That Girl From Nowhere Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Part 1

  1 Smitty

  2 Abi

  3 Smitty

  4 Abi

  5 Smitty

  6 Smitty

  7 Abi

  8 Smitty

  Part 2

  9 Smitty

  10 Abi

  11 Smitty

  12 Smitty

  13 Smitty

  14 Smitty

  15 Abi

  16 Smitty

  17 Abi

  Part 3

  18 Smitty

  19 Smitty

  20 Smitty

  21 Abi

  22 Smitty

  23 Smitty

  Part 4

  24 Smitty

  25 Abi

  26 Smitty

  Part 5

  27 Smitty

  28 Smitty

  29 Smitty

  30 Abi

  31 Smitty

  Part 6

  32 Smitty

  33 Smitty

  34 Abi

  35 Smitty

  36 Smitty

  37 Abi

  38 Smitty

  39 Smitty

  40 Smitty

  41 Smitty

  42 Abi

  43 Smitty

  44 Smitty

  45 Smitty

  46 Abi

  47 Smitty

  48 Smitty

  49 Smitty

  50 Smitty

  Part 7

  51 Smitty

  Part 8

  52 Smitty

  53 Abi

  54 Smitty

  55 Abi

  56 Smitty

  57 Smitty

  58 Smitty

  59 Smitty

  60 Abi

  61 Smitty

  62 Abi

  63 Smitty

  64 Smitty

  65 Smitty

  Part 9

  66 Smitty

  67 Julius & Heather

  68 Smitty

  69 Abi

  70 Smitty

  71 Smitty

  72 Smitty

  73 Smitty

  74 Smitty

  75 Smitty

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Clemency Smittson was adopted as a baby and the only connection she has to her birth mother is a cardboard box hand-decorated with butterflies. Now an adult, Clem decides to make a drastic life change and move to Brighton, where she was born. Clem has no idea that while there she’ll meet someone who knows all about her butterfly box and what happened to her birth parents.

  As the tangled truths about her adoption and childhood start to unravel, a series of shocking events cause Clem to reassess whether the price of having contact with her birth family could be too high to pay ...

  About the Author

  Dorothy Koomson is the author of nine novels including The Chocolate Run, Marshmallows For Breakfast, The Woman He Loved Before and The Flavours of Love. She’s been making up stories since she was thirteen when she used to share her stories with her convent school friends.

  Dorothy’s first novel, The Cupid Effect, was published in 2003 (when she was quite a bit older than thirteen). Her third book, My Best Friend’s Girl, was selected for the Richard & Judy Summer Reads of 2006, and her novels The Ice Cream Girls and The Rose Petal Beach were both shortlisted for the popular fiction category of the British Book Awards in 2010 and 2013, respectively.

  Dorothy’s novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and a TV adaptation loosely based on The Ice Cream Girls was first shown on ITV1 in 2013. After living in Sydney, Australia, for two years, Dorothy returned to England and now lives in Brighton. Well, Hove, actually.

  While writing this book, Dorothy developed a bit of a penchant for making jewellery, drinking coffee and taking photos with a real camera.

  For more information on Dorothy Koomson and her novels, including That Girl From Nowhere, visit www.dorothykoomson.co.uk

  This book is dedicated, with love, to my dad –

  sometimes disapproving but always supportive.

  I’ve decided to say my thanks with KISSES (Keep It Short, Sweet and Especially Simple). So …

  Thank you

  to my gorgeous family who are everything

  to me to Ant and James, my wonderful agents

  to all the fantastic people at my publishers, Cornerstone (especially Susan, Jenny G, Gillian, Jen D, Richard, Charlotte, Natalie, Rebecca, Aslan)

  to Emma D and Sophie, my great publicists.

  A special thank you goes to those who helped with my research, particularly Sarah Marshall and Chris Manby, who also provided brilliant long chats as well as info.

  And to E, G & M – thank you for being so amazing in every way. I love you.

