‘You sound like my dad. No, actually, you sound like my sister.’
‘What are you two doing out there?’ Macy calls. ‘I’m going to start getting paranoid.’
‘I’m just talking to Nell about her work,’ Shane says in what seems an uncharacteristic moment of honesty when it comes to something to do with me.
‘What work? Nell doesn’t have a job any more,’ Macy says and dissolves into giggles.
‘Thank you and goodnight, Macy,’ I say. I take the paper from Shane. ‘Thanks for this,’ I say to him.
‘And … ?’
‘And yes, I’ll think about charging people. Goodnight.’
The world outside is darkening and it is glorious. I like the betwixt and between hours when night is descending but it’s not quite certain if it will stay. When night could very easily lose its battle to reign over the sky; when daylight could reassert itself.
I don’t charge people for looking through records and, especially, for having their DNA analysed because what I do with it isn’t strictly legal. I have everyone sign a disclaimer saying I can submit their DNA on their behalf, and that I can get the results. I then interpret those results for people and inform them of the findings. But I … I also use the results to scan through all the databases available to see if they are even the slightest of matches to the DNA of The Brighton Mermaid or Jude.
Macy
Sunday, 1 April
On days like today, when Nell’s been over and it’s been fine, I know without a doubt that what I worry about is stupid to worry about.
I know this. But most of the time I can’t stop it. Most of the time it’s like I’m trapped behind glass while my mind and body do things I don’t want them to do. I don’t want to go back five or six times to check I turned the cooker off. I don’t want to rewash my hands if I happen to turn the tap off with my fingers instead of my elbow. I don’t want to rewash every plate on the dish rack if the water comes out too fast from the tap and splashes a bit of dirt from a pan out of the sink. I don’t want to go around straightening everything so it all lines up. I don’t want to walk the lines of my kitchen floor. Most of the time, I’m trapped behind glass, shouting and screaming and telling myself to stop it, all the while knowing I can’t. I mustn’t. Because if I stop, then everything will fall apart.
When Clyde left, things did fall apart. I couldn’t do anything. I called Nell, who was at work and never usually answered her phone. I don’t know why she picked up that day, but when I told her, calm as you like, that Clyde had walked out and that I was scared of what I was going to do, she came straight away. At the time I thought I’d meant I was scared because I didn’t know what to do. But in reality, what I meant was I was scared of what I was going to do to stop the pain.
She’d heard that second version, the real version of my words, and she was there in no time. And she took over, stopped my family from falling off the edge. While she was doing that, she didn’t have time for all that other stuff, that obsessing about the Brighton Mermaid, and it was good for her. That’s why I try to make her take part in family life: it’s good for her.
The thing of it is, Nell doesn’t realise she’s as damaged as me. She just hides it better. Nell doesn’t realise that there’s something she doesn’t know that means she should stop looking for Jude. If she knew what I know, what I saw from my bedroom window the night Jude disappeared – not the night everyone found out she’d gone, but the actual night she vanished – Nell would know she has to stop.
I want to tell her so she’ll stop. I know I’ve been thinking of telling her to hurt her, but the reality is, I can’t tell her. If I tell her, she won’t keep it quiet like me, she’ll immediately confront Daddy with it. And I can’t take our family being any more fractured than it already is.
And it would kill Mummy.
Nell
Sunday, 1 April
I see his car from the turn at the bottom of my road.
I live at the dead end of a maze of roads and opposite my building is his silver car. This is what happens when I don’t respond to the ‘He needs to see you’ texts: I get a visit.
I knew I wouldn’t get away with it much longer, but it’s gone 3 a.m. and I’m only now getting back from a night with Zach after the day with Macy and her family so how long has he been waiting? What if I decided to stay out like I did last Friday night? Would he really have sat there until I returned? The answer is too scary to contemplate.
I stop. What do I do? If I go to my building and he sees me, he’ll come to talk to me. He’ll talk to me until he convinces me. And I do not want that. I do not want that at all. My heart, which I haven’t been aware of, becomes a thick, heavy thrum of panic right at the centre of my chest. I should have gone, but I really didn’t want to. That’s the crux of it. I didn’t want to see him .
I take my mobile out of my pocket. Call up the last text message, which came through earlier when I was with Zach. I stare at the five words and wonder what to say. I rarely reply to these texts – I get one, I go to see him. So what do I say now that will stop this?
I can’t.
I eventually settle on this and hit ‘send’ from my place at the end of my road.
I see him in his car look up and spot me. Instead of getting out and coming over like he normally does, he lowers his head again and seconds later ‘He needs to see you’ pops up on my phone screen.
What does he want?
Can’t text it. You know that.
I can’t.
He needs to see you.
Please.
Nell …
Please … Please.
My phone is silent for long seconds. He’s struggling with himself, with the position he’s in. What my reply is going to mean for him.
All right, when?
Soon.
You promise, soon?
Yes. Soon. Goodnight.
It’s morning, Nell. So good morning.
OK. Good morning.
The sound of his car starting up is like a firework exploding in the quiet night air. I’m sure my neighbours will be annoyed, their sleep being broken at this time. He only throws the briefest of glances my way before he turns out of my road and heads back to his part of Brighton.
