That Girl From Nowhere Read online

  ‘Which people?’

  ‘You said you wouldn’t interrupt.’

  ‘I know, love, but I’m not completely understanding you.’

  ‘She was Finnish, this woman. It was her that they … those people … got the idea for the butterfly box from.’ Mum nods, now she understands. ‘And she said that the daughter of those people works there.’

  ‘Daught— Sorry.’ Mum purses her lips to stop herself talking again.

  ‘I went to talk to her then I changed my mind but she came out to the car park and I spoke to her. We had a chat and I found out that she has two brothers and her parents have been together for nearly forty years. So her parents are both my—’ I’m finding it hard to say the word in relation to them and me. ‘I came home and I wanted to tell you but I couldn’t, so I didn’t. She kept ringing me but I didn’t reply. So she tricked me. Got someone to pretend to want to talk to me about an engagement ring, you know, the man I was telling you about who wanted one done really quickly? Then suddenly she’s there and then she’s there.’

  I look at Mum, expecting her to speak. She doesn’t. Her lips are still pursed, as though waiting to be sewn together.

  ‘Her,’ I say.

  ‘Your birth mother?’ Mum says when she realises I need her to talk now.

  I nod. ‘Yes. My birth mother.’ I can say it now that Mum has said it first. She’s broken the taboo so I can too.

  ‘I bet you were a bit surprised.’

  A bit surprised? A BIT surprised? A BIT SURPRISED?! ‘Yes. It was too much for me, I had to get out of there.’

  ‘You must have been in all sorts of turmoil. I bet she was, too.’

  I glare at my mother. I don’t mean to, but it sounds like she is putting herself in her shoes.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, Clemency. It will have been a very difficult thing for her to do, to come and meet you like that. She won’t have known what your reaction would be, and imagine seeing for the first time someone you haven’t seen since you gave birth to them. Imagine how terrifying it would be. She must have been in bits anticipating it.’

  At least she got to anticipate it, not like me, who had it sprung on them, I think in reply. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ I say.

  ‘I’m sure she’s thought about you all these years and I’m sure she was just bursting with the things she’s wanted to say to you after all this time. Did you speak to her at all?’

  I shake my head. ‘She gave me the box with the photos that’s in the corridor, but we didn’t really speak.’

  ‘Would you like to see her again?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Would you mind if I did?’ I reply.

  I’m carefully watching my mother: I see the edges of her smile touch her eyes, but don’t take over them. I see the strain from having to smile, the clenched tightness of the hand that is not stroking my back. ‘It’s not about me, love, it’s about what you want,’ she says eventually. So eventually that inside I think: I knew it! I knew you didn’t think it was wonderful news.

  Mum doesn’t want me to get hysterical again, which is why she is playing along for now. She’s probably hoping this whole experience will have put me off, will stop me from even contemplating getting in touch with them again.

  ‘I don’t know what I want to do,’ I say. As much as it’s the truth, I need my mother to be honest with me. She needs to tell me what she really thinks. Over the years there’s been one abiding message that she has sent me: do not go looking for your other family. Do not do anything that will upset what we have. Dad wouldn’t have minded, but with Mum, it was obvious it would have been to her a huge rejection of who she was and what she had done for me. Why she was now pretending not to mind could only have been down to her not wanting me to become hysterical again.

  ‘OK, love,’ Mum says quietly. ‘I understand.’

  21

  Abi

  To: Jonas Zebila

  From: Abi Zebila

  Subject: Total disaster!!!!!

  Wednesday, 24 June 2015

  Well, that went well, NOT!

  I set up a meeting with Clemency using Declan as bait through her job and she completely freaked out and ran away when she saw Mummy.

  I actually felt sorry for Mummy. When I told her I’d arranged a meeting, she looked so happy and terrified at the same time. She didn’t say much on the way there, and when she sat in front of Clemency for the first time the look on her face reminded me of how I felt the first time I saw Lily when I gave birth to her. I was completely freaked out. I loved her, don’t get me wrong, and I thought my heart was going to explode because I had such a fierce need to hold her, but I was also really shocked. I kept blinking at her, wondering if she was real and if she had really come out of my body and if she was really something to do with me. Mummy was looking at Clemency just like that.