  As always, I would like to say thank you to you, the reader, for buying this book.

  Prologue

  With Her, sometime soon, Brighton

  ‘You will help me, won’t you?’ she asks.

  ‘If I can,’ I reply. I wonder what she thinks someone she has just met will be able to help her do when she has a whole family down the hall in the living room who are at her beck and call. ‘What is it you want help with?’

  This woman, my grandmother, who has only really been in my life for the past hour, fixes me with a gaze that is determined and a little frightening; woven through with strands of defiance. Maybe I was mistaken; maybe those outside this room aren’t as devoted and loving as I thought. Whatever it is that she wants to do is clearly something they’re unlikely to agree to. She says nothing for a time, and the longer she stares at me with her brown eyes, the colour dimmed by age, the more a feeling of dread meanders outwards from the pit of my stomach. I should not be sitting here having this conversation with this woman. I should have brought her back here and left her to it. The longer I sit here, the longer things are going to go wrong for me.

  Eventually, so eventually I thought she was planning on remaining silent, she speaks. Cautiously, haltingly, she says: ‘My time has come. I am too old … too sick … too tired to carry on in this world.’ She pauses but her eyes continue to drill into me. ‘My time has come. I want … I want to leave this Earth. I need you to help me.’

  Part 1

  1

  Smitty

  ‘Miss Smittson, it’s good to see you again.’

  ‘You, too, Mr Wallace,’ I reply. I smile at him and shove my hands into the pockets of my combat trousers to avoid having to shake hands with him. I’ve met him twice before – both times I’ve had to do it and both times his hand has been hot and clammy. The images of what he could have done to get it that way were a horror movie that played constantly through my head.

  Mr Wallace, in a shabby, too-tight black suit, offers me his hand to shake. I hesitate. The rest of him seems dry and normal, I wonder if he’d accept a hug instead? It would get me out of touching his hand without seeming rude and it’d be altogether better for my mental health. He pulls a smile across his face, sticks his hand out a little bit further. Defeated, I offer up my hand to be encased in his moist, sweaty palm. The touch of him sends a shudder through me and I can’t take my hand away fast enough, but not too fast in case he notices and his feelings are hurt. Maybe he can’t help being sweaty-palmed, maybe he has a condition and it’s not his fault. Maybe the horror movie in my head has got it all wrong and he doesn’t do unsavoury things in his car before he meets clients.

  Mr Wallace’s attention strays to the older woman with wavy brown, grey-streaked hair who stands silently beside me. He smiles curiously at us both, waiting for an intro
duction.

  Mum has obviously noticed how reluctant I was to shake the estate agent’s hand so has taken to holding her bag in both hands, rendering them incapable of being shaken when I do the introductions.

  ‘Mr Wallace, this is my mother, Heather Smittson,’ I say. ‘Mum, this is the estate agent who’s dealing with renting the flat.’

  Immediately, Mr Wallace’s face does that thing. ‘That thing’ most people who don’t know my family do: he double-takes, then rapidly moves his gaze from one of us to the other, wondering why the visuals don’t match the words. After the staring comes the perplexed, suspicious frown and, right on cue, Mr Wallace’s confusion develops on his face until he is frowning very hard indeed at us.

  We’re in the car park of a beautiful, reddish-yellow-brick, art deco block of flats on Hove seafront. This is going to be my new home, the place for my fresh start. Everything bad is three hundred miles away and in that place called ‘the past’ while everything good is here, and about to happen in that shiny new destination called ‘the future’.

  Except little snags like this, a man who is nearer to Mum’s age than mine, giving us his version of Paddington Bear’s hard stare because he doesn’t understand why Mum is my mother and why I am her daughter. To him, it surely shouldn’t be possible.

