The Girl Who Just Appeared

by Jonathan Harvey

  I had so many questions to ask Francesca, but the question in my head just now was, ‘What does an ageing former prostitute look like?’ Or maybe she wasn’t former. Maybe she was still working.

  No wonder Rose had been coy about admitting she knew her. Francesca might have had a string of babies by her punters. And who wants to admit to being pals with a hooker? No wonder she had clammed up in the salon when I’d told her: she was probably gobsmacked that an old hooker would have had a child. Furthermore she was probably worrying about upsetting me. How easy must it be to say, ‘Oh, you know your mum? The one you’re looking for? She sells her body on street corners. Must be a joy to find that out. It’s been an absolute privilege being able to let you know.’

  I felt a bit sorry for Rose Kirkwood.

  I had to steel myself. If Francesca was the mum in the diary, then chances were she was going to be hostile towards me. Hostile with an overcurrent of vile. I just had to get in there, ask my questions and get out.

  The madness of what I had done struck me like the wind. I had uprooted myself to go on an adventure, and by the looks of it, it was over before it had even begun. I had discovered my identity. It wasn’t particularly fragrant; now it would be time to move on. So what if I had nowhere else to go? I would go somewhere. On another adventure. And like the old prostitute, I would survive.

  Even without giving it too much thought, I felt I had come to a decision. The search was over, my mother was found, but I didn’t want an ongoing relationship with her. If that was snobbish of me, I didn’t care. Would it have been different if she’d worked in a bank, a shop?

  I tried not to think about this. She didn’t do either of these things; she was a prostitute. And she had been rather ghastly to my brother, Darren.

  It felt so odd thinking that. Me, the only child, suddenly, potentially, having siblings.

  It was pointless trying to avoid these blessed statues. They were everywhere. I yanked Michael’s lead again and headed away from the water, back towards dry land.

  As I turned, I saw her. Where the beach ended, there was a rather gaudy-looking brick esplanade, raised above the beach, green dunes behind it. Rose was walking along the esplanade in a very long leather jacket, with the collar turned up. All she needed was a massive fur hat and she would have been every inch the Russian spy. I instinctively waved and she nodded. I headed over, running with Michael to give him some more exercise, trying to tire him out so that he could sleep through my meeting with Francesca.

  But the nearer I got to Rose, the easier it was to make out the look of apprehension on her face. She kept flitting her eyes down to the dog.

  ‘Sorry. Is something wrong?’ I asked, before even saying hello.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d bring the dog,’ Rose said.

  ‘Oh. Sorry. Is that a problem?’

  I started climbing some steps up to the esplanade now.

  ‘Well . . .’

  Clearly it was.

  ‘Does Francesca not like dogs?’

  Rose shook her head. ‘No, it’s not that. It’s . . . where she is . . . they’re not allowed.’

  I gasped. ‘Oh, is she in hospital? Is she OK?’

  ‘She’s fine. She was. But she isn’t now.’

  Rose was confusing me. And she could tell.

  ‘She was in hospital, but now she’s out.’

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’

  ‘She had a fall.’

  ‘Oh right. And why can’t she have dogs, er . . .’

  ‘Come with me.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  There was nothing green about the Greenacre Nursing Home when we arrived five minutes later, a tall, narrow Edwardian mansion slightly set back from the main sweep of a road called Mersey View. The brickwork was greying, but I could see that it had once been a proud yellow. ‘Faded grandeur’ was the phrase that sprang to mind. Not unlike the feeling of Gambier Terrace, now I thought of it. The shrubs and bushes surrounding it appeared to be grey also; gnarled fingers of branches poked out of crumbly dry soil. I didn’t get a particularly good feeling from the Greenacre Nursing Home.

  ‘So, this is where Francesca is,’ Rose said solemnly.

  ‘What’s the matter with her? Is it old age? How old is she?’

  ‘A woman never reveals her age,’ Rose countered, which I found a ridiculous thing to say.

  I felt a sudden rush of anger. I wanted to spit back, ‘No. And she clearly never revealed she’d put a daughter up for adoption. She possibly hasn’t even told you she’s a prostitute. Unless you’re one too. You weird bloody geisha!’

