The Truth and Lies of Ella Black

by Emily Barr

  I look like the happiest girl in the universe. I look like a girl who has been dancing in the street and kissing in the street and falling in love.

  Falling in love.

  I have fallen in love.

  I

  have

  fallen

  in

  love.

  Nothing will ever be the same.

  6

  32 Days

  ‘I’ve got a headache,’ I say, closing my eyes to shut out the sight of her. I feel terrible. I can’t get up.

  ‘You poor thing,’ says Mum. She sits on the edge of the bed and puts her hand on my forehead, the way she used to when I was small and feeling ill or, later on, when I was trying to get a day off school to avoid Tessa, or because I could feel Bella, and I knew that I would soon need to be in my bedroom, alone.

  She is leaning forward with her hair tickling my face, and that means she is close enough to smell the fumes. She drinks those caipirinhas every evening: she must know the smell. I leap out of bed and run dramatically for the bathroom, where I sit on the loo for long enough to make her think there must be some form of illness going on, and then flush it and brush my teeth very thoroughly for a long time.

  Last night I crept back into the room, clicked the door closed and slipped into bed. Mum groaned a bit in her sleep, but I got under my sheet and changed into my pyjamas.

  I totally got away with it.

  While I’m at it, I decide to have a shower. There must be an alcoholic smell coming off me, or a smell of the streets, or grime where there was no grime last night. If I’m going to get away with this I need to be fresh and innocent.

  My feet are filthy.

  My feet are filthy because I danced in the street in flip-flops.

  I danced, with Christian at my side.

  I scrub them clean.

  ‘Better?’ Mum says when I emerge, back in my pyjamas, with wet hair and clean teeth and an altogether fragrant demeanour.

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘Were you sick?’

  ‘No. I’ve just got a bit of a funny tummy.’

  ‘Could you manage breakfast, do you think?’

  I have to go to breakfast. I have to see Christian. I hope it’s not too late. He and Felix and Susanna will be getting up late, I’m sure.

  ‘Yes. I’ll try a bit.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes.’ I say it weakly, but I am firm too. I am desperate for food. I’m quite sure it will chase away the hangover. I need to eat all the cheese balls there are, and drink lots and lots of coffee and plenty of water.

  But the only thing in the world I really need to do is see Christian.

  I’m glad I came home when I did. My parents are lying to me about something; now I’m lying too.

  In the lift down I feel ill, and I can see Mum worrying that I’ve come down with a terrifying tropical disease (a mutation of the simian flu perhaps). I want to reassure her, but I can’t.

  Dad gives it his best shot. ‘You look all right to me,’ he says, sizing me up in the mirror. For a moment I think he suspects the truth, but it passes. The lift stops at floor eight and we shift up to let more people in, but when the door opens it turns out to be Christian, Felix and Susanna.

  My legs go weak. My skin is electrified.

  I stare at him. He stares back. I smile a little bit. He grins. I sense both parents stiffening, disapproving.

  ‘Hi,’ I say, but I address it to Susanna.

  ‘Hi there,’ she says, and I really, really hope she remembers that everything has to be kept secret. I hope she doesn’t ask if I got home all right, or tell me about the rest of their evening.

  No one says anything, and then we are on the ground floor. My stomach is flipping over because all I want to do is kiss Christian again. I want to be alone with him. I hate my parents for being here and stopping me.

  I hang back, and Christian does too, pretending to look in his pockets for something. Mum and Dad get out, and so do Felix and Susanna, and Christian and I brush silently past each other, and everything inside me bursts out singing.

  Mum and Dad are waiting right outside the lift of course, so we can’t kiss or speak, but our bodies touch and I am alive.

  I try to convey to Christian the fact that we need to talk and plan, but we all troop into the dining hall and give our separate room numbers to the woman at the desk, who crosses them off her list, and then my parents and I go to sit at one table, and my gorgeous boy and his friends go to another, and every time I look up Christian is looking at me and I gaze back.

