The Girl Who Just Appeared

by Jonathan Harvey

  ‘Ah, nice one, Pips. That’d be sound.’

  Again, when he said it, it sounded like ‘sounzzzzzzzzzzzzz’.

  ‘Unless you’re working or something.’

  Which made him almost double up with mirth by the sound of it.

  ‘Nah, I think I can squeeze you in, Pips.’

  I wasn’t overly keen on being called Pips. It reminded me not of Pippa Middleton, as he intended, but of Pip from The Archers, an immature character who only ever seemed to moan, a character who seriously annoyed me.

  But I was a yes-woman now, open to new experiences, and if Iggy wanted to give me a pet name, no matter how annoying that was, maybe now was the time to embrace it. Pips/Pip/Pippa I was!

  Next I took out the business card I had put in my purse. I dialled Perm Suspect and asked to speak with Rose. However, as I expected, she was still up at the hospital, so I booked myself in with her for a wash and blow-dry in two days’ time. I decided I wouldn’t worry about crossing the Mersey to Birkenhead for now. I was sure Iggy could offer sage advice about that.

  When I hung up, I felt excited. As the salty air from the Mersey hit my nostrils, I felt like a proper woman about town.

  Look at me, I thought, I am a woman living in Liverpool with plans for the next two days. And I’ve only been here an hour. It felt good to have a full dance card. I wanted to shout out to passers-by, ‘Sorry, what was that? What am I doing for the next two days? Well, it’s funny you should ask, actually, because . . . Let me get this straight . . . Oh yes! I’m seeing my pal Iggy tomorrow for a bit of a scout around the city, and then the day after I go and see my landlady, Rose. Bless her, she’s going to do my hair for me at her salon. Ciao, darlings! Have a great day!’

  I had read online about a vast shopping area called Liverpool 1, so I followed some pedestrian signs for it and eventually found myself in open and covered multilevel walkways lined with all the usual shops you’d find in any given city centre. Why this was seen as a particularly glamorous jewel in the city’s crown I would never know. But though the backdrops seemed familiar, the people populating them seemed more startling.

  The first time I realized I wasn’t in London, let alone Tring anymore, was when I clocked a young woman, possibly early twenties, caked in make-up eating chips at the bottom of a pyramid of stairs that led to a food-court area. Nothing odd about that, you might think, except that this woman was wearing fuchsia-pink leggings, a fuchsia-pink poncho, had fuchsia-pink nails and lips, and then her jungle of blonde hair perched atop her head was carefully arranged in a construction of humongous fuchsia-pink curlers. I was startled by her and, I’m embarrassed to say, I stopped and stared, mouth open, as if she were an exhibit in Madame Tussauds. It took her a couple of seconds to register my gawping. And when she did, she froze, chip mid-air between paper and mouth . . . At this point I noticed her unfeasibly large eyelashes – they were like paintbrushes – and she said, ‘Are you a model scout?’

  I shook my head. She looked disappointed, then resumed eating. I hurried on. I tucked Michael into my shoulder bag when I entered the shops. If people noticed, maybe they’d think I was an It Girl. Or a WAG. He didn’t seem to mind. He seemed to be ten per cent chihuahua, ninety per cent sloth.

  The shops were busy, considering it was a weekday and not half-term. Also, considering there was a recession on, there were plenty of people browsing. But maybe they weren’t buying. And the more I looked, I realized there was quite a lot of time-killing going on here. Three teenage boys had clearly settled in for the afternoon in one games shop, standing playing Xbox around a pillar. In John Lewis, a bored woman was playing with all the locks on a row of Samsonite suitcases. After doing some time-killing of my own – I must have sprayed myself with at least ten different tester perfumes, so much so I was making myself sneeze – I decided to head home.

  Home. It felt funny thinking of it like that.

  The traipse back up the hill wasn’t as pleasurable as the brisk catapult down it, and by the time I arrived back at the terrace, I was definitely looking forward to putting the kettle on and making myself a decent cup of coffee. No sugar.

  When I put my key in the main door of the house, I was relieved to find that it worked. Although Alan had previously assured me my keys worked, it was one thing I’d not checked before he’d left.

