The Brighton Mermaid

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘Did Shane give you a rundown of what I’m after?’ asks Craig Ackerman.

  ‘Not really, no. He said it was something to do with a will?’

  ‘Oh. I don’t know why he told you that. I’m adopted. I would like to find out more about my birth family.’

  ‘Do you have your adoption records?’ I ask.

  Craig Ackerman smiles. ‘My dear, if I had them, what would I need you for?’ He laughs. ‘No offence meant.’

  ‘None taken,’ I reply, because in some ways it is a valid point. I reach into my large bag and take out my A4 sketchpad, which I use to make notes and start to draw a rough family tree to fill in. I also take out my voice recorder. I need to take an oral history of everything he remembers, everything he’s been told – no matter how vague or gossipy – so I can get an idea of where to start.

  The man behind the desk looks at the recorder suspiciously. ‘Why on Earth are you recording me?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m not recording you as such. I like to get two versions of the history you tell me, in case I miss something in my notes.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have much to go on,’ he says.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Any detail, no matter how small, can sometimes spark another avenue of research. Ready?’

  He clears his throat a few times, picks up his glass of water and gulps a couple of mouthfuls before clearing his throat again. ‘Ready.’

  I hit record and pick up my pencil, ready to start sketching as he talks.

  Craig Ackerman doesn’t talk for very long because he doesn’t have much to go on. He keeps apologising and I keep telling him it’s fine. I need a challenge and it looks like this is it.

  ‘Have you eaten anything in the last hour or so, Mr Ackerman?’ I ask.

  ‘No. May I ask why?’

  I drop my notebook and recorder back into the folds of my large black leather bag and pull out the rest of my kit, which is my DNA collection pack. In a very large, clear polythene bag are fifteen buccal swab kits, rubber gloves, and several sheets of disclaimer forms, drawn up for me by a solicitor. Craig Ackerman’s already lined face frowns at what I’ve just carefully laid out on his desk in front of me.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asks.

  ‘This is the other part of what I do,’ I say. ‘I take a DNA sample and send it off for analysis to various companies who will match you with anyone who could be a biological relative. I do all that for you. I send them off, and check the results, see which matches you have and explain them to you. I can also get in touch with any matches for you if you want. You obviously get a copy of the results and access to the account in your name on the various websites. But I do need you to sign an authority allowing me to submit these samples in your name, and a disclaimer to say you won’t try to sue me if you don’t get the results you were hoping for …’ My voice peters away. ‘You look confused, Mr Ackerman.’

  ‘Craig, please, call me Craig.’ The furrows on his brow deepen as he stares at the blue gloves on my hands. ‘Shane did not mention that you took DNA samples.’

  ‘It’s most likely he didn’t know. I don’t really talk to him about what I do.’

  The furrows deepen even more.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ I ask gently. ‘The thing of it is, adding DNA to the search makes all the difference. I can do all the paper and hard-core genealogy research just fine, but DNA brings in another dimension and opens up even more avenues for discovery if you find a match. Which sometimes doesn’t happen, I have to admit. And you can’t do it with only DNA either, as the sample size out there is way too small. But old-school methods and DNA together are a powerful combination.’

  ‘I see. What do I have to do?’

  ‘Drink a couple of swigs of water to wet your mouth. Then use this giant cotton bud to swipe along the inside of your cheek.’ I hold out the buccal swab, which does indeed look like a giant cotton bud, that I will store in what looks like an oversized test tube. Once I’ve taken the fifteen swabs, I’ll send them off in different envelopes to different DNA testing companies. ‘I’ll bag them up and send them off.’ He obliges with the water swig, but when it comes to the cheek swipe, he doesn’t take the swab from me.

  ‘Would you … would you mind doing the first one for me, so I can see what I’m supposed to do?’

  ‘Open,’ I say.