  ‘You’d better stay off all that fruit this morning, darling,’ says Mum, who didn’t notice that I spent the whole of the lift ride down staring at the boy that every molecule of me adores; that I am still staring at him now. ‘If you’ve got diarrhoea. Stick with the carby things.’

  I’m glad she didn’t say that in the lift.

  As it happens, the carby things are exactly what I want. I go straight up to the buffet and fill a plate with cheese balls, a big spoonful of scrambled egg and two white bread rolls. I put that down on the table and go back for a glass of water. When the coffee woman arrives I get her to pour me a black coffee, which she does, though Mum frowns as coffee is bad for upset stomachs. I pretend not to notice, eat everything on my plate, drink the coffee and water and feel much better. So I go back and get the same things all over again.

  ‘Your appetite’s all right,’ says Dad.

  ‘Yes.’

  We sit in silence. I watch the Brazilian news on the screen at the other end of the room. There is footage of a rainforest shot from a helicopter, and thick clouds of smoke. I can hear Christian and Felix and Susanna laughing, and I hope they’re not laughing about me, sitting here with my mummy and daddy. My mommy and daddy.

  ‘What are we doing today?’ I say.

  My parents look at each other. ‘Well – that rather depends on you, darling, doesn’t it?’ says Mum.

  Dad isn’t speaking much. I think the two of them are silently arguing again. He wants to tell me the thing and she doesn’t. They have told me that there is a thing. They are not remotely remembering to pretend that Dad has to go to work. That was the most half-hearted and pathetic lie ever.

  ‘I feel rubbish,’ I say. ‘I’m going to stay in bed. But you two should go out. You should just go down to the beach or something. I’ll sleep in the room. You can talk about your secret and I won’t hear you.’

  I say that, just in case it annoys Dad so much that he tells me the secret to get it over with, but he doesn’t. He just closes his eyes.

  Mum takes a deep breath. ‘If you’re ill,’ she says, ‘then I am not leaving your side.’

  ‘And if I’m well, you also don’t leave my side. I want to spend the morning in the room, resting. Are you really going to sit on the edge of my bed and stare at me? Are you going to stay in a darkened room, on a sunny day in Rio, one block away from Copacabana Beach, just because you don’t dare leave me in a locked room? Really?’

  Neither of them answers. On the television screen a blonde woman wearing a lot of make-up is in conversation with a puppet of a parrot.

  Christian is on his feet. When our eyes meet again he inclines his head towards the lifts and arches an eyebrow.

  I clutch my stomach. ‘I need the room key,’ I say. ‘Got to get to the loo.’

  Dad holds out the key. I take it and walk very quickly out of the room. I press the button to call the lift, and when it arrives I step into it. I hold down the doors-open button, and Christian appears, and I close the doors and press the button for the top floor.

  We look at each other and laugh.

  ‘You made it back!’ he says as the doors close.

  ‘They have no idea.’ Then we are pressed against each other, kissing, kissing, kissing. I push my whole body up against his. He reaches round and feels the contours of my body. I want to go straight to his hotel room, fling off my clothes and stay there all day and all night and all day a
nd all night and all day and all night. I want nothing but Christian.

  Instead, the doors open with a ping, and we are not on the top floor but on the ninth, and there is a very white couple standing there, all ready to go out for the day, looking annoyed to find that we are already in the lift, and that we are entwined, and that the lift is on its way up rather than down. All the same they get in, and Christian and I stand close together, giggling a little, and then when we arrive at the top of the building we get out and walk down to floor eleven, hand in hand.

  ‘I’ll get them to go out,’ I say. ‘I haven’t got my phone, but I’m working on it. So I can’t text or anything at the moment.’

  ‘No cellphone?’ he says. ‘OK. You should maybe call my room when you’re ready. Even if they’re only out for, like, a half-hour, you could come over. It would be really good to see you. Room 816.’

