That Girl From Nowhere

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you make her believe that she would be better off dead as payback for what she did to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you think that after you killed her you could let yourself into the house and help yourself to her jewellery whenever the mood took you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you want her dead?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We have evidence that since you came into their lives, Mrs Zebila started to express thoughts of suicide and ending her life early. Do you know anything about that?’

  Over the years I have collected old-fashioned tools to help me craft my metalwork jewellery and one of my favourite things is an old steel screwdriver. It looks like a wooden-handled whisk with a turning handle at the side. Where the whisk blades would be, there is a gap where you insert the different screw bits. The first ring I ever used it to make, I secured thick pieces of silver and copper wire into my metal clamp then fed the ends into the open end of the screwdriver. I turned the wheel handle, wound it slowly but consistently, twisting the wire into something new, unrecognisable from what I started with. This police officer is like that steel screwdriver with the metal strands of the truth – he is twisting what nearly happened between my grandmother and me into something new and shiny and unrecognisable; a version that will make me look guilty.

  ‘Do you know anything about Mrs Zebila’s sudden thoughts of suicide?’ the officer asks again, showing me the twisted, reshaped strands of truth.

  ‘Not in the way you mean,’ I reply. Not in the way you’ve twisted things. ‘She told me she was tired and old and ill and that she wanted to die.’

  Another visceral, shocked reaction from my father. Him staying with me was a spectacularly bad idea. It seemed wonderful before, that my father was willing to publicly acknowledge me, that it was a chance for us to bond. Now he is finding out things he shouldn’t know, in ways he shouldn’t have to.

  ‘You were more than willing to help her out, I take it?’

  ‘No. I told her to talk to her doctor or nurse. I thought if she talked to them, they’d make her see her condition wasn’t as bleak as she thought. They’d give her hope and comfort, show her that with the right medication she could live a comfortable life for her remaining years.’

  ‘She did talk to her doctor and nurse, as it turns out,’ the policeman says, ‘but had a different take on what you’ve just said. She told them both that she was thinking of ending things and that someone had come into her life who had not only made her feel it was possible, but had eagerly agreed to help her.’ That woman, I think. That woman. ‘Judging by the look on Mrs Zebila’s son’s face, I am guessing this is the first time he or anyone else in his family has heard of her plans to end her life.’ That woman. That woman. ‘I think it’s safe to assume, Miss Smittson, the person she was referring to, was you.’

  They’ve let me go without charge. But I’m not to leave the area, and I’m not to think for one second that any of this is over because they are continuing the investigation against me. They will be going through my home and place of business looking for evidence that I carried out this crime; that I had maybe helped myself to her jewellery and had convinced her to kill herself to cover it up. The police officer told me if it was true that she did want to die, it would not be any better for me – that they take cases of assisted suicide very seriously, because even supplying the means for someone to kill themselves is a criminal offence. ‘We all know Mrs Zebila was not capable of carrying out the act herself,’ he said, ‘especially not injecting such a huge dose of insulin let alone the other medication, which means someone else would have done it for her.’

  Mum’s face, small, extremely pale and scored with fretful lines, is the first one I see. A little behind her is my other mother, her face as worried and concerned as a mother’s would be. To Mum’s right stands my husband, a full head and a half higher than both of the women.

  ‘I think it’s best that you stay away from my family from now on,’ is what my father says to me when we leave the interview room and are shown out into the reception area. Mum has reached for me, pulled me towards her and hugged me tight. I wonder if that is what causes him to say that. I called Dad ‘my dad’ in front of him and he hadn’t been happy, and Mum is the person I go to for comfort. Or is it the shock of finding out all those things about his mother that he probably would rather not know?

  ‘Julius!’ my other mother says, horrified that he is doing this.

  My father glares at my other mother, and when he does, I see his mother, my grandmother: her sternness in his forced-together lips, her stubbornness in the frown on his brow, her determination to get her own way in the set of his jaw.

