That Girl From Nowhere Read online

  ‘I don’t, Mum. I’ve got brown skin and you’ve got peach skin. I’ve got black hair and you’ve got yellow hair.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. I still love you. No matter what you look like, I still love you.’

  ‘But Nancy looks like her mum. Why don’t I look like you?’ I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t tell me. She’d looked so worried and now she looked sad.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said again. ‘Nancy … It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I love you, no matter what you look like.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK, Mum.’ I patted her hand because I didn’t want her to cry and her eyes were all wet. It made her sad that I didn’t look like her, and I knew, even though she said it didn’t, it mattered lots and lots.

  ‘Can I ask you something about being adopted, seeing as you’re a stranger and I never have to see you again if I don’t want to?’ Melissa says. She speaks in a rush, obviously desperate to get the words out before she changes her mind.

  I have given her back her phone, I have pulled myself together. It honestly didn’t matter that I didn’t look like my parents; that wherever we went when I was growing up, and even now, I stood out from the crowd as different, as other. Mostly it didn’t matter. ‘Sure,’ I reply. I’m going to lie. It’s easier to do that than to become ‘The Adopted Person’ whose experiences someone uses as gospel for every discussion they ever have going forwards about adoption.

  ‘Did you sleep around a lot?’ she asks.

  I stop laying out the square, white-framed Polaroids of my previous work and designs on the table to look up at her.

  ‘I used to,’ she continues in her flustered rush. ‘I’ve met a few other people who were adopted and I’ve wanted to ask them if they did it, too, but I never got up the courage. I was really promiscuous at one point and my therapist – yes, I do that, too – suggested it might be because of stuff I’d internalised about what women who gave up their children were thought to be like back then. Nowadays it doesn’t matter, but I suppose people must have thought badly of women who got pregnant and then had to give up their children for adoption. She said it was possible that I’d been acting that out as a way of connecting with my birth mother. I don’t know if that’s right or not, but I was curious if you were ever like that? Or if it was just me? I hope I didn’t offend you.’

  ‘No, you didn’t offend me.’ My mother was madly in love with my father, I’m sure of that. In every version of my birth story I have thought up over the years, I know she was in love with my father and didn’t sleep around. I think she was just unlucky – they probably got caught out the first time they did it. And he panicked. ‘No, it wasn’t just you,’ I say to Melissa. So much for lying. ‘I did it too.’

  ‘Really?’ She closes her brown eyes and her face becomes a tapestry of sheer relief. She’s not alone. I’m not blood, but I do belong to the same group as her, the same family. I was adopted and I used to do the same thing as her. ‘I seriously thought there was something wrong with me. That I was the only one.’

  ‘I suppose I did, too. For me, it was about being wanted. If someone wanted me, even if it was just for sex, then it felt good.’

  ‘Yes! I was like everyone else because someone wanted me. Even if it was just wanting my body for sex. So many people take being wanted for granted.’

  ‘I know. But I’m not sure it’s only down to having been adopted. I mean, there must be loads of people out there who sleep around just because someone wants them.’

  ‘Maybe so, but it’s nice to talk to someone who understands.’

  ‘It is. It really is.’

  10

  Abi

  To: Jonas Zebila

  From: Abi Zebila

  Subject: AQOTWF

  Monday, 8 June 2015

  J,

  I don’t want to be emailing you only if there’s a problem so I’m just letting you know that All is Quiet On The Western Front. There’s a woman I know whose mum texts her that when she’s babysitting to let my friend know all is well and the baby is asleep.

  All is well and the Zebilas are – mostly – asleep. No unusual dramas of any kind.

  Gran seems to have stabilised quite a lot since the hospital stay (which of course gives credence to what Mummy has been trying to say about her being in a home where she can get specialist care). Mummy has disappeared the artwork as I thought she might.