2007
Nell
Monday, 3 December
I stood outside the green front door and willed myself to knock instead of running away as every fibre of my being wanted me to. I had to do this. I had to speak to Jude’s parents, even though it had been many, many years since I’d had meaningful contact with them.
After Dad was arrested, Mr Dalton had stopped coming over to drink beer and sit in the garden, and Mrs Dalton had stopped talking to Mum at work. Neither of them had explicitly accused Dad of anything; neither of them had given interviews to the papers about how they’d always known there was something dodgy about the man they’d called a friend and had trusted with their daughter; but they – like pretty much everyone outside of our family – must have had that no-smoke-without-fire thing on their minds.
In the following years, if I saw Mrs Dalton in the street, she would walk past me without acknowledging me. It was like a physical blow each time she did it, because I knew she blamed me. Even at fifteen I had worked out that she had rewritten things in her head; had reimagined Jude in her mind so that I was the one always in trouble, always sneaking out, always dragging her daughter along for the ride and something disastrous had befallen her on one of my misadventures.
I had to get over the hurt of her misremembering, though, if I was going to find Jude. I raised my hand and knocked on the door.
‘Enelle,’ Mr Dalton said. ‘This is a surprise.’
‘Hello, Mr Dalton,’ I said. ‘I, erm, I wanted to talk to you and Mrs Dalton, if possible. I won’t take up much time. I just wanted to ask you both something.’
‘Come in,’ he said tiredly. He didn’t completely ignore me if he saw me in the street – he’d smile sadly, nod his head, but he’d never speak to me.
That was something, though, because he didn’t pretend I wasn’t there. ‘She’s in the living room.’
‘Hello, Mrs Dalton,’ I said. She was sitting on her sofa, watching TV. Mrs Dalton had always been the glamorous one out of my mum and her. They were both always immaculately turned out, but when she wasn’t working, Mrs Dalton would style her hair in funky ways, she would wear false eyelashes that made her eyes look huge, she would paint her nails in bright colours. After Jude disappeared, she stopped wearing anything but the most basic make-up; she put her hair back in a bun always; she only ever dressed in dark-coloured clothes. And the weight she lost made everything she wore swim on her. Her daughter had been her whole life, and now it seemed the spark that had made her ‘Party Mama’ (as Jude had called her) had been extinguished.
Mrs Dalton did a double take when she saw me standing in her house, all grown up and the age that Jude should be. She then glared over my shoulder at her husband, promising him a world of pain for letting me in, before she went back to watching the television that sat in the alcove near the fireplace.
‘I’m really sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry that Jude disappeared. And I wish I knew where she was because … because my life hasn’t felt the same without her all these years.’ My voice, suddenly overfull with tears, began to break under the strain, cracking up a little more with each word.
I hadn’t cried over Jude; I’d gathered up all that emotion, imprisoned it in a bottle made of fear, stopped up that bottle with a lid made of guilt. I hadn’t cried about Jude disappearing because I’d probably never stop. But standing there in front of her mum, I couldn’t control myself any longer.
‘I think about her every day since I last saw her,’ I sobbed. ‘I wear all these bracelets like she started to do because it’s another way to remember her. I’m not going to take them off until she’s back. And I check all the small ads in the papers almost every day in case she’s left me a message. And when I was younger, I made these posters to try to find her.’ I held out a piece of paper that she ignored. ‘And I’ve been looking for her. There are so many websites out there. I spend hour after hour going through them, hoping—’
‘Stop it, Enelle,’ Mrs Dalton snapped. She’d had enough of my emotion, my guilt, my not being Jude. ‘What do you want?’
I sniffed hard, scrubbed at my wet eyes with the back of my hand. Urgh. Who cries in front of a mother whose life stopped the day her daughter disappeared? Who does such a thing? Me. That’s who . ‘I wondered – I hoped you might talk to me about your family? I’ve been reading about genealogy and how family tree research can help you find people. I’ve done a few things, but I thought, if I could get some history about you and Jude, then maybe it might help to find her.’
Mr Dalton walked into the room, frowning. ‘You say genealogy stuff can help find people?’
‘Not always, but sometimes. I just want to try as much as I can to find her. If I find all the people who are related to her, it might be a clue as to where she went. She might know of some family that you didn’t think to check, or friends of family. It’s a long shot, as they say, but I want to try anything and everything to find her.’
‘Of course you do,’ Mr Dalton said. ‘Of course you do, Enelle.’ He turned to his wife. ‘It might work, Lilani. When people die intestate, sometimes genealogy companies track down distant relatives using family trees and records so they can claim their portion of the will. I’ve never known anyone do it in quite this way before, but it might work.’
Mrs Dalton did not glance away from the television, but it did look like she was listening. Eventually she asked, ‘You think this will help to find her?’
‘It might. Or it might not,’ I admitted. ‘But I just want to try.’
‘What do we have to do?’ Mr Dalton asked.
‘I just need you to tell me everything you can about your family’s background. Names, dates of anything you remember, places where they’ve lived. I’ll make some notes and then get on with it.’