  I didn’t, though. With my Home Counties restraint, I bit my tongue and said nothing.

  But I knew what I looked like when I was feeling angry and I knew that a telltale rash would be seeping up my neck. I could tell that Rose saw it too.

  ‘What I mean is, I don’t really know.’

  I nodded, placated.

  ‘But the reason she’s in here is . . .’

  I looked at her.

  ‘She has a form of dementia.’

  Dementia. A form of.

  ‘What d’you mean, a form of dementia?’

  ‘Well . . . she’s got early onset dementia.’

  Dementia. My old friend. Or maybe adversary was better. The condition that had cloaked my mother and now hid my birth mother. Like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, it completely wiped out any signs of a personality . . .

  ‘What stage is she at?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s had it a few years now. Some days she’s reasonably lucid, other days not at all.’

  ‘Have you told her I’m coming?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘It didn’t register. Holly, I think you have to prepare yourself for her not remembering you at all. She’s away with the fairies.’

  I nodded. ‘Shall we get this over and done with?’

  Rose looked to Michael, wondering what I was planning on doing with him, so I tucked him under the front of my coat, gripped my stomach so that he was sitting on the ledge of my arm and in we went.

  Francesca’s room in Greenacre was a modest affair with a three-quarter bed tucked against a wall, a couple of armchairs, a small sink in the corner and a massive television, which stayed on throughout our visit. The decor suggested a set designer had visited and offered up things that you might assume you’d find in an old person’s room. The throw on the bedspread was crocheted; the flowers on the bedside table were paper; on a shelf on the wall sat a pair of porcelain praying hands. It all seemed a bit too old for the woman who sat before me with a twinkle in her eye.

  This was it. This was the moment I had waited for since that fateful day in McDonald’s all those years ago. I was finally meeting the woman who’d given birth to me. I’d expected a fanfare, trumpets, a roll of thunder, the axis of the earth to shift. Instead, we were sat in a poky room with the curtains drawn and Loose Women showing in the background.

  I had hoped and expected that when we finally met, I would have a déjà vu feeling, that I would look at her face and be shocked that I wasn’t looking into a mirror. Or that seeing Francesca would be a bit like one of those apps people have that can make a photo of them look fatter or older or uglier. Or all three. I would see a morphed version of my own face looking back at me nervously. The sort of nerves that come when a birth mother is worrying, I rejected her years ago. Will she reject me now?

  I knew. I’d seen every episode of Long Lost Family.

  But then, those birth mothers, of course, didn’t have dementia.

  Francesca looked to be in her mid-sixties, possibly older, well preserved, hair recently dyed – I wondered if Rose took care of that – the wrinkly terracotta skin of someone who’d seen too much sun. She was dressed simply but elegantly in a cream blouse and green skirt, but her foot was up in front of her, encased in plaster.

  Oh, and she was sitting in a wheelchair
.

  She didn’t look familiar at all.

  ‘This is Holly, Frankie,’ Rose said, as I sat myself in an armchair opposite her.

  Francesca smiled politely with a nod of the head. ‘You all right, love?’ she asked brightly, as if she had known me all her life and I’d only recently visited.

  ‘Good, thanks. You?’

  And she nodded, then looked to the TV. As if I was so familiar she didn’t have to stand on ceremony.

  ‘Well, you’ve broken your leg, Frankie,’ Rose pointed out, with a slight Duh! in her voice.

  Francesca swung her head round, surprised. ‘Have I?’

  ‘Course you have! Look at your plaster!’

  Francesca looked to her leg and seemed genuinely surprised.

  ‘How did you do that?’ I enquired politely.

  Francesca looked confused and turned to Rose.

  ‘You had a fall, didn’t you, Frankie.’ And it wasn’t a question; it was a reminder.

  Francesca looked to me and nodded earnestly. ‘I had a fall. It was terrible.’

  ‘Gosh, I’m sorry.’

  Then Francesca leaned forward, towards me. Urgently, she whispered, ‘Can you take me home? I don’t like it here. They’re trying to kill me.’