  Mummy was devastated when Clemency left and I was gutted, too.

  This is all so messy and horrible when they always show you on the telly people just getting hugged and being happy. This is all so big and out of hand, I wish, wish, wish I’d never done as Mrs Lehtinen asked and gone to check on Clemency. Then I’d never have known and none of us would be feeling this bad.

  I’d never know, though, what hypocrites Mummy and Daddy are. There, I said it. You’ve always said they were, but I wouldn’t accept it because they’re Mummy and Daddy and we’re supposed to do what they say and believe them about everything.

  On the way home Mummy didn’t talk much at all. She stared out of the taxi window, then as we pulled up outside she said, ‘I have to tell your father.’ She said it like he was going to blame her or something.

  ‘What about Gran?’ I said, because sometimes I don’t know when to leave well enough alone, do I?

  Mummy breathed out slowly and angrily. ‘Yes, her too.’

  I can hear voices downstairs – they’re quite loud but not loud enough for me to be able to make out what they’re saying so I’m guessing Mummy’s told Daddy and Gran. I wonder how they’ll take it? Thankfully, Lily is staying over at Declan’s so she won’t witness any shouting.

  What do you think I should do now? Do you think I should leave Clemency alone or get back in touch? What if I ask her to do a DNA test with me so we can see if we are related? Because it could still all be a huge coincidence. And if it is, that means she can go back to her life and Mummy and Daddy will realise they need to be honest with us in future if they want to avoid things like this happening.

  What if she’s not the only one? I keep thinking about that possibility. What if there are more children they had adopted who are going to turn up one day?

  I think a DNA test is probably the best way forward and then we’ll all know where we stand.

  Love,

  Abi

  xx

  22

  Smitty

  ‘Would you mind if I did see my birth relatives again?’

  It’s two days later. Mum is about to go for a ride on her tricycle and I am going to work via Beached Heads. In the past two days we haven’t talked about it. Mum left me to look at the baby photos on my own and I didn’t. I simply put the box on top of the other butterfly box at the bottom of the wardrobe, looked at the composition, realised that it looked like the big box had given birth to the smaller box so had to move the smaller one to my bottom drawer where I keep my hats, gloves and scarves, which I’m obviously not going to be going through any time soon.

  Mum, who had hoisted herself up on to her bike, steps down again and turns towards me but doesn’t rotate enough to look at me fully – instead she stares mostly at the sea. It’s rough out there this morning; the waves seem wrathful, their anger appearing as a white, frothy rage upon the tops of the grey surf. I wonder if that’s what Mum is feeling inside about this.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ she replies, quietly.

  ‘Because I want to know how you honestly feel.’

  ‘How I honestly feel,’ she murmurs. A long pause then: ‘Yes, I would mind.’r />
  Oh. I thought she might try to sugar-coat it, talk around it, gauge if I’m thinking of doing it.

  ‘Why?’ I ask.

  We’ve never talked about this openly, it’s all been carefully, wilfully, left unsaid.

  The pads of Mum’s hands are covered by fingerless cycling gloves and she raises her fingers to unclip her Hell’s Angels-inspired helmet and take it off. She ruffles her hand through her hair and continues to contemplate the sea. The first line of ‘Somewhere Beyond the Sea’ plays through my mind as I watch her.

  ‘Because I’m scared you’re going to get hurt again if you do this. What if they reject you? How will that make you feel?’ She hooks her helmet on to the padded leather seat of her tricycle, traces the outline of one of the flames.

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought it through. I just know—’

  ‘I have. I have thought it through and I know you wouldn’t be able to withstand such disappointment and hurt.’

  ‘Mum, I’ve withstood worse.’

  ‘Like what?’ she demands.