‘We’ll do anything, won’t we, Lilani?’ Mr Dalton said. ‘Won’t we? ’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Dalton said despondently. ‘Anything.’
Now
Nell
Wednesday, 4 April
DNA, DNA, DNA.
It is all about DNA when it comes to looking for people. It’s on all the TV detective shows as the thing that breaks the case, the thing that identifies people and brings criminals to justice.
I’ve been researching the Brighton Mermaid for ages, and I’ve been trying to find out about Jude’s family, too, and in the background of this, I taught myself everything I could about DNA. I read everything available, I learnt how to decipher the code of DNA, how the sequences are rendered as numbers and letters. I learnt about autosomal DNA, the stuff provided by both your parents; I read about mitochondrial DNA, the genes provided by your mother, and all the women along her family line; I taught myself about Y-line DNA, provided by your father and all the men along his line. I read and researched and learnt what I could because I knew, one day, I’d be able to have access to the DNA databases similar to the ones the police had and I would be able to start searching myself.
Obviously when the tests became available to the public, they were too expensive for me. But I could wait.
I didn’t have samples of Jude’s DNA, nor of the Brighton Mermaid’s, though. That was always the stumbling block, even as the price of publicly available tests came down.
I assumed they took DNA from the woman we found, and I knew they must have got Jude’s DNA (probably from a hairbrush that had hair with the little bulb attached to the end) because the police forensics team tried to test our house for Jude’s DNA at one point. But, like the fingerprints, her DNA showed up in the places where it should, because she practically lived at our home. Same with Dad’s car, same with the shop. Shops. They tested all the shops, but only ever found her DNA in the one in Hove, where she constantly hung out with me.
For a long time DNA was like a shiny beacon, something I had no access to but something I was convinced would help me to find Jude and work out who the Brighton Mermaid was.
My mobile bleeps with the third ‘He needs to see you’ text of the day. I thought I’d bought myself more time at the weekend, but obviously not that much time. I’m going to have to go there. Even though—
‘Miss Okorie, I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.’
Shane’s friend from the gym is called Craig Ackerman and he was keen to meet me the moment I called him yesterday. I’d suggested later in the week, but he managed to get a window in his schedule (his phrase, not mine) for today so I have come over to his offices just outside the city centre. His building is a very shiny thing: lots of clean lines and glass and magazines placed just so. There is uniformed security and a large reception desk on the ground floor, and the fifth floor, where his office is, has an impossibly neat personal assistant who sits outside his door, typing and answering the phone.
Craig Ackerman is older than me, by at least five years, possibly more.
‘Take a seat,’ he says but doesn’t exactly point to any particular one. He has an expansive office, with a sofa, a side chair as well as his chair behind the large glass desk, and two chairs on the other side of his desk. And then, of course, there are the low cupboards, the side table beside the side chair and glass desk – all of them offer valid seating options.
I’m nervous, which is why I am internally babbling. I’ve never done this for someone who is a complete stranger before. When I started with the genealogy stuff, it was to try to work out if Jude had any family, no matter how distant, that she might have run away to. As time went on, I met a few people – online and in real life – who were searching for their extended family. They’d share what they were doing and I would help them by looking over what they had done and offering the insights that only a stranger can.
One woman, for example, who had been searching for her father’s side of the family tree for a long
time couldn’t get past a certain point. They were all scattered across Sussex, mostly East Sussex, some in West Sussex, but only back three generations. I didn’t have the family knowledge, the insight into family history and legend that she did, but those things, as it turned out, were dead-ending her search. I came at it by breaking down the family surname and searching for where each of those branches of the name originated in this country. Some had come over from Ireland and had settled along the Scottish border; others had settled in the Midlands. Once we had deconstructed her family name in a way she hadn’t considered, her search took off again.
Craig Ackerman clearly realises I don’t know where to sit, so he opts to go behind his desk. Good choice, that man , I almost say. Let’s keep this business-like if I’m going to do it properly .
‘So, how do you know Shane?’ he asks when I have installed myself in one of the large leather chairs opposite his desk.
‘He’s sort of my brother-in-law – he’s with my sister,’ I reply. ‘How do you know him?’
‘Well, I don’t really. I see him at the gym. One time he was watching a match on his mobile phone when mine had run out of charge, so he allowed me to watch over his shoulder. Firm gym friends ever since, even though we were rooting for different sides.’
Craig Ackerman is really quite posh. He is dressed in a suit that is clearly expensive but is quite modern in style and a royal blue colour. He has light brown hair neatly cut, light blue eyes and pale skin. I look him over, wondering what his genetic make-up will be. It usually shocks people to learn that how they look doesn’t necessarily correlate with what is going on with their genes. They can be pale, pale skinned with blond hair and still find out they have 41 per cent Sub-Saharan African DNA; they can be dark-brown skinned with black hair and find they have 37 per cent Scandinavian heritage. DNA sneaks in from all over the place, and people are often floored because they’ve been looking in the mirror their whole life and seeing who they think they are; they’ve been bombarded with messages that say people X, who look like the one in the reflection in the mirror, come from Y. Then it turns out this particular person who looks like X comes from D, F, G and H, with the tiniest hint of a waft of Y, Z and A.
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