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. I looked to Rose.

  ‘Nobody’s trying to kill you, Frankie. This is a good home. You like it here.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said to me. ‘They poison the food. Everyone’s dying.’

  And as I just looked blankly at her, she turned and watched the screen for a while. I felt Michael wriggling beneath my coat, so undid some buttons and he hopped into my lap. Francesca shrieked, then laughed.

  ‘Oh, isn’t he comical?’

  The abruptness of her change in mood brought me up sharp, reminding me as it did of Jean.

  ‘Sorry. This is Michael. I’m minding him for a friend.’

  Francesca looked to Rose. ‘Oh, isn’t he comical, Marg?’

  It took me a second or two to register. Did she really? No, she did. She just called Rose ‘Marg’. Margy from the diary.

  ‘What did she call you?’ I asked, short of breath suddenly.

  ‘What did you call me, Frankie?’

  Francesca looked to her. ‘Y’what?’

  ‘What’s my name?’

  Francesca looked blank.

  Rose looked to me. ‘I think she called me Marg. Sometimes she calls me Margy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think it must’ve been the name of a mate from when she was younger. I don’t know.’ And then Rose looked to Francesca and raised her voice. ‘Who knows what year your head’s at, eh, Frank?’

  I looked at Rose again. Could she be lying? Could she actually be the other prostitute from the diary? The one who Francesca battered in broad daylight on the street? And if so, why was she lying? Had she reinvented herself as ‘Rose’ to cover up her embarrassing past?

  Or was she – which was more likely – just telling the truth? I knew from personal experience how Jean had called me myriad names during her illness. Each of them made sense in their own way; each had been the name of someone important to her at some point in her life. I’d found some comfort from this at the time.

  ‘Who’s Margy?’ I asked Francesca.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Who’s Margy?’ I repeated.

  Francesca shook her head, like it wasn’t important, and turned her face to the television again.

  ‘Did you work with her?’ I asked.

  ‘I think she’s tired,’ Rose said, seemingly apropos of nothing. ‘Maybe we should come back another time.’

  ‘We’ve only just got here,’ I said, voice raised, and Rose shifted in her seat. My tone told her I was not to be argued with. ‘Francesca, Rose has brought me here today because, as she’s explained before, though you might have forgotten, I am your daughter.’

  She looked at me. Stunned.

  ‘My name is Holly. And I am your daughter.’

  Her face remained impassive as she said, ‘I haven’t got a daughter.’

  ‘You had a daughter who you gave up for adoption. Or maybe she was removed from you. It was a very long time ago – 1982. And now I’m . . . all grown up and I’m here and I just came to say hello really.’

  Francesca continued to stare at me blankly. ‘I don’t have a daughter.’

  ‘You’ve forgotten. I’ve got my birth certificate. Mother: Francesca Boyle, 32B Gambier Terrace. That’s you.’

  Francesca returned to the television.

  ‘Have you got any children?’ I asked.

  Francesca studiously ignored me.

  ‘Frankie, answer her. She’s come all the way from London.’

  But Francesca was saying nothing. I looked around the room. No photographs in frames. Nothing personal, come to think of it. Loose Women came to an ad break and this seemed to please Francesca, as she smiled and turned round and . . . well, it was like she was seeing me and Michael for the first time.

  ‘Oh, look at that. Isn’t that comical, Margy?’ she chuckled, pointing out the dog to Rose.

  ‘I’m Rose,’ Rose replied sadly. And this time I believed her.

  ‘And who’s this pretty thing?’ she said, looking at me.

  ‘My name’s Holly,’ I answered, possibly blushing.

  ‘Are you from the Co-op?’ she asked, and she looked so pleading I felt I couldn’t upset her.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘that’s me.’

  And she turned to watch the adverts.

  ‘See?’ said Rose bitterly. ‘I told you she was away with the fairies.’

  And I couldn’t help but detect a hint of cruelty in her tone. Like she thought Francesca wasn’t just ill but stupid. Or deserved it. And it made me not like her very much.