  ‘What are you saying?’ my other mother says. Even though less than a week ago she put me off coming to see them.

  ‘This is for the best, Kibibi.’

  ‘It is,’ Mum says. ‘I was about to say the same thing.’

  I release myself from her hug like a toddler releases themselves from their buggy they’ve outgrown and push myself free. ‘Mum, don’t—’

  ‘No, Clemency, this has gone on long enough. I have watched them welcome you with open arms, then cast you aside when it suits them. And now this.’ She shakes her open hands upwards, to emphasise the place we’re in. ‘This. It’s gone too far. You’re to stay away from them, do you hear me?’

  ‘I’m not nine,’ I tell her.

  ‘I think Mrs Smittson is perfectly correct. We welcomed you into our home and you have violated our trust by not being honest with us.’

  ‘I thought you said no daughter of yours could do such a thing,’ I say quietly. I’m sure he’s sat next to innocent and guilty people before, did I sound like a murderer, a killer to him?

  ‘That was before I knew all of the facts. You are to stay away from us or I will have the police charge you with harassment.’

  Is this what that woman wanted? To have me out of their lives at any cost? Even at the cost of her own life?

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ I say.

  ‘I will be telling Abi to avoid all contact with you also,’ Mr Zebila, as he has morphed into in the last few minutes, states. ‘Ivor has always had his doubts.’

  ‘Come on, Clemency,’ Mum says. ‘We are leaving.’

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ I say to my other mother.

  She looks incredibly, heartbreakingly, sad. Her features are soft, her face a little downcast and her eyes are a liquid brown that swim with soon-to-be-shed tears as she stares at me. Her hair is so neat – each strand is glossy, black, smooth and perfect. I’m sure she never has tangles in her hair. She most likely has them in her mind, her heart, but not in her hair. I have them in all those places. The hard Sussex water is playing havoc with my hair, and the complicated Sussex life is playing havoc with my mind and heart.

  ‘Please tell Abi I’m sorry I won’t be seeing her,’ I say to my other mother.

  She doesn’t reply.

  ‘And Lily. I’ll miss her, too.’

  ‘Come on, Clemency,’ Mum states.

  I grab my other mother and hug her, hold her close. She relaxes for a moment in my arms, and I’m overwhelmed by how comforting it is to hold her. If I had known it would feel like this, I would have done it a million years ago. A second or two later, she stiffens and retreats. That moment is enough – it tells me she believes me. She believes me that I didn’t do it.

  ‘You must promise me you will not see those people again,’ Mum says in the taxi home.

  Seth does not turn from his place in the front seat to look at us, but I know he’s listening, wondering what I will say because he knows how ‘complicated’ my mother can be. How despite the effect she has on me, when she makes me promise something, I always do. Except, Seth knows this is different. I know this is different. Mainly because I am different and ‘those people’ are my family, too.

  ‘Promise me,’ Mum insists when my silence is her answer.

  �
��I promise,’ I say. In my flat black ballet shoes, the only shoes I could put on in a rush, I have, obviously, crossed my toes.

  60

  Abi

  To: Jonas Zebila

  From: Abi Zebila

  Subject: Please reply. PLEASE!!!!!

  Monday, 17 August 2015

  It’s all gone a bit batsh*t around these parts. Which is why I am plotting my escape. I think it’s going to have to be Declan. I make him sound like the terrible option but he’s not. He’s simply the commitment option and I’m not ready for commitment. But, there are times in your life when you have to sh*t or get off the crazy pot, and I am getting myself off the crazy pot quick smart.

  Daddy actually thinks Clemency killed Gran. He truly believes it. He came back from the police station and informed me I wasn’t allowed to go near Clemency again. I was so taken aback I actually said, ‘I’m not nine, Daddy.’ And he told me I would do as I was told while living in his house. Like I don’t pay rent, like I don’t do chores, like I didn’t help feed, clean and take care of Gran. Well, that’s it, I’m done. I’ve texted Declan that he needs to start looking for a bigger place for us all to move into. He’s over the moon.