  He opens his mouth and waits patiently for me to insert the swab and watches me the whole time, staring into my eyes while I move it around. Most people who ask me to carry out the swab for them look away, embarrassed that I am doing something that feels quite intimate. Not this man. He has that supreme confidence I often come across in successful businessmen – nothing seems to faze them.

  Once I have the sample, I swiftly return to my side of the desk to put the swab safely in its glass tube. I slip the tube into the plastic bag and carefully lay the others on his side of the desk. ‘I’m sure you can do these yourself now,’ I say. ‘And then once you’ve signed the papers, we’re done.’

  ‘You’re most efficient,’ he says.

  I busy myself with getting the paperwork in order and wait for him to finish swabbing himself. I don’t like Craig Ackerman. It’s nothing he’s done, he simply makes me uneasy. Having said that, I have to admit I spend a lot of time on high alert, feeling wary and unsure about people. Another hangover from the Brighton Mermaid stuff, I suppose.

  ‘I generally send everything on Fridays, so once I post these off, I should get the DNA results in a month to six weeks. I’ll let you know if I turn up anything else significant in the meantime.’

  ‘It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Okorie,’ he says.

  It hasn’t been a pleasure meeting him, but I smile and say, ‘Likewise. Thank you,’ and exit his office as quickly as possible. In all these things, even with the people I find odious, I focus on the most important thing: another set of DNA results that will hopefully take me one step nearer to finding Jude and the identity of the Brighton Mermaid.

  Macy

  Wednesday, 4 April

  ‘Shane, stop for a second, stop.’

  ‘Wh-what’s the matter? Am I hurting you? Am I too heavy on you?’

  ‘No, no, it’s not that. I just … This is the fifth time since Saturday.’

  ‘I know, it’s wonderful, isn’t it? We’ve got our mojo back.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘What do you mean, “why?”’

  ‘Is it because of Nell?’

  ‘What? No. Why would you say that?’

  ‘You’ve … This … It’s only been like this since you sorted things out with Nell on Saturday. You practically jumped on me when she left. Are you doing it because of her? Because of Nell?’

  ‘Will you stop saying her name? Why do you keep saying her name when we’re in the middle of making love?’

  ‘Because I need to know if it’s because of her.’

  ‘No. A million times no.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Because I love you. Because I want you all the time but it doesn’t feel like you want me in the same way.’

  ‘Of course I do. You repeatedly rejected me first, remember? That’s where it started.’

  ‘I rejected you because you called me Clyde one time. All right? It killed a bit of me and it took me ages to get the confidence up to make love again. I mean, we’d been together all this time and you called me by your ex’s name at a crucial moment. That was hard. By the time I got over it, you didn’t want to know.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I had no idea I’d done that. No idea.’

  ‘It’s OK now, I’m over it.’

  ‘I really am sorry. But if it’s any comfort, I know how it feels.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve called me Nell more than once. Usually when you’re about to come. I know what you mean about it killing a little part of you each time.’

  ‘Oh, Jeez. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry. I had no idea. You should have said something. I shou
ld have said something.’

  ‘Do you think we’re fooling ourselves here? That we’re not really suited and we should just call it a day?’

  ‘I think I love you. More than I’ve loved anyone in my entire life. I think I want to continue making love to you right now because it feels so good doing it with you. I think we’re perfect for each other. And I think I want to marry you. That’s what I think.’

  ‘I think I love you too, Mr Merrill. And I think I want us to carry on making love. And I think I’ll think again about marrying you.’

  ‘I love you, Mrs Merrill.’

  ‘Hey, I didn’t say yes yet.’

  ‘I know, but I’m just testing it out. Practising, if you will, for when I finally get to sleep with a married woman.’

  You already are, Shane , I think. You already are .

  Nell

  Thursday, 5 April

  Maura Goodrich cries.