  Declan is gearing up to one of his monthly meltdowns about us living together again and being a proper family. I can feel it coming. Mummy and Daddy are still pretending that Lily-Rose was the Immaculate Conception and that Declan doesn’t exist. Even when we go to spend the weekend with him at his flat, they never ask where we’ve been or what we got up to. He can’t see why I won’t move in with him full-time, but you know, every time I think about it, I remember the look on your face when you told Mummy and Daddy what the things Gran had said and done had resulted in, and that if they wouldn’t stick up for you and Meredith against Gran, then you weren’t hanging around any longer.

  Is Declan worth giving up my family for? He was such a dick when I told him I was pregnant. We were both nineteen and both meant to be doing the university thing after we’d finished school together, but I couldn’t believe how badly he behaved. I know, I know, it lasted all of three days before he was begging me to give him another chance, but it still makes me cautious about committing totally to him. That’s why I’ve never properly lived with him – we’ve both kept our own places until now when I’m living here. He could do it again.

  I suppose my only way forward is to move to Montenegro with you. Ha-ha, you’d love that, wouldn’t you?

  What did you think of the pictures? Do you want some more? Do you want me to get Mrs Lehtinen to send you some of those Jim bars? Or maybe I should pass on your email address to her. I may just do that if you don’t reply!!!

  Talk to me, big brother, please.

  Abi

  xxxxxx

  11

  Smitty

  ‘Tell me a story about you,’ I say to her. ‘Not the jewellery, but you.’

  ‘My darling, if I told you a story about me, I would be here all day. I mean, of course, you would be here all day. I am here all day anyway.’ Her voice has the slightest husk of an accent, one I do not recognise. She speaks with a slight hesitancy, the caution of someone who sometimes has to translate words in her head before they leave her mouth. ‘Tell me about you.’

  ‘There’s really nothing to tell. I’m here to help you, anyway.’ We’re sitting in the large community room in the retirement village where she lives. It’s bright from the stark overhead lighting, and airy from the glass floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the large courtyard. Several blue easy chairs are placed around small, low coffee tables. Apart from the lack of a counter and leather seating, it could be Beached Heads.

  On the table in front of us is a light-wood box with a hinged lid that is carved with different types of musical notes. Inside, she has a collection of gold and silver items, brooches, pieces with precious gems that look like real sapphires and emeralds. Pearls, too. Mrs Lehtinen, a widow who has lived at the home for a few months, is the third person I am seeing here today and she has by far the most extensive collection of jewellery. The others had modest assortments of jewellery and talking to them, seeing the condition of their hands, I knew I would make their pieces into elasticated bracelets or simply necklaces so they could wear their collections with no catches to negotiate, no clasps to undo.

  Apparently one of the staff saw my advert in the local magazine and asked the residents if they’d be interested in having me look at their jewellery. Six were interested. Mrs Lehtinen is one of those people who seems to exist in a soft-focus glow: her hair is white with a candyflossy haze, her skin is the colour and consistency of a peach, her eyes are a gentle blue. I don’t recognise where in the world her name might come from, just like I can’t place her accent.

  ‘You look like one of th
e girls who works here,’ Mrs Lehtinen says. ‘Abi is her name. You look so much like her.’

  ‘Do I?’ I say. I always look like people apparently. During my second year of college, I had people coming up to me constantly telling me they’d started a conversation with me in the library, the canteen, the bar, the car park, only to find they were talking to another girl. ‘She’s your absolute double,’ they’d say. When I finally met her, we discovered the only similarity between us was that we were both brown-skinned, and even then, not the same shade of brown. Other than that, we were different heights, weights and had completely different features. But apparently none of the people around us could see that. We’d both raised our eyebrows at each other, nodded sagely, and had to stop ourselves from laughing out loud. ‘You look nothing like me,’ we both said at the same time.

  ‘You are her double,’ Mrs Lehtinen says.

  ‘I hear that all the time,’ I say diplomatically. ‘I think I must look like a lot of people.’