  Mum suddenly needs something from her handbag, and she pops the black leather rectangle open and starts to ferret furiously through it. Clearly what she is searching for is so important the world might end if she doesn’t find it RIGHT NOW. What she is actually doing is her version of ‘Lalalalalala not happening’, which she does every time she might need to explain our situation. If the handbag thing doesn’t work, she’ll simply wander off, pretending that she doesn’t know we’re in the middle of a conversation.

  With Mum making it clear with every root through her meticulously organised bag that she isn’t going to be forthcoming, Mr Wallace returns to me. It’s now my job to explain. I’m supposed to say, ‘I’m adopted’. To let him know that Mum and Dad did the whole white parents taking on black children thing well before various celebs made it fashionable. He stares at me, I stare at him – he wants answers to his unasked questions, I’m not giving them. I haven’t got the energy.

  As if someone On High knows I need rescuing, Mr Wallace’s left, inside breast pocket begins to vibrate before the tinny, tiny sound of ‘YMCA’ joins it. ‘Oh, excuse me,’ he says and reaches for it. He checks the screen, grimaces, struggles with himself. ‘I’m sorry, I have to get this. It’s an emergency waiting to happen. Do you mind?’ He’s pressed the answer button and put it to his ear before I even have a chance to react. He wanders away from us, heading across the promenade and towards the blue-green railings that separate land from sea.

  ‘Well, that was rude,’ Mum states. She removes her head and her hand from her bag, snaps it closed again with a loud click as the brass clasp shuts itself tight. ‘We were in the middle of a conversation.’

  ‘You mean I was,’ the person I am in my head says. ‘You were going, “lalalala, not happening”.’ The person I actually am says, ‘It’s fine, Mum. It gives us a chance to have a proper look at the place. So what do you think?’

  This building is as beautiful as it is commanding. The bottom part of it is painted cream and looks from a distance like a short, satiny cream skirt, while the top half looks like it has been dressed in a blouse of russet sandstone. The corners of the building are curved instead of pointed and the whole of the top floor is apparently one penthouse apartment. My flat is on the first floor, and most of it overlooks the sea. I’d spent far too much money on renting it, even with the huge discount I’d got because it’d been empty for so long and the owners were desperate to fill it. It didn’t matter about the money right now, it would come out of my savings, and it was only for six months before I decided what to do next.

  Mum, who rarely shows if she is impressed, rotates slowly on the spot, stares at the sea, which today is a shimmery azure, and takes in the matching-coloured sky that is crammed with white, floccose clouds. While she looks, I retrieve my small instant camera from the left knee pocket of my navy blue combat trousers and flick it on. I need to take a snapshot of this moment so I can write underneath it: With Mum, May 2015, Outside New Home (Brighton/Hove) and stick it up on my wall. A reminder of the moment my new life began.

  In my right knee pocket my mobile buzzzz-buzzzz-tings for probably the fiftieth time today. I ignore my phone and take the shot, capturing our proximity to the sea as well as the look of the building.

  ‘Who is it that keeps sending you messages?’ Mum asks. She can’t ignore it any longer. She’s held her tongue all day but this is the text that has sent her over the edge. She sounds so miffed anyone would think it was her who was being texted at least six times an hour all day. Mum becomes diabolically upset with people who use ‘text’ as a verb. (It’s actually worth doing it just to see her nostrils flare and her eyes turn into hard blue lasers seeking to burn your tongue out of your head for such an evil act.) ‘They were sending messages the whole of the journey and even now when you haven’t replied. Who is it?’

  ‘Who do you think it is?’ I reply, a little more tartly than is necessary.

  ‘Didn’t you tell him that you don’t want to see him any more?’ she asks.

  She says that like it was a casual fling – not a twelve-year, cohabiting relationship – that he should really be over by now.

  ‘Well, didn’t you?’ she demands to my silence.

  ‘Yes, of course I did.’

  ‘Then why is he still sending you messages?’