  Since I arrived and laid out her final family tree, showed her where she fits into it, explained who is around her and before her, revealed the secrets of the people who share portions of her twenty-three chromosomes, she has not stopped crying. I sit beside her, not at all uncomfortable because this is often how people react, and wait for her to be calm enough to form words. When people see themselves on their family map, the upside-down tree on which they are a leaf of a branch, they become very emotional. Not all of them cry, but most of them pause for a moment, gather their thoughts, round up their feelings and then try to comprehend the vastness of it all. We seem to be tiny specks in the vast ocean of our DNA pool when it is all mapped out, and it is that – the literal relativity of it all – which takes their breath away.

  ‘I knew it!’ Maura says. ‘I knew there was something they were hiding from me.’ She sniffs and wipes her dribbling nose on her sleeve. ‘I’ve always known there was this big thing that nobody talked about.’ She sighs. ‘I remembered my dad leaving for a while, like I told you, but they would always pretend I was mistaken or misremembered him going away on business. He didn’t, he left and he went to live with another woman. Had a child with her.’ She wipes at her eyes with her fingertips. ‘Oh. The relief. I wasn’t going batshit. I really do have a sister.’

  Technically, she’s her half-sister, but I know for many people, that detail isn’t all that important. What is important is the connection they have out there. The other people who could be a part of their lives. It doesn’t always work. They don’t always find more people to expand their family and live happily ever after. More often than not, if a person hasn’t actively gone looking – put their name on websites, submitted DNA, looked at records – they don’t want to know. Most people who aren’t actively searching have a life that may not be perfect, but certainly works for them, so they have no need for another person to enter their world. Those are the heart-breaking conversations. I usually tell them when I present them with their family tree so that I can tell them in person, hold their hand, offer a hug, remind them that they have other family to rely on. Or friends. That this doesn’t change anything about who they were at the start of the search and who they could be. I also remind them that people often change their minds – they rarely find out this sort of news and decide they don’t want to know for ever.

  Happily, Maura’s case isn’t like that. Her (half-)sister had been floored. Brought up by her mum and stepfather, she had always been told that her father was unknown because he was a one-night stand. She’d been fine with that, apparently, but had put her DNA online in the hopes of one day meeting him. When she heard that she had a sister, she was over the moon. I wasn’t sure how she’d receive the news that her mother and father had been together for the first year of her life, though. It wasn’t my place to tell her, so I held my tongue.

  ‘I want to meet her,’ Maura says.

  ‘She wants to meet you, too.’

  ‘Really?! That’s so wonderful. I’m so excited. I can’t wait.’

  ‘There are a few things to remember, though, Maura, before you meet Laura. You probably won’t become instant best friends, or even sisters. She is, essentially, a stranger, so you have to bear that in mind. I will come to the meeting with you if you’d like me to, but you might want to take a friend or your boyfriend. Meet somewhere public, try to take it slowly and, most importantly, don’t invest anything in the relationship that you’re not able to lose. So if you’re going to be hurt if she isn’t who you think she is, then only expect the most basic things from her and the relationship. Does that make sense?’

  Maura nods. She’s not really listening. I’ll have to repeat it all for her before I leave, but that’s understandable. I’d be just as floored as she is.

  Ah, drat! I didn’t give Craig Ackerman the ‘expectations’ speech. I usually give it to everyone I work with, it’s always best to under-promise than overpromise and have to eat humble pie when I find out very little or even nothing at all.

  ‘All right,’ I say with a smile. ‘I’ll tell you everything I found and then we can maybe call her.’

  ‘That would be amazing!’

  This is why I don’t get horrifically upset and despondent when a search has no Jude or Brighton Mermaid connection. What I do helps people, it creates links and reveals connections to other humans. This type of work is rewarding even if it doesn’t bring me any nearer to solving my two big mysteries.

  ‘I have a friend,’ Maura says while her eyes run over and over the family tree, ‘he wants someone to track down some family for him, too. I said you were just the person. Shall I pass on your number to him?’

  ‘Erm, if you’ve got his number, that’d be great.’