  Mummy didn’t say much during all of this. She kept looking at Daddy with resentment in her eyes. When he’d finished she said, ‘I’ll never forgive you or your mother for what you’ve done. You took my first child away from me. My eldest son is rude, unpleasant and talks to me like I am beneath him because that is what your mother taught him to do. She drove away my second son. I suspect my second daughter is already planning on leaving and never returning. And now you have taken away my first child again because of your mother. I will never forgive you, Julius.’ And then she left the room. Daddy just stared after her and Ivor looked terrified. For the first time in Ivor’s life someone had told him he wasn’t the be all and end all of everything. He’ll miss that about Gran, I think: not being her golden child any more. That sounds mean, but when I think of some of the things Gran said to me and about me just because I wasn’t male or Ivor …

  I feel so angry right now. It’s like Ivor doing this thing and Daddy ordering me about has made the scales fall from my eyes. Or allowed me to be honest with myself for the first time in years. I feel like I’ve been part of this conspiracy that let Gran get away with anything she wanted because she was ill. I was so scared of losing her, I moved in to be with her, to help take care of her, and she never really had a kind word to say to me. I didn’t want gratitude, just for her to treat me nicely. How she treated Lily-Rose, how she treated Ivor. She wasn’t even that nice to Daddy if I think about it. She was a mean old woman.

  Yes, yes, Jonas, I know you worked it out all those years ago. I’m sorry that I ever made you feel guilty for not getting in touch with her. And I am so, so sorry for what she did to Meredith. I’m guessing because you haven’t told me otherwise that after the miscarriage Meredith still can’t get pregnant again? I feel so awful for being a part of Gran’s world. I really hope you can forgive me.

  I’m sorry, you probably don’t want me dredging all this up. It’s like the floodgates have opened and I can’t believe how under her spell I was. I hope I don’t end up with only negative memories of her, that would be bad for me more than anything.

  Will you talk to me now, Jonas? Now I can see everything so much more clearly, will you talk to me?

  I love you.

  Abi

  xxxx

  61

  Smitty

  Someone killed my grandmother. And they want me to be convicted for her murder.

  These are the thoughts that accompany my every waking moment, every step I take, every time I leave the house to go and meet someone who wants their jewellery reloved or something special made. Someone killed my grandmother and they hate me enough to let me be accused.

  They’d have to know me and they’d have to know her. They’d have to have access to her house or my key, and knowledge of when it was safe to get into the house to do it. There aren’t that many people with all that information, all that access. If I didn’t know me, I’d think it was me, too. But it wasn’t.

  The only person who I know who could hate me enough is the person who would call Social Services before I was even born to make sure I never set foot in her house. I’m still smarting at the idea of that. She sat there and pretended that she had wanted to see me, that she regretted it, when all along she never had any intention of seeing me. And then she manipulated what she told her doctor and nurses to make it sound like I had been the driving force behind her decision to die. The only person who would hate me enough and would want her dead was her. My grandmother. Even if she did, though, there was no doubting that she couldn’t do it herself, which means someone had to help her. Which means they must know I am being investigated for their crime.

  Somebody killed my grandmother, and they’re going to let me go to prison for it.

  I let myself into the flat, kick off my shoes, stop by the bathroom to wash my hands and then head straight for the kitchen. I had a message from Melissa earlier, asking how it was going, whether I’d got any closer to applying for my adoption papers and saying she’d come with me or be with me while I read them. I remember the first time we met, her saying that it was important to have them even having met her birth mother. I need to call her back, I felt such a connection with her, like she had lived so many of the things I did in a similar way. But I am barely functioning at the moment. All that keeps going though my head is that someone killed my grandmother and they’re going to let me be convicted for it. I can’t engage with anybody about anything else beyond that.

  I can hear the others in the living room; I caught a glimpse of them on my way to get a drink. Mum and Nancy are on the sofa, the TV is on, Seth and Sienna are by the window watching the world go by and shouting ‘Bingo!’ every time they see a dog.