  Mrs Lehtinen smiles at me. ‘You think I’m a silly old woman, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ I really don’t. ‘Do you want to show me some of your jewellery? Tell me about the different pieces if you don’t want to tell me a story about you.’

  ‘I collect jewellery like I collect ailments,’ she says. ‘I am never really sure where any of them come from or when I am going to get rid of them.’

  I grin at her. I see she is one of those people who needs to be dealt with differently. She won’t tell me her story until I’ve told her something about me.

  I remove the butterfly pendant from around my neck. I hold it out to her. I notice Mrs Lehtinen’s hands as she relieves me of the necklace. The rest of her – right down to her powder blue twinset – may be soft-focusy but she has lived. Her wrinkled, weathered and used hands tell me so. Her mind must be a treasury of stories, as varied and interesting as her chest of treasures in front of us.

  She’s surprised, as most people are, by the lightness of my pendant. It looks heavy, solid, its strong, thick lines create an expectation of heft, but it has very little weight because it is hollow.

  ‘This used to be a pair of earrings,’ I explain. ‘I got the earrings when I went on holiday. You know how, when you’re on holiday, something you buy looks amazing and you love it, then you get it home and the shine comes off it and you realise that the thing that was the most amazing thing in the world is now hellish? That was these earrings. They were incredibly uncomfortable. The shape, though, like teardrops, reminded me of the closed wings of a butterfly. I like butterflies, always have done, so I thought I could remake the earrings into something I could wear. It is not very good, because I was just starting to make jewellery.’ I run my fingers along the solid lines where the wings meet. You can still see the rivulets of the solder, something I would painstakingly file smooth if I was making the piece now. ‘I cut into this part of the earring, then I had to file both edges into curves to make them fit. Then I had to solder them together.’

  It sounds so simple, that I just did it, but the pain I went through: I had sobbed as the solder ran into the wrong places because I hadn’t painted enough of the yellow-green liquid flux into the right areas; I had cried again at the moment when I had finally got the solder to stay and it snapped off because I was too vigorous with the filing. ‘I used a large silver jump-ring and soldered it on to the wings to make it into a head. See?’ I moved my finger over the curved antennae on each side of the butterfly’s head. ‘The small antennae were made by melting and soldering on the little links you put through your ears.’ As I speak, she turns the pendant over and over in her hands. ‘I wear it all time now so it’s gone from a pair of earrings that sat in a drawer mostly forgotten to something I love to wear. I want to do that with some of your jewellery.’

  ‘It is so simple but kaunis.’ Mrs Lehtinen’s hands turn over the pendant and her eyes, upon which she has now placed the glasses she wears around her neck on a gold chain, continue to scrutinise it. ‘What is the word? Beautiful. But not as ordinary as beautiful. No, no, I don’t mean beautiful. In Finnish the word is henkeäsalpaava.’

  ‘Henkeäsalpaava,’ I repeat as close to what she said as I can. I nod while I say it, acting as though I understand completely what she is getting at. She’s Finnish. Does she have children? I wonder. Grandchildren? Did they sleep in baby boxes, too? Did she decorate them or were they as plain as they were when they were given to mothers by the government?

  ‘I haven’t met many Finnish people in my life,’ I say.

  ‘I am surprised at that, there are many of us around. Even here, in Brighton.’

  She’s not really giving me her full attention, she seems obsessed by the pendant. It isn’t that perfect. I love it, but I can see all its flaws, all the ways I would have made it differently now I am more experienced at what I do. Back then I was trying too hard to make things perfect and didn’t always manage it. In 2015, having done this for years, I still aim for perfection, but I don’t panic because anything that goes wrong, I know I can usually fix. Or at least make it look like the problem was intentional.

  ‘Do you like butterflies?’ I ask her.

  ‘It is not that,’ Mrs Lehtinen replies. ‘I am always fascinated by them because I remember a long time ago I knew of a baby who had a perhonen box.’ She traces her fingers over the wing curves of my butterfly pendant.

  ‘A what?’ I ask, scared to repeat the word in case it comes out wrong and I end up swearing at her.