  ‘Come on, Michael, in we go,’ I said, sounding so Home Counties it was untrue. Amid all the Liverpool accents I’d heard on my stroll, I felt like I sounded posher than Nigella Lawson. Michael trotted in and his obedience was moving. Poor little thing. Sylvie had been gone for weeks now and hadn’t once checked that he was all right. Oh well, stuff her. It had all been quite fortuitous really; at least with a dog I would never be truly alone in my new residence. I was just climbing the creaky stairs when the door on the ground floor opened and a shock of pink hair blurred out. Jax.

  ‘Hi, Holly, babes!’ she chirruped. ‘Did you move in all right, love?’

  Oh. How kind.

  ‘Oh. How kind,’ I said, echoing my thoughts, not the most original of retorts, but it made her smile. ‘Yes, thank you. Everything all right with you?’

  ‘Oh God, yeah, babes. Everything’s fab. I was thinking, if you were at a loose end, whether you wanted to come round for a drink? Let me welcome you to the house and all that.’

  Again. Oh. How kind. And I had to say yes, did I not? I was now, after all, a yes-woman.

  ‘Well, that would be lovely. When were you thinking?’

  She pulled a phone from her pocket and checked the time on it.

  ‘Er . . . now?’

  ‘Oh. Well, let me just go and drop Michael off upstairs and freshen up, and I’ll be down in . . . fifteen mins?’

  She nodded, unperturbed, it would appear, by my – to my mind, anyway – rather annoying use of the abbreviation ‘mins’.

  ‘Bring the dog, though. I love animals, me.’

  So bring the dog I did.

  If I thought Jax’s appearance and voice pitch was a little Minnie Mouse, then her ground-floor flat maintained this quirky feel. When I came down, she had changed into a bright red dress with white polka dots on, which matched the tablecloth on her dining table. Her flat seemed somehow smaller than mine, even though I reasoned it must have been the same size as it was directly below me and covered the same floor space. But then I had only been shown her living room. It appeared smaller because it had so much . . . well . . . tat in it. Heavy red velvet drapes masked the tall sash windows, blocking out so much light. There were three sofas in clashing colours that formed a U-shape facing a fireplace full of dried flowers. There was a dusty rocking horse in the corner, a mannequin dressed in a Hawaiian skirt and a garland of flowers, and several marionettes hung from the ceiling so that you had to duck when you moved around the room. On one wall, there was an old payphone.

  ‘Oh my gosh, does it work?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘God, no. But I love the look of it, d’you know what I mean?’

  I did. And then I saw the slots on it for two and ten pences and realized it really was a museum piece.

  She poured, from a Cath Kidston teapot, what she claimed, and what proved to be, pre-mixed gin and tonic into oversized pink teacups, and handed me one.

  ‘Cheers, baby face!’ she sang.

  ‘Cheers!’ I giggled. I had never, ever been called ‘baby face’ before. I looked into a narrow hallway that must have led to her bedroom and bathroom. A massive suitcase appeared to block it, its cover-up, a big mouth spewing dresses from it onto the floor. Seemed she was packing for something.

  ‘Oh. Are you off on your hols?’ I asked.

  Her eyes narrowed and she gently but firmly pulled the door to.

  ‘No,’ she said. She was looking at me disapprovingly. I wasn’t sure why. Then she smiled and said, ‘Is there something you wanna ask me?’

  This wrong-footed me. I had just asked her something. And she’d replied in the negative. There was, of course, something else I wanted to ask
. So I did, though I no doubt sounded startled by her directness.

  ‘I was wondering how long you had lived here, actually.’

  ‘Oh right. Er . . . three years?’

  ‘Oh,’ I echoed her. ‘OK.’

  ‘Why, babes?’

  ‘Well, I was interested in tracing someone who lived upstairs many years ago.’

  ‘I’ve only known the Greens. They were the people before you. Solicitors. But then she fell pregnant and wanted a garden.’

  I nodded.

  She continued, ‘Fuck knows why. Maybe she wanted to give birth on the grass. Holly?’

  ‘Aha?’

  ‘Are you . . . here on a quest?’

  Which wrong-footed me, again.

  ‘Er . . . well, yes. A bit.’