  ‘Like what?!’ I’m amazed she has to ask. ‘Like losing Dad. Like my— my relationship with Seth coming to an end.’

  ‘They’re not like being rejected by your mother.’

  ‘But she’s not my mother, is she? You are. At the moment I barely know her.’

  ‘At the moment.’ Mum seizes on this so immediately I wonder if she has been waiting for me to say something like that. ‘When you do get to know her, you’ll start to think of her as your mother.’

  And you think that will mean I’ll love her more than I do you, I think. Mum acts like my love for her is fragile, transient and transferable; as though I’ll never have room in my heart for two people with the tag ‘mother’. As though it is a forgone conclusion I’ll reject her in favour of the person who was there first – even though I have barely met the woman.

  ‘How do you know that?’ I ask.

  ‘I just know. A mother knows these things.’

  ‘So if you had a biological child you’d have loved them more than me?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘How is that ridiculous, Mum? You’re saying that if I get to know someone I’m biologically related to they’ll replace you, so why is it ridiculous for me to say the same about you having a biological child?’

  ‘It’s not the same,’ she snaps. Defensive, angry, my mum snatches up her helmet, plonks it heavily down on her head. Fumbles crossly at her chinstrap. ‘You know very well that it’s not the same.’

  ‘I really don’t,’ I reply. Out loud. For once it’s something I don’t keep in.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ she hisses at me. She mounts her bike, indignation on her features, and without another word or look in my direction, she cycles across the small car park in which we stand and heads to the cycle path that snakes around the building and towards Portslade, the opposite direction to the one I’m heading in.

  ‘I really, really don’t,’ I say to her retreating form. She doesn’t indicate as she turns the tight corner around our building and rides off at speed.

  ‘So much for it being wonderful news,’ I mutter.

  Tyler’s coffee is going to have to be nothing short of spectacular to see me through this day.

  23

  Smitty

  ‘I’ve had a few ideas about what to do with your pendant but the one I keep coming back to is a watch because of the connection with time.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ Melissa says. She sits on the other stool in my workshop and her attention doesn’t rest anywhere for long – she looks like a meerkat, constantly looking around, trying to take it all in. My workshop is neat and tidy. In general, I am not neat and tidy, my life is full of chaos and piles of paper and several dozen jobs I meant to finish. But wherever I work has to be immaculate, tidy, precisely organised. I have hung all my larger tools on the walls, there are designated pots for the files, the daylight lamp sits in the left-hand corner of my bench, in the right-hand corner is the soldering area.

  ‘It’s so cool in here,’ Melissa says suddenly. She spins herself on the stool. ‘I’d love to have a place like this to work in, instead of just an office.’

  ‘I’m really lucky, I know.’

  ‘It’s not so much luck, you have worked for this, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, not luck as much as good fortune from hard work.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. About this watch idea …?’

  ‘I don’t really wear watches.’

  I open up my sketchbook, already ashamed about how bad my sketches are. ‘Have a look at the idea I had,’ I say. ‘Excuse my sketches. The locket would become the watch, it’d be protected from knocks by the locket lid, and the strap would be made from linking the chain together in small sections, like this.’

  Melissa stops fidgeting and visually exploring and gazes down at the lines I’ve made with a soft, 2B pencil. Her face, sceptical when she first looked, changes. ‘Actually, that looks kind of … nice. Classical, but still funky. If people even say “funky” any more.’ She turns her head to the side, examines the photo of the pendant pinned to the corner of the page and the drawing more carefully. ‘I really like it. So what’s the problem?’

  ‘Why would you think there was a problem?’ I ask.

  ‘Because you could have emailed me those sketches.’

  ‘Well, the only sticking point is I’m not a watchmaker, I’d have to outsource that and it would be a bit pricey. I don’t want to get quotes until I know you at least like the general idea.’

  ‘I do like the general idea, yes.’

  ‘Excellent, I’ll get some quotes and we’ll decide how to proceed from there.’