  On the worktop nearest the kitchen door, the foil, wire top and cork of a bottle of champagne sit discarded, as if someone had hurriedly opened them. Champagne at 4 p.m. Mum and Nancy are becoming ladies who lunch clichés. Nancy was gutted (Mum probably was, too) when I stopped taking Sienna out with me every day.

  In the fridge I reach for the orange juice, which is too large a bottle to fit in the fridge door. Next to the orange juice is a champagne bottle-shaped space, from the bottle I’ve stored since I arrived here. I leave the fridge door open and return to the foil, wire and cork on the worktop by the door. Snatch it up. The metal cap that sits between the wire and the cork is the same brand, same vintage, as the one I had in my fridge in Leeds for more than a year and then brought here. It was very expensive and the same brand and year as the one Dad had given Seth and me after we’d cancelled our engagement party. He’d scrawled a note saying how sorry he and Mum were about the party but how pleased they were that we were together and happy. The bottle and note were from him because he’d known what had really happened, he wasn’t as blind to Nancy as Mum was. When I told Dad I’d almost saved up enough to open my own shop, he’d bought me another bottle of the same champagne to keep for that day. The bottle lived in that part of the fridge. I go back, check it hasn’t been moved, shunted along to make room for something else. It’s not there. It’s not there … but they wouldn’t, they just wouldn’t.

  Slamming the fridge door shut, I dash out into the corridor then across into the living room.

  ‘Clem, go back into the kitchen and grab yourself a glass, we’re celebrating my good news,’ Nancy says. On the low coffee table in front of them, a coffee table Mum and Nancy ordered and had delivered without consulting me after one of their shopping trips, sits the condensation-soaked bottle of champagne. I snatch it up, look at the bottom right-hand corner of the label where Dad had written Love, Mum & Dad, 2014. Nancy and Mum would, they did.

  ‘This is the bottle that my dad bought me,’ I say, the first time I’ve spoken directly to Nancy without her having asked a question first.

  ‘Seth did mention th
at, but Auntie Heather didn’t think you’d mind much since I’ve had such brilliant news,’ Nancy says. Her brow is a little creased, she probably wonders if she has said it properly or if I have a hearing problem. Even after everything, she still thinks I care about anything good or bad that happens to her. ‘My blog has been shortlisted for an award. The inside word is that I’m a shoe-in to win. Isn’t that wonderful?’

  My attention moves from the bottle to Nancy. That’s it; done. She has at last succeeded in taking everything from me. Even in our most desperate-for-a-drink moments, Seth and I wouldn’t open that bottle, not even when we got married, because it was special, it was for when I opened the shop. It was a promise between Dad and me. Since Dad died it’s become more than that promise, it’s also the last thing he ever gave me to complete the important task I needed to fulfil.

  ‘You need to pack up and leave,’ I say to Nancy. She’s done it all, she’s taken everything from me. She can go now.

  Her glass pauses on its journey to her mouth, her smile becomes a rictus mask of what happiness should look like on her face.

  ‘Sienna.’ Seth is on his feet. ‘Would you like to come for a walk on the beach with me? We can play dog bingo and maybe get an ice cream in Marrocco’s.’

  ‘OK, Uncle Smitty.’ My niece, who is really my second cousin, gets to her feet as well. ‘Is Auntie Smitty going to tell off Mum?’ The emotion in the room is heavy, potent enough to be real, touchable. Sienna can sense it and isn’t about to pretend that she can’t.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Seth replies, as honest an answer as Dad would have given, ‘but I think it’s best that neither of us is here right now.’

  ‘OK.’ She shrugs. Makes no difference to her whether she’s here or not, plus she gets ice cream.

  Minutes later, when Seth has gathered his keys and wallet from the shelf in the corridor, when they have debated and decided on which shoes to wear, whether to take coats or not, a click – quiet and discreet – tells us we are alone.