it’s absolutely what I believe, too, and I couldn’t tell him what I’m going to do. I couldn’t burden him with that when I hardly know him.

  ‘I need to speak to my ex-husband,’ I say.

  ‘Are you serious? I kiss you and you have a sudden need to speak to your ex?’ He seems offended and confused in equal measures. ‘Was it that bad a kiss?’

  ‘No, no! Of course it wasn’t, Tyler. I could sit here kissing you all day. I have something I need to tell him and I need to do it now or I’ll bottle out of it.’

  ‘Fine,’ he says.

  ‘It really isn’t anything you’ve done—’

  ‘Spare me, Clemency. If you’ve got to go, go.’

  ‘I’ll see you?’ I ask him hopefully.

  ‘Not if I see you first,’ he replies before he gets up and marches away.

  He’s sitting barefoot on my bed, headphones on, book open on his lap, television on in the background. This is how Seth preps himself for a new design project. He immerses himself in all different types of media, blending them together in his mind until he comes up with a new concept.

  When he looks up and sees me, he grins. I feel like I’m about to shoot him, if I knew what shooting someone
was like. I feel like I am about to damage him in a deep, fundamental way. I need to tell him though. I need to say the words aloud so I can know how bad it is, how final. He’s the only person on Earth that I can tell.

  The smile slowly disappears from his face and he pushes the headphones off his head, switches off the television and lays aside the book.

  ‘Do you want me to leave?’ he asks.

  I shake my head. ‘I need to tell you something. And I need you to listen to me. And then I need you to tell me the truth about what you think. I’m still going to do it, but I need you to be completely honest with me about how bad you think it is.’

  Frowning, he climbs over the bed, slips off and then sits on the floor, resting his back against the bed. He indicates to the space beside him, which I take. ‘Tell me,’ he says.

  ‘In ten days’ time, I’m going to have to kill somebody,’ I say.

  The relief of being able to say it out loud, the horror of what it means, and the fear of having to do it, cause me to break down and sob in the arms of my husband for the next two hours.

  Part 8

  52

  Smitty

  I am standing in my bedroom in front of the huge windows which look down over the promenade, which runs like a thick black marker line under the constantly undulating blue-grey waves of the sea.

  Since I moved in here I have been drawn to the windows, to staring out at the sea, to losing myself in the constant motion of the water. Even when the sea is calm it moves, shifts, reshapes itself. I stand here and think about Dad, about life, about my grandmother.

  Seth doesn’t want me to do it. I probably shouldn’t have told him, it was selfish to burden him when we are as we are. And the more people who know, the more it will look like premeditated murder, not privately fulfilling her wishes. Even if she leaves a note, it could be argued that I pressurised her into writing it – that I influenced her to reach the decision and then carried it out. It could be argued that since she has not asked anyone else to help her other than me, a relative stranger, I could have made up the whole thing simply to kill her.