  I grin at him. He’s smiling back.

  ‘I’d better go in,’ I say, outside my room. ‘I know my mum’s going to appear here in a few minutes to check I’m OK.’

  ‘Understood.’ He smiles and kisses me on the lips, and then I am in the room, and Christian is gone, and I wander around the bathroom a little and make sure I mess things up a bit, and leave the toilet lid down and flush it, and brush my teeth again and stare at myself in the mirror.

  My eyes are shining. My cheeks are flushed.

  ‘My boyfriend is called Christian,’ I say out loud. ‘He’s Cuban American.’

  I am longing to tell Jack, but I can’t. Christian is my real boyfriend; today I’m going to visit him in room 816. I have no idea what has happened to my life, but right now I like it.

  Someone is knocking on the door. It will definitely be Mum, and I assume an ‘ill’ face before I go to open it.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ she says. ‘Look. Come downstairs and sit on one of those sofas in the lobby and read those leaflets you like, and I’ll explain that we need one of the chambermaids to make up the room right away. So you can have lovely fresh sheets. Then we’ll get you tucked up in bed. All right?’

  I nod, looking as sad as I possibly can. That breakfast certainly washed away my hangover, and I am feeling brilliant. It is important that I don’t look brilliant.

  ‘You look a bit feverish,’ she says.

  I nod. Yes. I am a bit feverish.

  The bed is comfy and I do actually fall asleep. First of all Mum is sitting on their bed, reading and looking over at me. Then I nod off and blissfully sleep away the last of the street cocktails, and when I wake up she’s not there. The bathroom door is open, and I can see that she’s not in there either. I sit up. There might be time for me to visit Christian before she comes back, or there might not. If she comes back and I’m not here, I can just say that I went for a walk down to the ocean to get some fresh air.

  She has left a note beside my bed. It is in her fussy calligraphic handwriting, and it says:

  Darling Ella,

  Dad and I have gone for a stroll to the beach to get a coffee. Won’t be long! It’s lovely to see you peacefully asleep. Hope you’re feeling better.

  Love, Mum xxx

  She didn’t put a time on it, and I am completely disorientated, and the bedside alarm clock says that it’s half past midday.

  I pick up the phone and make an internal call to room 816, but it rings and rings. I can’t really expect Christian to be sitting in his room staring at the phone for the entire day just in case I managed to call him, but all the same I am disappointed. I’ll keep trying. He might be in the shower, or he might come back into the room in a few minutes, or he might be standing right outside this door right now, trying to find a reason for knocking.

  I open the door. No one is there.

  I sit in bed for a while, but the parents don’t come back. I call Christian’s room again, but he still doesn’t answer. I think about my night out last night. I try to recall every single detail. I relive our ride in the lift this morning. I call his room again. I call again.

  Then I realize that I am alone in a room with all my parents’ stuff, and I know that the answer to everything must be here, if I can only access it. I am alone in the room with the secret, and if Christian’s not in his room I can at least use this opportunity while I wait.

  They would definitely have put anything they consider important into the safe. It’s locked, and they have set a four-digit code.

  I have already tried my birthday, 1711, but I put the numbers in again, just in case. It’s not that. If they didn’t set it to my birthday, that means they were trying hard to keep me out of it. I try their wedding anniversary: 0606. It’s not that either. Mum’s birthday is 21 October, and Dad’s is 4 May, which enables him to make endless Star Wars jokes. It’s still neither of their birthdays, and it’s not 2104.

  Mum hasn’t used a number I would guess. If it’s something truly random I won’t get it. I try 1234, just in case, and then 4321. I try 2468 and then 8642.

  The machinery clunks and the doors swing open. She tried to make it impossible for me to guess, but she’s never really going to be a superspy.

  I snatch up my phone and put it in my pocket. Now I can get my fucking life back. I can’t wait to tell Jack and Lily everything that’s happened. I take my passport too, on principle, and put it in my other back pocket.