  ‘Great.’ She picks up my set-square that lives in one of the pots beside the soldering station. ‘What do you use this for?’

  ‘Drawing straight lines, mainly. It’s useful for checking I’ve cut a line straight if I cut a piece out of sheet metal, too. Also, I check edges where two ends of a ring meet because they need to be perfectly straight otherwise soldering is a nightmare. Well, nightmare is a bit of an over-exaggeration, but you get what I mean.’

  Melissa nods thoughtfully. ‘I’ve been wanting to call you,’ she says like a wayward churchgoer finally returning to the confession booth.

  ‘I’ve wanted to call you. In fact, I did call you. You’re right, I could have done this by email or phone. I wanted to see you, though.’

  ‘I’m glad it’s not only me. And I’m glad you did call. I know I went a bit funny when you asked if I’d met my bio mother, but I don’t often get to talk about it all to someone who’s been there.’

  ‘Have you met her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not good?’

  ‘I don’t know what good is. We kind of get on, but she can be a bit full-on. I get it, I get that she’s been storing up all this love and emotion and she’s desperate for us to have some sort of relationship, but…. I’ve got parents. But then I feel guilty thinking like that because she’s only doing her best. And she didn’t want to give me up. It’s so hard sometimes. Hence the therapy.’

  ‘How did your parents take your deciding to search for your birth mother?’

  ‘They were supportive, up to a point. I didn’t realise until I was eighteen why they made such a huge thing of giving me a locket on my sixteenth birthday – and reminding me to wear it until it was something I put on automatically. I then can’t start wearing the other one, can I? Which kind of taints the locket I wear and makes me feel a bit odd about my parents, and it spurred me on to contacting you about making this locket wearable.’

  ‘That’s not fair of them.’

  ‘They always said that they didn’t mind me searching, encouraged it even, but then when I actually did it, they started to get a bit funny. Really down on mothers who give up their children. Kept reminding me that I might find out something I didn’t like – that I could be a child of rape or incest or someth
ing hideous like that. It was true, but God, I didn’t need to hear it from them of all people. I think some of it was genuine concern, but there was a lot of jealousy too.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Are yours being funny?’

  ‘It’s only me and my mum now and it’s a different situation but she won’t admit she’s jealous, too.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ That’s the kicker. I don’t know what to do. I want to meet my birth family again, properly, but then I don’t. What if, like Melissa’s parents said, I find out something I don’t like? It’s not as if I can simply not search for them, they’re in my life. Finding out things I don’t like will come from getting to know them. Something I can avoid.

  ‘Have you applied for your adoption papers?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh, no, it’s too late for that. Way, way too late.’

  I explain to her the bare bones of the situation and she listens with her eyes wide and her mouth open. At the end of it, she is silent for a while. So am I. Listening to myself tell this tale to someone else who hasn’t been there makes it sound horrific. Horrific as in the emotional devastation those tiny, fragmented meetings have caused. It might have been better if it was planned. If everyone had a chance to think, to pause before each meeting, maybe I would not have this much panic rushing through me.

  That is it. Panic. Thank you, Melissa, I think. Talking to you has let me understand that I’m in a state of panic, even when I am not having a panic attack. You can’t think properly when you’re in a state of panic.

  ‘You could still apply for your adoption papers,’ Melissa says. ‘It might stop anyone from rewriting history if you do meet them again. Some of the stuff in my adoption papers … It reminds me when my birth mother gets all misty-eyed about how she was wronged and I was “stolen” from her that at various points she could have made another decision. It wouldn’t have been easy by any stretch of the imagination, but still there was another path she could have taken that she didn’t. Some of it, of course, was from the social worker who seemed to be really judgemental, but some of it … Written by her, so there’s no doubt. I have to remind myself she was young and in an impossible situation but, you know, blah, blah …’ Melissa smiles. ‘I don’t say that to her, of course. I never say anything like that to anyone – no one wants to hear it. That’s why I wanted to call you – I got the impression you might understand.’