  ‘A butterfly box,’ she says. ‘A box covered in perhonen. In Finland, when a baby is born, the government gives the mother a box full of everything they need – clothes and nappies and the like. And the box has a mattress too so the baby can sleep in it.’

  I know this. The tingling that has taken over my body tells me that I know this. The sudden shortness of my breath tells me that I know this. I nod at her.

  ‘I told the young girl of the family I used to live next door to about it when she was expecting. Many years ago. I told her and she made one. She decorated it with perhonen. Beautiful butterflies. She used such henkeäsalpaava colours. She had a baby girl.’

  When I was eight Dad took me on a rollercoaster for the first time. We were on our annual trip to Blackpool and I was giddy with the excitement of finally doing something grown-up and adventurous with my dad. We sat next to each other and he held my hand. Right at the top of the rollercoaster, just before the car began its descent, I felt weightless; as light as air, as though I weighed nothing. As if I was nothing. I was suspended above the Earth and in those seconds I felt like I was flying. I was a butterfly, as light as anything.

  I feel like that now. I am suspended above the Earth, weightless, light as air.

  ‘Does she still have the butterfly box, the little girl?’ My voice is working even though I am as light as air, as weightless as a butterfly.

  ‘I do not know. The baby … They … She went to live somewhere else. They said they sent her back to their country in Africa to grow up with family because the girl was too young to look after her properly. But I do not think that was the case. The girl’s guardian, she was my friend and she was so proud. She did not like scandal. We were never to speak of what happened, nor the baby. I suspect …’ Mrs Lehtinen stops turning my pendant over in her hand and places it carefully on the table beside her open jewellery box. ‘But what do I know? I am just a silly old woman.’

  She is just a silly old woman and I am still as light as air. My body tingles and my lungs do not work properly, but I am as light as air.

  ‘You’re not a silly old woman,’ I say. Ask her. Ask her what happened to the girl who had the baby. Where she is now. Ask her.

  Mrs Lehtinen’s eyes are suddenly, surprisingly, on me. She is as far away from a silly old woman as it is possible to get. ‘The girl, Abi, the one you look like, she is also the daughter of the woman who made the butterfly box. She had a box, too.’

  I stare at her. Does she know? H
as she guessed who I am? Who I might be? I do this, though. I’m constantly looking at people and wondering if we’re related, if they could be a half-sibling or a parent. I’ve never had a relative who looks like me, who acts like me, who’s interested in the same things as me. I’m always searching. This is probably an extension of that: I have come across a coincidence and I am using it as a passive way to search for more information on who I am and where I have come from. I didn’t go looking for this, it came to me.

  Of course it’s a coincidence, that’s what most things are in life. We believe in Fate, we believe in kismet, we believe in predetermined happenings, when really, it’s all down to coincidence. There must be hundreds of children out there who slept in butterfly boxes when they were born. Hundreds, if not thousands. I mean, what are the chances of me actually sitting down opposite the neighbour of the woman who gave birth to me? Slim to none, I’d say. And what are the chances of the other child of the woman who gave birth to me working here, too? Not even slim, just nonexistent. I am seeing things that are not there.

  ‘OK, Mrs Lehtinen, are there any pieces of jewellery that you’d like to wear again and I can help you with?’ I am back. I know this is all nonsense, my brain searching for familiarity – family – in the world of strangers I have grown up in, when I know who my family are. Here I am, back on solid ground. I am no longer floating, hovering above reality. I am back to doing what I am here to do.

  My hand reaches for my butterfly pendant. It is trembling. Stop shaking, I tell my hand. Stop shaking, you’re showing me up. Mrs Lehtinen is watching me but my hand won’t stop shaking. I enclose my butterfly pendant in my hand, hide the tremors. I hook the thick chain over my neck and flip open my toolbox, take out my camera. Mrs Lehtinen stares at my yellow and black tool box – years ago I decorated it with butterfly stickers.