  Then there are the official envelopes: my hands tremble as I leaf through them. My head and vision are clear. That’s a relief.

  I pause. I don’t actually have to do this. I could put everything back. I might not want to know.

  I legitimately have no idea what I’m going to find. Dad told me I’m not ill, but I don’t think I believe him. I can’t think of any other thing it could be. I wish I could. I would take anything other than that.

  I might be better off not knowing.

  I bolt the door so that if they come back they won’t be able to get in, and tip the contents of both envelopes on to the bed. One of them contains something about travel insurance and a receipt from a currency exchange. The other has a letter from a solicitor on official paper.

  I read it. Then I stare at the words. They go fuzzy and blur into one another. I sit on the bed and read it like a small child, running my fingers under the words as I speak them aloud.

  Dear Fiona and Graham,

  Following our conversation last week, I have made enquiries regarding your understandable concern about Ella and the legal changes that will take place on her upcoming eighteenth birthday.

  As you know, an adopted child has the right to look for her birth parents on the Adoption Contact Register when she turns eighteen. However, I have spoken to the caseworkers involved and everyone has assured me that, due to the exceptional circumstances of Ella’s adoption, her birth mother will not be eligible to add herself to the register and, although we are all aware that she would like to meet Ella, she will emphatically not be able to do so.

  However, due to the fact that she has clearly found your identities and your address, I would recommend that, if you are able to go away for a while, this might be an advisable course of action while Ms Hinchcliffe is made aware that attempts to make direct contact will have extremely serious consequences. I am confident that she can be compelled to stop contacting you, and the law will step in when necessary.

  I hope this puts your minds at rest. Don’t hesitate to call if I can do anything else for you.

  Yours sincerely,

  David Vokes

  I run to the bathroom and bring up the whole of my breakfast. My eyes are burning. My head is ringing and I gasp for breath. Everything is fading to black and I struggle to make it stay. This is not the time to lose control. It is too important for that.

  I breathe in. I breathe out. There is just this moment and nothing else. No past, no future; just now.

  My head is ringing. Everything is blurred around the edges.

  Hello, Bella, I say.

  I KNEW IT!

  Do you understand what we just read?

  NO. />
  What shall we do?

  WE’LL WORK IT OUT. BUT I KNEW IT.

  ‘The exceptional circumstances of Ella’s adoption’.

  Ella’s adoption.

  Adoption.

  I am adopted. They have never told me.

  People who are adopted know that they are adopted. It’s not a big shameful secret. It’s a good thing to happen. But they never told me.

  That woman is not my mother.

  That man is not my father.

  Other people – people I don’t know – are my parents. Not these people. I do not come from them. I do not have any of their genes. They never told me.

  We have run away because my birth mother wants to find me.

  My

  birth

  mother.

  There were exceptional circumstances, and because of them she’s not allowed to see me. I don’t know what the exceptional circumstances are.

  It swirls around. I am just standing in the bathroom.

  I am utterly lost.

  Time passes.

  I have to try to find out more. I sit on the bed and try my very hardest to pull myself together and make a plan. There is only one thing I can think of.

  I pick up the hotel phone, work out how to make an international call and ring our house. Michelle might be there, I think, and this could be my only chance to find out more. Michelle is nice. She is always kind to me and she liked my hair when I dyed it.

  ‘Hello?’ she says.

  I use my mother’s voice. Everyone says we sound identical on the phone.

  My mother. This is not my mother’s voice. It is my adoptive mother’s voice. We sound the same on the phone because she brought me up.

  ‘Hi, Michelle,’ I say. ‘It’s Fiona. Calling from abroad.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘Hello there. Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. Is Humphrey OK?’

  ‘Oh, he looks just fine. He’s in the living room so I’ve shut him in there until I’ve finished. Didn’t want to put him in his basket before I have to.’