  Afterwards we sat in Rose’s car. I didn’t particularly want to share such an intimate space with her, but as I didn’t know the way from Greenacre to the railway station, I didn’t have much choice.

  ‘Well, you’ve seen her now. You must be gutted,’ Rose said, as she fiddled with some make-up in her handbag and attacked her lips with some lip liner.

  ‘It’s not ideal,’ I agreed.

  ‘Oh well. Some things are best left in the past. Did you have a nice adoption?’

  She said it with the casual ease of someone asking if I’d had a nice holiday. I just nodded. I had no desire to tell her anything about myself. She almost seemed to be enjoying this.

  ‘Well, you know, if I were you, I’d just keep it in your head that they’re your family and her in there –’ she pointed at the nursing home ‘– well, I’d forget she even existed.’

  ‘I thought she was your friend?’ I couldn’t help but be surprised at her harshness.

  ‘She is. But you seeing her again won’t do you any good.’

  ‘I’ll see her if I want to,’ I said, sounding like a completely petulant child.

  Rose sat in silence for a bit. She was still staring in the rearview mirror, checking her face.

  ‘How do you know her?’ I asked.

  Rose froze for a bit, looked away from the mirror and down into her bag again.

  ‘I used to do her hair,’ she said sadly. ‘Holly, the thing you need to know about Frankie is, dementia’s softened her. She used to be a right hard-faced —’ and she stopped herself from swearing.

  ‘You’re saying she’s not a nice person?’

  ‘She is now, but then, she’s not herself.’

  I wanted to say, ‘Yes, I know – I have read her son’s diary,’ but I didn’t want to tell her how much I knew.

  ‘Does she have any family?’

  Rose shook her head. And she blushed. I knew she was lying.

  ‘Only my mum and dad – Ted and Jean – they were always of the opinion that she had sons. Two sons.’ Now I was lying: Ted and Jean had said no such thing.

  ‘Well, if she has, then . . . she’s not seen them for years.’

  And this sounded
plausible.

  ‘As I said, Holly, she wasn’t very nice. So it wouldn’t surprise me if she had kids and they didn’t speak to her.’

  Again, this sounded plausible.

  But for some reason I still didn’t trust Rose Kirkwood.

  ‘So, will you go back to London?’ she asked, completely out of the blue. I was affronted. It was like she was trying to get rid of me.

  ‘No.’ My voice had a steely edge. ‘She might be away with the fairies, but she’s still my mother.’

  Rose licked beneath her lips, erasing any lip liner from her teeth.

  ‘And besides,’ I added, ‘I want to find my brothers.’

  She didn’t have to say anything. Her body language shouted it all. She crumpled into herself as if to proclaim, I give up. Like she was my careers adviser and I was the first girl in the school to want to be a welder. And I wouldn’t let anything stand in my way. So any fight on her behalf, even though she thought it futile was . . . well . . . futile too. Just then my mobile rang. I checked the caller ID: ‘Jax calling.’

  I answered, trying to ignore the passive-aggressive ice queen sitting next to me.

  ‘Hi, Jax!’

  ‘Babe! Where are you? Can you get home?’

  ‘Why? What’s the matter?’

  ‘There’s a load of water pouring through my ceiling!’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘I know! I thought it must be coming from your flat!’

  Stopping myself from saying, ‘Well, you’re psychic, don’t you know?’ I instead beamed, ‘Well, fortunately I’m sitting here with my landlady!’

  I turned to Rose and smiled.

  EIGHT

  As Rose and I arrived at Gambier Terrace, we saw Irish Alan pulling up outside number 32 at exactly the same time. Rose had made me call him en route and tell him to drop everything and come and meet us. Again, the sheepskin jacket was on, and I nearly held on to it as I followed him up the stairs, two at a time.

  Jax was having a very noisy nervous breakdown in the hallway.

  ‘My favourite Cath Kidston wallpaper ruined!’

  ‘I’m really sorry!’ I called back, even though I had no idea if this was my fault or not. I could hear Rose running behind me. Then Jax started pacing up the stairs too, not wanting to miss out on the drama, no doubt.