  For the same reason that I’m still reading them: I don’t want it to be over; I don’t want any of this to have happened; I want to be living at home in Leeds with our plans for the future and my eye on that shop in the Victoria Quarter. I want to be making jewellery, and arguing about my mess, and planning days out in our campervan. I want the life I was promised and thought I was going to live before all of this happened. It’s the same for him, I’d imagine.

  I can’t talk about this with anyone, but especially not with her when she made it clear over the years how little she thought of him. ‘I don’t know why he’s still texting, Mum.’ Like clockwork her eyes harden and her nostrils show their annoyance at the text verb. ‘Maybe he thinks if he sends me enough messages I’ll change my mind.’

  ‘Typical,’ she mumbles nowhere near under her breath. ‘I never did like the way he was so confident and sure of himself.’

  ‘Really?’ I reply. ‘’Cos I always loved that about him.’

  ‘And look where that got you,’ Mum says. Shocked, I take a step back. She’s not normally that spiteful. Her words usually have a sting to them, but that was like a nasty stab from a vicious weapon and it’s hit me square in the chest, right over my heart, right where everything seems to ache from at the moment.

  Mum, even though she must have seen my reaction, and noticed that I have stepped away from her, is openly unapologetic as she observes me.

  ‘Oh, get knotted,’ teeters on the tip of my tongue, while huge tears are cramming themselves into my eyes. I take another step back and force myself to look away because I’m not sure if swearing at my mother or crying in front of her would be the worst thing to do right now.

  With Seth & Dylan, November 1996, Liverpool

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ The man who asked this question looked vaguely familiar, fitted right into this university world of distantly remembered, partially recalled faces.

  He had come over and sat down on the stool on the other side of the table in the area of the student bar where Dylan, the absolute love of my life, had unintentionally annexed these last few weeks we’d been here. Dylan was like The Fonz in that people were drawn to him; they hung out near him like groupies around a rock star and didn’t seem to mind if he didn’t actually get around to talking to them during their time together in the bar. Today was one of those rare occasions where it was only Dylan and me having
a drink after an additional early evening tutorial that only he and I had turned up for. Other lectures hadn’t started or were about to finish, and in that lull I’d managed to get him all to myself. I was relishing every last second – until this guy appeared.

  Like most of the people I met at college, I wasn’t sure if this new bloke was someone I’d seen around – in halls, in the library, right here in the bar – or if I’d met him before I arrived at Liverpool University to study Political Science.

  ‘I’ll have a pint if you’re buying,’ Dylan replied to the new man.

  ‘I wasn’t asking you,’ the new man said good-naturedly. ‘I was asking your friend.’

  I pointed to myself in surprise. ‘Me?’ Male or female, no one noticed me when I was sitting with Dylan. He was far too rock star-like.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘No. Thank you, but no.’

  ‘Make the most of it while you can,’ Dylan laughed. ‘Seth’s not exactly known for reaching into his pocket unprompted.’

  ‘Think you’re mistaking me for yourself there, mate,’ the new guy, Seth, replied. ‘Which is why I’m not offering to buy you a drink – you owe me a couple of thousand of them.’

  Dylan laughed again.

  ‘Does your mum like Emmerdale Farm, by any chance?’ I asked. She may have had a special interest in Greek mythology but I was guessing modern-day TV was probably more her thing.

  Seth nodded slowly. ‘I got off quite lightly,’ he said then laughed. When he laughed his pink lips moved back to show his perfect white teeth, while his hazel-green eyes danced with mirth and kindness. ‘My brother’s called Sugden. We’ve got Alans and Jacks in our extended family so Sugden he was named.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ I scoffed.

  ‘It is, actually,’ Dylan said. ‘I’ve known Seth since we were in nursery. Grew up near-ish to each other over the years. Now, apparently, he’s transferred to do Political Science here, too. Can’t get away from him, it seems. But yes, his brother is called Sugden. His family’s dead posh and all, you’d think his mother would have some shame about it, but she’s unrepentant.’