  ‘Don’t be scared, Holly,’ she said, advancing towards me in quite a scary way, ‘only I’ve got a gift.’

  ‘You have?’

  She nodded and sat on one of the sofas. She patted the space next to her and I joined her.

  ‘I’m psychic.’

  Oh gosh.

  ‘And . . .’ she continued, ‘someone’s trying to speak with you.’ Just then she abruptly looked to her left, the other side to me, and barked, ‘Yeah, all right. Can I handle this my way, love?’ Then she looked back to me apologetically. ‘Some people in spirit. They aren’t half gobby.’

  I found myself swallowing. Possibly because I was starting to feel uncomfortable.

  ‘Now tell me, Holls. Can I call you Holls?’ But before I had a chance to answer she continued, ‘Has someone close to you recently passed? Is it your dad?’

  ‘Er . . . my mum.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Mm.’

  Jax tried another tack. ‘Has she got a deep voice?’

  ‘No.’

  Jax took this in. Then tried again. ‘Did she die of throat problems?’

  ‘No, her heart.’

  Jax nodded, as if this all made sense. ‘Think she’s got a bit of a throat problem at the mo. And you’ve been trying to contact her, haven’t you?’

  What madness was this?

  ‘Well, no, I haven’t. I’m not sure . . .’

  ‘Oh God, am I freaking you out, Holls?’

  ‘No!’ I shrieked, sounding completely freaked out.

  ‘Oh God, I am – I can tell.’ Then she added, ‘Coz I’m psychic. I sometimes forget this isn’t to everyone’s taste. I’m sorry.’

  And then she got up and crossed the room. ‘Shall we talk about something else?’ She took a packet of cigarettes from the mantelpiece and lit one quickly. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  I shook my head.

  She nodded. ‘I knew that.’

  ‘Jax,’ I felt the need to explain, ‘you didn’t freak me out. My mum did die recently, but . . . well, it’s not her I’m looking for. It’s my birth mum. I was adopted.’

  Jax’s eyes widened as the penny dropped. She took another drag on her cigarette and then hastily jabbed it out prematurely in a conch shell on the dining table. She hurried and sat beside me again.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘You know what?’

  ‘I know you don’t believe.’

  ‘Well, no, I don’t really.’

  ‘But you’ve just got to open your heart, your mind, to the universe. To what’s around you, babes.’

  And because I was a yes-woman, I found myself nodding.

  ‘Tell me everything you know,’ she said.

  She listened intently as I told her all that I knew. Which admittedly wasn’t much. She held my hand while I spoke, and as I finished, she started to breathe heavily and nod slowly.

  ‘I think we need to go up.’

  ‘Right. Is that a . . . spiritual thing?’

  ‘No, Holly. Upstairs. Bring the dog. And the teapot.’

  Once we were in my flat, she made a big song and dance of moving from room to room and whispering to some invisible force, sometimes shaking her head sadly, sometimes chuckling mischievously. Sometimes she would go and touch a wall with both hands, again, breathe in and emit a low kind of hum.

  Michael went and lay in the airing cupboard. I didn’t blame him.

  I followed her round like a spare part. She even sat on the toilet.

  ‘Oh sorry, did you need to . . . ?’

  ‘No, I’m communing!’

  I stayed there. In the bathroom. As she sat on the toilet, eyes closed, deep in thought. After twenty seconds of doing this, which actually felt a lot longer, she opened her eyes and smiled awkwardly.

  ‘Can I get you a top-up of gin?’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘I need one.’

  And she hurried through to my lounge, where she’d left the teapot. She topped herself up with a shaky hand and a smile. A particularly false smile. You didn’t have to be psychic to work out something was amiss.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘No!’ she said quickly.

  ‘So . . . nothing came through?’

  ‘How long have you rented the flat for?’

  ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Jax!’

  And then she swung round, panic on her face. ‘I’m sorry, Holls. It’s your birth mum. She’s dead.’

  I looked at my teacup, rattling in its saucer. I lifted it to my lips, knocked it back in one, then asked for another.

  SIX

  ‘What d’you think of John Lennon?’ Iggy said to me as I showed him round my flat the next day.