  ‘Yes, wait right here, I’ll go get it.’

  Having a recommendation passed on is payment enough for me. Getting access to more and more DNA is vital for me right now. I need as many chances as possible to find that genetic link, that magic combination that will prove I’m doing the right thing. That I can solve these mysteries before everything blows up again.

  Macy

  Friday, 6 April

  Jude. Jude. Jude.

  I keep dreaming about Jude, and she keeps echoing through my mind during the day. Every time I think about finding Clyde so I can start the divorce process, my mind skips back even further, back twenty-five years to that night and I have to think about Jude.

  I don’t remember the dreams, I just know, when I open my eyes, that she has inhabited every part of my mind while it floated in dreamland. Then, while I’m staring into the dark, her name repeats and repeats in my head, like a never-ending drum beat.

  Jude. Jude. Jude.

  I know she didn’t run away. And I know who she was with when she disappeared. I can see it as clearly as though it happened yesterday. In twenty-five years I’ve forgotten so much – people, places, events and things – and still, I remember that night as clear as anything.

  I remember … my bare feet on the textured carpet in my bedroom … my nightdress clinging to me in the hot stickiness of that night … the heat pulsing around me as I sat up because I could hear talking … the otherworldly feeling of being out of it as I went to my bedroom window and looked outside.

  The world was asleep but they were not. They were in the street. I watched them. I watched them and I knew I could never tell.

  Jude. Jude. Jude.

  I often felt pushed out by Jude because she and Nell had known each other for so long.

  Sometimes it felt like she was Nell’s sister instead of me. But I liked Jude. I thought she was funny and kind and always had a great tale to tell. She was trouble, too. Everyone knew it. Even Nell knew it. Nell didn’t care because she was her friend, but when I would listen at the door, sometimes I could hear Nell telling her off. Saying that she shouldn’t have done this or that, telling her she was going to get them both into trouble. Nell was always loyal, and she would always stand by Jude, even if it meant getting into hot water, too. Nell would get into trouble as well, because our parents weren’t like Ju
de’s.

  Our parents shouted and told off and took things away if you misbehaved. Our parents would sometimes smack if you got completely out of line. We always knew where we stood with our parents and we – for the most part – behaved. Jude’s parents were mega laid-back. I think that was Mr Dalton. I heard Jude tell Nell how she and her mum would have stand-up rows, but it was always her stepdad who calmed them down. Mr Dalton always seemed like the most placid and unflappable person in the world. I remember one time I tripped and dropped a glass of water on him. It splashed all over his lovely grey suit and made him look like he’d wet himself. I was horrified and said sorry a million times. If that had been Daddy, he would have said ‘Macenna!’ in a cross voice because I was always spilling things and dropping things and knocking things over. He would have grabbed a towel and shaken his head and told me I had to be more careful. Mr Dalton just went, ‘Oh, oops-a-daisy,’ and then laughed.

  Jude. Jude. Jude.

  Being a parent now, I don’t think Mr Dalton being so casual was a good thing. I didn’t think so even back as an eleven-year-old.

  Maybe because Nell only ever got into trouble with Jude, I kind of thought her parents needed to be stricter, should stop her doing exactly what she wanted whenever she wanted. When they found that dead body, when Daddy had to go to the police station to pick Nell up, I was certain that would be it. That Daddy and Mummy would ban Jude from our house as well as not letting Nell out ever again. It didn’t work out like that, of course. Jude’s parents only let her out to come to our place so she spent even more time with us. They were mostly in Nell’s room, talking about the dead body and talking about Jude’s bracelets and talking about what they could do to find out who killed her.

  That was mainly Jude. She was the one who wanted to know who the woman was and how she was killed. Nell mostly wanted to forget about it. I could hear her sometimes, crying into her pillow, screaming away her fears. Nell thinks she hides her feelings so well, but I’ve always been able to see right through her.