  I kept pointing to things: the space-age kettle that lit up when you switched it on, the view of the cathedral completely filling the windows, the dog. Each time he would nod, but nothing would deter him from his train of thought.

  ‘Are you, like, a fan or what?’

  At least he wasn’t pretending to commune with spirits like Jax had.

  ‘Erm. Yeah, he was . . . yeah, he was great,’ I said, sounding non-committal, which completely went against what I’d actually said.

  Could Jax have been right? I kept thinking. Even though she gave the air of being completely inept and away with the fairies, and even though she had got everything else absolutely wrong, could it be that she had been right about one thing and one thing alone? Francesca was in fact dead?

  Only time would tell, I guessed.

  Iggy stood in the middle of the living room and placed his hands firmly down the front of his jogging bottoms. Although it looked like he was about to start fiddling with himself, he was so engrossed in his train of thought I found it doubtful.

  ‘See, most people say Elvis was the King. But he wasn’t. In my eyes it was Lennon.’

  ‘The Lennonmeister,’ I proclaimed. And I had no idea why I did. I couldn’t even speak German, and I wasn’t a hundred per cent certain what it meant.

  Iggy was nodding, though, so it must have made sense.

  I had to be honest, I’d never given John Lennon too much thought over the years. Yes, he was a superbly talented musician, taken too early, and in tragic circumstances, but he wasn’t exactly of my generation, and a part of me had slightly dismissed him as a hippy man with a beard, long hair and bottle-bottom specs. But then Iggy had to be at least ten years my junior, and to him, this man was a god. I had to embrace this; I was a yes-woman now. Heavens, I’d even let this practical stranger into my new home. I was alone with him; I could so easily have been in danger. I could hear Mum’s voice in my head. And, what’s more, she was appalled.

  Holly, you let a strange man into your apartment? When you were on your own? But . . . anything could have happened!

  And yet somehow I felt safe with Iggy. Possibly because he was that much younger and he had the air of a frisky young pup who could become excited by the slightest distraction, and also, despite the window-dressing of tattoos and – now I noticed – piercings to the eyebrow, physically he still felt a bit like the runt of someone’s litter. And yes, anything could happen, and that was
precisely the feeling I wanted to savour. Now an adventure could begin.

  And also I suppose a part of me felt, well, I’ve lain on top of him in a railway carriage. What’s the worst that can happen?

  And so, continuing the Lennon theme, Iggy proceeded to take me on a magical mystery tour. Though having said that, had he just taken me to the local sweetshop, that would have been a magical mystery tour, as I was in a city I only knew virtually. The streets around Gambier Terrace felt comfortingly familiar as we stepped out with Michael into another bright day. I wanted to think it was because I had seen these pavements, these houses from my pram, but it was because I had crossed them so many times via the magic of the internet and Google Earth that I felt instantly at home. I’m not sure that Michael was doing much for Iggy’s street cred: every time he looked down at him wiggling along beside us, he emitted an embarrassed high-pitched laugh and shook his head, probably disappointed that I didn’t have a Staffie or a pit bull, though that was probably unfair of me.

  ‘Iggy, do you believe in the afterlife?’ I asked as we ambled along.

  ‘What, like ghosts and all that?’

  ‘I suppose so. You know, when you speak to dead people via psychics?’

  ‘No fuckin’ way!’ He didn’t even apologize for swearing. I found this refreshing. ‘Why? Do you?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. I don’t know really.’

  ‘So why d’you ask, like?’

  ‘The girl who lives downstairs from me claims to be a psychic.’

  ‘Oh aye? How much did she fleece you for?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. She didn’t charge me. But she did say my birth mother was dead.’

  ‘Nutter. They wanna send her up Rainhill.’

  ‘Rainhill?’

  ‘The arl looney bin. Here we are.’

  Oh good. Iggy was dismissing her as a bit lulu. That I could live with.

  A few streets behind Gambier Terrace was Percy Street, and now we were at number 9, Iggy informed me that Lennon had lived there when he’d been at the local art college. We stood reverently for about five minutes on the pavement outside the yellow Georgian terrace.

  ‘Looks a bit like a castle, doesn’t it?’ said Iggy, demonstrating the observation of someone who had looked at something for too long far too many times.